Vapourware Lays of Evenheart - Vapourware

[Calcium]

If you don't mind me asking, what actually constitutes development costs with this sort of game?

 

[bionicman]

This looks like a fun game, OP. Keep it up!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If you don't mind me asking, what actually constitutes development costs with this sort of game?

Booze. Probably the artwork.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Fixed as of today. I want flanking to be an important mechanic so I can't let the player camp in the corner of the map.

Solution: A border that players cannot move through, but AI-controlled units can.

Unintended feature: While testing I found that players can still move beyond the border as long as it's to come back into the main battlefield. I like this feature, so I'm keeping it as long as it doesn't cause any bugs.

It's alive!
Your engine is creating new features by itself, now you're a true pioneer.

On a serious note, I can't think of a game, except by having infinite battlefields, ever having this feature (part of the movement outside the screen)

 

[Tavernking]

 

[Ularis Badler]

How are you handling the pathfinding for the large creature? How many tiles does it occupy?
Looking great! Cheers!

 

[Tavernking]

How are you handling the pathfinding for the large creature? How many tiles does it occupy?
Looking great! Cheers!

Thanks! Large multi-tile units are what I'm working on right now. I've decided to implement my own pathfinding because I'm hitting limitations in the official Godot one (or I simply can't figure out a workaround). Large creatures occupy a shape of connected tiles, but the top-left tile will be the reference tile. Pathfinding is done by checking if a path is valid not only for reference tile but also for each other tile of the creature. There are many challenges remaining but it'll be worth it, just look at how intimidating and imposing that ogre looks

 

[Ularis Badler]

How are you handling the pathfinding for the large creature? How many tiles does it occupy?
Looking great! Cheers!

Thanks! Large multi-tile units are what I'm working on right now. I've decided to implement my own pathfinding because I'm hitting limitations in the official Godot one (or I simply can't figure out a workaround). Large creatures occupy a shape of connected tiles, but the top-left tile will be the reference tile. Pathfinding is done by checking if a path is valid not only for reference tile but also for each other tile of the creature. There are many challenges remaining but it'll be worth it, just look at how intimidating and imposing that ogre looks

I see. I've attempted this in the past and concluded that even if I check each tile composing the creature's area it won't simulate accurately the area needed to move it around, since pathfinding calculation is still 1 tile in size going through narrow passages. A common solution I've found was having another larger grid on top of the smaller one, just to be used by larger creatures.

Another more complex solution is calculating the position of all tiles matching the area that the creature would occupy, whenever the main pathfinding tile thread advances 1 tile towards the destination tile. (A bit hard to explain without images).

Let us know if you manage to pull this off. Cheers!

 

[Tavernking]

Is STR affected by sex?

Males receive 3x as much strength exp as females.

Do the females get anything as a compensation?

I thought I would come back to this. New values:

Male - 1.5x strength exp modfier
Female - 1.1x longer lifespans (and a decreased ageing penalty), 1.1x chance of surviving disease, x3 charisma exp modifier

First off, I think in almost all RPGs male and females should be equal - the exception being if it forces the player to make interesting strategical decisions. In my game players won’t be able to choose which child will be their ‘heir’ aka which one they’ll play as in their next life, so there’s a 50-50 chance they’ll be playing as a male or female. This encourages players to try different playstyles.

Second, in Lays of Evenheart all playstyles are viable whatever sex you end up with, but definitely not optimal. However keep in mind, some professions (not combat classes; literally jobs) within those playstyles are gender-locked.

Females can still become badass adventurers. They’re just as good as males when it comes to mage/cleric/pure-ranged builds. They're unoptimised but still extremely useful as spellswords and paladins (magic is so rare and powerful in my game, you're not going to care if you're male or female - if you're magic-sensitive you'll want to become a mage). They will have to work a bit harder if they want to be a pure-melee or melee/ranged-hybrid build, but a good weapon and melee training matter more than raw strength.

 

[Tavernking]

Prepare to lose 7% of your strength and dexterity per year once you’re considered ‘declining’. For all races this is 1/2 the maximum male lifespan. For humans, this is 45 years old.

Once you reach the age considering 'elderly', 2/3rds the maximum male lifespan (60 years for humans), you can no longer gain new strength or dexterity exp. Watch your legendary heroes waste away into clumsy feeble old-timers.

There’s also an adolescence bonuses for ages 13-18. The youngest a player/partymember can be is 13 years old.
Fun fact: I was going to call this a puberty bonus, but I don’t want to make new players think ‘wtf am I playing’

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I see you have a typo there, it's spelled "aging"

 

[Serus]

Is STR affected by sex?

Males receive 3x as much strength exp as females.

Do the females get anything as a compensation?

