If we did do a Valley 2 expansion, what would you even want to see?

[LaughingThesaurus]

I played the demo, and if it's a bullet hell, it can be defined as a bullet hell where you are the boss and there are so many enemies that they generate a second bullet hell. The game's really hectic.

[Pepisolo]

I played the demo, and if it's a bullet hell, it can be defined as a bullet hell where you are the boss and there are so many enemies that they generate a second bullet hell. The game's really hectic.

Very true! There also stages that are a bit more puzzly, too, which adds a little bit of another dimension to things. Good stuff!

Thinking about this other game idea, I can sort of see how having the ability to fly would help with the control problems: mouse and keyboard and dual sticks would both work very well with this. Interesting...

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think flying also means you need fewer complex animations. If you look at, say, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (I think there's a demo somewhere) you just play as a flying saucer. You get knocked about a bit if you ram a wall or get hurt, but otherwise you just sort of rotate and float and that's really about it. Players of Valley 2 complained a lot about animations. It seems to add up rather well. It might also be why AI War doesn't get many (as far as I see) complaints about its graphics. The ships really only need to just move. Ships do a lot of things, but a simple 'ship slides around' animation is definitely adequate. Whenever a man or woman is moving around, there's a lot to animate there. It's a lot more work to do.

[x4000]

I think flying also means you need fewer complex animations. If you look at, say, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (I think there's a demo somewhere) you just play as a flying saucer. You get knocked about a bit if you ram a wall or get hurt, but otherwise you just sort of rotate and float and that's really about it. Players of Valley 2 complained a lot about animations. It seems to add up rather well. It might also be why AI War doesn't get many (as far as I see) complaints about its graphics. The ships really only need to just move. Ships do a lot of things, but a simple 'ship slides around' animation is definitely adequate. Whenever a man or woman is moving around, there's a lot to animate there. It's a lot more work to do.

All true.  Also, if we just have one type of ship, we can AFFORD to do lots more animations and make it multi-part with various upgrades and attachments and so on.  A lot of those sorts of animations are things that we can easily do in-house versus paying a line animator for them, too.  Even most of the monsters in Valley 2 were animated by me directly, not by Heavy Cat.  It was just the characters and the henchmen that were animated by Heavy Cat, plus maybe 10 out of the 130 monsters.  It seems like players really liked my animations, although that may just have been in contrast to the Heavy Cat ones.

[Misery]

Ok, just stepping in to answer the original (unexpected) question here:


As AVWW goes, I can see why you guys considered the second game to be pretty much a "complete" product.   The first game really didn't have that aspect to it.... at least, not to me, while I enjoyed it alot there were various unfinished things in it, but the second one felt properly "complete". 

If you were to ever do an expansion though, I would say.... more strategy stuffs.   The strategy mode that is in there is very, very good and has alot of depth, but somehow it kinda felt like there wasnt as much "stuff" in it as compared to the platforming side with it's 10 kersquillion enemy and spell types and enchantments and biomes and towers and factories and powerups and.... yeah.    I also feel like the strategy part is the bit that could easily be added to without ever breaking anything, whereas the platforming bit got really fiddly with the balance at various points during development.


Overall though, I personally would be more interested in a third game at some point.   You guys created quite the game world there with lots to do and lots to see and an interesting backstory to all of it (which is something I only very rarely ever say) that seemed like it was very open to more stuff down the line.   

A bloody shame that it's so unlikely at this point, though, with SC having turned out the way it did, I really cant complain too much.

[Teal_Blue]

Just asking: would there be any interest in a "just the strategy game" mode?  Or a "just the platformer game" mode?  I think one of them could be spun as an expansion with a little sprucing so it wouldn't be "paying more money to get a subset of the original content".  But there'd need to be some interest for them to make sense.

I haven't finished reading through all the posts for this thread, but when i saw Keith's post i thought i'd throw this idea i had in the back of my mind out there...

Basically, take the strategy portion of the game and separate it from the platformer, where you have the map and the small icons that represent the player, the npc's and demonica and the monsters and have the game revolve primarily around having your npc's take the tiles, establishing the farms and medical facilities to keep other npc's alive, and increase the number of npc's that the player has access to, perhaps as many as 20, or 30, or more, but offset this as well by beefing up the monsters and demonica's attacks as well. But have it all playout as tooltip blurbs when the npc's face off against monsters or attacks from demonica, where perhaps they evade, or escape, or are injured but manage to get out and onto another tile nearby.

The player character can be used to orchestrate the movement of the npc's, or for recruiting purposes, or for some particular purpose now that the platformer portion of the game is removed.

Having this type of playstyle; which reminds me of Conquest of Elysium 3, or a Paradox Strategy title, and extending it by having sub-bosses or new bosses take demonica's place on his death would mean extending the game play onto bosses that have different variables than demonica did. Different strengths and weaknesses, different spells, taken from those available, different movement speeds.

In this way, we have no additional art assets that have to be produced, we limit the game interface to the strategy maps and the small icons in use for players and npc's and demonica/other bosses. We extend the strategy and tactics used for each game by varying the boss elements and the available recruited npc's.  To make things more difficult, when necessary, it might be difficult for the player to recruit certain types of npc's, not for every game certainly, but perhaps every game would randomly choose a difficult to recruit npc so as to vary the tools the player has to use for each game.

This is just my opinion, but i think it could be fun. 

-Teal

[SerratedSabre]

Ah yes, Bangai-O. I'll second the mention of it being an action-puzzle platformer. Some of Treasure's best stuff in terms of level and game design, which is strange considering their big claim to frame is all the wacky boss fights they come up with. In Bangai-O's case, the boss stuff is not really there, but due to how crazy the game already is you hardly realize it's gone. Also, Bangai-O also has this unwritten goal of putting enough missiles on-screen to slow to a crawl whatever console it was on; a goal easily met, even on the Xbox 360. It's definitely worth a look at, just for the experience of crazy it is, and how powerful you feel when the game starts to click (for reference, the guy in that youtube vid wasn't very good, though he probably got better at the end).

