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my dungeon crawler project

V_K

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You can do a more forgiving reclassing system, without dropping the stats to bare minimums, like e.g. in Wizards&Warriors:

Should a character take on a new elite role, their previous level will be frozen and
their EXP total will be reset to zero – however they will keep all their old abilities and
powers. From that point on they will advance within their new role gaining
experience from first level again. There is a penalty to this newly accelerated
advancement however; until the character surpasses the level they had in their old
role, they will gain only minimal bonus at each level advance.
Or, if that sounds too forgiving, go the Wiz8/DnD 3.5 way.

By the way, are you planning on giving classes non-combat abilities to interact with the dungeon environments (outside of usual unlock/disarm)? How interactive the environments are going to be anyway?
 
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megidolaon

you're a cool cat dude stay fresh

while i wholeheartedly believe Wiz-clone class-changing shenanigans are, preeetty much the best class changing system one will run into all things considered... i fully admit i have been taken in by the current trend of japanese 'crawlers (elminage, stranger of sword city, etc) to sprinkle class-specific abilities from which the player will choose 1 of hopefully at least 2 or 3 meaningful abilities (say, a bard weighing the pros and cons of starting out w/ song of healing versus instead taking a more generic, NON-class-specific skill, such as for example something akin to extra inventory or the ability to deal 5 or 10 percent more "something" in some ridiculously specialized combat scenario, etc); elminage utilizes a large "generic" pool of skills that any class can choose from and while at first it seems there are some that are no brainers and that around half of them are "useless" it is to Starfish's credit that the more i play the elminage games the more i realize not a single one of those skills is useless whatsoever.

for example there is one called Drunken Fist (like i said, any char can take it on char-gen in elminage: gothic) that boosts melee dmg output by an undisclosed amount when the char is poisoned. obviously i'm betting p. much no one will ever pick it, and neither did i, until i started running into enemies in the post-game dungeons that came with that drunken fist skill bult-in and effectively turned my party's poison-happy Ranger-type character which i had power-gamed to the max by not only making him a Ranger w/ a class-specific ability to take the 1st turn at times, but also picking the 1 race in the game which comes with a bonus to inflicting poison... those drunken fist fuckers completely obliterated my Ranger-type char and and it turns out the dmg boost is level/cumulative, so the higher the character's level the higher the dmg output when he/she is poisoned and the dmg was scary as fuck, easily +50-60% extra. (of course, these enemies were 100+ levels, post-game, etc).

now, starfish could've had a legitimately awesome skill there w/ drunken fist except they forgot to allow players the choice to poison themselves therefore completely eliminating any use a player might have for drunken fist. OOPS.

but the point stands, i think? anyway the other thing is instead of a pool of skills utilize a combined approach allowing generic skills to be taken on char-gen and also allowing class-specific skills that don't really change the macro of the game, i mean, i am by no means advocating dumb skill trees like some sort of Diablo game or some stupid shit like that: just shit that actually does impact the gameplay on every playthrough but not in a way that any one single skill is "too essential".

the one part where Wizardry (not just elminage, all wiz-clones) fuck up in my opinion is the goddamn identification being always relegated to Bishops. This means any serious player will have to either have a bishop in the crew or have a bishop benched (something super tedious).

originally the Bishop class as envisioned and designed by greenberg and woodhead was an attempt to present 1980's Wizardry players with "hidden psychological direction". In Wizardry acquiring loot is second only to gaining character levels in determining the effectiveness of the player's characters and as such when a Wiz player acquires loot rushing back to the Town to identify the items is a glorious event and this creates the following logistical gameplay interpretation for the player:

- the player upon getting new, unidentified loot, and he/she got this shit from enemies on a brand new floor he/she hasn't explored before so he/she knows it'll be good; this player will now face the simple choices that Wizardry's type of resource management present when coupled with the simple item identification system: i.e., the player has to decide whether to continue exploring the Maze or to retreat to the Town in order to identify their loot.

