  Action RPG | 
Posted - 5/29/2005 7:11:26 AM | Dragon Warrior
noaktree responded to one of my previous posts, and its important enough for me to make a new entry about it:
Quote: So you're planning to show the monsters rather than just enter a battle at random? I don't know. This kind of takes away from the surprise DW brought to the battle sequence. But it does allow you to choose your battles.
What will the battle sequence be like? |
(entering into battle)
very good question - how will you enter into battle? i haven't put any thought into this one at all yet. i've seen a whole bunch of ways to go about it, and i gotta agree, the spontaneity of a monster attack in dw was kinda neat. knowing exactly when and where monsters spawn does sorta suck a bit - its easy to run the game if its done that way. (zelda comes to mind pretty quick here)
well, games that immediately come to mind that did it randomly are: Chronicle of the Radia War, Sword of Mana, Faria, and Willow. odd that three of these games were original nes.. 
Chronicle was a bit different than what i'm actually going for. what it did do that most console rpgs havn't, is it keeps the same map for where you got attacked and uses it for the battle sequence too. the map doesn't scroll during an attack, but there's no different area for a fight. you'd be walking along and then the screen would flash suddenly (and randomly) and monsters would appear on the same map. you'd move around in real time and attack in any of four directions until you win.
Faria had a more traditional overworld map, where everything was shrunk down alot and towns occupied 2x2 tiles as opposed to a whole map like in Chronicle. as you wandered the world, the screen would flash randomly and you'd go to a new screen and fight random monsters. depending on what kind of tile you were on (plains, forest, desert etc) you'd go to a screen that represented that tile. if you were in a forest, the screen would be closed in and there'd be trees scattered around that would get in the way or be used for cover, depending on how you played.
Willow was more like zelda than the previous two games. you'd walk around in real time and use your sword any time you wanted. if you were walking around in the 'unsafe' areas, typically non-town areas, as you scrolled to the next screen, you could have a random monster encounter. monsters would never attack at the same screen every time, and they'd appear in different places each time you were attacked on the same screen.
in Mana (for gba if you're wondering) you'd always be attacked in an unsafe map. as soon as you walked into the map, monsters would appear - there were always two position sets for the monsters, and the monsters were almost always the same. sometimes unique monsters would have a third set, but they're rare. after you've killed the set of monsters given to you (and after you've taken the treasure chest or it disappears) then after a time period, more monsters would appear. repeat over and over, and you've got the idea.
which do i like best? well, it depends on the advantages i want most. though Mana doesn't give much in the way of surprise, you can be sure that monsters will be around. if you're item-hunting or looking for monsters for Gold, you'll know right where to go. if its the randomness that i'm aiming for, then yeah i should probably go with something like Willow. i actually think thats the way i want to go with this.
(monster occurance density)
well, another topic is popping up in my head. are you only ever going to see one monster in the wild at a time? its how the game went, and it wasn't until dw2 that they changed that. it's going to make a difference in how some battle topics are being addressed, if we say that you're only ever going to fight one monster at a time. repel wouldn't need an area effect, for example. i don't know how i feel about that yet.
if i'm only going to have one monster attacking at any given time, then i'm definitely going to have to put alot of effort in their ai. having monsters just charge at you and do melee attacks over and over (like in diablo..) is going to seem like an insult. i suppose that extra work is going to be worthwhile, because the monsters will seem to have more life than they do now.. and i certainly don't want to just swarm players to death.
another benefit of one-monster-ing would be that you wouldn't be able to power-level by herding monsters together. the original game pace would be respected as well.
man, the more i think about this, the more i like the idea.
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| Action RPG | 
Posted - 5/28/2005 7:01:04 PM | Dragon Warrior
(monster ai)
Goldman - Defensive pose
Wraith - Heal
Druin - Sleep
DeadNite - Heal
Wolflord - Stopspell
ArmKnight - Stopspell
MagWyvern - Sleep
finally, saw the Druin/Warlock cast Sleep again.
um, i just noticed as i was doing stuff that i had no idea where i was on the map until i moved around a bit. i thought i was on rimuldar continent and i realized i was just north of domdora/hauksness. should i have different kinds of trees in different areas of the world? have the trees look different enough that you knwo exactly where you are using them? i mean, it doesn't have to end at trees either. in zelda:la, you knew exactly what screen you were on no matter where you were, because everything was unique to areas. something to think about.
here's where i'm at with the map:
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/27/2005 7:48:41 PM | Dragon Warrior
(overworld map)
did a bit more on this. i need to level before i go near hauksness/domdora, or rimuldar. copper sword, chain mail, and leather shield will only do so much.
when i'm done the entire thing i'll zip it and post a link.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/27/2005 4:53:08 PM | Dragon Warrior
(useless areas of the world)
as i was working on grabbing the overworld map, i realized that there are huge areas of the world i don't bother visiting. the whole northern area between garinham and the northern shrine is nearly a void in my memory. i knew there was a desert area south of kol, but i never spent any time there.
why not make some 'interesting' stuff to put there, to lure the player back every once in a while? i'm not really sure what kinds of things to put there.. maybe some interesting people (maybe with minigames), or monsters unique to the area. just anything at all.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/27/2005 4:52:30 PM | Dragon Warrior
(monster use of sleep)
so i was wondering about sleep in #gamedev and we had a lively discussion about different ways to deal with it. during it, i was wondering what monsters could actually USE sleep. i looked up ability list on www.gamefaqs.com and its not accurate! i know this because i had a Druin/Warlock cast Sleep on me and they don't have that in their list. maybe they didn't have a lv30 warrior? anyways, here we go:
Monster abilities:
ArmKnight - Stopspell
AxeKnight - Firebane, Healmore
BlueDrgn - Breathes fire
Dracky -
Drackeema - Firebal
Dragon - Breathes fire
Droll -
Druin - Firebal
Druinlord - Firebane, Stopspell
Eyeder -
MagDracky - Firebal
MadKnight - Sleep
Magician - Firebal
MtlScrpio - Defend
Poltergst - Firebal
RedDragon - Breathes fire, Stopspell
RedSlime -
RockGolem -
Scorpion -
ShdwKnght -
Skeleton -
Spooky -
StarWyvrn -
Werewolf -
Wolf -
Wraith - Heal
Wyvern -
while compiling the list, i was fighting a Druinlord who stopped casting magic altogether and started attacking instead. its possible that monsters have magic points! further investigation reveals that MadKnights can only cast Sleep twice!
