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KickStarter Himeko Sutori, tactical JRPG, 100+ unit armies

Mr. Pink

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Just make it dependent on what type of bow the unit is equipped with. Shortbows and recurve bows can have less of an accuracy penalty at short range than longbows.
 

Dreaad

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That's possible to do, and I was thinking that later I would repurpose my engine for use as a more traditional tactical RPG where you control one unit at a time. I think that sort of feature would make more sense there. But then again, I've also seen this, which makes me rethink the whole short-range penalty:



That, plus the Lord of the Rings movies, which I'm not saying are realistic, but they do show how deadly a high-level fantasy archer could be at short range.

I'm not even necessarily talking about realism.

If you've played, FFT, Tactics Ogre and their countless SRPG's clones you'll notice that a lot of the time the ranged units have a massive advantage. Technically it makes sense, but in terms of gameplay it creates a lot of problems.

a.) The ranged units always get the most XP because they are attacking almost every turn AND often attack the weaker, squishier, injured elements of the enemy, thus they get more kills.
b.) There is often no incentive no have any close combat troops because not only do ranged units have ranged attacks, they also often have more movement points and act faster than melee units.
c.) They cost less to equip.
d.) They only really rely on one skill as opposed to their close combat counterparts who often need to train several.

Obviously I don't know all the little details of your system and if any of these things will be an issue but it's just something to keep mind. Something realistic to solve the problem can be as simple as adding limited ammo, which would make a huge difference. After all if you've ever read any historical accounts of battles, ammo for archers is often a big issue, especially on long campaigns where you couldn't get supplies easily, arrows aren't that easy to make, especially in bulk amounts. There's all sorts of stories about how armies would routinely send raid parties to grab as many arrows as possible from the enemy, or at very least try to burn them.
 

Galdred

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That's possible to do, and I was thinking that later I would repurpose my engine for use as a more traditional tactical RPG where you control one unit at a time. I think that sort of feature would make more sense there. But then again, I've also seen this, which makes me rethink the whole short-range penalty:



That, plus the Lord of the Rings movies, which I'm not saying are realistic, but they do show how deadly a high-level fantasy archer could be at short range.

Actually, longbowmen did use melee weapons and were even trained with them, so I suppose there was some advantage to not only rely on your bow, even for trained archers.
 

Mr. Pink

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I'm not even necessarily talking about realism.

If you've played, FFT, Tactics Ogre and their countless SRPG's clones you'll notice that a lot of the time the ranged units have a massive advantage. Technically it makes sense, but in terms of gameplay it creates a lot of problems.

a.) The ranged units always get the most XP because they are attacking almost every turn AND often attack the weaker, squishier, injured elements of the enemy, thus they get more kills.
b.) There is often no incentive no have any close combat troops because not only do ranged units have ranged attacks, they also often have more movement points and act faster than melee units.
c.) They cost less to equip.
d.) They only really rely on one skill as opposed to their close combat counterparts who often need to train several.

Obviously I don't know all the little details of your system and if any of these things will be an issue but it's just something to keep mind. Something realistic to solve the problem can be as simple as adding limited ammo, which would make a huge difference. After all if you've ever read any historical accounts of battles, ammo for archers is often a big issue, especially on long campaigns where you couldn't get supplies easily, arrows aren't that easy to make, especially in bulk amounts. There's all sorts of stories about how armies would routinely send raid parties to grab as many arrows as possible from the enemy, or at very least try to burn them.

A realistic approach to balancing would be to give archers limited ammunition, which would increase the strategic depth of the game.
 

Nathaniel3W

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I'm not even necessarily talking about realism.

If you've played, FFT, Tactics Ogre and their countless SRPG's clones you'll notice that a lot of the time the ranged units have a massive advantage. Technically it makes sense, but in terms of gameplay it creates a lot of problems.

a.) The ranged units always get the most XP because they are attacking almost every turn AND often attack the weaker, squishier, injured elements of the enemy, thus they get more kills.
b.) There is often no incentive no have any close combat troops because not only do ranged units have ranged attacks, they also often have more movement points and act faster than melee units.
c.) They cost less to equip.
d.) They only really rely on one skill as opposed to their close combat counterparts who often need to train several.