- this is what i call an emergent gameplay type of scenario because in reality there is no real reason to continue exploring: the most rational action is to retreat, identify, and come back: the only reason this is even a thing is becasue the Wiz player is completely engaged with his explorations of the Maze and the new floor. The oft misunderstood aspect about the supposedly obtuse or challenging ways classic Wiz will fuck with the player is not because the designers want to frustrate the player, on the contrary what they wanted to achieve was to challenge the player to learn the underlying systems and to engage with the game not in contest but in a journey of exploration: both exploration of the game world and the constant desire to better understand the dozens of elegantly interlocking mechanical systems that comprise a Wiz-clone crawler.

- anyway, the player then has to think about his resources: hit points, spells, items, amount of party members left standing, etc. Example: in early portions of any of the first 5 Wizardry games getting poisoned by an enemy means 100% guaranteed death unless you are close to the floor's stairs to safety. Each step deals 1-5 points of poison damage and Wiz characters, regardless of class, will never usually have more than 20 points (and being generous there) before levels 5 and onwards.

- the designers intentionally price the latumofis potion, poison-removal potion, completely out of the reach of the beginning Wiz party. If i remember correctly it costs 500 gold (or more, don't remember exactly) in Wiz 1-5 and 1st floor enemies drop like... 1 gp. Getting poisoned is death... UNLESS THE PLAYER KNOWS EXACTLY WHERE HE OR SHE IS IN THE FLOOR AND KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT TO DO AND KNOWS EXACTLY HOW MANY STEPS TO TAKE TO REACH SAFETY.

- once more the player is rewarded for being able to save their own skins simply because they are willing to engage the game's challenges.

So, right, the Bishop was introduced specifically to provide Wiz players with the choice to continue exploring and be able to identify items inside the Maze. While on the surface that sounds like a no-brainer decision, to include a Bishop always, the discerning Wizardry/Wiz-clone player will have realized eventually that: BISHOPS ARE COMPLETELY USELESS.

In return for the ability to ID items on the spot the designers literally gave the players a non-character to occupy a valuable spot in the 6-person wiz party. Bishops don't learn their spells until a Wiz player is already playing through the scenario's END GAME; level fucking 26 (!), and Bishops cannot do anything even remotely useful in the context of dealing melee or ranged dmg either nor can they protect themselves adequately as they are given severely gimped/limited access to armors/weapons basically a gimped-Cleric but without having spells when it counts. (clerics learn all their spells at lvl 13, so they are useful from the start, as opposed to a bishop who will never, ever be useful except when identifying an item).

it's a simple thing really but most players don't even realize that they are actually forfeiting a completely legitimate spot on the team that could be occupied by an actually useful character class. however, the advantage of identifying an item inside the Maze is that there is the possibility that the party will ID an uber weapon or armor which will immediately boost their damage, or immediately boost their protection, or it might be an item with spell resistance, etc, the point is that this allows this party to continue exploring and are now effectively more powerful than they were before.

in closing all of what i have mentioned hinges completely and totally on the way wizardry handles itemization: the acquisition of loot is "random" (nothing is truly random) and the only way to acquire loot is to defeat an enemy force and then engage a second layer of conflict resolution wherein they must weigh once again whether to risk attempting to disarm/open the chest or to leave it alone. This cannot be stressed enough: in classic Wiz (and in elminage) you can literally be steamrolling everything and then open one chest and boom, immediate party wipe.

some will mistakenly assume this is some sort of "bad design" of "bad RNG" or some such bullshit: no, this is a mild skinner box element. In the end there is absolutely no reason you have to open the chest, and in fact, the Maze should instill in the wizardry player the actual and living fear of attempting to acquire loot as that chest could be a magnet trap and bye bye your Plate Armor!

all of this creates something very familiar: TENSION. The most common experience any wiz player takes away from a good session is that they did something and they did it by challenging the game. Easy example: a 1st floor party gets poisoned, everyone, because the chest they tried to disarm had a Gas Bomb, and now they don't know if they're close enough to the stair to Town to return with at least 1 surviving character, but instead of reloading (remember that classic Wiz is iron-man style, so there was no reloading) they decide, fuck it, let's see if i make it: and of course they make it and it is the single most fun part of the session managing to make it back to the Town with every step sucking hit points out of them.

i remember once i reached the stairs with 1 char alive and he had 2 hp. it was glorious. the experience has nothing to do with the game itself but rather is an experience that is born naturally from the game's mechanical systems: i consider that to be legitimate emergent gameplay, unless it means something other than what the word emergent means.

for those paying attention these incredibly simple scenarios/examples i wrote about regarding classic wiz-clone formulas manage to stimulate the players: logistics, ethics (to be greedy and attempt to take the chest or play it safe, etc), the player's independent will to further explore the game's Maze without any actual prodding whatsoever by the game itself (!!!), and of course the player's relationship with the game's rules and systems and their continuing appreciation of them as the game reveals itself to the player, but note, it is the player that has to take notice as the game itself is completely straightfoward as can possibly be.