I thought I would come back to this. New values:

Male - 1.5x strength exp modfier
Female - 1.1x longer lifespans (and a decreased ageing penalty), 1.1x chance of surviving disease, x3 charisma exp modifier

First off, I think in almost all RPGs male and females should be equal - the exception being if it forces the player to make interesting strategical decisions. In my game players won’t be able to choose which child will be their ‘heir’ aka which one they’ll play as in their next life, so there’s a 50-50 chance they’ll be playing as a male or female. This encourages players to try different playstyles.

Second, in Lays of Evenheart all playstyles are viable whatever sex you end up with, but definitely not optimal. However keep in mind, some professions (not combat classes; literally jobs) within those playstyles are gender-locked.

Females can still become badass adventurers. They’re just as good as males when it comes to mage/cleric/pure-ranged builds. They're unoptimised but still extremely useful as spellswords and paladins (magic is so rare and powerful in my game, you're not going to care if you're male or female - if you're magic-sensitive you'll want to become a mage). They will have to work a bit harder if they want to be a pure-melee or melee/ranged-hybrid build, but a good weapon and melee training matter more than raw strength.

I like your approach. I think it's nice that someone at least tries to make men and women different in realistic(-ish) way but at the same time both being viable. Of curse i would make women worse in (almost)any adventuring role, except maybe magical ones - but only when it comes to the magic itself. But it is still great the way you do it.

I hope that you can make the multi tiles creatures work. Many computer games with grid movement lack that feature. But it is great, as you said the ogre/giant thing looks nice and occupying more space potentially adds some additional options in game. Good luck with that. And with with everything else!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Are you going to include further biological variation e.g., some people are naturally stronger or quicker?

 

[Abu Antar]

Women should have a longer lifespan.

 

[Serus]

Women should have a longer lifespan.

They already have in game.
From the point of view of realism in a pre-industrial society women didn't necessarily had longer life expectancy than men due to high mortality in childbirth. Men on the other die slightly more often in infancy and generally have more dangerous occupations.
Hard to know for sure, most good statistical info we have on old societies goes back (at best) to ~18th century. At least in Europe, not sure about Far East. Everything past that point is either fragmentary, derived from sources that were used for other purposes (like taxes) or from archaeology.
Sorry for the nerd/historian rant.

However this game is NOT a simulation, lol.

 

[Tavernking]

I see you have a typo there, it's spelled "aging"

Ageing for british english, Aging for american english. In Australia we use british english but the internet has taught me to use many words the american english way. I end up using both interchangeably.

I hope that you can make the multi tiles creatures work. Many computer games with grid movement lack that feature. But it is great, as you said the ogre/giant thing looks nice and occupying more space potentially adds some additional options in game. Good luck with that. And with with everything else!

Thanks man, I'm not going to lie it's very hard to modify my implementation to include large units, it would have been so much easier if I had planned for large units from the start... at the time I just assumed future me would figure it out. It's going to be a nightmare in terms of bugs. BUT I've got large player-controlled units working, large ai-controlled units are coming soon. Then I have all those bugs to fix.
LARGE UNITS CONFIRMED

Are you going to include further biological variation e.g., some people are naturally stronger or quicker?

Yeah, there's a few genetic traits in there.

 

[Tavernking]

There are still some minor bugs but good enough for now, large units are now in the game!

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Can larger creatures bypass some scenery or are they blocked by little bushes and stones?

 

[Tavernking]

Can larger creatures bypass some scenery or are they blocked by little bushes and stones?

They are blocked by bushes and stones, I thought about letting them tear down the environment around then but that might be feature creep for now. Something to return to later.

 

[Tavernking]

Hey all, despite some massive leaps forward in development recently (the combat engine is 90% finished), the project is now going on an indefinite hiatus. Mostly due to life and career stuff. I’m going to put ‘vaporware’ in the title so that no new readers get disappointed after being interested.

The last thing I’ll say is that if development one day continues or some kind of spiritual successor is made, it will be back better than ever

 

[Abu Antar]

Hey all, despite some massive leaps forward in development recently (the combat engine is 90% finished), the project is now going on an indefinite hiatus. Mostly due to life and career stuff. I’m going to put ‘vaporware’ in the title so that no new readers get disappointed after being interested.

The last thing I’ll say is that if development one day continues or some kind of spiritual successor is made, it will be back better than ever

"Don't believe his lies"

 

[Haba]

What a shocking turn of events.

 

[just]

share the source
i'll make a porn game out of it

 

[ERYFKRAD]

share the source
i'll make a porn game out of it

Tyranicon probably beat you to the punch.

 

[Aemar]

Hey all, despite some massive leaps forward in development recently (the combat engine is 90% finished), the project is now going on an indefinite hiatus. Mostly due to life and career stuff. I’m going to put ‘vaporware’ in the title so that no new readers get disappointed after being interested.

The last thing I’ll say is that if development one day continues or some kind of spiritual successor is made, it will be back better than ever

I pre-ordered the game, you can't just back out now. Who do you think you are? Ceres Games?