apparently drolls aren't scared of anything! i went through at least 20 rounds of trying to use my Loto Sword and a droll hitting me for 1dmg every round, and he just wouldn't go away. everything else in the dungeon is terrified of me, making it hard to gather info. gonna keep that in mind when i get to droll ai.
for all the monsters i gathered info on above, i didn't see any Druins casting Sleep. why was the area around Rimuldar full of ones that did, before? man, i dunno..
(dealing with sleep)
anyways, i got a good discussion out of #gd (a rarity) and we came up with a few ideas. since it was last night, i don't remember every detail, so i'll gloss over them. someone mentioned having a minigame during the length of the sleep, but the timelength is just too short for that. april mentioned that you could have warding items and protection spells - i'm not going to throw that idea away yet, but i don't want to add too many new things to the game yet.
actually, if you're wondering - someone's logged the chat here, start at around 08:55, 1/3rd of the way down. anyways, i started thinking about ffx, the limit breaks. you have to input a series of keys, randomly chosen, and if you get it before the time is up, you get the best damage. it kinda reminds me of dance dance revolution too, without the waiting.
see, the whole problem i have is being stuck asleep, not being able to do anything about it. all you can do is watch, helplessly, as you get beaten until you wake up (if you do before you die). no damn good. if you let the player affect the status somehow, it releases that feeling of helplessness a bit - they can do something, more than nothing. i'm probably going to end up just doing a button mash to speed up the recovery of the spell.
if i stick with the 1sec round length and 50/50 chance of recovery, then i imagine button mashing would decrease the round length by some small amount each press. the faster you mash, the faster a round is up, and the faster you get to a 50/50 test. you either wake up, or a Z pops out and you keep mashing to get to the next test. it might be good enough.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/25/2005 11:34:57 PM | Dragon Warrior
(town map changes)
before we get started with something actually interesting, i want to put in a quick note that the other towns (hauksness, cantlin, kol, and rimuldar) are probably going to be good to go as is. i'll leave it at that for now.
(monster ai)
i've been putting this off for too long. after i got started on it, i realized it wasn't half as scary as i was making it out to be. sure, i'm not sure what to do with most of the monsters yet, but i'm going to wing it and its going to be fine. lets start out with the most basic of monsters.
(slime monsters)
lets cheat a bit and define the monster's graphic representation. i know its not really a big part of the ai, but it helps to show what the thing looks like for subsequent illustrative designs. here we go:
its a pretty simple creature, just a blob of jelly. i'm taking inspiration from zelda: link's awakening for quite a bit of the monster. since the reds and blues are a little different, i figured i'd just pull from zelda ii and go with distance and height to differ them. in order for the monster to move about, it will make little jumps in whatever direction its moving:
just about the same as they do in zelda ii. in zelda ii the reds were weaker, so its a mere color reverse to get what i'm aiming for. the red slimes will do big upward jumps like they do in zelda:la towards the hero as a part of their attack ai.
the slimes will have a field of view like this. if the player sprite (or clip area?) clips that, the monster 'sees' the player and then goes into attack mode. the blue slimes are weaker than the reds, so we might want to give them a smaller field of view.
the metal slimes (metaly) are going to be insane. huge view radius, can cast Hurt/Firebal. massive DEF, seen only if you can catch the bugger to hit it. its going to be doing alot of running away at really good speeds. i imagine you'll probably have to do some herding to get this thing under your blade.
lets get to some general stuff about slimes. more pictars, yay~
here we're representing roam mode. the slime doesn't have a target and roams around looking for one. as the slime roams, it can be moving in some random direciton - maybe it should hop (n <= ~3) times in the same direction or something. when it stops moving, it sits and jiggles for some random amount of time, like in zelda ii. in the case of the red and metal slimes, it can also randomly jump in some direction - again like in zelda ii.
in attack mode, the slime can move directly toward the player much like it moves randomly in roam mode. it can hop directly toward the player, again like in roam mode. hm. i guess the only difference attack mode places on the ai is focused direction. oh, and the metal slimes will move away very quickly instead of toward - though they will jump toward with increasted jump distance, across the screen maybe. the metal slimes also cast Firebal at you. i guess i already said all that.
i keep forgetting to mention that touching the monster is all it takes to take damage from it. i don't want that to be the case for all monsters - but in this case, the slimes are toxic or whatever.
(knight monsters)
well, first i tried to think about action games that had knights in them, and how they fought you. obviously Zelda i, ii, Link to the Past, and Link's Awakening all come to mind immediately. only in ii do the knights swing their weapon - except the bow knights in lttp, and the mace knights in both lttp and la.. i might be able to use them somehow.
other games that had knights that fought with blades.. well, chronicle of the radia war did, as did crystalis. in both of these games, the knights thrust their sword at you like how you use the sword in zelda 1. then there's final fantasy adventure, where the knights did the same thing, but the werewolves had an arcing attack like you did. it feels more 'right' to let the knights attack like you can. i'd say that it would probably be more fair for you if they had a wind-up delay or something, so you could get in and attack and get out again. each stronger knight would have a better wind-up delay so you'd have to be more careful with choosing your shots.
i want these mofos to be tough! the axe knight (armored knight in dw1) is supposed to be the 3rd hardest monster in the game to fight, in terms of raw hp and attack power. i mentioned in my notebook that they should be slow due to their heavy armor - but i have to take care not to make them easy to kill. lots of def and hp will protect him only for so long. make his attacks swift and deadly and you'll learn to fear him.
these guys should have fovs set in front of their facing direction. if they're not looking at you, then you should be able to sneak around them. here's a visual aid ^_^
get in behind them and you get a free hit - but only one. when you strike a knight, no matter if he sees you or not, that puts him immediately into attack mode and he'll turn around right away to fight you.
