| Monday, December 31, 2007 |
  lots o' stuff | 
Posted - 12/31/2007 12:26:23 AM | contests.
well the ludum dare 10 results are up and i won a bronze medal! i was surprised i even ranked. i'll definitely be trying harder next LD. i'm actually kinda excited for it, even though it probably won't be until april. who knows, there might be a 24h in between!
i know i could be competing here in 4E but i'm just no good with that amount of time. six months is just too long for a nooblet like me. there may come a day when i'm able to plan something out over a period like that.. who knows!
new monitor.
i got paid on saturday (wierd day) and deemed it appropriate to replace my 15" crt backup mon with something that didn't hurt my eyes. i got my dad to haul my carcass around town a bit, and i settled on a $200 19" lcd widescreen display. i'm looking at a 1440x900 pixel desktop right now. its amazing! i can keep the solution explorer, the properties pane, and the tools pane all open and work on code without any problem at all. i was running 800x600 on the old crt. i love this thing.
new(?) project.
i was going through the older ludum dare entries and i came across drpetter's LD8 entry and i just couldn't put the game down. even now i'm resisting running it for one more go - i gotta finish this post and get to bed for work tomorrow. i highly recommend giving it a go, its a great little game. IMO it plays best with a gamepad and a key input emulator like joy2key.
anyways it got me thinking about space fortress again, and i was wondering why i hadn't gone the tilemap route before i took on something more complicated. it seemed like a great idea, so i started thinking about it some. as i played 7th swarming, i was thinking about how i could put his mechanics to use in my game, and recalled Cybernator - couldn't i use a mecha instead of a ship? and then it all started coming to me.
what i have in my head for space fortress beats the pants off of what i was planning before. i can't wait to get this on the go!
actionrpg
i'm not neglecting this! i've actually started working towards getting npcs in, and i just realized how i was going to do the classing and instanciation. err wait no i can't have a special inherited npc class for shops, i need to let npcs throw events that start shop windows up or something more to that effect. hmmmmmmm
bedtime! zzzz
| |
| Wednesday, December 26, 2007 |
| xmas & ff1-4wm | 
Posted - 12/26/2007 12:11:59 PM | xmas.
this probably doesn't go here, but its been years since i got a sweet haul of loot that i just had to drop it somewhere. whee christmas! yeah its probably been since university, and that would put it at about 10 years.
i was invited to my gf's parents' place this year, it turns out they really want me to stick around. we've been going out for about a year and a half, and we've been living together for about 3/4 of a year or something like that. they must have gotten used to not having her around, they're redoing the floors in the house and they made her room into a rec room. so yeah. i got lotsa presents this year.
normally i only get like a couple of gift certificates for coffee or walmart. don't get me wrong, i'm used to that - in fact i'd still rather do it that way. i've got a week still to go this month before i get paid, and i've got $10 left in my bank account. so christmas always does a number on my bank book. i suppose i got more stuff than i could have afforded if i had myself bought the gifts that i received, but the point still stands that i have $10 left to get through the next 5 days with.
anyways back to the big haul!
well, there's a bunch of clothes i actually liked - including a dress shirt and tie! i've never owned a tie in my life! we got a whole bunch of house stuff that we were lacking; more encouragement (discouragement?) of a prolonged existance away from the nest on her parents' part.
the good stuff:
- 36 x 22" dry-erase whiteboard
- hellfire, the unoffficial diablo1 expansion
- bleach: memories of nobody dvd
- beard trimmer
the whiteboard i've been wanting for a while. now i can scribble programming stuff on the wall! i need a corkboard now, my parents stole my old one >_<
"hellfire?!?!" you scream? yup! i'm a diablo FANatic, what would you expect? i've got the diablo1 alpha and now i have the final peice of the game collection. i played it a little, its not really all that special, but its neat to see what they did with it. i'll be playing it for a while.
the bleach dvd is a little wierd. i like bleach a bit, that is to say i might collect the dvd boxed sets in the future, but i'm not gonna kill myself to get them. anyways so yeah i got a bleach movie on dvd with a sorta blurry cover insert that doesn't have any company name on it whatsoever. i looked it up (on wikipedia, i know i know) and it hasn't been released in america. its got english subs, but i don't think they'd do that for a japan release. so i've got a well-made subbed copy of the movie. if it comes out over here i'll grab it, they tend to put extras on those things.
and the beard trimmer. yup, its great they got me one - now i don't have to worry about looking like a terrorist anymore. i gots me a trimmer!
ff1-4wm.
so over the last couple of days i've been playing a good share of final fantasy 1. ran my white mages through the rest of the game, and beat it! i probably gained 20 levels to 99 in the last area of the game. they give you a ton of exp there! anyways i ended the game with four lv99 white mages. i relied heavily on 3 judgement staves, 2 rune staves, and 2 lightbringer swords. thats pretty much how i cleared most of the game.