Obviously I don't know all the little details of your system and if any of these things will be an issue but it's just something to keep mind. Something realistic to solve the problem can be as simple as adding limited ammo, which would make a huge difference. After all if you've ever read any historical accounts of battles, ammo for archers is often a big issue, especially on long campaigns where you couldn't get supplies easily, arrows aren't that easy to make, especially in bulk amounts. There's all sorts of stories about how armies would routinely send raid parties to grab as many arrows as possible from the enemy, or at very least try to burn them.

You bring up some really good points. I've been thinking about how to balance out the ranged units. Right now they are very overpowered (especially those mages with their AoE nukes). I'm in the process of fiddling with damage calculation (including bonus melee damage vs. ranged units) and eventually I'll start adding more equipment and I'll balance out those equipment stats. Thanks to your input I'll also be careful to avoid those other pitfalls.

A realistic approach to balancing would be to give archers limited ammunition, which would increase the strategic depth of the game.

That would add a very interesting element to the game, and it could really switch things up as late in a battle your ranged units become less useful. That's not a bad idea at all, but it just might be too complicated for me to work on right now... Actually, maybe not that complicated. It would just be one more variable, and I could come up with a way to display ammo remaining. And I already have a system in place for dual-wielding and off-hand attacks. So you could have a shortbow in one hand and a dagger in the other... I think I might try that out sometime.

But first things first: I need to give the player manual control over forming squads (and I have to think up some way to limit squad size and total number of squads based on some sort of leadership skill), then swapping gear. After that, XP, level-ups, and class changing. And I need to test everything with the save-game system to make sure the right stuff gets saved and loaded. Once I have those systems in place, I can release a respectable demo.
 

Nathaniel3W

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Trying to tie the look of the game together. 3D backgrounds now pixellated, cubified, and color saturated. It's really, really late here. Need sleep. Will post coherent thoughts later.

HS_PixelHillsBattle3.jpg

HS_PixelHillsBattle2.jpg

HS_PixelHillsBattle1.jpg
 

Mr. Pink

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
this is a big improvement over the last update! Will units be shown in outline if obscured behind obstacles?
 

Nathaniel3W

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Thanks Mr. Pink! Your input has been very helpful in guiding me (hopefully toward a successful Kickstarter and game release) and I'm glad to see I'm on the right track.

Will units be shown in outline if obscured behind obstacles?

But sometimes I wish you would quit coming up with good ideas. ;) That does indeed sound like something I need to do, but it's going to mean more work... I'll add it to the to-do list.

Edit: Oh yeah, and as for more coherent thoughts on what exactly I posted there, terrain height is also working as intended, with the foundation laid for terrain height bonuses and flying units. The cubes are also vertex-paintable, so they're very easy to change from one type of terrain into any other.
 

SCO

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So many necromancers, why not have some other monsters.

Units that take up more than one square could be cool too, i'm imagining a 4x6 dragon or a large army moving as a unit (maybe a small turn speed or movement bonus for some tricky encounter design). Pathfinding can be adapted for it.

http://aigamedev.com/open/tutorial/clearance-based-pathfinding/

http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/53492/pathfinding-with-different-sized-units

Jeanne D'Arc is a sjrpg that did it. Your terrain height would need to factor in it's traversability of course, that's probably tricky, cause they're not simply impassable.
 
Last edited:

Nathaniel3W

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Mustawd thanks! I'm glad you like it.

SCO I definitely want to include other monsters, and I'm working on it. But for now, I promised my wife I wouldn't commission more sprite sheets until I launch a Kickstarter. For now I'm working on some really simple monsters just for some more diversity, things like slimes and myconids, and some recolors and minor edits to turn my humans into orcs and stuff like that.