(i didn't mention cursed items but yeah, another incredibly good addition to the stew of classic Wiz, and of course i know very well that is from d and d).
 
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megidolaon

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By the way, are you planning on giving classes non-combat abilities to interact with the dungeon environments (outside of usual unlock/disarm)? How interactive the environments are going to be anyway?

Aside from lighting up dark areas? Certainly won't be Grimrock 2 levels of fancy. I've considered three ideas so far, each of which would be trivial to implement. I could probably code all three of these in less than two hours (but only after I tackle the big elephant of a TODO which is to revamp the internal dungeon format, which currently takes up way more memory than necessary):

1) Basic trigger type that toggles a floor existing/not-existing on these-squares for use in some puzzles
2) Mid-to-late-game magic artifact that can freeze water for 'x' steps before it cracks under your feet, can open up previously inaccessible areas seen earlier on
3) 90 degree swapping of walls of a single-square-sized room depending on whatever arbitrary condition makes it rotate.

Whatever I do implement, will have to accommodate for the fact the player may have square-to-square walk/turn animations turned off.
 

V_K

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Mid-to-late-game magic artifact that can freeze water for 'x' steps before it cracks under your feet, can open up previously inaccessible areas seen earlier on
Maybe make it a spell instead? With reagents requirements to limit spamming it?
By the way, will falling into water be immediate death or are characters able to swim?

Basic trigger type that toggles a floor existing/not-existing on these-squares for use in some puzzles
This could work nice together with a levitate spell, probably also reagent-based.
 

megidolaon

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By the way, will falling into water be immediate death or are characters able to swim?

I haven't programmed in swimming, and I haven't planned to.

Water's current purpose is pretty much like that of a pit if you walk into a water square, but the difference it has from pits is that solid ground squares adjacent to water squares have additional monster encounters like alligators, fishpeople, etc.
 

megidolaon

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Been working on implementing magic these past few days. The most time-consuming part was not the magic itself but the part tying it in to the combat system's UI code, which is easily the most spaghetti-like code in the game due to the way the windowing system works. I wanted to get this done last weekend, but I've been savaged by violent fits of bronchitis and only recently have gotten better.

With regards to magic casting limitations, I'm experimenting around a bit with a non-Vancian system. MP does not represent "how much energy does the magician have remaining" but rather "how hot is the magician becoming": casting magic raises MP ("heat"), and when the magician's heat reaches a certain threshold then magic becomes dangerous to cast. It keeps track of "heat" separately for each of the three schools of magic; casting a spell will fully heat up the magician's MP for that spell's school, plus a bit of additional "collateral" heat gets added to the other two schools of magic as well.

If the magician is below the threshold but casts a magic spell with an MP cost that will bring it over the threshold in that turn, then there will be a slight chance that a not-so-deadly, but still highly inconveniencing, effect will happen to the magician.

If the magician is already above their threshold and decides to risk casting a spell, then the chance of injury/backfiring would be VERY likely, AND the effect would be a lot more serious, putting themselves and/or their allies' lives in jeopardy.

Now I shall have fun programming in a few of those dangerous effects and consequences!

There is "cooldown" but it is only from a 1/20 chance per footstep in the dungeon, not every single step. Tested this for a bit and it's often very slow when compared to the higher average monster encounter rates, so there's still a pretty strong incentive to haul ass back to the nearest Inn and rest instead when possible.

If this system turns out to not be so fun or feeling too contrived when being used in an actual scenario then I suppose I'll just fall back on standard ol' Vancian, which I admit I've never been too fond of in any games that use it. I just thought something like this would be worth a try... my hope is this system is one that would allow one more avenue for the player to take weighted risks.