'nuff said on that one. however, lets go through the differences between our lovely knights. the weakest knight doesn't wield any weapon in the game, but i say if you're going to give an axe they're going to swing to the other two, then this guy should get something weaker like a copper sword or something to that effect. anyways, he doesn't do much but pace around until he sees you, and then he attacks.
the strongest knight weilds an axe and shield, and can cast healmore to recover. though that puts your efforts behind, in my opinion they're much less dangerous than the "middle-weight" of the knight family. the mad knight has the middle-ground attack and hitpoint max, midway between the weaker and the stronger.
the one thing it has, is the sleep spell. that is the single most powerful weapon a monster in the game can have. any monster that uses it will most likely kill you; if you're not dead when you wake up during their merciless beating, you're probably going to be close. there's no protection from being put to sleep, no defense whatsoever against it. you just luck out if the monster attacks enough times for you to kill it before it casts.
(sleep spell)
i'm realizing that i haven't really said much about the sleep condition and spell. to be honest, its the worst part of the game - it doesn't work when you need it to most, and it almost always means your death when used against you. i want to remove it altogether, to be honest. but since i can't do that, i have to look at it and figure out just what i'm going to do about it.
[working] i just played the game and tried using Sleep on a variety of monsters with my lv30 warrior. most things could be put to sleep, but the wizard/druinlord and green dragon would not go to sleep. i didn't try it on the undead, but i can't see how the undead would sleep. i can understand a dragon's natural magic resistance, as well as a magician's. so some monster classes are immune, and the rest seems that there is a 50/50 chance of waking from it each round. if there were a magic stat, we could use it to figure out chance of success, and length of sleep.
in all honesty, i think that if you're physically struck once (as in the ff games) you should be brought out of the sleep state. i'm not sure how being struck from magic is any different - pain is pain, and thats what i would imagine is waking you up.. in this game though, we could use it every bit as much as a way to get away from monsters as we could to use it to help destroy them. if i make it fair to use, i can see it being a worthwhile spell. it just wasn't reliable enough in the original, and i didn't use it at all.
obviously the representation for the state is going to be zzz (not the snot bubble in manga/anime). each monster not immune to sleep should have a sleep animation to go along with the zzz. it will be a single facing animation (and the death animation will be too). casting the spell itself made purple bubbles appear around the monster. i'm not sure how purple bubbles imply sleepiness, but there it is. it'll probably be an area effect, focused in front of the player sprite (whichever the player's facing) and if a monster is caught in that area, sleep status is rolled.
so we can go with rounds and then 50/50 tests to get out of it, rounds of like 1/2sec (long enough that a single round is noticable) and possibly 'miss' or something popping out to show the rounds. something has to be noticable and obvious to tell you whether or not you missed it. maybe a Z will pop out of you every miss? something obvious, anyways. it'd be nice if you could affect the sleep duration somehow. i'd hate to do button-mashing, but i've seen it before.
i'll wrap it up here. i should go with some of the animals next.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/25/2005 9:05:06 PM | Dragon Warrior
(brecconary)
lets get back to the town maps. tantagel town (brecconary) is almost alright to go with - except the item shop island:
err.. do i need to explain anything here? if i were to work a beach into the town or something, i could put the item shop on a wooden-built platform, and that would work pretty well for me.
(tantagel castle)
i went back to look at tantagel castle again and i'm positive i'm not putting it on the shore, because it just doesn't make any sense to.
i wanted to look at what having a castle outer wall would do, and i think it'd work pretty well if i need to force limited access to the keyshop and basement. most importantly though, i'm definitely not going to be putting the castle on the shore. noone does that. it'd sink into the sand, or whatever..
coming back to garinham. jesus, this one has completely fucked my brain. honestly! what is UP with all that water!
the only thing i (we - i involved a few people at work with this one) could come up with was that since the world map is zoomed out so far, a small pond or whatever wouldn't be noticed from there. i still maintain this is bullshit - but yeah i suppose its possible. all that's important though, is that you can't get into the big building without a key. once you're in, you need to find the hidden entrance - how to do that without giving it away is beyond me for now. once out back, its walled off anyways so you can't access it by walking around. that saves me some work. i'll just include that as part of the building from the outside, rather than trying to show it and giving it away.
in any case, i'm axing the water in the town altogether. there's just no goddamn reason for it. its not like its a port town right on the water or anything - there are no ships in this world... wait. aren't there? well, if i felt like pushing some interesting twists on the world, i could do that ^_^;; STILL. the town is neither a port originally, nor is it sitting on the water, to be mistaken for a port.
i'm going to post this much and we can move onto the next topic - monster ai.