As for larger enemies, I've considered that too and I'll start including them as soon as I can afford the sprite sheets. Thanks for the reading on clearance-based pathfinding. The brushfire algorithm was really interesting and a technique I hadn't heard of. Still though, I think that I'll only be able to make enemies that take up an entire square (That alone would be pretty huge considering a square fits 10 regular human-sized characters) because of complications with the sprite sheets... Let me add big units that take up a full square first, then maybe I'll try experimenting with bigger enemies and see how it goes.
 

Nathaniel3W

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OK, new monsters: goblins and slimes ready to go. Also, trying to make the maps more vertically variable. You can't see it so well in these pics, but the shamans are wearing bird-skull helmets. They look better in profile. For these characters, I had to make new sprite sheets for the enemies and their equipment, and a new slime attack particle effect.

HS_CaveFight1.jpg


Here's a goblin ranger attacking:

HS_CaveFight2.jpg


I know the screenshots are dark. I'll increase the ambient brightness some other time. For now, it's time for bed.
 

Nathaniel3W

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This might be a better screenshot. I added a few more light sources and increased the ambient lighting. Now I think I might want to reduce the color saturation on that goblin skin, maybe shift it slightly more yellow. I don't know. It's supposed to be green, but it just looks too green.

HS_CaveFight4.jpg
 

Perkel

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Trying to tie the look of the game together. 3D backgrounds now pixellated, cubified, and color saturated. It's really, really late here. Need sleep. Will post coherent thoughts later.

HS_PixelHillsBattle3.jpg

HS_PixelHillsBattle2.jpg

HS_PixelHillsBattle1.jpg


See i told you it will look waaaay much better if you stylize art. Frankly speaking it looks really really good.

Things that could improve look of the game further without hard work:

- switch off posterize filter on terrain, leave it on buildings and objects
- find a way to make terrain fluid instead of getting minecraft blocks. Shouldn't be hard.
- that selection effect (yellow circle FX) looks like shit from NWN. Consider changing it to something else like some sprite under foots of those soldiers, UI sprite or outline for units (see Divinity Original Sin)

And remember don't skip resources on UI. Good UI is live or die situation for SRPGs.

Take note for example of Tactics Ogre, FFT. Disagea for UI design. Good UI needs to be:

- fluid - absolutely no framerate problems, lag or other things like that
- quick and simple to use but deep enough to show additional actions, stats if player will choose to
- doesn't bite with gameplay. Toned down colors possibly more toward white/yellow.
- Good font. This is also super imprtant. IF you don't have nice looking font your game will look like a flash game or worse. Again look at FFT or Tactics Ogre, Path of Exile also has excellent font which is one of the defaults on windows.

UI in SRPG is part of gameplay as important as battles, story etc.
 

Nathaniel3W

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Hey everyone, sorry for the long silence. I've been working on some stuff that doesn't quite lend itself to frequent flashy updates.

Perkel yeah, I definitely had your comments in mind when I updated the art. I've been going back and forth on the natural, rolling landscape versus the blocky Minecraft landscape. I think I'm going to have to keep blocks for now if I'm going to have easy-to-see and easy-to-calculate terrain height modifiers. I might throw in some sloping terrain, but I'll probably leave some sort of blockiness in there. I also shrank down the glowing yellow cylinder. I'll see what else I can do to show which squad is selected. I know I also need to work on making a really solid UI. I'll see how much I can improve it before launching the demo and Kickstarter in early 2016. I'll take a look at the fonts and UIs you mentioned.

As for the latest updates, the squad menu is almost done:

HS_SquadMenu_optimized.gif


And for fun and practice I made some combat .gifs. The quality breaks down a little bit to get them down around 4MB, but I think for this kind of game, the animation generates more interest than high-quality stills.

HS_CaveFight_optimized.gif

HS_ForestFight_optimized.gif


Latest details on my gamedev adventures are up. Also, I've been blocking hackers. Any of you gamedevs out there running your own website probably need to keep a closer eye on your logs. And just a reminder: I have a Kickstarter reminder opt-in over here. Your input has been a huge help to me so far. Thanks for all your interest.
 