Thoughts?
 

V_K

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Yes, please! I always hated the arbitrariness of Vancian magic.
May I also sugges making it more granular? I.e. putting several thresholds for different chance and severity of backfire?
By the way, what are your plans concerning non-combat spells?
 

megidolaon

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Right now the only non-combat spell is one that sets Illuminated status flag on the caster so they're a human torchlight for a certain number of steps. Aside from that and healing spells, it's still too early to tell what the entire game's spellbook is going to look like.

I do know I want to include teleportation, but no promises -- that's only if I can figure out a few logistics pertaining to how different dungeon floors spatially relate to one another, especially if they are not neatly aligned and/or stacked. It seems like a feature that can be easily done horribly wrong if I don't take those details into consideration; it can either make the game too easy one way, OR the other more likely way being it could also be literally unfair in a way that the player teleports into rock even if they make a 100% objectively reasonable deduction about what relative coordinates to enter (due to a mistake on my part).

Before next Sunday I aim to make the NPC interaction/event system less rigid; not a strictly multiple-choice-only sort of thing like it is now. Fortunately I don't think I need to re-write the whole system, as I previously feared. Things like free text input, or attack-anytime, etc. can be shoehorned in. The code will be another big ugly mess, but still feasible.
 

V_K

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I do know I want to include teleportation, but no promises -- that's only if I can figure out a few logistics pertaining to how different dungeon floors spatially relate to one another, especially if they are not neatly aligned and/or stacked. It seems like a feature that can be easily done horribly wrong if I don't take those details into consideration; it can either make the game too easy one way, OR the other more likely way being it could also be literally unfair in a way that the player teleports into rock even if they make a 100% objectively reasonable deduction about what relative coordinates to enter (due to a mistake on my part).
I think a Mark/Recall system of Wiz8 could solve that. With the backfire effect teleporting the party to a random spot (quite possibly a rock). Could make for a nice risk-and-reward dynamic where your overheated mage tries to teleport the party back to safety to cool down but can't predict the result.
 

Wayward Son

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re-classing some veteran lv 20-something heroes in a later end-game-area outpost may not be a good idea if they'll then be squishy lv 1 newbies again entrapped within walls which have swarms of gargantuan lv 20 Hell-centipedes that breathe nuclear fire surrounding the outside. I'll have to think this through a bit and play around with some options when I get around to this detail. But beyond that, I agree with your statement that *whichever* approach I go with should be one such that it makes the player seriously consider why they are changing and whether it's worth the risk/time involved to do so.
A decent way to solve this problem, imo, could be to set them to half of their current class's experience value. Doesn't make sense logically, but from a game design stand point, I feel that it's a concession (goddamn it, can't think of teh right word atm).
Also, how will the multiple dungeons be connected? Will it be by an open world mechanic, à la Might and Magic, or will they logically but linearly connect in a Wiz6-esque fashion?
 

megidolaon

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I think a Mark/Recall system of Wiz8 could solve that. With the backfire effect teleporting the party to a random spot (quite possibly a rock). Could make for a nice risk-and-reward dynamic where your overheated mage tries to teleport the party back to safety to cool down but can't predict the result.

This sounds like a good fallback teleport mechanic if I can't avoid nincompooping the approach to classic-style teleportation.

Also, how will the multiple dungeons be connected? Will it be by an open world mechanic, à la Might and Magic, or will they logically but linearly connect in a Wiz6-esque fashion?

What I have in mind is for something like what the original Megami Tensei games did: Larger, flatter dungeons that connect multiple smaller "tower" type dungeons. And then of course miniature "town" outposts found here-and-there. This is the ideal thing I want to do, because it looks like it'd be more fun to design than just a single dungeon of nine 20x20 or whatever floors simply stacked on top of one another.

But, this sort of world's structure would be why I was saying getting classic-style teleportation right might be too tricky to do. I remember Wizardry 5 had a lot of varying-sized dungeon floors, but I don't remember how it did cross-floor teleportation. If I remember correctly (it's been like 3 or 4 years), that very uncertainty kept me from wanting to find out the hard way.

Would you make available consumables that lower the MP on the magic heat barometer?

I haven't given much thought to items yet. It's still way too early for even me to know.
 

megidolaon

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Any updates on this?

