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AdolfSatan

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2017
Messages
1,871
That's pretty much what the entirety of the roguelike genre stands for, PompiPompi
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
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Australia
Looks really cool.
But... you are creating a new game genre/type. That is a risky move.
There is a reason why game developer clone old and known genres. Because those genres were perfected before them. They passed "natural selection".
Then you make an entire combat system no one will want to even try.

I really appreciate your post as I often think about this too. But I'm way beyond the point of saving. I've had this vision for a game for the past 7 years! I'm going to be very responsive to feedback, but the core of the game (perma-death, highly lethal combat, hitpointless health system, no save,) and its tenets (unfair, unpredictable, unforgiving) will remain. Even if everyone hates the highly lethal combat, I will still push on because I have faith it'll work well with the life sim elements of the game I've got planned, and because ultimately I'm making this game for myself and merely hoping that others enjoy it too.

I am afraid highly lethal combat+no save+1 life will make your game impossible to progress very far. Or the death will be so random, combat should be avoided at all costs.

You SHOULD avoid combat at all costs in my game, it isn't like how you kill hundreds of enemies in what's been a month of in-game time. The average player might only get into a handful of fights in an in-game lifetime. And if you die, you'll play as your heir. So it's not necessarily game over.
 

madhouse

Guest
Looks really cool.

But... you are creating a new game genre/type. That is a risky move.
There is a reason why game developer clone old and known genres. Because those genres were perfected before them. They passed "natural selection".
I am afraid highly lethal combat+no save+1 life will make your game impossible to progress very far. Or the death will be so random, combat should be avoided at all costs.
Then you make an entire combat system no one will want to even try.
IRL has a similar combat system, but pussy niggas are afraid of being warriors and shit.
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
Joined
Oct 7, 2019
Messages
5,867
Looks really cool.

But... you are creating a new game genre/type. That is a risky move.
There is a reason why game developer clone old and known genres. Because those genres were perfected before them. They passed "natural selection".
I am afraid highly lethal combat+no save+1 life will make your game impossible to progress very far. Or the death will be so random, combat should be avoided at all costs.
Then you make an entire combat system no one will want to even try.
IRL has a similar combat system, but pussy niggas are afraid of being warriors and shit.

We need more people trying new things.
 

madhouse

Guest
Looks really cool.

But... you are creating a new game genre/type. That is a risky move.
There is a reason why game developer clone old and known genres. Because those genres were perfected before them. They passed "natural selection".
I am afraid highly lethal combat+no save+1 life will make your game impossible to progress very far. Or the death will be so random, combat should be avoided at all costs.
Then you make an entire combat system no one will want to even try.
IRL has a similar combat system, but pussy niggas are afraid of being warriors and shit.

We need more people trying new things.
This is why I'm interested in this in the first place. Not many games have similar systems and game design. I fully support something that will be different even if it won't be completely in-tune. This is why I liked Fear&Hunger so much. It starts out brutal, then becomes more managable after some trial and error. Being good feels more satisfying when getting there is difficult.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
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Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
It's a hot buggy mess but please enjoy! Please share your thoughts after you try it.
Combat demo v1

------
Purpose:
• Create basic functionality for a tile-based combat system to get feedback for that basic functionality
Functionality:
• Movement
• Basic melee combat
• Basic ranged combat
• AI melee combat
• Attacks of opportunity
Known Bugs:
• Flickering of path line and/or red highlight when moving mouse from over one being to another adjacent being
• If a melee fighter cannot find a path to their target, they will attack it without moving to it first.
• AI controlled units will sometimes try to move to a cell occupied by their friend. This can also happen if their friend has recently died.
TO-DO:
• Combat abilities (such as grappling, cleaving, etc.)
• Line of sight ranged combat with chance to hit allies that are in the way.
• AI ranged combat
• Magic spells
• Flanking effects
• Display a visual turn queue
• Big enemies that take up more than one tile
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Australia
In almost all RPGs, a unit with 1% of it's health left is as strong as when it's got 100% of it's health left. This doesn't annoy me, but I've always thought it would be cool if there was an RPG where wounded units are less powerful.
Screen-Shot-2021-01-24-at-7-41-56-am.png

Active effects will be in the next demo, here are the ones added so far (subject to change):