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| Legal Issues | |
Posted - 5/24/2005 10:47:55 PM | Dragon Warrior
what a night. i took a hard road and decided to look into the copyright and trademark infringements i might run into. for one, i learned that trademarks are every bit as important as copyrights. i googled and found the US Patent and Trademark Office, and they have a trademark search (here) that yeilded two results on "Dragon Warrior":
[Serial Number] [Reg. Number] [Word] [Mark] [Check Status] [Live/Dead]
1 74271226 1844355 "DRAGON WARRIOR" TARR LIVE
2 73815978 1585893 "DRAGON WARRIOR" TARR LIVE
of course, i was expecting that, but if i need to run trademark queries, i know where to go. anyways, even more important, i got to talking with kSquared on #gamedev about intellectual rights and fair use. he pointed me at this.
in my mind, the most important part was rule 2, to me. as far as i'm concerned, the only thing that square-enix's lawyers care about is: does my work in any way hinder the sale of their game? in a word, probably. i mean, if there's this great game with the same story and setting as their boring old game, who the hell's gonna bother? that's a bummer. but, where does that leave me?
i sure don't intend to sell it. but i would like to share it. thats most definitely going to cause a problem for square-enix. i'm positive that i can change the maps, graphics, and names enough that i can get away with "almost" the same story and setting - but is that enough? once i'm done it, i'm sure i'll be able to twist the data enough to make it half-way unique, and shouldn't i do that? but at the same time, if i'm devving the game under the premise that i'll "change it later" - i'm still going to be sharing the data until that happens.. is that going to cause problems too?
oh the conundrum of the fan-based derivative! its just not different enough the way i'm going about it so far. i'm not sure what to do now. of course i'm going to keep ploughing at it as i was before, but i've gained a bit more knowledge on the subject.
hmm! here's an interesting well of info, the business of making games. didn't see that before. did a search on "fair use" ^_^ still, not much new here.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/24/2005 12:15:40 AM | Dragon Warrior
i did a bit of the mapping from the game, and here's a quarter-sized sample of what i have so far:
i need to take the blue blots out when i clean it up - thats dragon warriors.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/22/2005 9:12:45 PM | Dragon Warrior
well i took a look at garinham again, town map vs world map, and the glaring difference was just too much to think about. i figure that i shouldn't be fighting to keep as much of the original info in as possible. instead, maybe we can just plop buildings down on the world map as best as we can; that might do the job sufficiently.
if i were to try that, i'd have to make sure i was making room to fit the buildings as i was working on the screen divide terraform. i'd have to watch for how i was splitting the buildings so that a door wasn't at the edge of the screen, and whatnot. we have to ignore any useless geographical info in the towns and just keep the basic building info. throw out any trees and water and whatnot, in other words, and use the world-map as a basis for them.
here's a little sketch i drew (and the resulting info) at work today:
as you might be able to read at the bottom right, tantagel isn't going to need much changed. i think adding an outer wall and having a bit of courtyard will do the job sorta ok.. only so long as its big enough that people might not bother to look in all corners of it right away. in the original games if you walked a little bit too far, you exited town, and that made it tougher.
i'll look at the other locales later. i really need a full world map..
[edit: hmm.. it looks like you can't see the right edge of the castle map very well. doing a rescan now, to show the stairs.]
[edit: there we go. now you can see why it doesn't fit, and why we need to hack the map up a bit.]
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/21/2005 10:19:11 PM | Dragon Warrior
(world map)
so i was thinking about how the world map was going to work. i was thinking along the lines of zelda:la and final fantasy adventure, where there's a 16x16 array of single screen maps. if you hit the edge of the screen, you're transferred to the next map. it worked, and thats fine by me.
(towns)
i have to come up with how i'm going to represent the towns in the game. what i want is to have it done like in zelda:la; an area of the world-screens is set aside for the town. the buildings are roughly scaled to your size and you walk into a door tile and warp to another map, the inside of the building.
final fantasy adventure blocked access to all but the south edge of a town world-screen, and walking onto that screen warped you to a series of maps that wouldn't fit on the overworld map altogether. i don't like the restricting feel that would impose on me. it wouldn't feel right if i were to have a hut lying just far enough away from a town to not fit in its borders - because i'd have to walk all around the border to get to it, when i should have been able to just walk straight to it from the corner of town.
in dwi+ii-1, the towns are roughly 3x3 screens in size. if i kept to that, the eight towns in the game would take up: 8 x 3x3 = 8 x 9 = 72 screens. if there are 16x16 = 256 screens to make up the world, that works out to be 28% of the world. one quarter of the world-screens will be town maps. it sounds a bit.. wrong, at first. but, realize that if you're not in town, you're in the wilderness fighting monsters - and that's still three quarters of the world to do that in.
if i were to go with that, i'd have to do some serious terraforming to fit some of the towns on there. extending this thought, the world is suddenly going to feel alot smaller, because you'll be getting around it faster, and the trees and hills are going to be shown at a completely different scale.
here's a picture of what garinham looks like in dwi+ii, from the world map:
now, we have to take that area and expand it to three screens! see what i mean? we need to shove those mountains back a bunch and arrange things .. differently. i took some time and chunked some screencaps together:
and thats not even the whole map! its almost like they just didn't care about the geography around this town, they just threw it together. all i can think of is to just fit the big building in along two screens and arrange the buildings around it. whats up with all the water? where's the forest to the southeast? what about the shoreline? i might be doing some altering of the town here too, so there's a little more sense about the geography.
since i'm keeping zelda:la and ffa in mind here, buildings can be as small as 3x2 tiles in order to get just enough information in to suggest house-ness. obvserve:
i was thinking that garin's grave could be hidden 3 maps deep - enter long building map, use key and get into the building map, and find the hidden entrance to get to a back-way map that you can't access by just walking around the building.. its possible we could just fence it off along the top, but if you run fences all along the top of the building, and not let them see the path, it could work out nicely. hmm, but that might give away the secret too. hmm, hmm.
i want to drop the cut-away roofing that dragon warrior seemed to be proud of, in lieu of a more space-conserving method like 3x2 housing. i guess i'll have to do some playing around before i can know for sure.
one last thing i want to drop in here is that i need to look at how the world maps will break up into 16x16 single screens. i'm sure i'm going to have to do more terraforming to make the screen breaks look more 'pretty'. i wonder if things will even look the same at all anymore after i push around forests and rivers. i'll need a big map file with a division overlay. work work work ^_^
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/16/2005 11:33:19 PM | Dragon Warrior
(repel visuals)
i was thinking that i'm probably going to be simplifying this game down as far as it'll go for the first iteration. how simple? gameboy original simple. black and white graphics, two action buttons like in final fantasy adventure, minimal hardware specs. there just isn't enough variety in the game for me to worry about anything complicated.