Before flying home I spent a few days implementing the code for the entire magic system (before that, only combat magic worked, and even then only spells which attack an enemy group were possible), and implementing about 2/5ths of all the planned status effects (fun!). Resists, both in magic as well as with physical weapons' attributes and styles, also now work (pure percentage-based for simplicity... and negative values also work, for enemies who are meant to be weak to certain types of weapons).

What actual magic spells there will be in the final game are not yet decided, but at least I got the basic code side out of the way. I structured both magic and status effects to be as data-driven as possible so I'll hopefully have minimized the amount of future code-side maintenance I'll have to fuss with whenever there are any major changes to the rest of the game.

Staying focused is the main challenge more than code itself lately, as I've slowed down a bit due to all the moving. I'm back on my Windows 7 desktop computer and have been re-setting-up my environment to match as closely as possible what I've been working on from my little-Linux-laptop-that-could. And the inevitable job hunt has also been eating up a lot of time and energy I'd rather invest in my game, but I suppose it has to be done so no use complaining about it.

Speaking of status effects, there are some I'm trying to figure out how to implement "realistically" in a game where you control a group of up to six people who may not all have the same status effect. For example I wanted to have something like "Dizzy" or "Drunk" which would cause you to sometimes stumble onto the wrong square you didn't intend to step on. But if only one party member has that affliction... then it seems kind of silly, no? I was thinking one or two approaches for this:

1) On each step, the game randomly chooses an alive hero in the party, and uses his status effects to pool from. If that pool has a relevant status effect such as Dizzy, then do the dice roll to see if it affects that attempt at moving.
2) Designate a "Leader" for a party (one person who may never be manually swapped out, may never exchange Leader status with any other party member, and if he dies the rest of the party has a difficult time fighting and must book it back to town for their own safety before choosing a new Leader). And so, if that Leader has the relevant status effect, then that's what matters on deciding how those field-affecting status effects work.

Second option seems perfectly reasonable, but seems like it'd also oblige me to add other gameplay elements that make the Leader more important in battle. Maybe not a bad thing?


Goals I plan on nailing before end of October:

1) USE ITEM. Still don't have usable items programmed. Use on the field, use in battle, etc., gotta do it sooner rather than later. Did plan ahead a bit with this in NPC interaction mode many months ago; if you 'Use' an item when talking to an NPC the interpreter will jump to the tree node named :[USEITEM-itemsymbol] but that's about it at the moment.

2) Allow flagged entries in the EVENTS table to affect state of dungeon geometry. ie, 'Wall is only here if DRAGON-EXPLODED is false', 'Vault door is unlocked only if BUTTON-PUSHED is true', etc. Biggest challenge is making sure I have everything else relevant in the existing code accounted for to avoid classic slicing problems.

3) Lockpicking. Never seen an RPG, ever, where this mode wasn't either too pointlessly simple or too boringly gimmicky, so I may as well just implement whatever works and not worry too much about how dumb it will inevitably be.

4) Treasure screen at end of battle, mainly implementing traps and the disarming of them.

5) Add a Generic Menu to NPC interaction mode; allow player to make arbitrary choices during NPC interaction mode. "Fight/Steal/Cast Spell" etc. at ANY TIME, so NPC interaction is not just limited to basic multiple choice responses the NPCs' dialogue offers you. This might drag on until November, though.

6) Other little miscellaneous field/camp commands (Reorganize Party, etc.)
 
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I wanted to have something like "Dizzy" or "Drunk"

3) Lockpicking. Never seen an RPG, ever, where this mode wasn't either too pointlessly simple or too boringly gimmicky, so I may as well just implement whatever works and not worry too much about how dumb it will inevitably be.

What is your intent with the status effect in question? Are you aiming to get a character into harms way or something?

Regarding lockpicking if you are open to suggestions perhaps you should try something else. Magical containers of some sort. Opened by solving riddles and/or puzzles or another way since those two can prove to be a hassle.
 

Mustawd

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Respnsible party members don't let other party members drink while dungeon delving.
 