Perkel

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As for the latest updates, the squad menu is almost done:

HS_SquadMenu_optimized.gif


And for fun and practice I made some combat .gifs. The quality breaks down a little bit to get them down around 4MB, but I think for this kind of game, the animation generates more interest than high-quality stills.

This yellow fx looks good here on single units. Problem is when you use it for whole squad (looks then rubbish). Like i said imo best way would be to use some sort of sprite under foot of unit or soldier.

here is what i mean (sorry for that size)

79252-tactics-ogre-snes-screenshot-moving-your-character-in-battle.gif


that white selection sprite would be good for your fx. ( i mean type not strictly white square based sprite). This should work for both single and squad selection.

Also you are using colored grid system to show player attack range, movement etc. They are basically solid colors.
IMO you should either fiddle with brightness of them so to make them change brigness in "waves" coming from up or down
OR
. Give them some sort of pattern + reduce transparency a bit.

This is what i mean in therms of pattern:

solid type you use:

LFQBTtl.jpg


how it imo should look like:

Vt1lyjX.jpg
+ a bit reduced transparency

This seems like nickpick problem but imo current solid type part of your UI feels a bit "cheap". Like in case of previous change of artstyle you should aim to make your game feel like proper game and not cheap knockoff. Your previous artstyle had that cheap look, by changing artstyle you made it feel like proper product coming from proper game company. The more you eliminate those cheap effects the more game will feel like proper product in eyes of your future backers.

That part of UI shouldn't i think be hard to adjust, considering what you have achieved already.

-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------

Either way good progress. Just change of artstyle made your future kickstarter way more interesting for many people.

Other thoughts on presentation.

Combat model looks interesting (mish mash between singular unit tactics and squad tactics) but for now i think your main job in future kickstarter is to answer properly question. "Why ?". For now what you showed in all screens is that this is sort of mix mash npcs to squad and make them work together somehow which leads us to those questions:

- Why focus on mixing squads ?
- Does single class squads could work at all ?
- Do you need healer in every unit ?
- If you need various types of classes in every squad then doesn't that make all squads basically the same and doesn't this undermine customization part of your game which seems to be important ?

This is something you will need to answer in your pitch video. Fast and precisely at that.

SRPG/JRPG. Treat this carefully. People have different expectations for different genres. If you will try to pitch it as JRPG people will expect JRPG if you pitch it as SRPG people will expect SRPG. Point is that if someone likes JRPGs and you will try to sell it as JRPG and they will see SRPG then they may not like it. If you sell it as SRPG then people will have different expectations.
To summarize if you want to use JRPG then you need explain why it is JRPG and not SRPG in pitch video.

For example SRPGs are more about combat than story and "cinematics" but that doesn't mean they can't feature solid storytelling or story itself
JRPGs on other hand require ton of story content dialogs etc to fill that box you want to check.

MUSIC. This is important. This too early for your probably from developement position but music is important to project. In fact it is crucial.
At this point i think you don't need to think about long therm commitment from someone but you do need to think about setting tone for the game.
Music alone could make game twice as good, lack of it or bad music could make it bad.

To make my point clear here is fragment of some game (probably you never played ) SWITCH OFF SOUND FOR THIS:



Then look what those czech dudes choose for their promo trailer:



Notice how just gameplay from game (though staged) FEELS completely different when you hear it with right music.

There are ton of dudes who could either make good cheap music for you or work with your for future benefits if you kickstarter will be hit goal.

-----------------------------
-----------------------------

Like i said good progress. Getting playable vertical slice would be more than enough to ensure you will get more money than most of people trying to make funding via kickstarter, becuse it proves you have the skill something which isn't so sure about almost all of other people.
The more you polish that vertical slice and the more you prepare the better you chance is.
 