for this reason (and others) i figure using shines for repel, even if they're smaller or a different color, is probably not so great an idea. for one, its not different enough for you to know whats going on at a glance. instead i figure a series of blended rings, travelling away from the player, would be a better choice. it looks alot different from shines, and doesn't rely on color for differentiation - its a different graphic altogether.
i don't have its exact look in my mind yet, but i need to make sure the player can at least partially see what's going on under the effect - whether it be between the rings, or by doing something to make it blink real quick, or by hatching like on the edges of the dungeon lighting effect.
i drew a quick pic in my notebook at work, to give a better idea of what i mean:
(repel, stopspell & sleep chance)
i'm going to have to make a decision sometime on this one. i know that the chance of success of any of these three spells will probably depend on the difference between the player's HP and the monsters' HP, with a chance thrown in on top of that. the exact equation i'm going to need to play with during the tweak stage of development. i can't hazard any guesses until i have some rough HP estimates for the player's levels and for the monsters.
(stopspell effect)
not much to say here. probably going to go with a recent final fantasy status indicator on this one. here's another pic:
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/12/2005 10:41:57 PM | Dragon Warrior
i completely forgot to go over the magic spells. well, they're going to work like the items do, you assign them to a button and then press the button to cast. i'm thinking that i'll have their icons in the inventory/spell screen be books with various symbols. let's start by listing them, along with their cost:
Heal 3MP
Firebal 2MP
Sleep 2MP
Radiant 2MP
StopSpell 2MP
Outside 6MP
Return 8MP
Repel 2MP
HealMore 8MP
Firebane 5MP
for every spell you cast, i was thinking we just make it look like the dust is being thrown in the air by a small air circle around you as you cast.. like, arc-sweeps that travel around and away from you - like fred perry does in his gold digger comics, to indicate impacts. i can't find a picture of it, but i'll draw it to show it when i start working on the art. i think they do it that way in street fighter iii..
as you cast it, and for the duration of the spell, you're going to be vulnerable to attack - you can't do anything until the spell is done.
(heal and healmore)
Heal and HealMore obviously heal your character. a shower of shines (many more in the case of HealMore) will go over your sprite and the number of HP you gained back from the spell would pop up in green. if you gained more than you can hold, the number is still shown - you're just capped at your max.
Heal gives around 30HP and HealMore gives around 100HP back. i'm going to want a randomness to it, i'm pretty sure its that way in the game. i'll have to play and record some numbers if i want it exact, but i'm pretty sure i can guess: 24-32HP for Heal, likely, and 96-104HP (maybe a bit bigger range here) for HealMore.
(firebal)
i'm not sure about firebal yet, probably a ball of fire shot in the direction you were moving last? i know that in dw2+, firebal damages a series of monsters, so i could do a half-circle fire arc that would work just like you were swinging your sword, but further away from you. that would cover more ground and be alot more useful than a projectile. if you can never hit with it, you'd never use it. well, you would, but you wouldn't like it.
(firebane)
if we were to go with the fire arc for firebal, then firebane should be a full 360' blast that does more damage. you'd use it alot if you could nail a ton of monsters with it at the same time. i hate missing monsters with higher level spells that do more damage - this takes care of that, its even easier to use than firebal. i'm liking the sound of this ^_^
(fire spell immunities)
the great thing about the fire spells is that they completely ignore DEF. when you hit, you get the spell's full fury every time. gotta like that. unfortunately, some monsters are actually immune to them! i know for sure that Metaly and DracoLord are immune - this is something interesting to go through. [working]
Firebal: 16-19 damage
Firebane: 54-58 damage
ok, i'm having a bit of trouble here. i was assuming that if i hit the first time, it worked always, and if it didn't work the first time, it never worked. well, i fought a Druinlord and man i got confused! firebal wasn't working but firebane was! then i tried firebane a few more rounds and it worked off and on. i'm not sure what that means. i know that the metaly has to be fully immune. i'm pretty sure that the dracolord's 2nd form has to be fully immune too, as well as any of the full dragons. the wyvern took damage but the starwyvern didn't, and as i said before, the druinlord was iffy. i can't test it on golem yet, but i can make that up if i want.
err, well, Dragons take damage from both firebal and firebane, so i can't jump on that one. i'll have to go hunting for Blues and Reds to test it on. also, what about MadKnight and AxeKnight? i'm assuming that everything else should take damage.. well, maybe not the Metal Scorp... [working] AxeKnight is partially immune, as is BlueDrgn. RockGolem and RedDragon are completely immune. DracoLord's first form is partially immune, and surprisingly, so is his second form. i was wrong, but oh wells. i'll talk about the dracolord when we come to the monsters - he's only supposed to be damaged with the Loto Sword.. but not in this game, i guess.
(radiant)
lets move on. when you enter a cavern, you should only be able to see a little bit around you - its going to be dark. when you cast radiant, your view radius increases dramatically; as time passes, the radius recedes - eventually it will shrink back to the start radius. there will be two parts to the circle of light, the inner half (or two-thirds), which will be full light, and the rest, which will be half light. i'm assuming the half-light will just be hatched black and see-through. this ties in with how the torch item works.
(repel)
we already went through this one last time - with the repellant item.
(return)
look up the warp wing item in teh previous post.
