If Rithmatist was a videogame

[Moash]

Ever since I heard of Mistborn Birthright (which I really hope does get released) I have been thinking of what other books by Brandon would be like as videogames. I read up on a forum in the Warbreaker thread which had some really awesome ideas. Anyway I have been thinking about what a Rithmatist videogame would be like.

 

 

 

I do not know about any of you but I think that a Rithmatist videogame if done correctly could be amazing and a popular game franchise. I would imagine the Rithmatist as more of a non canon spinoff story. Rather than being about the battle against the wild chalklings you play as a character who is starting out as a Rithmatist and wishing to become the best rithmatist in the entire world. I imagine this more like gen 6 of pokemon with you running around the city and other areas of the world exploring and challenging other people in Rithmatic competitions. The story mode has plenty of freedom but ultimately centers on becoming the best rithmatist by entering tournaments and defeating other rithmatists. In battles it is just like the game with the same rules, defensive circles, chalklings, etc. Cool animations to represent chalklings and circles with a very detailed appearance. I think difficulty modes would be important for this. On the hardest mode you have to be as good as the rithmatists whereas easier modes will be more forgiving of the awkward circles drawn.

 

 

Then have an online mode where you can compete on teams or one on one. Have a for fun mode and a for glory mode with the for glory mode being exactly like the hardest mode in single player where you have to be extremely precise with circles drawn. That is where the really skilled and competitive strategical players would compete with each other whereas for fun is more relaxed and less harsh on those who have trouble with circular precision.

 

I think this game would be perfect on a system like the Wii U or 3Ds because of the stylus you should be using to draw circles and chalklings. Any good handheld or console that can use a stylus to draw the circles would suffice. So really anything that could use touch screen for rithmatics would work perfectly. I feel that this game would fit well with a single player somewhat like pokemon where you can explore many places and do different things along with battling different rithmatists. Also as you level up you learn new circles and you can choose which skills to strengthen with stats gained on levelling. Finally as I also said before a good online mode with competitive and casual play.

 

 

 

I was not even a huge fan of the book but I would love this kind of competitive strategy game with a nice single player and great online. I am not necessarily sure how the gameplay in battles should work but I feel that the pokemon style rpg setting fits best. would anyone else love a videogame for rithmatics? Imagine if it got super popular and became a really popular strategy game with gaming tournaments for it. What would you all think of this kind of competitive strategy game with some smaller rpg features and a stylus as the main controller?

 

 

 

Edited November 27, 2014 by Moash

[Blaze1616]

It would have to be for one of the current Nintendo consoles, as you mention. My only issue would be with the fact that you would need to be a good artist. Even if the difficulty levels were more forgiving of circles, as you mention, you simply cannot alter the attention to detail for chalklings, because it is the detail and complexity that decides the strength of the chalkling. 

 

A simplified system, one that does not include drawing, could be implemented in that, as the player, you pick which drawings to have the controlled character draw, and a "cooldown" is applied while, visually, the character draws. Obviously more complex circles have longer cooldowns. There could be a leveling system in which the character improves in drawing speed/ability. There could also be a sub-leveling system in which the individual chalklings level up to become more complex, similar to the Persona series. Unlike Persona, though, I would only have 3-5 levels for each type of drawing (knight, unicorn, etc.) with each level adding complexity. This system would allow the game to release for any console, but the game would become a pseudo-turn based game. This could potentially benefit the game, though, for it could allow a player to control more than one rithmatist at a time.

[Retsam]

So I just finished a re-read of the Rithmatist, specifically with this question, whether/how this could make a game.

 

The biggest problem with a game where you do the drawings freehand is chalklings; there's no feasible way for a game to be able to recognize the aesthetic quality of a drawing.  (It might be a theoretical possibility for a program to evaluate that...maybe, though it'd be a major artificial intelligence research problem in and of itself)

 

Otherwise, as Blaze it could be done more as a strategy game, removing the skill aspect; but it'd still be a pretty interesting game.  I feel like there would have to be different skill areas: drawing speed, chalkling ability, ability to draw more complex drawings, etc.  It could be done as an RPG leveling system; though personally I think it'd probably work better as a non-leveling system where you just have a certain number of skills to distribute.

[Gamma Fiend]

When I was reading the book, I had in mind that it might be a pretty nifty game on something like the 3DS. Bear in mind, I've never actually owned or used one of those devices, but it just seemed like it'd work pretty good. Of course, there'd have to be some leniency with the skill required drawing on one of those screens. Beginner levels could have tracers for the complex circles.