Nathaniel3W

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Hey Perkel thanks for the good advice as always. First off, what's up with everyone suddenly getting the forum rank "conductor we have a problem"? (I just looked up that phrase and saw a video of some guy freaking out on the metro.) Second, you gave me some great advice and I'm going to be working on that...

This is what i mean in therms of pattern:

solid type you use:

LFQBTtl.jpg


how it imo should look like:

Vt1lyjX.jpg
+ a bit reduced transparency

Yeah, I can do that. Shouldn't be hard at all. I actually had a pulsing texture before, but I didn't like how it looked. I'll see about using something like what you have, and go from there.

- Why focus on mixing squads ?
- Does single class squads could work at all ?
- Do you need healer in every unit ?
- If you need various types of classes in every squad then doesn't that make all squads basically the same and doesn't this undermine customization part of your game which seems to be important ?

This is something I've been giving some thought to and I think this is how I'm going to try to make it work:

Yes, you definitely can use single-class squads. And you might want to do that in certain cases. For example, you might want to have a squad of all rangers or all mages if you just want to keep them behind your melee squads. If you're sure you can keep them protected, no reason to put a healer in with them, because that healer will never be useful. You'll be able to max out that squad's ranged damage capability, but you do so at some risk.

Do you need a healer in every unit? Not necessarily. It wouldn't hurt, but there might be cases where you will definitely want a healer and cases where you probably will not want a healer. Let me explain:

The game abilities use six elements:

HS_ElementRing1.png

(Huh. That's higher resolution than I was expecting. Oh well.)

I plan on having twelve base classes in the game, a fighter and a caster for each element. (White: Paladin, Cleric. Green: Ranger, Druid. Red: Barbarian, Warlock. Black: Rogue, Illusionist. Bronze: Gunner, Mechanic. Blue: Knight, Mage.) Each squad will have a leader, and each leader will bestow bonuses and penalties on the rest of the squad. The main healers of the game will be the cleric and druid, and those will get the biggest bonuses under a white or green squad leader respectively, and the biggest penalties under black and bronze. So if you have a black/bronze-based squad, then you might be better off trying to do something else to heal them, or send them in without a healer, and just try to pull them back if one of your valuable units gets into trouble. Also, I plan on nerfing healers a bit. Staffs, the weapons used by healers, will be two-handed weapons, but they'll bestow bonuses like one-handed weapons. So for the total damage output or negation of a sword and shield, or a two-handed axe, a healer with about the same XP will be less effective... Also, I'm planning on managing the loot drops to make you want to have, if not mixed squads, then at least you'll want to have mixed armies. If you decide that squads of knights are all you'll ever want to use, then you'll have a bunch of cool loot going unused, and your armies will have lower stats overall than if you had a mixed army that could make use of all the gear you find.

Can you think of anything else I should do to encourage players to experiment?

SRPG/JRPG. Treat this carefully. People have different expectations for different genres.

Thanks. I'm going to have to keep that in mind. I definitely want this to appeal to fans of both genres.

And regarding music, I have an arrangement with Kevin Won. He's awesome. He wrote one track for me that I'm going to be using in my next trailer, and he's pretty excited about doing more. I'll put that out there for everyone to hear soon, but for now I'd recommend going to his site and listening to his SoundCloud widget. He has some great original material on there. I plan on using a pretty big percentage of the Kickstarter to pay for more of his music.
 

Nathaniel3W

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Oh wait, I just moused over the "conductor we have a problem" link. It's for reporting problematic postings. I get it. Funny.
 

Niektory

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Can you think of anything else I should do to encourage players to experiment?
Throw curveballs at them. Have varied encounters that require different approaches. Each class should have a weakness that makes it unsuitable for some situations, and enemies should exploit that weakness if the player relies on a homogenous army.
 

Perkel

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Can you think of anything else I should do to encourage players to experiment?
Throw curveballs at them. Have varied encounters that require different approaches. Each class should have a weakness that makes it unsuitable for some situations, and enemies should exploit that weakness if the player relies on a homogenous army.

This.