i jacked my stats with items also found in the dungeon, but i don't think that str or agl stats do anything when you pump them. int is definitely used in the damage calc for magic, so i could keep cranking that one if i wanted. since i'm at 999hp i don't need to worry about cranking sta, and lck isn't something i really care much about either now, since i've got all the item drops i need now. i didn't need the 5 elixirs and 10 megalixirs i collected. i figure that if you need to use those kinds of items, you're still too weak.
so yeah. i'm done of this one now. back on the hunt for the next challenge!
happy holidays!
pictars.
| |
| Sunday, December 23, 2007 |
| etc etc | 
Posted - 12/23/2007 12:18:51 PM | since i don't have long enough time blocks for the next bunch of days because of holiday visiting, the following is all i have to post about. can't code when you can't put in 3-4 hours, unless its something simple..
ff1 dawn of souls.
anyways, i went up and beat tiamat. she was a massive pushover, like she had no chance at all. i was boosting one of my wms with saber and she fell before i even attacked with that character. i almost felt bad for her. i figured i'd run the third new dungeon again, for another judgement staff.
then i got to the bottom and decided to take on omega. wow, he hits hard. he's got four attacks: earthquake (always misses everyone), lightning (~200lit-all), wave cannon (~150-all), and some kind of beam (~750-one). he probably has a physical attack too, i don't remember it being brought out. that beam really beats the shit out me. my guys are 800-900maxhp so everyone can survive a shot if they're near max, but a lightning or wave cannon next round will finish the job.
gotta run the numbers. life brings them back to 1hp, and curaga/healaga restores 250hp-300hp, so even with two people dedicated to healing, you're still only bringing back 600hp max to everyone each round. he's got first-attack every round probably due to his agility being way higher than mine. the only way i can do this is if i healaga with 3 people every single round and anticipate that he'll continually be using that goddamn beam. that leaves one wm to do... something.
if i have that wm focus on flare-ing, thats only about 400dmg a turn, and we're going to run out of mp for healaga long before that wm can take omega down. so the only option left is to have that wm saber for a loooong time and get their attack up to do 2000 damage or something a round, if thats even possible. gonna try that.
what was that all about?
i figured i'd throw that stuff in there because i actually enjoy that kind of thing from time to time. omega is an optional boss, and i'm certain he's the most powerful boss in the game. i could probably go take on chaos right now and beat him.. though i'm not positive, i didn't beat him with my white wizards yet >_>
anyways, i don't want to find myself trying to guess at the kinds of things i want in my game. i figured that i should take pleasurable experiences i'm having with games currently, and write them down so i can examine them from an actionRPG perspective. let's see what i come up with.
bestiary.
ideally i would have a bestiary, and as soon as i hit omega with something that it was strong or weak against, that information would become available in the entry. as soon as there was any interaction with the boss, it would be - but every interaction we would have that would show information about the boss would be revealed in the bestiary upon discovery. so even if omega beat you, when the team was resurrected they could look in the bestiary and see the new entry and check out information about him.
Omega - new!
[pictar]
[pictar]
[pictar]
hp: > 5473 - new!
????
????
strong vs fire - new!
absorbs lightning - new!
(i made this stuff up, i didn't look the info up)
i wonder if any of the ff's provided this level of info? well they should. would their attacks be listed, as well as attributes and damage? should you be able to tell their defense from a series of physical attacks? (and so on.)
boss encounters
is the boss experience better when its focused solely on the boss? in many games, i've found the designers sealing the player in a room with the boss, leaving only two options: kill or be killed. in FF they simply deny you the Flee command 100% of the time. the other side of the coin is to let the player come and go as the game would normally allow, and to treat the boss as a "more significant" mostly-regular foe. which is better?
if you seal a room off, you wind up with a few results you wouldn't necessarily have otherwise. in a sealed room, you can anchor the camera in the center and ideally show the entire battle space for the entiretly of the battle. you can keep an eye on the boss more easily this way, and you won't miss anything cool it does. there's more of a sense of urgency when you don't have an escape route, as well. there tends to be better rewards when you defeat a sealed boss, though i'm not sure if the two things go hand in hand - or if it's just an expectation on the part of the player. sealing a room with a boss often helps to signify the importance of the battle, as well.
while i'm not against sealing you into boss rooms, i still like having the freedom to fight or not fight, or the ability to run away midway through a battle. minibosses or roaming super-tough non-boss monsters are always a pleasure to encounter. i think of diablo unique monsters and ff12 marks, or even the gold monsters from minish cap. ideally you're going to wind up with extra loot or fatter exp returns when you kill them.
