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[Pineapple]

After seeing His Dark Majesty, I said to myself, "Dang, I gotta make me one a those!"

But Amiga emulators are confusing, so instead of doing any of that, I'm going to try to make a full-fledged Fire-Emblem-esque game with the touch of retro that we all know and love.

It's my personal goal that the game's size not exceed 2000 bytes 1 mb. This, at the moment, appears completely manageable.

If I don't finish it in a week and a half, I'm through with this and I'll release what I did finish. I don't want to get too absorbed in this, I'm just using it as an excuse to take a break from my other stuff I've been working on.

Stay tuned.

[muku]

It's my personal goal that the game's size not exceed 2000 bytes.

 

What are you going to code this in?

At that rate, you can lovingly write each byte by hand!

[deathtotheweird]

I have no idea how you would accomplish this.

http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2010/05/19/complete-flash-sokoban-game-in-less-than-2kb/

This is a sokoban clone in flash, just barely under 2kbs.

[Pineapple]

The exectuable with all image data and framework code is

wait, crap

that's 335 kb, not 335 bytes

scratch that.

Ummmmm

Yeah.

I need to pay more attention >_<

 

[Pineapple]

The graphics engine and map loading are up and running!

This was shown in-game


using this media:
Font:

Tiles:

Map:


I'm rather proud of my map-loading code.

[Pineapple]

I'm planning out the weaponry system. Comments for improvement are welcome.

Each character or unit can wield 1 of a specific item type.

Direct triangle:
Lance > Sword > Axe > Lance
Ranged triangle:
Fire > Arrows > Ice > Fire

Each unit can also equip 1 of any defense type. Defense will cut damage of the specific type to only 25% of normal

Defense items:
Shield: Protects from Sword & Axe
Gemstone: Protects from Fire & Ice magics
Armor: Protects from Lance & Arrows

There will be several varieties of weapons, with stronger ones being heavier.
Each unit will have a specific strength, and if the weight of its equipment is higher than its strength stat (which can be increased thru levelling up) its movement stat will suffer reduction.

[fraxcell]

Cool. Looks like Hero meets Fire Emblem.

[moi]

You could use this game engine that uses procedurally generated content. I forgot the name. It was used to make Artificial Nature. You could do a game in less than 150 kbytes

[Pineapple]

I'm familiar with procedural generation, but I don't want to make this too overly difficult on myself. Perhaps I'll incorporate it later, but not yet.

[Pineapple]

HUD pretty much done (I still need to make some nice menus to work with) and I've got a good start on units.




Right now I'm making radical replayability my main focus - every time you play you'll be presented with a much different set of missions than before. (The game would probably be around 20 separate missions long, with about 4 or 5 possibilities for each one, ranging from slightly varied to radically different)

I need feedback though: should there be permadeath (as seen in the FE series) or should the characters come back at the end of the battle? Right now I'm leaning toward permadeath to make the game more challenging.

[Blindsight]

I'm not sure what, if any, stats your heros will have but how about something in the middle? Where if someone 'dies' in combat, they will come back, slightly weaker until enough deaths kills them.

As much as I like them, I think permadeath games tend to reward save/fail/reload play rather than fun progression through the game.

[Pineapple]

Hmm. I dunno, other's opinions? I enjoy permadeath because it requires me to strategize further than just killing the enemy, but also to preserve my own units.

[Pineapple]

I'm having a hard time settling on how exactly I should be doing character portraits (which I feel the game really needs to have)

Tell me, does this look good, and like it fits?



(Screen shown is basically just a mockup. I'm very bad at making mockups. )

[Pineapple]

Made a visually functional menu and more work on the interface. Next I'll be making it so you can move your units.

[Pineapple]

My first-ever flood fill algo!



 

[deathtotheweird]

looks pretty awesome. and what moi was thinking about was ZGameEditor

[Pineapple]

Units can actually move now via a neat interface menu (shown several posts back), and I made the aforementioned flood-filling code a bit cleaner and more flexible so I can use the same function call for the enemy movement, too.

[Pineapple]

I made (five?) more character portraits than when I posted them before, and I've done a good bit more work on the menus.

I'm trying to decide exactly how the strategic part of the game will work, but this is the tentative plan:

Selecting a unit gives you a menu with 4 options. "Move", "Action", "Item", and "Wait".

"Move" allows you to move your unit. You may move each unit no more than once per turn.
"Action" allows you to attack an enemy within range of your weapon, or to open a chest that's only a single tile away from your unit. This may done once by each unit per turn.
"Item" can be done once per turn, but can only be done if you don't move or perform an action with your unit. It allows you to access your inventory and switch out your offensive weapon (but not your defensive armor) or use an item. (A potion, for example.)
"Wait" finishes your unit's actions. Since you end your turn manually this seems rather pointless to me, so I'll probably take it out.