I feel both Valley games are in a weird place. I feel the "incomplete" feeling of the first game I think came from how there was no true end game. Sure, you managed to crush that overlord into paste, but there was always the next big guy to take his place, so eventually the game turned into:
crush the lieutenants
crush the overlord
rinse, repeat
with the only two hurdles being leveling up your spells, and pushing the wind back a couple tiles. Note that pushing the wind back in some cases is optional, as I remember at least one person on a multiplayer server who was crazy enough to stomp the lieutenant under the windstorm. It kinda turned into a race actually, cause the guy would clear an entire continent all on his lonesome, despite the fact the difficulty was cranked up to one spot below The Chosen One.
That said, I still think the exploration part is one the first's game's strong points. Searching for materials, finding bonus missions and survivors, and sometimes pushing the next level of the caverns to see if you can take it. I'm surprised there wasn't more incentive to go deep to the point where you needed a heatsuit just to keep going, though part of it was that the monsters scaled really hard and would curbstomp anybody who got down that deep. Faced with almost certain death going down deep or going elsewhere and not coming back, people would usually go with the "I live" option. There needed to be some reason for people to risk the plunge, especially when a lone bat down there could chew a third of your HP before you kill it.
Hmmm, I didn't make my point about the exploration clear. I liked it a lot, a feel there's plenty of room to grow there.

Umm, as for Valley 2, I'm not quite finished playing a round of it, so I can't give a full view of it. It certainly has more focus on game goals that the first game. I do like the different mage classes, and the abilities they bring. Even the classes I think of as clunkers have their uses (fist spells OP).
The enemies demand a bit more respect, since they have a lot more tricks up theirs sleeves. Now if certain enemies could actively dodge spell shots, or try to react to certain player actions, I think there's potential for really memorable critters.
On the flip side, the bosses. So far I've only dealt with the henchmen, aaaand they're kinda meh. While they can cast a different number spells and have different quirks (Lilith's counter), they're samey in the sense that have almost zero movement. I also feel like each henchman should have a theme going. Vorgga seems the type to be in an open room by himself, challenging the player to a one-on-one duel against a very mobile opponent. Fanzara seems the type to throw monsters first at you, and attack you with support from other creatures. Wordrak seems the type to be slippery, teleporting around to get a better vantage on you. Lilith seems the type to try to overwhelm you with magic, while at the same time being in terrain that favors her. I haven't met Elder, so I don't know what his deal is. And I haven't had any of the final fights with the henchmen, so I maaaay be jumping the gun a bit. It's just that right now, the henchmen are just a fist spell away from being utter chumps.

I don't mind the strategic part of the game, though I am certainly feeling the dread now that Demonica out on the field. His presence is pretty intimidating. That said, I'm not the best strategy player, though I think I can manage this bull in the china shop.

Ugh, this post is running too long. I'll continue it later.

[Aquohn]

OK, not sure if this idea has been floated yet, but what if there are both strategic and combat methods for achieving a variety of objectives? This is just a vague idea, but I was thinking about Evil Outposts. What if we could venture into them and destroy them ourselves, instead of relying on survivors? And what if we apply this method of doing things to everything else?

I don't know. Just a random idea. Somehow it sounded quite a bit more substantial in my head.

[nas1m]

OK, not sure if this idea has been floated yet, but what if there are both strategic and combat methods for achieving a variety of objectives? This is just a vague idea, but I was thinking about Evil Outposts. What if we could venture into them and destroy them ourselves, instead of relying on survivors? And what if we apply this method of doing things to everything else?

I don't know. Just a random idea. Somehow it sounded quite a bit more substantial in my head.

I like this idea!

[Shrugging Khan]

The above sounds like a good idea; it would let the player have some choice in whether to risk himself or his goons. Of course, the actual risks would have to be adjusted...

...anways, as far as the OT goes, I gotta say this: No thank you, I'd rather have more AI War or something entirely new. AVWW and me have no working chemistry together.

[x4000]

Regarding choosing between personal missions and strategic ones: that's only valid of there is a strategic-layer cost to your running a personal mission. Anything that lets you skip strategic layer requirements by running around on foot makes he strategy game no longer a strategy game.

[Aquohn]

Hmm, maybe some kind of incremental/exponential cost such that trying to win a pure strategy/pure combat victory would be much more difficult than a mixed one?

[LaughingThesaurus]

Doing certain things pure combat could increase danger, as a result of you outright blasting Demonaica's forces away and making your presence known all over the place. I imagine, the survivors' way of doing missions is much more sneaky and less chaotic, and would end up reducing danger or making it decrease it a slower rate.

[x4000]

Could be, yes. But then that has its own strange sorts of consequences that get very hard to balance. When someone does something via combat too many times , they shoot themselves I'm the foot strategically. So how much is too much? Safest thing then becomes to always do things strategically. Etc.

There are a lot of vicious circles there that I'm not just paranoid about uselessly: we've seen, repeatedly in AI War and even Valley 1, how a lot of players will do something quite un-fun for a long time if it is "playing optimally." Then they give up and quit. Giving players options that are nonfun but optional,which is what often happens with something like this mixing, really goes poorly.

Anyway, other game ideas that I really want to do are stacking up these days anyhow, so I doubt this will ever come to light in the first place.

[abdulmuhsee]

Something that involves fighting Elder and the Lords of the Underworld might be nice, but I'm just holding out for the 1.008 patch, really :-).