i guess there's a place for both situations in the same game, in my opinion. there are lots of ways to seal exits, though, aren't there? from scripted "we can't risk bringing this too close to town!" and being forced back away.. to literally dropping physical barriers in the way of every exit. in the end, a healthy balance of sealed and unsealed bosses will suit actionRPG best.
hit or miss.
one of the things i'm making sure not to put into actionRPG is a "miss" roll. i HATE it when games put that in an action game. if your sprite or attack model visibly collides or passes through your target, then you can't deny the player that. its so damn aggravating! I HIT SO REWARD ME! anyways, so how then should i do AI regarding that?
obviously there are going to be some AI with terrible aim, and some with awesome aim. the simplest case is a missile weapon: the AI has a target they want to hit with some kind of projectile like an arrow or fireball. in many cases games tend to give perfect aim, and you just have to move aside a little bit to avoid it.
so what about that? i get to thinking about doom with this. in doom there are a few different monsters with missile attacks that don't track - cacodemon, imp, those fat demons, and so on. when they throw their missile, you just need to do a little sidestep and you're free and clear of it. i call that "missile management".
now, there's a "powerup" in doom called "partial invisibility" that screws up the monsters' aim so you can stand still and have a chance not to be hit. i put the word "powerup" in quotes for a reason. because of the random nature of the projectiles while you've got partial invisibility, you can't manage them reliably. in this situation i actually find it harder to predict where the imp is going to throw the fireball. is the powerup actually a powerdown in my case? i avoid the things like the plague unless i'm playing multiplayer.
with that in mind, i need to think to myself that perfect-aim is an easier AI to play against than random-aim. so if i'm going to make a boss with a projectile attack, and i want to make it harder, i would want to randomize its targeting somewhat - let it have perfect aim and then add on a little random angle that might throw it offcenter by a little, just enough to keep the player guessing. omega's beam weapons would be harder to deal with in an action game if it were to fire in a slightly random pattern.
etc.
the stuff was kinda out of nowhere, wasn't it? well it was just some of the thoughts i had after rereading the ff1 bit. thats kind of the idea, i post something i'm doing or thinking that i'm enjoying, and reread it to try and get a different perspective on it, for use with my game (as i said before). guess it worked out this time. 
| |
| Saturday, December 22, 2007 |
| final fantasy musings, and other randomness | 
Posted - 12/22/2007 3:02:34 PM | so yeah, its almost xmas. i took a break from xmas cleaning and figured i'd drop a line in here. xmas is just so much fuggin work.. i want it to be over already, so i can get back to my stuff. maybe the break from it will do it some good.
i tried out mount&blade, and by that i mean i did all of the tutorial. i probably couldn't pull that off, it was pretty cool. its emphasis on "realistic" swordplay is a little too much for my tastes though - i tend to rather arcade-type gameplay in almost every case. (/me hides from the grammar nazis)
the gf tried out world of warcraft the other night by herself - because of the tv commercials. she thinks its kinda boring. i'm glad she picked up on that. nuff said there. someone's gonna need to come up with something a little more fast paced than that for the casual gamers, though.
i picked up final fantasy 1&2: dawn of souls again, and kept forging forward with my four white mage team. i've restored three of the crystals, and killed all of the bosses in the first two new dungeons - as well as the first two in the third. shin-ryu is whupping my ass right now, but i managed to take him down like 15min ago on the gc-gb player but it wouldn't let me save for some reason! i might bow out and go through the dungeon a couple more times to get more staves out of atomos. 4x judgement staff (flare) ftw!
[edit: killed shin-ryu, now at the top of mirage tower - white mages can't equip thor's hammer!  ]
4wm ff1 is more or less about buffing with spells and items. you can use Giant Gloves for saber and stack it to get a decent amount of damage against any boss. until right near the end, i was doing 2x ~1000 damage against shin-ryu every round because i stacked enough saber on two of the mages. the problem with relying on items is that i've only got one giant gloves, and so i can only saber once a round. that means stacking takes a looong time, and you gotta be able to survive the hammering you're going to take.
i'm talking a little much about 4wm ff1, but it was getting me to thinking about a few things regarding what i'm going to do with actionRPG. multi-target damage, element wheels, using equipment as items, to name a few thoughts off the top of my head.
multi-target damage.
well i've already got it set up like seiken dentetsu, where you can only give damage to one target with a basic attack. contrasting that, zelda lets you hit all targets that fall within the attack path. i'm still considering taking the zelda path, though. i was thinking more about spells and item effects, though. chain lightning was different in diablo1 and diablo2, for instance - it would chain between monsters in d2 but it would just start as a spread of regular bolts in d1. i definitely want to get some spells on the go, soon.
element wheels.
by this i refer to the rock-papers-scissors systems that games tend to employ with their elements. up until ff5 or 6 (can't remember which put poison in the wheel) the element wheel standard was fire-ice-lightning. instead of coming up with something completely original (is that possible now?), i'm trying to decide which wheel people are familiar enough with that i can go with.
