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[Chris Pavia]

One more character down.

[Chris Pavia]

Got 2 weapons to texture before I move on to the enemies.

[McMutton]

His hair is my favorite.

[Chris Pavia]

I'm glad you like! It's inspired by Brave Fencer Musashi 

[Chris Pavia]

Fighter's sword is done! I'll try to post pics when I get home...

[BomberTREE]

This thread is stabbing me with swords of awesome 

[Chris Pavia]

Haha thanks! I'm making my way through all the enemy textures at the moment.

[Chris Pavia]

Lately I've been brainstorming some of the finer points of the game systems, and I figured I'd post up one such session in case anyone finds value in it.




I personally like adaptive difficulty systems in games, as long as they are not obvious to the player. Otherwise it's an instant immersion-breaker. For example, the "rubber banding" effect in the Mario Kart games can be very obvious at times.

For TZG, I wanted to have an adaptive difficulty system in place to promote an undulating difficulty curve (a curve that rises and falls over a fairly regular period, while maintaining an overall upward slope).

Each potential encounter in a level is rated with an intended difficulty. For example, Giant Rats are difficulty 0, Skeletons are 1, Reapers are 2, a Giant Rat and Skeleton is 2.5, etc.

After each battle, the player's performance can be derived to determine how they fared for that battle, from 0 to 1. 0 means the player breezed through the fight, 1 means that the party barely scraped by. The system can keep track of the player's performance over the last few battles, and use that knowledge to pick a battle of the appropriate difficulty the next time an encounter occurs.

The player's performance for each battle can be derived from the following:
-The time it took to complete the battle. A longer fight can be a very general indicator for a more difficult fight.
-The amount of damage the party as a whole received vs the party's total starting health. As this number approaches and exceeds 1 (due to healing), we can assume the battle was more difficult for the player.
-The number of times characters died during the battle. Self explanatory.

Now that we can rank player performance over a number of battles, we can use that information for the next battle. For example, if the last 3 fights were Easy, Easy, Normal, the next fight should grab from the Normal or Normal-Hard bag of encounters. If the last 3 fights were Normal, Hard, Hard, the next fight should most likely take from the Easy bag of encounters.

What constitutes Easy, Normal, and Hard is relative to each level, so that there is an overall upward-moving curve. For example, Giant Rats will appear on levels 1 and 2, on level three may only appear in addition to another enemy, and never appear on subsequent levels.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

[Triplefox]

It sounds OK - and you might not even need that many factors once you go in and tune it - but I would also consider the rate of encounters as part of difficulty. I don't know what you have planned exactly for how encounters happen, but if it's "generic JRPG random battle" then each encounter's difficulty should probably stay relatively flat within one dungeon level.

If it's more like a traditional Roguelike and monsters roam until the level is cleared, you have more room to vary combat difficulty, since the player can try to escape and apply some strategy of encounter order, and when the level is cleared the player can engage in more "peaceful" exploration/recuperation etc. (Alternately, you can trickle out new spawns to keep them moving.)

[Chris Pavia]

Currently it's the "generic JRPG random battle" system, although I plan on adding a bit more intelligence to it. There will be a "desired number of encounters" per level, as the player approaches that number the chance of an encounter occurring starts to fall off.

[rogerlevy]

Hey man, this just dawned on me, are you looking for a musician?  I am really, really good at doing adventurous music that sounds exactly like JRPG's.

[Chris Pavia]

Hmm, currently I have someone who had agreed to compose the music if his schedule allows, and a backup if the first person can't. If they both fall through, I'll let you know! Or if I want a track that is intentionally different from what the current artist is producing.

Thanks for the offer! 

[Chris Pavia]

Pretty much done with these guys. I went a bit overboard with the detail on the skeleton warrior, so I may add a bit more detail to the faces of the Reaper and Giant Rat to make sure they all fit together.

I've got a few props to finish texturing, and then it's on to the environments.

[BomberTREE]

They all look pretty awesome!
I was hoping you would decide to make all the texture's low res and amazingly pixely,
but I guess Ill just have to keep dreaming 

[AndrewFM]

Don't change the Reaper at all; he's perfect.

I think the Skeleton Warrior is the problem. You should lower the detail on him instead of increasing the detail on everything else. Also, the whole dingy mud-splatter/scrapes on his armor doesn't really fit with the style of the rest of the game.

[McMutton]

What Andrew said.

[Conker534]

What Andrew said.

[Chris Pavia]

Don't change the Reaper at all; he's perfect.

I think the Skeleton Warrior is the problem. You should lower the detail on him instead of increasing the detail on everything else. Also, the whole dingy mud-splatter/scrapes on his armor doesn't really fit with the style of the rest of the game.

I think you're right. And so does everyone else apparently I always get so obsessed with meaningless detail! Look for an update soon.

They all look pretty awesome!
I was hoping you would decide to make all the texture's low res and amazingly pixely,
but I guess Ill just have to keep dreaming 

My next game will probably end up being more pixely. This has definitely been a great learning experience for how much 3D content one person can produce. The next game will also have a much more restricted color palette. But that's mostly because it's a fun challenge more than anything else.

Thanks for the comments everyone!

[Raku]

Aah, wow. you're right about our similar styles of character design. This looks really nice! The graphics remind me of... psp games? just much more polished. I am loving the way you do the faces as well!

[Chris Pavia]

Okay, here's the skelly warrior with reduced detail





And here are the fighter's sword, skeleton warrior's sword, and archer's bow:





I think I'm going to work on the environments for a while before I come back to the characters and start animating.