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[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.

[Franklin's Ghost]

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

[JasonPickering]

hey guys. game still chugging along. adding a projectile to the game at the moment. it should help with some of the combat. I will also be removing the Mimic. it just doesn't work combat wise. if the monster gets to attack it feels cheap and if you get the first hit its pointless. it will probably be replaced with just a potion. so instead of treasure chest there will just be health potions. but shooting a health potion will probably cause it to explode so you can sacrifice the healing to kill some monsters.

also the next plan is to figure out how the spells refill. many different ideas rolling around including.
- refills with turns
- refills with kills
- refills each floor
- each potion can either be used to heal you or recharge the spell.

[CosmicJC]

This looks great! I am such a sucker for minimalist pixel art 

[st33d]

chaos rings limits your spellcasting per floor

it's a good way of forcing basic combat over spamming your nukes

depends on your pacing though really

[happymonster]

Sounds like you are doing a lot of bite sized experimentation and iteration. I think that could lead to some really good gameplay ideas here. 

[JasonPickering]

Its been a lot of prototyping so far, both paper prototyping and building out digital ones. also I was goofing around and wondered what a tilt shift effect would look like



I dont think it works here, but would love to try it someday on a game.

[laxwolf]

It doesn't work here but it is definitely a cool effect!

[baconman]

I'd say have the grey/iron chests require a key, and the brown chests be open. Either way, Mimics w/ teeth are the way to go.

You could also be a REAL dick, and make Mimic keys, too.

And while others argue in favor of grinding for levels, I think a better approach - especially consider the quick playspan you're going for - is to keep the enemy totals a bit above the player's threshold, so that you'd be best advised to plan an optimal start-to-finish route and stick to it. That way it's more about tactical planning and execution, and less about trying to hose every enemy in the game (which makes for a certain tension upon escape attempts).

[rek]

Maybe try a gaussian blur so the further away from the player the more blurry it gets? Something subtle might look nice.

I don't think it makes sense to use such a high-res effect on something that's so painstakingly low-res and minimalist.

[st33d]

You could also be a REAL dick, and make Mimic keys, too.

Shiren the Wanderer does this with items. You pick it up, then try to use it...

[JasonPickering]

Actually guys. I think I will remove the mimic. it really doesn't add much to gameplay. The game is about managing your limited health and stuff, so the mimic complicates it. if you attack a chest and its a mimic who goes first? if the mimic attacks you it makes it an unfair gamble and I found myself not going after chests when I was low on health because i was afraid of a mimic. if we allow the player to go first this is pointless because its whack chest, whack monster. so for now the mimics really don't add anything gameplay wise like I hoped they would

[rek]

Actually guys. I think I will remove the mimic. it really doesn't add much to gameplay. The game is about managing your limited health and stuff, so the mimic complicates it. if you attack a chest and its a mimic who goes first? if the mimic attacks you it makes it an unfair gamble and I found myself not going after chests when I was low on health because i was afraid of a mimic. if we allow the player to go first this is pointless because its whack chest, whack monster. so for now the mimics really don't add anything gameplay wise like I hoped they would

But isn't that uncertain gamble part of the thrill? Salvage it if you can! Maybe the Mimic's opening move is to knock the player back one square (killing any monster he lands on?), rather than hurting him – adding a new monster to the level, one that deprives the player of the health potion he was hoping for, is sufficient punishment.