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[happymonster]

I think your menus are too narrow, you seem to be struggling to fit in the full name and an icon. Why not make the menus a bit bigger?

[JasonPickering]

well at most I can widen it to get one more letter, but I cant go any wider without redoing the game resolution. even without the icon you think it still seems crammed?

[happymonster]

What is the resolution now? It seemed much bigger in the very first screenshots.

[JasonPickering]

its 80 pixels wide and 54 pixels high. Not the most amount of Room to work with, and the largest problem has been the UI. usually RPGs have a tremendous amount of UI on screen, so I have been pairing it down. Right not I use the names for the spells which I think works good, I have 11 Characters to work with in a name including spaces. for some spells its not to bad. Like Freeze, Fireball. I just need to keep the name length to a minimum.



If you have any ideas though I would love to hear them. I even have the menu above if you want to do any edits. I could zoom out a bit and do 96 x 64 but I am not willing to go any larger then that. that would give me another 10 pixels so 2 more letters.

a While ago I switched to a 10x10 tilegrid instead of an 16x16. it meant I couldn't have huge monsters, but it meant I could be a little more zoomed in on the character

Edit: So I dug through some of my older mockups and found one that was 96 x 64. I loaded that and the current one up on my ipod screen and the 80 looks better. the game feels more condensed. of course my opinions might be colored as I have seen both. Most players will not know what the game looked like before.

[happymonster]

Ok, then the other options I can see if you need more text space is to use 3 pixel width characters if possible.

It doesn't look bad now though!

[Franklins Ghost]

I think the menu you have at the moment seems to work for the game you're making. And I personally like the font you're using.

[JasonPickering]

thanks. I think I will get rid of the Icon and now possibly the number. right now the game has stats. Attack Stat and a defense stat. the higher the number the better a chance you have to A. do a critical attack or B. block an enemy attack. this works pretty well. and the player always knows they will do at least one damage, and they will take at most one hit. but both things can only ever go in your favor. never against you.

So the player already knows that a higher number means a better chance. so I tried that with the spells. all spells start at a 9. meaning you have a 90% chance of the spell being cast. after you do it successfully once the stat drops to an 8. now you have an 80% chance. and so on and so on. you are free to use a spell at anytime, but each time you use it, it hurts your chances of using it next time. This is a cool idea, but I dont think it works for this. it puts to much luck into the game. I will continue testing with it, but I might need to find another way to do spell costs.

[JasonPickering]

okay so took a break from the skills for a bit. I am working on getting the enemies in and then that will give a much better system for building and testing the skill system. I am starting with the base Normal level. Right now I have created 4 enemies.



so the enemies are the Rat, Goblin, Witch, floating eye

Rat: the rat is the base enemy for the normal floor. 1 health

Goblin: a basic enemy but has 2 health instead of one.

Witch: a one health enemy, but has a range of 2. so if you are 2 spaces away she can hit you. she only attacks in the cardinal directions though. you can use this to get close.

Floating eye: a one health enemy that can not damage you. they cast blink if they are with in 5 squares of you.(again in the cardinal directions). this means you swap places with them. this could dump you into a nasty situation or get you out of one.

so what do you think. more importantly do they match up with their powers. I like all the sprites, but don't have to keep them with these specific powers. nothing is written in stone. My goal is to do 1 more enemy for the normal level, then move on to doing some Health Drops.

couple extra monster ideas and their possible skills:
Jellies  - 2 join together to make a Super Jelly
Wolf     - Has a small chance of summoning more of their kind with a howl.
skeleton - base monster in the tomb area.
Lich     - very rare monster. killing the lich, kills all the skeletons on that floor

[rek]

Don't use a fixed-width font if it's causing you trouble. There's no reason to sacrifice legibility of the M and W just so the I can be the same width as the rest. If you bump the former to five pixels wide and the later to just one, and go through the alphabet stealing back pixels where you can, you gain some space and increase legibility.

[JasonPickering]

yeah this was originally a font from auntie Pixelante. I just need to find a new one, but I am hoping for one that has all numbers as a fixed width. it makes the UI look better if the numbers are always the same size. any good suggestions?

[rek]

Nothing off the top of my head, but why not just modify the one you have? Take a look at what Ishi's done for font use in Trixie Treasure.

[JasonPickering]

that might be the way to go.

so need some help folks.


so I am adding chests which means MIMICS!! so which one do you like better. the brown or the grey. and with or without teeth.

[laxwolf]

I like them both. Maybe the color scheme will suite different dungeons?

[rek]

that might be the way to go.

so need some help folks.


so I am adding chests which means MIMICS!! so which one do you like better. the brown or the grey. and with or without teeth.

I like the brown, but the eyes don't pop as well as they do on the grey.

[Franklins Ghost]

I like the brown also but could see both working depending on the dungeon or surface level.