The more varied scenarios you will have in your game from both design and combat design perspective the more interesting it will get.

Player relies overly on archers ? Then throw into it weather system like in Tactics Ogre. If it rains and there is strong wind your archers will be shit or will have shit range.

Player relies to much on malee ? Throw at them units that needs to be tackled more with magic or other way than physical damage.

Your main draw for the game judging by your presented material is customization of each squad. This gives you opportunity to make more tactical combat.

On other hand due to high amount of customization you also have to take into consideration player expectations. If you have for example 15 builds for your tactics and only 2 of them will work well in next mission then you need to somehow signal to player of possible problems.

For example consider spy like figure or scout that will hand over information on your next battlefield so player can make changes to his squad based on that inforation. This way you can also surprise player. You prepare him baiting him into malee characters and low archers support then BAM at the end of missions your archers suddenly are way more valuable to battle thus player needs to reformat his strategy and provide archers good place and security.

Another example. Siege. Since sieges often means high walls naturally archers in your team will be at disadvantage.

Last thing you want is player using same squad composition whole game.
The more options you have for each battle the better.

Consider also things to spruce up battles. Like side achievements, for example if player will be able to get to save some dude before turn 5 then he might help you out by calling additional help or joining you.


Also when designing combat consider that less is more.

The less HP units have the more impactful options are.
The less amount different between worst and best armor the more impact is taken on strategy.
Instead of +10 to life every level consider giving units increased range every 3-4 levels, more attacks per turn etc.

So for example:

Fighters:

- at lvl2 they gain defend ability. They can now choose to defend instead of attack
- at lvl3 they can move one tile more
- at lvl4 they can move AND do action same turn
- at lvl5 they learn special attack
- at lvl6 they get immunity to fear
- at lvl7 they can more one more title
- at lvl8 their defense ability has now 50% chance to stop spells targeted at them


i know it is easy to make lvl 1-10 being all about +10hp and +10 to attack each level but it is frankly boring in larger picture.

Above schemat imo isn't really good for your type of game but you get what i mean i hope. For your type of game i would rather make some ability points type leveling combined with class based skills.

So let's say you mix Black mages and Warriors.

at lvl 1. You have option to attack or cast firebals. Since squad isn't 100% mage or 100% warrior then only half of damage will be dealt but you will have more versality (like fire damage to things that can't be hurt by sword)
at lvl 5. Your squad will have 5 points to spend on abilities.

So you can choose:
augument weapons - fire. 2points
body of fire (if squad is attacked it deal fire damage) - 3 points

This way your squad mages will augument physical attacks of fighters.

OR other way.
Super defense - 5 points which is fighter skil.

This way mages can hurl their fireballs safe and fighter will keep at bay attackers.
 

Nathaniel3W

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Thanks again Perkel and Niektory for all of the great advice. I'll be working that in. For now, I just wanted to share some of what I've been doing over the last couple of weeks. You've mentioned needing to simplify and unify the look of the UI, and I know the menus still need some superficial work, but the underlying functionality is pretty much finished:

HS_ClassAndEquip_Optimized.gif


Above, I’m looking through equipment and sorting it. The equipment is grayed out if the character can’t use it. Then I change the character’s class, go back into the equipment menu, and put on some new gear. Not shown here, I rewrote a lot of code to allow for dual-wielding, and the combat system allows characters to take two attacks under certain circumstances.

Below, you’ll see the system I’ll be using for level-ups. (By the way, my wife, who lived in Japan for a year and a half, tells me that “level up” in Japanese is “rebaru uppu,” and Japanese people say it to refer to getting better at anything.)

HS_LevelUpAnim_Optimized.gif


The animations there are recorded straight from Flash, but you’ll see the same animations in-game. I made the cards kind of long so that they look more like tarot cards than common playing cards. In-game, those cards will have some specific bonuses written out on them, and each class will have a different deck of level-up cards to choose from. I thought the card system would simplify level-ups for those players who field big armies, so you’re not spending hours between battles deciding on skill trees or the like. Also, I thought it might add kind of a fun feeling to the level-ups, so that you’re eager to see what new bonuses a class might give you.