V_K

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Never seen an RPG, ever, where this mode wasn't either too pointlessly simple or too boringly gimmicky
I think the only way to avoid that is to give lockpicking the same treatment as combat. I.e. have a variety of "attacks" (lockpicks of different forms, acid, dynamite, magic, brute force etc.), a variety of locks that have different "resistances" to those "attacks", and punish repeated failure by setting of a trap or attracting the attention of nearby monsters.

Speaking of status effects, there are some I'm trying to figure out how to implement "realistically" in a game where you control a group of up to six people who may not all have the same status effect. For example I wanted to have something like "Dizzy" or "Drunk" which would cause you to sometimes stumble onto the wrong square you didn't intend to step on. But if only one party member has that affliction... then it seems kind of silly, no? I was thinking one or two approaches for this:

1) On each step, the game randomly chooses an alive hero in the party, and uses his status effects to pool from. If that pool has a relevant status effect such as Dizzy, then do the dice roll to see if it affects that attempt at moving.
An easier solution would be to make the chance of misstepping proportionate to the number of characters in the party that are affected.
 

megidolaon

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Don't have many visual things to share since the last time I posted in here, except I finally found a decent name for my game that doesn't seem likely to give me possible trademark-law hemorrhoids: 'Jettatura', an Italian word for the curse of an evil eye, and I whipped up a quick-n-dirty logo, in the title screenshot below. It's still not the best title I could think of, but think it's still a lot less generic than "Dungeons of Danger" :)

I've implemented even more mechanics, too, such as the treasure disarm (especially all the traps and consequences/status effects), and implemented the ability to answer arbitrary entered-text answers during NPC interactions so it won't always be so multiple-choicey.
Now I'm in the process of writing all the actual UI stuff to tie-in everything else I've previously implemented in the REPL, a task I thought I would be able to get around to by November. Basically spent the last few days in Dia to draw a big graph-chart of a TODO in order to get an idea of all the windows and menus I still have yet to code; I thought I was done with at least half of it all, but no, I was dead wrong, I'm only about 1/4 finished as far as that goes! It isn't difficult or hard, but it is tedious busywork. At least the most spaghetti-codey windows are out of the way (especially that freaking status screen for party members!)

Tedious as UI stuff is, I hope to finish all that soon enough to be able to release a public playtesting build before the end of this winter; something with a small faux-campaign, with about 2 or 3 or 4 floors, and assorted monsters of varying types to fight, so I can hopefully get a lot of feedback and bug reports. I suppose that might also be a good time to put it on Steam Greenlight, since a build like that would have a lot of screenshot/video material that isn't too sparse.

jettatura_title_screen.png
 

mondblut

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Looks far better than all those jap unterwizardries with their 9999999999 hitpoints and UI that remained frozen in time since Famicom days. Cautiously fapping.
 
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If you mean dungeon layouts, I'm going to aim for a design style themed around multiple, separate, compact "towers"

If this is still the case maybe you could call the game Fiends or Foes in High Places. I really love the lack of health point inflation you have going on.
 

megidolaon

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Logo needs a different font, for me it was impossible to tell whether the first letter was a J, an I or a lower-case L.

If it's only that, I might edit just that one letter's appearance and leave the rest of the logo as-is; I had a hard time finding a font that was neither too bland and modern, and also not ridiculously YE OLDE EXAGGERATED RENAISSANCE FAIRE SIGNPOST-ish (there are a TON of those, and even if that's what I wanted, 99.9% of them are still ugly as sin). Finding good-looking middle-ground font took a long time.

As for un-inflated hit points, I figured that lower-ranged numbers in these things make all the mathematics generally easier to test and fine-tune. Fifteen stats going from 1..255, instead of seven or eight stats going from 1..20, means more rabbit holes of uncertainty and "sigh, back to the drawing board!" to get endlessly lost in.
 

megidolaon

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Hi again, it's been almost an entire year, shy of a few weeks, since I shared any updates on this project. But I definitely have been working on Jettatura almost daily, and I think (hope?) I can still complete it before the end of winter

514 git commits since I last posted in this thread, development is now at the stage where I'm much less frequently working on the more-or-less-completed code anymore, and now spending most of my time focusing on the various puzzles and scripted events, and going back-and-forth with playtesting it to make sure it's difficult and unforgiving of careless behavior, but not literally impossible to beat either. A lot of this time being spent also involved being honest with myself about puzzles or incidents that, on closer examination, seemed kind of lazy, lame, cliched, or otherwise "feeling rushed", and then kicking myself hard in the ass to alter or delete them to be replaced with something better.