actually, i looked it up again, and ff2 introduced poison into the wheel, and it was basically fire-ice opposed and lightning-poison opposed. using poison against a lightning-based monster would do double damage, where lightning would heal a lighting-based monster. using fire or ice against a lightning-based monster would just do normal damage. it tended to be more about monster classes rather than element based, though, as all other ffs were. the "standard" ff weak/strong against system was best seen in mystic quest.
if i go with the classic fire-water-earth-wind wheel, is it obious which elements are better against others?
i'm thinking that it shouldn't really matter anyways - since any bonuses given by a weapon/armor should be shown in its stat box when you hover over it like in diablo2. all hammers give 150% damage vs undead as a standard in diablo. when you look at a hammer's stats, you always find that at the bottom - and after a while of seeing that you catch on. it should be the same with any game, if you keep to a standard like that. if you pick up a bow and look at it, it should automatically have 150% (or 200% in ff?) vs flying.
how far do you take that though? suppose there's a standard where melee does 50% vs slime-base. do you list that in the item list? i think you tend to only want to see its strengths, right? perhaps having a bestiary that showed its strengths and weaknesses would give you insight into that. an entry for a zombie would show it was weak against hammers, and an entry for a flan would show it was strong against hammers.
as i think on it more and more, i think i'll go with the FF weak/strong/absorb standard. they can't copyright that, can they?
| |
| Sunday, December 16, 2007 |
| ludumdare 10! | 
Posted - 12/16/2007 8:00:54 PM | ludumdare 10 weekend! i figured i'd throw down with the rest of 'em, and i wound up with this:
ld10-sg.zip 459.32 KB, req: .net, dx10
i'll probably take a bit of a break from the compy for the next couple of days. this wore me out!
| |
| Wednesday, December 12, 2007 |
| ActionRPG | |
Posted - 12/12/2007 10:26:18 PM | 
tristram.map
so i got the town map loading and you can walk around on it now. there's really no reason to right now, its a ghost town. in that pic i'm pretending to talk to an invisible griswold. i'll be putting in the npcs eventually, i don't care if they look exactly right or anything, i just want to get the damn thing working right now. the town lacks in color as well - i suppose i could make the textured triangles have coloring too, but enh. basics first! temp graphics and all that.
i was helping my brother at his job this week after work, so i got a little more behind than i normally am. hopefully i can make up some lost ground this weekend.
[edit: whoops! nope, ludumdare is this weekend!]
| |
| Monday, December 10, 2007 |
| Untitled.txt - Notepad * | |
Posted - 12/10/2007 7:26:39 AM | i'm still alive, just been busy playing Aquaria and working minor magics on ActionRPG. i've added a couple of new monsters, and fixed some bugs.. but its not significantly different enough to really show it off and be proud of it.
i've added coloring to some of the game objects, as you can see. its a simple method that doesn't really give supergood results - i'll need to break up sprites in two (or more?) and only color the greyscaled part that i'll want to be variably colored. that's a mouthful.
also new are the two slime monsters. i've almost got my old Animate Demo wrapped up in here, with the addition of the red slime. red slimes have the same behavior as they had back then - a simple direct-line chase algo. they do damage a little differently than the darknuts, since they cause immediate touch damage, i had to run a half-second timer that would check for contact and give damage. it seems to do the job. the blue slime works mostly like the red slime, but i gave it less hitpoints and a little more speed, and when it detects that something has been killed, and the hero is close enough, it will run away for a bit.
that ring of items is showing off the item bounce i added in. when you kill a monster or drop an item from inventory, they bounce away from their drop point in a random direction. if you drop a whole bunch of things out of inventory, they form a circle around the spot you were standing. kinda neat.
i've got enough monsters in now that i can turn my attention elsewhere, like maps or npcs. i know i want to have a pet in there, soon ;)
| |
| Tuesday, December 4, 2007 |
| ActionRPG vidcap | |
Posted - 12/4/2007 4:20:25 PM | there's no reason to release a demo for the thing yet, but i figured i added enough stuff to actionRPG that screenshots wouldn't do. so, i capped some vid and dropped it on my youtube space. the vid won't play in this, i don't think gamedev supports that yet. i recommend right-clicking and opening in new tab/window.
so yeah. there's quite a few things there:
- manually picking up items (individual and multiple)
- dropping items from inventory
- equipping from inventory
- button usage display
- showing damage given and received
- showing a bit of animation
i know it ain't super-duper-awesome. thats why i don't have a demo out yet. there's plenty still to do. the vid shows that item drop lists that are too long are screwed up. there's only one monster, and they just sit around and do the same thing. there isn't much in the way of variety. i haven't even put a boss at the bottom yet..
but i'm getting there. its just a matter of time and stress-shielding.
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