(outside)
fades from screen to black and then to the entrance you used last. (the underground tunnel has two exits, so i gotta specify that) the game plays the 'pluck pluck pluck pluck' noise of your feet shuffling down stairs - might as well keep that one as a nod to the original.
all that's left now is stopspell and sleep. i left these for last because i know the least about these two spells. stopspell obviously stops monster spells and sleep obviously puts them to sleep. the one thing i don't know about them is their duration. how the hell do you figure it out? i'm going to have to wing that. the other thing i don't know is how to figure out if the spell even works. honestly, there's just no indication aside from 'it works better when you're stronger'.
i gotta get some shuteye. i'll think on this at work tomorrow.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/11/2005 11:59:45 PM | Dragon Warrior
(critical hits)
i finally hit with 100% of my ATK with a critical. i'm at lv27 and my ATK is 171 - i did a critical on a DeadNite, and i hit him for 171 damage. assuming that was right on the money.
(minimum damage)
i was noticing that monsters that should be hitting at 0 with my system always get at least 1 damage. also, my new lv1 character (i named him Jeez, you should see the crazy things people say now!) hits for 1 damage on stronger monsters he shouldn't be fighting. i should probably adjust that.
(cursed necklace)
if there's a Cursed Necklace in this game, i won't likely find it. in the nes version of dw, when you exit and re-enter a dungeon, its treasure chests are refilled (except in the case of quest items iirc). so, if you don't get the Cursed Necklace in the northwest of the 2nd floor in the Mountain Cave the first time, you can just cast Outside and go back in for another try - as many times as you need. in the gbc version, if you open a chest, it stays open forever. oh wells. the cursed belt isn't any more useful anyways, so i'm not going to worry terribly much about it.
(experience / level cap)
looks like i capped 'er off. at 65535EX you get promoted to lv30 and things change when you talk to the king or Lora/Gwaelin. instead of them telling you how much EX until the next level, they say "You are strong enough." nice. also, you can't get any more experience than that, just like in the original game. i wonder about the money, though - it capped there too. i doubt i'll test that one, though. killing Metalys is one thing, when you're almost at level 30 - 755EX a pop. killing Goldmen for 650G a pop, when you're only at 11000G is gonna take a looong time.
(keys)
let's get back to the items. a simple item is going to be the key, an item that you won't actually equip. using a key will be as simple as talking to a person or opening a chest, pressing the (A) button; you'll open a door if you have a key. like the herb, it will have a counter on it - it stacks to 6. counter will show 2-6; if no counter, then there's only one key. kinda sucks that it will take up an entire space - that makes keys as big as full suits of armor. meh.
(repellant)
though i haven't really put much use into it, repellant is used to make monsters leave you alone. in a real-time action game, i suspect the best thing to go for is to just have them move away from you. i know that repellant doesn't work in caves, so that'll be an issue to keep in mind. also, repellant doesn't work against monsters of a level relative to yours or higher. i'm not sure exactly what the difference is, because i don't know if monsters have levels or what - maybe its a hp difference? i don't know. anyways, monsters that are as strong as you or stronger aren't affected by repellant.
i'm not sure what kind of graphical indication i should have for repellant.. maybe really small dusty shines in a radius around you or something like that. not really that important right now.
(silver harp)
let's look at the quest items, to get them out of the way. we have the silver harp first. using this item will make your avatar play the song, after which, a monster will appear that belongs in the area. whether they walk in offscreen or use a teleport or something, they shouldn't appear terribly near you if we can help it. thats about it there.
(sun stone)
well, the only spot this item (along with the rain staff) is useful is on the altar in the shrine at the very southern tip of the rimuldar continent. when you use the item at the altar (sorta like trying to talk to the altar with the item) the item is removed from inventory and is set on the altar. you won't be able to pick it up anymore, it's stuck forever. any other time you try to use the sun stone, you'll hold it up in the air, zelda-style, and a message will tell you that you've just wasted your time.
(rain staff)
when you use the rain staff any place other than the altar, you just hold it in the air again, and nothing happens - displaying another message to tell you that. at the altar, an event takes place involving the two items somehow - destroying them. what happens? i dunno. i'll deal with that when i work on the scripts.
(erdrick's token / loto seal)
the token/seal is another item that doesn't matter whether you equip or not. it won't do anything. i'm starting to think that the items that aren't going to be assigned to a button should be sorted away from the items that can be. i mean, if you try to assign the token, what should happen? for one, it shouldn't be equipped. are we going to have to have a 'non-equippable' note on its message window, at the bottom or something? perhaps we should figure out which items won't be able to be assigned to the buttons..
(rainbow drop)
well, lets deal with the rainbow drop then and finish up the quest items. again, if you use the rainbow drop in any spot other than its event spot, you hold it up and get a useless message. we'll deal with the rainbow bridge event later, when i do the events.
(shields again)
i've been thinking more on shields, and i've come to the conclusion that it doesn't do anything for me to force you to use a shield to get its bonus. i should just let you equip it like armor and get on with my life. i never used it in zelda:la(gmb), why should i force people to use it in this? just equip it and forget about it.
i do sorta like the idea that if you know you're gonna get whopped, you get the chance to lower the damage by choosing to bring the shield up.. enough on this for now.
(fairy flute)
yet another specific-use event item. the duration of the action is longer, but you'll still get a useless message unless you're at the golem event. the golem event will be dealt with either in the events, or at the monster ai section.