Wounded = -25% combat effectiveness
  • Takes 2-6 weeks (14-42 days) to heal up to a healthy state
  • 20% chance of causing long-term injury once recovered
Critically Wounded = -65% combat effectiveness
  • Takes 2-6 months (60-180 days) to heal up to a wounded state
  • 60% chance of causing long-term injury once recovered
  • 20% chance of causing permanent injury once recovered
Muscle soreness is a -5% combat effectiveness effect that takes 1-4 days to heal. Getting this effect also gives +10 strength exp. It can be cured instantly by going to a bathhouse or something. There is a % chance of this happening after successfully blocking a meele hit OR attacking (all weapon weapons and bow (crossbow are exempt) in combat depending on your strength skill. 2H weapons have triple the chances listed here:
  • Unskilled 40%
  • Beginner 16%
  • Novice 6%
  • Intermediate 3%
  • Advanced 1%
  • Expert and higher 0%
Sprain that is a -5% combat effectiveness effect that takes 14-42 days to heal.
  • Occurs according to combat skill when successfully blocking a meele hit OR when attacking with a meele weapon or bow.
    • Unskilled 50%
    • Beginner 25%
    • Novice 8%
    • Intermediate 2%
    • Advanced and higher 0%
In case you were wondering, a long term injury will take 80-1095 days to recover. A permanent injury can only be healed with a health potion, and since magic and magical items are incredibly rare in my setting, these will be hard to come by.
 

PompiPompi

Man with forever hair
Patron
Developer
Joined
Jul 22, 2019
Messages
2,794
RPG Wokedex
That's pretty much what the entirety of the roguelike genre stands for, PompiPompi
The original Rogue wasn't that hard. I think. It was much more simpler.

The issue is that you can't really pick up that kind of rogue like without having to study the game, read about it. You cannot learn about the game from playing it. You need guides, you need to read what all the items do, what are the enemy stats.
I wonder if any person who finished a really difficult rogue like(and I mean real rogue like, not garbage like Binding of Issac) finished it by learning it from the game itself, all the stats, all the items, everything. Or he was forced to read about it in a guide what are the stats of everything.

Don't get me wrong, Rogue Likes are really fun. The issue is that most authentic rogue likes are impossible to finish without knowing the stats of all enemies/weapons/items.

The thing is... since the core mechanics of a rogue like are super fun... whenever a company makes the core mechanics accessible to the casual gamer. They usually have great success.

Good examples of that are: Diablo, and recently Hades.
They basically made rogue likes for the casual masses.

I hate Hades btw, but Diablo is kind of cool.
 

Krice

Arcane
Developer
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
1,289
Does "unfair" mean there is no balancing in the combat? Balancing is important if you want to make players feel they progress and not die in.. well, in unfair situation.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Does "unfair" mean there is no balancing in the combat? Balancing is important if you want to make players feel they progress and not die in.. well, in unfair situation.

Thanks for reminding me to update that description.

The game will give the player a world filled with its own rules and let them loose in it. You encounter a dragon on your first day of adventuring? Too bad. Don't go out adventuring if you don't want to die and lose all your progress. You can work a steady job in cities that will provide some safety from the world, but you will never be truly safe.
 

AdolfSatan

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2017
Messages
1,871
Ah yes, light gray against slightly darker gray, I don't think that's gonna pass a contrast accessibility check. What's with the weird rendering? Image compression? Fonts look super blurry.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Ah yes, light gray against slightly darker gray, I don't think that's gonna pass a contrast accessibility check. What's with the weird rendering? Image compression? Fonts look super blurry.

That's a result of me shrinking the image by 57%, no blurriness in the actual game.
It's good enough for demos/early-access but remind me to hire a UI expert right before release to make everything good, this isn't my strong suit.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Combat demo v2 is here. Not many new features but lots of the work done in v1 has been refined.

New Bits:
• Border around character portraits that highlights when it’s your turn
• Active effects
• Combat effectiveness decreases as health decreases
• GUI overhauled
• New party member screen information including Traits, Attractiveness skill and Intelligence skill. All useless at the moment.
• Some placeholder battle music… still unsure what style I’ll go with in the end

Changes:
• Changed Val from an AI-controlled ally to a party member.
• Shrunk the battlefield, and increased its tiles from 16x9 to 17x10.

Bug Fixes:
• LOTS. The game should run a lot smoother now.

