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[unsilentwill]

  Keep in touch with us Tim!

Some design things:
TheDustin asked about dungeon structure, and I'd love to have medium sized (half hour to 45 minute sized) dungeons with a checkpoint after the miniboss(es), or whatever. If we could make them fairly organic in shape either to fit the environment or dungeon theme I would love that to death, if anyone knows me that's my favorite part of Zelda.

He and Kadoba critiqued my design about player deaths a bit. If possible I'd like each puzzle to require as many characters as possible. If someone dies, the puzzle should still be possible, but it would become more challenging with each player death (could be done by having puzzles require multitasking, multiple enemies, etc.) As for "resurrection", I think discouraging death at all costs is the goal, first to help the team work together offensively and defensively, and also as a limit to the griefing aspect of dicking around. You know if you through the dude into the fire again, you're going to have to carry him. I'd like to have one (maybe 2) "resurrection" sites, depending on the size, and they'd have to be unlocked.

I do like the idea of player resurrecting each other though, maybe it could be limited and item based to try to keep the same level of consequence, but also for just-in-case scenarios like boss fights. I'd like to think dying would be a fairly rare occurrence if the players are actually trying to work together, supported by items that allow for team defense or what have you. It's definitely something we can test out to see how it compares to Gauntlet or Left 4 Dead.

Okay, before this message gets too long I'll say a few things about art. Like I said, I love jad's work. Pen, that to amazing and exactly what I'm looking for. We have two small problems now though. First, jad's design for the miner girl and her respective home by pen clash in style. I think this can be helped by assigning the more cartoonish anime style to only one "nation", though jad I would love to have you help design anything else if you have the time. Once we can find which style fits best with which nation, everyone's (include my own) desire for megalomania will be settled a bit. The idea behind it, again, is making the characters feel more like people and the places feel more like countries, based on unique national art styles.

Secondly, is everyone cool with jad's sprite size idea? It's currently 40x40. I think we should get that settled as soon as possible as I've been starting some basic tiles and enemies, and I'd like to get a standard.

so excited

[Kadoba]

He and Kadoba critiqued my design about player deaths a bit. If possible I'd like each puzzle to require as many characters as possible. If someone dies, the puzzle should still be possible, but it would become more challenging with each player death (could be done by having puzzles require multitasking, multiple enemies, etc.)

But then you restrict all puzzles to be designed this way. We also want to promote teamwork and I think having any of the puzzles be able to be solved with less people will do the opposite. Suddenly you'll have hardcore players wanting to beat the dungeon by themselves. And there's still the problem of being dead just watching teammates have all the fun for however long.

[unsilentwill]

Dying is a bad thing, especially in a game where people rely on you. What's wrong with a minor consequence? Making a character have to carry you would increase the incentive to revive you sooner, and hopefully they'd want to because you'd have an indispensable item/skill.

I think the puzzles should be impossible with one living member, extremely difficult with two, and hard with three, depending on what items are needed. Also each character would have weakness that would presumably be remedied by having the whole team, and worsened by trying to go it along, not just with puzzles but with traps, enemies, and bosses.

I'm not trying to force my opinion, I guess I don't really get your alternative.

[TheDustin]

I think the problem we need to address is the one I brought up a while back: are we going to mandate having four players, or are we going to scale our puzzles and enemies as the players decrease? If we agree to have a minimum of four players I think the puzzles should require at least three people, and if the odd person out isn't helping to solve the puzzle she should be protecting the others from enemies. We want a cohesive whole, not two seperate factions working against each other. If puzzles could be completed with two players experienced veterans wouldn't want to put up with newbies; they'd duo our dungeons. I think the minimum number of players should be three, and it should be rather hard to accomplish things if everybody isn't working together.

And there's still the problem of being dead just watching teammates have all the fun for however long.

Valve realized this when developing L4D, so they implemented the "saving from a locked door" as a means to bring fallen players back into the game. I really like the idea of having to carry dead team members back, so how about we have a combination of the two? There are altars or what have you that you can pay $$$ for to bring back your partners; if you bring their corpse back you get an extremely reduced price or you get to revive them for free. 

If we want replayabilty we should implement some randomization to the puzzles. I'm no code junkie so I'm not sure how hard it would be to make, but how about having X amount of parts to a puzzle, and at the outset you get a random assortment (3 or 4) of those parts that you have to complete. To keep it from being monotonous we should occasionally sprinkle in the equivalent of L4D's crescendo events -- something scripted and totally awesome. I have a couple things in mind but I'll wait till we get to that stage. If the puzzles are the same for every playthrough they'd wear thin after their third or so playthrough. *Insert something about jokes being less effective the more times they're told.*

[gimymblert]

I'm sad nobody bring up FFCC as an inspiration for multiplayer! 
It has some pretty good cooperative mecanics

However here is the link to the manual 
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/gameslist/manuals/GCN_Final_Fantasy_Crystal_Chronicles.pdf

looking forward for this project...