(torches and inventory-use)
now we're at the last three. with the torch, again, i don't know if i want to just have you equip it, or have it as an item. either way, it needs a duration counter on it that's easy to read. if we have it as an item, that means you'll have to use it to light it, and then keep it on for the light.. that seems crappy. thinking about this is making me think about the herbs too. why assign either of these to a button when you just want to use them and put them out of the way again?
as i think more on it, i can imagine the inventory screens only taking up 1/2 of the screen so you can still see your character in realtime. pressing the (A) button on the herb would make the shinies and the green number pop out in realtime, but you wouldn't equip it. if you couldn't equip it, though, wouldn't that suck if you were low on HP and had to get the cursor to the herbs super-quick - and it was at the furthest distance away? maybe you should be able to use the items from the inventory, if you press the button to assign it and then press the button again while it's still selected.. this is getting a little confusing.
see, i'm imagining pulling up the inventory to use a herb. you'd press (start), the inventory would open; you'd move the cursor over the herb and press (A) to assign it. then, to use it, you'd press (start) again to put away the inventory screen and then press (A) to finally use the herb. in a pinch that would be scary. but it works well enough for me.
but what about the torch? if you did it the same way, you'd be like: press (start) for inventory, pick the torch and press (A) to assign, (start) to get out, and then (A) to light the torch. if you wanted to use a herb, you'd have to put the torch back in inventory - and we have to make sure that it doesn't go out if you do that, because that would suck.
let's say that you can do that, then. if you want the torch to be put out, you'd leave the cave and it would automatically go out. seems like alot of going into inventory that might not be worth doing, to me. if you can just use the item in inventory to get it going, why not? i'm thinking that from-inventory use is going to be pretty limited, and i'm going for broad-type simplicity right now. whether going into inventory over and over to switch assigns might be irritating or not, i should probably go with that and figure a better way later.
you could maybe use the item and have it be visually equipped - drawn on the player to show that its going. i havent had a torch go out in the gbc version, so i'm not sure if there is even a duration on them at all. i do know that once you light it, its outta your inventory. putting it on the player and taking it out altogether is another solution. i don't want to have a single item that has a durability on it, when all other items don't. consistancy fails there.
if we go this direction, it works a little like the repel does, you have a graphic showing its use, and when it runs out, the graphic is gone. i think we have a winner here. i do think that in both cases, the radius should reduce at a slow rate, to nothing. using a new one resets the radius and we start again.
(cursed belt)
now i have two items left, the War Ring and the Cursed Belt. they are both equip-type items, equipping them puts an E on them or takes it away in the case of the ring. trying to unequip the cursed belt plays the curse song and you simply can't unequip it. but.. what happens to you when you're cursed? i haven't figured it out. the only thing i've seen is that the castle guards kick you out of Tantagel if you try to go in, cursed. so what? if you can save your game any time you want, who gives a shit about tantagel except for the sun stone? i say we should probably do something more.
what could we do to hinder someone with a curse? we could reduce damage, we could slow the movement rate (that'd be mean if you were trying to run away from scary monsters).. increase damage done to you.. or a combination of any or all of these things. being cursed should suck enough for it to become a focus for the player to remove it. but we don't want it to suck so bad that you die all the time from it. if we half the damage you do to monsters, that'd be sucky enough to have to deal with it. we gotta make sure to put a big scary eye over your head every where you go, just to remind you and anyone who sees you ^_^
we should make sure to have ??? as the description for it, until you've equipped it - we don't want to give it away right away. we should tell them that its equippable as opposed to assignable too, in whatever way we do that with theh armor and shields. what, something like "press a button to (un)equip" or something at the bottom? i'll look at that when i'm doing diagrams for the specs.
(war ring)
the war ring - this is the only item i really don't know what to do with. i guess its open for me to choose - but frig, what does it do? i have no idea. does it do repel? does it increase the chance a monster runs away if its sufficiently weaker than you? does it increase the chance for a critical hit? i'm going to go look it up. [looking] wha? the Cursed Necklace does exist in this.. its called the Choker, apparently. [looking] whoops there it is! apparently there's a chest there that DOES refill! rock! i'm gonna go get it. [working] they say to fill up your inventory so you can keep trying for it. ok. [working]
yup, there we go. anyways, the faq said that the war ring worked like repel. that sorta sucks, when i was looking for monsters - i was repelling them.. i'm going to have to work around that, and let the player know what it does or something. if it does actually cast repel, or even a weak version of it, then it should probably have the visual effect thing happening around you, so you can tell. i'm not sure at what point the description should go from ??? to 'repels monsters' or whatever - as soon as you equip it, exit and re-enter the inventory, i guess..
(repel, war ring, repellant visual effect)
i'm not sure about the mechanics of it, but i'm imagining a layer between the sprites and the map, of small, sparsely spaced, greenish sparkles, and a circle surrounding the player sprite cutting out the area around him. the sparkles at the edges of the circle will be cut up a bit, of course, but thats fine. repellant and repel radii will recede at the same rate over time, but the war ring will never recede - though its going to only have half the start radius of repel/repellant.
well, its late and i gotta get some sleep. now i can move on to either monster ai - which is going to be newish ground, or i can work on the events' descriptions.
| |
| Action RPG | |
Posted - 5/11/2005 1:04:23 AM | Dragon Warrior
(limiting button selection)
before i get to the meat of this post, i wanted to mention that i had a thought about the (L) and (R) quick-selection. i was thinking that if we linked (B) and (L) to only attacking actions and (A) and (R) to the rest, we would scroll things faster. you'd only be able to put the (B) button on weapons, and pressing (L) would only scroll through weapons and attack magics. it would speed up selection for that side. if (A) could only be put on the rest, we wouldn't scroll through weapons for it with (R), again speeding up selection. we would also avoid the two-weapon-equipping issue we had earlier, for the stats screen.
i sorta don't like the idea of limiting the player, but i do like the idea of having less to scroll through. on the same note, if we're going to be speeding up quick-select, perhaps we should only have healing or escape spells on (R)'s quicklist. it sorta doesn't make sense to have a quick-list for (L) though, because you're not likely going to want to equip a weapon weaker than your strongest one, and that only leaves HURT and HURTMORE (and SLEEP and STOPSPELL, possibly) for that list. if we're only goingn to have three things to scroll through.. well, its something to think about. having only a few things to scroll through is a bonus though, thinking back to Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (gc).
so let's see now, for my (now) lv20 warrior, the (L) scroll list might look like (as an example):
Loto Sword
Firebal
Sleep
StopSpell
Firebane
and the (R) scroll list might look like:
Herb 6
Heal
HealMore
Silver Shield
... its sorta hard to decide what to put there. it might be easiest to just pick a series of things to scroll through - or just say screw it and just scroll through it all for now. that'd be the easiest thing to do for now.
i suppose if we limited the (B) button to the sword alone, we could use (L) and (R) to left and right rotate the (A) button's item - exactly as FF:CC(gc) did. imagine going through 14 spells and items and pressing (R) one too many times - you'd have to go through all 14 again and try not to miss it. if you could go back one, that would be much better. maybe thats the best bet here.