Known Bugs:
• Flickering of path line and/or red highlight when moving mouse from over one being to another adjacent being.
• AI may attempt to walk through a friend, freezing the game.
• AI may attempt to attack someone they can’t reach, then do the attack anyway.
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,205
Location
Ingrija
Unless it's meant to be played for no longer than 15 minutes, you will have some kind of save mechanism in there. And then I will savescum the living shit out of it, because I can :obviously:
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Today flanking was implemented - a big thanks to my fiancée who loves bug hunting apparently.
taOlDNs.png

Similar to real life, the key to fighting multiple opponents is not getting inbetween them. How real life works, or at least my eternally imperfect perception of how it works - is a huge influence for my design. Fighting multiple opponents is hard. The movies, and especially video games, often gloss over this fact. I am still annoyed to this day that Divinity: Original Sin 2 only lets it cause a -10% dodging debuff. ‘Flanked’ is the latest active effect added to my game and it results in -45% combat effectiveness. To compare with other active effects, wounded is -25% and critically wounded is -65%. So outflanking and avoiding being flanked will be very important to consider on the battlefield. This, along with grappling and stunning being added in the next few days, will add a lot more tactical depth to this combat system.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Combat demo v3 is here! Very proud of this one, lots of hard work went into it. Again I'd like to thank my fiancée who spent days debugging my obscure RPG project.

New Bits:

• Flanking
• Grappling - many bugs
• Stunning
• Rise and fade text describing some active effects
• Encourage ability
• Concussion active effect
• Orc enemy
• Cursors

Changes:
• Display of Chance To Hit updated to accommodate chances greater than 99% and less than 1%.
• Shrunk the battlefield again, and increased it’s tiles from 17x10 to 20x11.
• Animated unit highlight
• Changed music, like the last one this might be temporary

Bug Fixes:
• Fixed a rendering issue, text and textures should render much better
• Fixed AI walking through friends and AI attacking targets they couldn’t reach

Known Bugs:
• Numerous bugs concerning grappling, these will be fixed in the next demo
• Flickering of path line and/or red highlight when moving mouse from over one being to another adjacent being.
• Someone can die multiple times if they take multiple fatal attack of opportunities
• Character Screen of each party member displays the portrait health status of Gilgamesh, not their own health status.
• AI may attempt to attack someone they can’t reach, then do the attack anyway.
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

Time Mage
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Apr 30, 2020
Messages
3,292
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Arborea
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Saw you shilling your demo on 4chinks.
To leave some more lasting impressions here:

Base concept is simple but enjoyable. There need to be more abilities that actually do shit, but on a base level it works.
The difficulty in the demo is strange. If you fight out in the open it is close to impossible. A single goblin can oneshot even your Val and Gilgamesh on a lucky roll, and you are outnumbered 1 to 5.
The only winning strategy is to rush a corner, and build a good old HoMM defense triangle.
hBFINq0.png


Won on third try, first try I got slaughtered on the field, second try they intercepted me before I could reach the corner, third try I could bunker up in the corner and won.

Some short term suggestions:
Add an option for the archer to do melee attacks. Having 2 attacks and not drawing attacks of opportunity late game would make him a lot more fun.
Add a Whirlwind attack option for one of the fighters. You need aoe attacks eventually, and they are not that unrelasitic if you wear a Bidenhänder for example. Maybe a 2 or 3 tile slash for a more coservative start.
Add something to do with unspent AP. I suggest adding a way to store unused AP, up to 4 AP in reserve. This would give the archer a pattern of (shoot > shoot > shoot twice) when stationary and would allow (move 4 > attack thrice) for fighters.
Add immovable tiles. Colour some tiles grey for the next demo and make them impassable. That would make this specific encounter not all about rushing a corner, as you could setup turtle positions in the middle of the map aswell.
Give an option to play the map as the goblins. This means one could actually try the damn grappling option, as on this map it is suicide to try and grapple.

So yeah, nice proof of concept I think there is some potential there. It is very bare bones at the moment, and there is only one tactic that wins consistently.
Have the archer focus down the orc, move everyone into a corner, always kill the goblins in the middle so both units do not get flanked. Use the fodder to stall the enemy so you can bunker up in the corner