Or the idea of making it like a strategy with leveling up skills also sounds like it'd be a fantastic idea. Also with the idea of turning it into some Tower Defense type game, would be a really fun browser based games, even. (Where are the skilled flash users/game makers on the forum. We're looking at you. )

[Kasimir]

Or the idea of making it like a strategy with leveling up skills also sounds like it'd be a fantastic idea. Also with the idea of turning it into some Tower Defense type game, would be a really fun browser based games, even. (Where are the skilled flash users/game makers on the forum. We're looking at you. )

 

This would be a literal Tower Defense game, wouldn't it?

[the Gleeman]

The other problem you would have is size. A 3DS or WiiU screen is rectangular and somewhat small so it would be hard to draw at that level.

 

If a skill tree like what is used in League of Legends-- where you gain more points at each level,there are way more spaces than points, multiple trees, and skills building off one another-- you could create a system where each player can customize toward their play style. You could have tree be for chalklings, one for defensive lines, and one for general things such as cooldown and lines of vigor. This would allow for both personal customization and multiple play styles. Also, you could maybe use the touch screen to place items on your general defensive circle, an x could be used to mark bind points and tapped to place something on it.

[Blaze1616]

The other problem you would have is size. A 3DS or WiiU screen is rectangular and somewhat small so it would be hard to draw at that level.

 

A simple solution would be to have a map of your character's dueling "area." Each battle starts with you drawing your circle/oval, and depending on what kind of circle you employ, you then get bind points. So the game has you draw your circle/oval, then once that is completed the game zooms out and has multiple select-able areas; bind points, free draw space, and defensive lines spaces. The player would touch to select the area, and the screen would zoom in again for a more "life-size" drawing canvas. Once the drawing is complete the game zooms out again.

 

Though I still think a leveling RPG, or skill tree based "free" RPG would be a better system.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Blaze1616

[killersquirrel59]

I think you're all going down the wrong line of thinking on this. Rithmatist Battles would be a perfect tablet game. Draw with your finger or stylus, link up with an opponent either online or via direct wi-fi connection and battle. It wouldn't even be that hard to program an app to recognize the various types of lines and some chalkling dynamic programming based on form and size.

[Moash]

Now you are making me think of clash of clans. I mean could rithmatics in a tablet work like a raid on an enemy clan base. you can summon up your circles and chalklings and send them wherever you want so there is also a placement strategy to.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Moash

[Turos]

I think you're all going down the wrong line of thinking on this. Rithmatist Battles would be a perfect tablet game. Draw with your finger or stylus, link up with an opponent either online or via direct wi-fi connection and battle. It wouldn't even be that hard to program an app to recognize the various types of lines and some chalkling dynamic programming based on form and size.

Bringing the chalklings to life through animation would suck, though. Also, some players would figure out the ways to make repetitious, non-artsy shapes for chalklings that would be efficiently drawn and spammed. The human element of judges for quality would make a huge difference, but is unreasonable, so, eh... Maybe kind of meet halfway between effectiveness and diversity by giving players several types of lines to build the chalkling, like different colors while drawing them. Each color would represent what the line is intended to serve as(legs, arms, eyes, armor, etc.) The finished chalkling would turn into a solid color and a Spore-like animation process would figure out how the joints move. Still can be cheated, but at least its diverse.

 

Maybe have parts and pieces to choose and drag-and-drop when building chalklings. Each part would possess so many points in defense or offense or speed and each would take more or less time to draw, such as suggested before. Throw in some RPG leveling of your skill as a rithmatist by leveling up what you use more, making drawing those lines slightly faster.

 

A con to the freeform style of this game would be people drawing suggestive stuff or even using crude phrases as lines. Facepalm-worthy and no doubt it would happen and happen a lot.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Turos Stoneward

[blad3mast3r]

i think tablet app, just has to detect patterns/ basic animal shapes.

[18th Shard]

Or you have preset chalklings worth a certain amount. You can have chalkling X that looks like a unicorn and has so many hit points, attack points, etc. and you just select that one to draw and it draws it automatically.

[Wrath]

Or you have preset chalklings worth a certain amount. You can have chalkling X that looks like a unicorn and has so many hit points, attack points, etc. and you just select that one to draw and it draws it automatically.

 

What I would do would be to have a "Chalkling Draw" mode where you are free to draw your own chalklings, which are then evaluated based on the number of lines used, etc, and you are allowed to assign stat values/behaviours. Probably just a simple version with general classes (ie, Attacker, Defender, etc).

 

Then you have a character who is allowed to "equip" a certain number of chalklings, including the default options, the ones you've drawn and ones you've downloaded (from other people and also premium chalklings for monetisation).

 

Anyone who wanted to put time into making cool chalklings would be free to do so without punishing people (like me) who suck at art.

[KalynaAnne]

Some form of rithmatics dueling game could be fun :-)

 

That said, it is mentioned briefly that rithmatics is used for more than just dueling.  I think there is a lot of potential for rithmatics puzzles.  Maybe something Incredible Machine style where you are given a parts box with a limited number of different kinds of lines/chaklings/chalkling commands and have to figure out how to meet objectives.