Any advice on the menus so far?
 

Perkel

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Yup UI looks smooth. Can't comment on how useful it will be (that would need hand on) but from looks it looks ok.

Things i noticed:

- Frames are a bit to simple. Consider adding layer above ui that will add sprite frames. Or if those frames you have already already are editable thing consider changing them a bit to more correspond to art you have on left side (that flora on the left side of screen)
This may sound trivial but it will make your UI better looking. Like in previous post i made current simple straight borders are just to "sharp" for art you are trying to use. Even better would be to completely throw out borders and make it like end of scrap of paper ( bit uneven, or bit crumpled)
- Tile based view is insteresting but i don't know how it will work in practice. Especially since player will be using more than 10-20 units at the same time. Either list based + small portrait or grouping according to class would be interesting i think in this case.
- I assume that White/tranparent part of UI will be filled with something ? That left art flora screams to go with something like old paper or other fillings with rough texture.
- that card lvl up screen is neat but i don't think it will mash well with amount of units you will have at one time in battle (let alone reserves). Though naturally everything depends what will be on those cards.

But yeah on UI front it looks better than i assumed it would.
 

Nathaniel3W

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I can play around with the UI a little more. I can see about making things match better with that background flourish. I'm glad that the UI looks better than expected. I was honestly worried about that.

And yeah, the white part of that bottom animation would be filled in when I put that part in the game. I'm doing all of my menus in Flash, and I recorded that animation directly from Flash because I could very quickly leave a piece of test code in there that gave the character a level-up when you click on her portrait. Importing into UDK takes a while, and I didn't want to leave test code in just to show off the level-up animation. Anyway, the point is, the white part will be transparent, and it will look like the top menu when I import it into the game.

For changing all of your units' equipment, and the possibility of that getting tedious for a large army, I'm just hoping that the player won't do it very often, and when you do change equipment, it should be for just a few units. I'll try to control that by controlling the timing and amount of new gear. I'll try to avoid the phenomenon of arriving at the next town, finding the weapon shop, and buying new gear for all your characters at once.

Also, I realize that the card level-up mechanic could get tedious if you finish a big battle where all of your characters level-up. So I think I'm going to have to do something different: For most actions, your XP will go up based on the toughness of your enemy relative to your own characters' levels. When that XP goes up, your character level goes up, and you get some boring stat increases. But I'll add some sort of achievement system, and when your characters do something cool (like critical hit a boss or something), then they get the cards, which will let you choose from cooler abilities.
 

Mr. Pink

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expecting an rpg player to not minmax is unrealistic. squeezing out that 1% more efficiency is the norm for us, and every mechanic will be pushed to its limits.

Streamlining equipment by being able to buy weapons and armor in bulk and setting units to auto upgrade based on highest equipment stat would make life easier.
 

Nathaniel3W

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expecting an rpg player to not minmax is unrealistic. squeezing out that 1% more efficiency is the norm for us, and every mechanic will be pushed to its limits.

Streamlining equipment by being able to buy weapons and armor in bulk and setting units to auto upgrade based on highest equipment stat would make life easier.

That is very true. I can make an "optimize" button pretty easily. Each character has a primary element, attribute, and skill, and I should pretty easily be able to find the best combination of equipment for each character. But I do need to make a way to let players upgrade their equipment in bulk. Games like Valkyria Chronicles gave everyone in the class the same armor, and whenever you upgrade the armor, everyone gets the upgraded armor. And everyone has a default weapon, and when you upgrade that weapon, everyone gets the upgraded weapon. I think I would like to have more customization than that. Maybe it'll be OK in the shop screen to buy quantities (like in Final Fantasy Tactics) instead of one inventory item at a time (Diablo, Mount & Blade), and then I can stack the items in inventory instead of having them take up a full slot on their own. That'll take some extra work, but it might be worth doing. Thoughts?
 

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