(action interface)
we have many situations to have to work through here, as there are quite a variety of things that can happen. maybe we should start broad and simple and work our way in.
(basic movement)
here, we look at just the use of the d-pad (+). the most basic thing you can do is make your avatar walk around. you can face in four directions, but you can move in 8. moving your avatar onto stairs will move you to the next map (likely through an event), as will moving it off the edge of the map (though an event probably won't be needed for that). stepping into marshy areas will work like zelda:la(gmb)'s shallow water, your avatar will move down a little, and you'll take damage at a fixed rate like in crystalis(nes). stepping onto the hazard floors won't sink the avatar, but damage will be done at a much faster rate. i hate the hazard floors. they seem so pointless.
walking under roofing will make the outside go away and will let you see only what's under the roof. i don't think this is very necessary, and might not add it until after it's been 'finished'.
(item use)
its time to go through all of the action items and describe them and how they'll be used.
(weapons)
Bamboo Pole +2 ATK
Club +4 ATK
Copper Sword +10 ATK
Iron Axe +15 ATK
Steel Sword +20 ATK
Flame Sword +28 ATK
Loto Sword +40 ATK
the most basic use of the weapons is to press the button and have the weapon travel in a half-circle arc around you; in that duration, the player's avatar will perform an attack animation that will make it look like he's doing it. all weapons will work exactly the same, arc at the same speed, and should have exactly the same range - the only difference should be the appearance and damage. as in zelda, pressing the button rapidly will restart the action again and again.
we'll deal with what the weapon will do to monsters later.
all but the Flame Sword work exactly the same, and that's only because of dwi+ii(gbc)-i; you can use the Flame Sword as an item and it casts a form of HURT/Firebal. i don't necessarily have to do that.i don't even think that i'd be able to - if you put it on a button and press the button, it will attack with it. i could have the player hold the button in for the magic bolt, i'd have to add that functionality for only this item - and i'm aiming for general stuff all around. if it makes the cut, it won't be until the very end of the production.
(shields)
Leather Shield +4 DEF
Iron Shield +10 DEF
Silver Shield +20 DEF
here's something i'm not positive of yet. see, in zelda, as shields got stronger, they didn't affect anything but what they could block. for example, in Zelda:LttP(snes), the small shield could only block little things, like octorok rocks; the large sheild let you block zora beams, where the small shield didn't; the mirror shield let you block statue laser beams, where the large and small didn't.
in this case, though, that's not what the difference is in the shields - its the armor rating on them. if you haven't equipped a shield, should you still get the defense from it? in final fantasy adventure, you just equipped it like you did your armor, and got the defense like that. this is an action game though, and i want to get the shield in there as a tool, like in zelda:la(gmb). press the button it's assigned to and you hold it up in front - and gain the defense for the duration of your button holding.
in zelda:la(gmb), they let you walk around with the shield in use - but as you moved around, you would change directions. zelda:mc(gba) went a little differently - as you moved around with your shield up, you wouldn't change directions. i'm not sure which would be better. if you wanted that to happen in zelda:la(gmb) you'd just hold your sword button in too and you'd face the one direction. i probably won't be doing that one. i like the idea of keeping the one direction as you move around, though. we do need to deal with the button holding in as a special case here (unlike the Flame Sword) because this is a feature i want to have for the shield, if i'm going to give it manual use.
but then, you want to have healing spells ready during tough battles requiring the shield, don't you? i honestly hardly used the shield in zelda:la(gmb), so that makes me think that i might want to have it as just an equippable peice of armor. it worked for FF:CC(gc) clavats, but if i do it this way, thats one less item to give into the variety of things you can do. i'd like to think i'm eventually going to support this - but man, i can't think of why, if i don't here. i'll have to put more thought into this one.
(other armor ratings)
as i was looking up the ratings of the shields and weapons, i figured i'd grab the armors too while i was at it.
Cloth Shirt +2 DEF
Leather Shirt +4 DEF
Chain Armor +10 DEF
Iron Armor +16 DEF
Steel Armor +24 DEF
Magic Armor +24 DEF
Loto Armor +28 DEF
D-Scale +5 DEF
(herbs)
assigning a herb to a button will allow you to heal yourself. i'd imagine a small puff of starry shines would go over you and the heal amount that occurred would pop off in green. you can only carry 6 at a time of these for some reason, and they give the item a counter, so we will too. where the E would show up on a peice of armor, a counter from 2-6 will be shown; if there's only one, there's no counter needed.
(wings)
using a wing immediately transports you to tantagel - but i think it should be expanded to let you fly to any town you've visited, just like in EVERY OTHER DW. so anyways, a menu containing the towns will pop up, and you'll select from it, i guess. i suppose keeping it simple would just have it send you to tantegel. fly up off the screen (hopefully holding the wing), fade out/in to tantegel's front gate, and drop the player down (poofing the wing away when you land). simple.
(err, what else is there?)
Repellant
Torch
Key
PxyFlute
LoraLuv
DvlBelt (Cursed Necklace?)
quest items: Sun Stone, Silver/Shiny Harp, Rain Staff, Loto Seal
.. i think thats it. i'll be finishing off that stuff and then moving on to monster interaction and then event scripts. what'll be left after that, who knows.
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