[michael]

i'll read up more carefully on this, but id love to help out with design, concept art, and spriting.

i love zeldalikes and co-op multiplayers!

i read some mentions of a wave, if so, my email is [email protected]

[neon]

i might help, but i have the weird disease called "does-fine-on-non-game-art-but-is-unable-to-draw-assets-itis". 

[unsilentwill]

Michael! Glad to have you aboard, your style is also fantastic.

And neon, now's the time for concept work for characters, enemies, items, and landscapes so go for it man. I'm on a huge spriting/pixel kick so you don't have to work on assets yet.

I did a version of the "druid" girl and a combination of my previous character sprite and the adventure hero, I'll post them as soon as I can get them scanned and fixed up.

[Lord Tim]

So... I've got a sort-of thing working.

http://filesmelt.com/dl/fourway.png

It works "in theory". As in, it works on my machine. And like, one or two others that I've tried.

However, due to NAT and firewall issues, I have had trouble connecting to other machines. From what I've read, there are workarounds to this, and I am going to start looking into those.

Anyways, if you want to try it out, and tell me if you get it working with other people, you can use

http://www.rocketninjagames.com/dangerousworking/

Once the host is loaded, press tilde to select and copy the join link (The click to copy thing only works on the standalone version for some reason). Then have someone else paste that link into any browser, and wait for it to say connected. Then you should be able to press X to ready, and move your square with the arrow keys, and it should transfer that data to the other people. Supports up to four players right now. Also, pressing "C" to continue just brings you to the old thing alone.

Also, the data transfer is horrible and inefficient, and will be fixed later.

[pen]

  server-side fixel multiplayer?

[unsilentwill]

I got three people connected and moving around without lag. I don't think any of the people who joined can see each other moving, but the game starter can. Looks like a great start, I actually thought networking would be one of the later things to work on, so it's nice to have it getting worked out now!

[s0]

Doesn't go beyond "connecting" for me unfortunately. I've waited several minutes.

[Lord Tim]

Yeah, it seems to either work or not for some people. Also, the problem is that it isn't server side. It is pretty much entirely peer-to-peer using Adobe's new Stratus service, which is totally awesome, if it didn't get entirely owned by NAT. What is happening is that people's routers won't allow udp communication unless they know it is safe.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/rtmfp_stratus_app.html

Also, if I get this to work it would totally be a kickass awesome addition for flixel.

I need one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traversal_Using_Relay_NAT

[unsilentwill]

There's some nice looking zelda-esque Assemblee projects, and a four player RPG. You/we may be able to talk to the designers if we wanted some help.

Here are the sketches I was talking about. They are in no way final, in fact is someone doesn't like the character, I'd love to see what would be a good replacement.


The last dude is a little odd, and was at 3 am. Kind of a combination of a big soldier type but really passive, eastern europe meets native america. *shrugs*

Just some concepts to inspire/enrage to get us thinking visually.

[michael]

not very helpful, but...



druidypoo!

i'll post my thoughts in a couple days when im back in the states

[Ashkin]

I'm trying hard to learn to program in flash, so I can help with SOMETHING.

[BlueSweatshirt]

I made a character design inspired by this game(kinda)
I'm not sure if you'd actually want to considering using this as a character, but I'm posting it anyway.

Some elf guy with long legs.(ignore the mistake with his right foot...)

[Lord Tim]

I'm trying hard to learn to program in flash, so I can help with SOMETHING.

Awesome, dude. If you want to look at what I've got so far (Not too much), then make an account on http://www.xp-dev.com/, and I'll add you to the project. That goes for anyone who wants to work on the code. If anyone wants to use something other than subversion too, then just say so. I just used that cause it is what I am used to.
http://svn.xp-dev.com/svn/dangerous/

Unfortunately, it looks like the Stratus multiplayer isn't going to work as well as I hoped. I will probably try out nonoba or come2play next. Both seem like easy, free multiplayer apis which don't need servers provided on our side. If anyone has any other suggestions that is also totally awesome.

I am open to suggestions on what to work on next code-wise. What do you guys want to see and tweak first?

[Ashkin]

We should start brain-storming items for Tim to put in, so that we can test them in action...

OKAY PEOPLE, ITEM SUGGESTION TIME!

[BlueSweatshirt]

Start with the basics, I guess

Small, medium, large, XL, etc, health potion

Small, medium, large, XL, etc, mana potion