[blackjackrobo]

I think this game could be best executed as a tablet game, by drawing the circles freehand, and/or tracing for easier modes, maybe. However, chalklings could be premade, with preassigned stats or, like previously suggested, you could draw it before hand and get points based on complexity. A system that let you progressively 'discover' more defenses could be implemented, and a skill upgrade tree could be used, like previous mentions, to specify in which ways you would like to advance.

[Nightshadee]

The best way to make an app like this work would be on a tablet.
 
Players would start by selecting what line of warding to use (circle or oval). Then they would draw it.
 
If it was a circle, the game would judge its strength in certain areas by first finding the center (average of all points) then finding the radius (average of all points distance from center), each part of the circle would have strength relative to how close the radius was to the average.
 
I'm not certain how that would work with the oval lines of warding. (However, they would definitely have the same overall strength as the circles, just more of it concentrated on the thin ends.)
 
From there, players would start drawing in lines of forbiddence (those lines would restrict where players could draw, restricted area being defined by within the angle, from one side of the line of forbiddence to the center of their line of warding back to the other side of the line of forbiddence, but past the line). Lines of forbiddence would have a set health (determined by their straightness) which would affect how well they anchored any lines of warding to which they were attached.

 

Players would then select their chalklings from a database (votes would be held regularly to pick which chalklings made it to the database) (chalklings from the database would be able to be 'favorited' and would then appear at the top of that players personal database). Different chalklings in the database would be better at specific things (like speed, and strength, and health). Chalklings would be judged on how closely they resembled the chalkling in the database (seriously, anything else is just to hard to program). The percentage of correctness would be directly proportional to the percentage of their awesomeness (I'm again referring to things like speed, strength, and health.)

 

Each thing connected to the line of warding would mark where a bind point is. The line of warding's strength would be dependent on (not just it's even-ness, but also) the correctness of the distribution of these bind points. 

 

Lines of vigor would be a bit more confusing. First the computer would have to be programmed to find the line of anti-symmetry. Then the lines of vigor would be judged based on how close they are to a given line of vigor (determined by the drawn line of vigor's average period and amplitude) to decide how hard they hit. The lines of vigor would be judged based on how many total wavelengths they contain (determined by how many times it crossed the line of anti-symmetry).

 

Lines of revocation would aimed by their center line and judged by the straight-ness and parallel-ness of certain parts of it (which I'm not going to bother explaining). Lines of revocation would move things, versus lines of vigor which just injure things.

 

I'm sure that I'm missing some obvious fundamental of the game, but as far as I can tell this is a pretty good overview (if you find an error please tell me).

 

I might even learn programming just to make this app...

[IAmTheBeard]

Just to throw in an idea...

 

The biggest problem with making it a free drawing based game is chalkling strength. I like the idea of difficulty levels which translate to the game "fixing" your circles/bind points. Basically, instead of creating a circle exactly like what you drew, the lower difficulties would recognize your circle and replace it with a good circle. The bind points would be marked and if it recognizes you drawing something that doesn't line up on a bind point, it just moves it.

 

Something totally similar could work with chalklings. There could be a host of different ones: knights, unicorns, blobs, dragons, etc. Each one is broken up into a set of lines. The more powerful ones obviously would have more lines. Then a recognition system would be used to identify which chalkling you had drawn and your line would be replaced with that chalkling. This way there would be a clear gradient in difficulty and the drawing recognition system could be more lax with lower difficulty settings. Also, the developers could constantly add new chalkling patterns (or bonus ones that are hidden/randomly generated in each new game) for people to learn. 

[Tyson]

I have some expereince in game making. This wouldn't be too hard to accomplish. Running a smooth online multiplayer would be the hardest part. I have no expereince in that side of things.

 

Here's how i'd do it:

 

- Blank background. Chalkboard or stone effect. Keep visuals to a minimum and focus on a good gameplay.

- Seperate chalkboard for drawing. Drag and drop, lines, cricles and chalklings into play.

- No assistance with lines or circles. Traceable chalkings. You miss lines, there HP goes down. Make more detailed chalkings unlockable. 

- As all chalkings are traceable, they would have preset animations when moving/attacking.

- Rate circles out of 360. A Hp of 360 would be a perfect circle. Take away health points for eccentricity. (the less perfect the circle, the less hp)

- lets say a level one chalking has 2ATK points, it would take that chalking 180 hits to destroy a prefect circle. Encourages swarming and leveling up chalkings

 

I haven't read Rithmatist for a while so i'm unfamiliar with the terms. I guess a tutorial or short story, just random battles with comic book cutscenes would give new players a chance to understand the game.

 

I'll make mock up of what it could look like on an iPad.

