A cross-platform online dungeon crawler RPG, built in Delusion, my very own custom in-house game engine.
Online Role-Playing Games
Tales of Aquila is built using Delusion, a custom in-house game engine that has been developed from the ground up. The development of the game does not rely on any outside utilities or services such as Unity or Unreal Engine.
An online account system lets players login to their account and play from any device. Tales of Aquila employs the Delusion Client/Server network system in order to support online functionality and social features.
The level system provides the primary baseline for character growth and progression. As the player defeats enemies, completes quests and other game world events, they are rewarded with experience points. Once a player receives enough experience points, they will level up to the next level.
The stat system plays an integral part of adding depth to player progression and combat. Stats apply to both the player character as well as enemies. Several examples of stats include: maximum health, mana, stamina, strength, intelligence, dexterity, attack, defense, critical strike chance and damage.
Attacks and enemies have varying element types, which provides additional depth to the combat system by adding a rock, paper, scissors aspect to the game. For example, an attack skill with an element type of fire will be weak against an enemy with the element type of water or rock, but will be strong against an enemy with the a nature element type.
There are various types of items in Tales of Aquila. Some item can be equipped and provide additional stats and/or unique passive abilities to the player. While other items may be either consumable or related to quests. Items can either be found within the game world, or picked up from enemies upon defeat. The inventory system allows the player to carry a large amount of items and browse through all current items using pagination, sorted by item type. Players can destroy, upgrade, or equip items from their inventory.
Tales of Aquila features a unique skill system that allows for the player to customize how they play. The player has six skill slots, one melee skill, one ranged skill, one magic skill, one ultimate skill, and two passive abilities. Each skill has a specified element type, and the power of each scales with certain stats. Skills can be learned from defeating enemies and completing quests. All skills that the player has learned are stored within the skill book. The player can open their skill book and swap between skills at will.
Buffs and de-buffs are temporary stats that can be applied to the player or enemies. Certain skills can provide buffs to the player and either increase stats or provide unique behavior for a set amount of time. Alternatively, some player skills or enemy attacks can de-buff the target for a set amount of time. De-buffs can range from stat-lowering effects, to status effects such as being stunned, frozen, or slowed.
Items and skills can be of varying rarities: normal, rare, epic, legends, or mythic. In general, the higher the rarity the stronger the item or skill. Both items and skills can be upgraded through the use of gold and other materials, the rarity of the item or skill determines how many upgrades can be made.
The player can switch between different characters they have unlocked when playing. The selected character determines the the visual appearance of the player, and provides the player with a passive unique to that character.
Talents are a series of a player attributes that can be progressed throughout gameplay. The player can train talents by performing repeated actions for each respective talents. A couple examples can be chopping down trees or foraging in order to train the harvesting talent, or training the melee talent by using melee skills in combat. The player is incentivized to periodically train talents as certain content and questlines may be locked behind talent requirements.
Tales of Aquila contains a variety of different enemy types and bosses. Enemies can have unique attacks and abilities along with artificial intelligence based path finding. Each enemy has their own stats and element type, determining difficulty.
Non-player characters (NPCs) play an important part in storytelling and world building. These characters walk around their environment and can be interacted with in order to prompt their corresponding dialogue branch. NPCs are often involved with the reception and completion of quests.
Quests are the primary method of presenting story elements to the player. Each quest is a group of interrelated tasks, which usually will involve their own story line. A quest can take anywhere from a few minutes to many hours to complete. Quests can be started by talking to specific NPCs and progressing through their dialogue. Quests can reward players in various ways, including, but not limited to: experience, talent experience, items, or skills. Some quests will require other quests to be completed or certain talent levels to be reached before starting.
Players can journey through the world of Tales of Aquila, exploring series of interconnected maps featuring different enemies, NPCs, and environments.
Tales of Aquila is in active development, meaning new features and content are constantly being updated and implemented. In addition, upgrades to the Delusion game engine are frequent, further improving the quality of the game.
Developer Portfolio
By Mazen M.