All items will have a certain number of maximum uses before they break or are used up. For example, potions would probably have 3 uses and most weapons would have around 50-100. Defensive items would have their uses depleted by 1 every time the unit is struck by the type of weapon that it's effective against. Uses of defensive items would have great variation, mostly high, because I want equipping the right units with the right armor to be a major part of strategizing. Between battles you'd access your inventory and be able to customize all your units' equipment thoroughly for the upcoming battle. Restarting a battle would return you to this screen so you can switch up your strategy without too much hassle. Defensive items could be exchanged here, but not in-battle. There'd be a cap on how many items you can have in your inventory, but it'd just be low enough to discourage the player from keeping truly unneeded items to reduce annoying clutter. Also, the number of uses remaining for an item will only be visible outside of battle, with the exception of things like potions.

The direct combat unit classes - swordsmen, lance men, and axe men - would rarely be able to use weapons that grant them a range of more than just attacking adjacent spaces. The ranged combat unit classes - fire mages, archers, and ice mages - would rarely have abilities that are not capable of striking afar. Arching weapons would generally have the greater range, but they would be unable to fire on adjacent and other nearby squares. Each class would have its general advantages. Axes would be generally more damaging, lances would often offer defensive bonuses as well (simply in the form of a increase to the unit's defense stat), and swords would offer smaller bonuses, but would give both offensive and defensive bonuses. For ranged classes, fire tomes would have superior attack but usually shorter range, bows would deal a medium amount of damage, but they'd have excellent range (though they'd be generally unable to fire closeby), and ice tomes would offer pathetically little in terms of offense, but fire's weakness against them would be a critical facet to a lot of strategies, they'd usually have a longer range that fire tomes, would offer some defensive bonuses, but, most importantly, some ice tomes would be healing "attacks" that regenerate HP of units nearby.

Important things that will set the strategy in this game apart from most TBS games are these:
- There will be no missing, and generally little variation in how much damage is done by a weapon. (i.e. hitting a guy repeatedly with an axe would consistently produce results that differ by only 1 or 2 points) This will reduce the finger-crossing moments of "Make it!!" and there won't be times when the player loses and feels cheated by the random number generator. Failure will always be the fault of the player. Same goes for critical hits. None of those, either.
- In a lot of TBS games, when one unit attacks, the defender automatically counters. This will not happen in this game.
- Leveling up will lose its huge significance that it holds in many TBS games. The maximum level will seem high (I'm thinking 50) but leveling up will be fast, and once you're up there you'll need to collect items from chests to keep your units strong. Boss enemies in the later portion of the game will often exceed the player's level cap since they'll be rather easy for the player to gang up on.
- Units never change classes, and can never hold weapons of any kind but the ones they're allowed by their class. I believe this constancy will help the player become attached to the characters and less likely to let them just die.


As for unit stats, all units will have four: attack, where the higher it is the more damage it can do, defense, which reduces the amount of damage dealt to a unit, movement, which is how far a unit can move, and strength. Strength is the most complex skill (though it's not extremely so); every item has a weight. If the weight of the shield and weapon a unit is carrying exceeds its strength, its movement range will suffer.

Also, a unit with no weapon equipped will be able to perform a low-damage melee attack.

As for permadeath, I'm still leaning toward making it so.


I said something earlier about randomness concerning the missions. In addition to that, there will also be randomization of the units you receive, with the exception of the first two characters you get. You'll get three of four available characters in the direct classes over the game, and two of three available characters in the ranged classes. Differences here will be almost entirely cosmetic, though.


So yeah. I'm trying to solidify some of the design. I've got heaps upon heaps of time to muse during the school day, but none to code. I'll get more done next weekend, then I'm out out school Monday & Tuesday. Hopefully I don't end up working my summer job both days :/

[deathtotheweird]

In a lot of TBS games, when one unit attacks, the defender automatically counters. This will not happen in this game.

Wouldn't that make for longer battles?  I think it's a bit unfair, would be seriously frustrating for me to damage someone, him still have like 1hp left and then he does his turn and I have to basically waste my next turn just to finish him off. This would slow the game down considerably and possibly make it more frustrating.

The damage variation is a double edged sword. If it goes good for you, then it relieves you of tactical errors and if it goes bad, you have to adapt. This always kept battles from feeling too static. The way you are talking about sounds like there would only be one way to fight the battle, and combined with no countering it seems like you could plan out the game and follow it straight to a T and win every time.

These types of games beg for balance, so I'm sure you'll figure out if your ideas work or not while play-testing it. You don't have to listen to me, just thinking aloud.

[Xion]

In a lot of TBS games, when one unit attacks, the defender automatically counters. This will not happen in this game.

Wouldn't that make for longer battles?  I think it's a bit unfair, would be seriously frustrating for me to damage someone, him still have like 1hp left and then he does his turn and I have to basically waste my next turn just to finish him off. This would slow the game down considerably and possibly make it more frustrating.

but isn't that pretty much like units getting two turns in a row? X attacks Y, Y counterattacks. During Y's turn Y attacks and kills X. X didn't even get a move between Y's two attacks to defend himself or whatever. I've always hated that. Seems like it'd be more fair, if anything, though, sure, maybe longer, but not if the game is balanced sweetly, I guess?