 

I might be able to do it if I really tried. Downisdies: copyright, i haven't coded for 7 years and its a huge amount of work for one person.

 

Things I definatley can't do:

 

- Design chalkings. Or enough chalkings to keep the game interesting. You would need at least 20 variants with three different levels of detail, as well as multiple images for each (walking and attacking animations).

- Make circles break in one area/weak spot. I don't know how I could accomplish this. Lets say someone uses a swarm of chalkings to attack a weak spot, I don't know how to make the game realise that it is a weak spot. Defence rings and walls in other stragergy games (Clash of Clans and Age of Empires) are made from individual blocks with their own HP. Drawing a circle is one unbroken line, with one HP. The only way to get around this is give the player a premade circle, which takes away a large aspect of the game.

 

Edit: Image wasn't loading. I'll upload a new one when i have chance

Edited June 20, 2015 by Tyson

[Haelbarde]

I guess my question is would you have the circles as rasters or vectors. But I'd have circles divided up into 12-24 zones (every 15-30 degrees). Give each segment its on HP (so 15-30, depending on the number of segments), with perfect segments having the max hp a segment could have, and the imperfect ones having less, depending on how far off they are. Then lets you change the texture as it takes damage to show it rubbing out.

Curious, what would you code it in? I've used GameMaker before (though I've only really dabbled in it). It mainly does 2D stuff, but that isn't really a problem for this sort thing.

[Tyson]

@ Haelbarde

 

I was thinking vector. But either could work. You could split the circle (line of warding) into segements and give them it's own HP like you suggest, but i'll be honest and say I'm not exactly sure on how to code that. If you know how to code it, them that is indeed the best method of doing it.

 

Premade circles would be by far the easiest, and lets be honest, who here can draw a perfect circle on an iPad?

 

Personally, i'd use GameMaker as I find it the most accessible and offers the best network of support (when I inevitably run into trouble). Plus you can create character models in 3ds max and import them, so you are not tied to 2d graphics, just limited. But for a Rithmatist game, you wouldn't need much 3d.

 

 

I should be working on my book but i'm tempted to boot up my old software and give this idea a go.  

[Haelbarde]

@ Haelbarde

 

I was thinking vector. But either could work. You could split the circle (line of warding) into segements and give them it's own HP like you suggest, but i'll be honest and say I'm not exactly sure on how to code that. If you know how to code it, them that is indeed the best method of doing it.

 

Premade circles would be by far the easiest, and lets be honest, who here can draw a perfect circle on an iPad?

 

Personally, i'd use GameMaker as I find it the most accessible and offers the best network of support (when I inevitably run into trouble). Plus you can create character models in 3ds max and import them, so you are not tied to 2d graphics, just limited. But for a Rithmatist game, you wouldn't need much 3d.

 

 

I should be working on my book but i'm tempted to boot up my old software and give this idea a go.

I might also give it a try (see if I can get that line division thing working), but I've got exams over the next fortnight, so it wouldn't be till afterwards I'd have time.

If we were potentially to collaborate on something, what version of game maker do you have?

[Turos]

- Make circles break in one area/weak spot. I don't know how I could accomplish this. Lets say someone uses a swarm of chalkings to attack a weak spot, I don't know how to make the game realise that it is a weak spot. Defence rings and walls in other stragergy games (Clash of Clans and Age of Empires) are made from individual blocks with their own HP. Drawing a circle is one unbroken line, with one HP. The only way to get around this is give the player a premade circle, which takes away a large aspect of the game.

 

 

 

I'm not sure how to code this, exactly, but you could have a function check for the widest points on x and y axes, set the center point based on this, then for every degree around in a circle, measure the distance of the line from the center point. Have it figure that the average distance is the 'perfect' circle radius, then at each angle divide the difference from the radius so that anything over and anything under is treated equally faulty, and divide the difference by the radius. If it is over five percent off, it becomes 50% strength, ten percent at 25%, etc.

Edited June 25, 2015 by Turos

[Hoohoo2]

On 6/24/2015 at 4:06 AM, Haelbarde said:

I guess my question is would you have the circles as rasters or vectors. But I'd have circles divided up into 12-24 zones (every 15-30 degrees). Give each segment its on HP (so 15-30, depending on the number of segments), with perfect segments having the max hp a segment could have, and the imperfect ones having less, depending on how far off they are. Then lets you change the texture as it takes damage to show it rubbing out.

Curious, what would you code it in? I've used GameMaker before (though I've only really dabbled in it). It mainly does 2D stuff, but that isn't really a problem for this sort thing.

Very important to the one who posted this, but unrelated to the comment. I found the steel ministry about a month back, and wanted to join, however the register page has been infected by lib.tongjii.us if you could bring this to the attention of admins that would be great.