Most important thing at the end:
In the 4chan thread someone said you need a walking animation. I don't think this is as important, you can just offer a enemy turn speed x3 option instead. Moving the enemy statically along a line is fine if it happens fast, it is really annoying if the enemies move as slow as they do however.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Some short term suggestions:
Add an option for the archer to do melee attacks. Having 2 attacks and not drawing attacks of opportunity late game would make him a lot more fun.
Add a Whirlwind attack option for one of the fighters. You need aoe attacks eventually, and they are not that unrelasitic if you wear a Bidenhänder for example. Maybe a 2 or 3 tile slash for a more coservative start.
Add something to do with unspent AP. I suggest adding a way to store unused AP, up to 4 AP in reserve. This would give the archer a pattern of (shoot > shoot > shoot twice) when stationary and would allow (move 4 > attack thrice) for fighters.
Add immovable tiles. Colour some tiles grey for the next demo and make them impassable. That would make this specific encounter not all about rushing a corner, as you could setup turtle positions in the middle of the map aswell.
Give an option to play the map as the goblins. This means one could actually try the damn grappling option, as on this map it is suicide to try and grapple.

Most important thing at the end:
In the 4chan thread someone said you need a walking animation. I don't think this is as important, you can just offer a enemy turn speed x3 option instead. Moving the enemy statically along a line is fine if it happens fast, it is really annoying if the enemies move as slow as they do however.

I will implement all these changes :salute:
 

Pink Eye

Monk
Patron
Joined
Oct 10, 2019
Messages
5,793
Location
Space Refrigerator
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Saw your thread on the 4chans. Really liked the game. It took me a couple of tries, but I managed to beat your demo!
PGbVfrV.png
You have the foundations for a good tactics game. Had a couple of bugs though. Some times, enemies would get stuck on their turn - preventing me from acting, refreshing seemed to fix the issue though. Other times, stuff like this would occur:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/3pwd4lq9bvalaow/bandicam_2021-02-20_23-13-11-453.avi/file

Besides that. A couple of features I think you need to consider:
>Ability to skip turns
It'd be great if I could skip my unit's turn, and let them act later. Sometimes you get a turn where you can't do anything.

>Overwatch/Ready vs
I think melee units and ranged units would benefit greatly from this feature. Basically, if an enemy moves onto a designated square. Your ranged units will get a free shot on it, vice versa for melee units.

Good luck on your game.
 

Tavernking

Don't believe his lies
Developer
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
Messages
1,216
Location
Australia
Some times, enemies would get stuck on their turn - preventing me from acting, refreshing seemed to fix the issue though. Other times, stuff like this would occur:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/3pwd4lq9bvalaow/bandicam_2021-02-20_23-13-11-453.avi/file
I swear we killed that bug... thanks for bringing this to my attention!

>Ability to skip turns
It'd be great if I could skip my unit's turn, and let them act later. Sometimes you get a turn where you can't do anything.
For a few days I messed around with a visual turn queue that you could delay your turn with, exactly like in Pathfinder Kingmaker. I couldn't get it working and I figured it could be put on the backburner. I'm also considering not letting the player delay their turn since the AI can't either. The player already has a lot of advantages such as an actual brain.

>Overwatch/Ready vs
I think melee units and ranged units would benefit greatly from this feature. Basically, if an enemy moves onto a designated square. Your ranged units will get a free shot on it, vice versa for melee units.
I have an ability planned called Prepare against approach for meele units. It costs 4 AP, when activiated if an enemy enters your adjacency they receive an attack of opportunity from you. I'll put this in v4 since you recommended it. Also let me know if you think this should be implemented a different way.
 

gurugeorge

Arcane
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Aug 3, 2019
Messages
7,437
Location
London, UK
Strap Yourselves In
God bless you. But a thought: if you're going the whole hog with this kind of simulationist approach (love the wounds, etc., stuff! :) ) shouldn't you have some sort of training system?

I'm reminded of GRRM's point that the reason fighting types tended to be drawn from the ranks of the wealthy was because they tended to have lots of leisure time to train (and we know from mediaeval "fight books" that they did train a lot) and the money to have the facilities required (you need grounds, equipment, etc.).

But also farmers had a bit of affinity for fighting since they were usually doing hard labour, so they were at least physically tough, so the phenomenon of particularly sturdy farmboys joining the military and getting up in the ranks was also a thing. (The real weaklings for combat would be merchants and other citified types who do very little physical work.)

Tricky to handle though (after all, even if one sets the rate of improvement from training as quite slow, one could in theory just leave training on until someone is fully trained, without even playing the game - which means you'd have to have some gating there, i.e. you'd need further improvement from training to be gated by actual combat experience, and of course real combat experience will always produce better gains than mere training - but still, you do need to "keep your hand in" even when not actively engaged in real combat).
 

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