Tweaking the combat and magic was the most difficult task because, for a long time, I wasn't keeping any firm design principles in mind with the battle system. It was a guessing game in the dark. But I got on good track finally by re-doing all of the monsters so that, just like the player's adventurers, their hp is affected by their level+hpdice: Animals have a d6 or d8 hp dice, so a lv 7 Sweeper would have 7d6 hp. Plants have a d4 hp dice, so a lv 10 Screaming Vines has roughly 10d4 hp (but they'd then come in greater quantities so they're not some trash enemy at that late stage in the quest). Lv 3 fighter would have 3d10 hp, where before I just kind of winged it for everything and it all felt oddly arbitrary: "Oh a Samurai enemy... hmm, I dunno... maybe 50 hitpoints, give or take?", fight it with a few times (sometimes not even thinking about what level the test party was), and then further tweak it on how things "feel", which certainly was not a scientific approach to designing enemy stats at all. I never consciously realized that's how many classic RPG systems do it, just something right under my nose that I hadn't noticed before.

So now ever since doing that big "reset" on the monster table, it's become much more intuitive for me to estimate not only individual enemy encounter difficulties, but also the game's overall entire difficulty curve, and in turn that also made it much easier to determine what kind of damage-dice that magic spells and obtainable weapons ought to have as well.

As for the dungeons: I had big plans about how vast the game's world would be, but I have to admit I was a bit delusional and cocky: what I said earlier about how there was going to be a series of of many-towers-full-of-hard-dungeons, with those towers connected by smaller-easier-dungeons (like Megami Tensei 1 did)... that really turned out to be way too ambitious, far beyond the scope of my own deadline. I'd love to make a game world that big someday, but not this time. So I scaled this down to be a total of 12 floors, directly above/below one another. This made it easier to implement & test teleportation spells, which have deathly fatal consequences if you do them wrong such as teleporting into rock, teleporting underwater (also instant death -- lungs instantly flood and you sink), over a pit, etc. A concession I made for that, is that the game will leave behind any quest-important items at the last walkable square the party was standing on before the player did the fuckup, and also, for each equipped item worth more than a certain amount of gold, it too will be also saved from oblivion if an unlikely critical-success d20=20 (with some slight modification from the doomed wielder's LUCK stat) roll is made.

Some maybe-bad news: It's too late in the code for mouse or controller support (at this point, redoing it would be like changing a chunk of a building's foundation, not just shuffling around pipes and drywall), but I took extra care that the UI is as comfy and familiar as possible for pure keyboard use. If/when I do add mouse/gamepad support, it will be done a *long time* after it's initially finished and released, because I was a dumbshit who didn't exercise enough foresight when designing the core of the input and windowing system.

I decided there will be no ingame map at all during gameplay. Graph paper time :). There IS map functionality but only for Edit mode. I did make one UI+gameplay concession, though: originally I had spells be typed in (again, "just buy some paper!"). But at the point where it reached over 80 spells, that was turning into a real endless source of scatterbrainy discombobulation even for me, and even that couldn't be neatly written strictly within two sides of a single sheet of paper. So as of last week I added a nice graphical picker window complete with descriptions and a school/tier mp table.

And finally, playable classes implemented:

Basic classes: Fighter, Thief, Priest, Mage -- the usual, need no explanation
Advanced classes which require many more stat points to switch to:
* Knight - Fighter/Priest
* Druid - can use Nature-school spells, which emphasize utility and status effects more than Arcane/Divine ones do
* Highlander - Fighter/Druid, a physical attacker with greater attack potential than Samurai and Ninja, but armor is limited to kilts
* Samurai - Fighter/Mage.
* Ninja - Like Thief but can use better damage-dice weapons exclusive to his class. Not as skilled at lockpick/trap disarm
* Wizard - Priest/Mage. Can Identify items, and can identify the stranger, deadlier, more arcane types of treasure chest traps that Thieves/Ninjas may have difficulty comprehending

And that's the general state of things.
 

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