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[SundownKid]

5 seconds?! Sheez--I can barely select and move a single unit in 5 seconds, let alone select an attack afterwards!

What do you all think: is 5-second mode something you want in a game like this?

The only game that would make sense in is Half-Minute Hero.  

Having an optional time limit would be great, and also a way to rate people based on their disconnect ratio during the game. There should be an option where both players agree to end the game, otherwise they get a bad mark on their record. With just random online multiplayer, in a long game like this, there is no way to prevent people from leaving when they lose.

[Craig Stern]

If there's no downside to including it, then why not?

I'm just concerned that people might select it thinking that it would be fun, and then get frustrated when it makes the game virtually unplayable. I simply can't imagine that the benefits of including an option that effectively breaks the game for 99% of all players would outweigh the costs.


So, some small improvements today: drop-down lists now auto-detect when they pass offscreen and correct their height accordingly. I've also removed the Energy Golem class from the game, since it doesn't really mesh with the style of play I'm trying to achieve here.

[cynicalsandel]

Maybe you could add a 15 second option too. That way, it is a little faster paced than 30, but not quite as fast as 5 seconds.

[Craig Stern]

Phew! Most of this week has been spent corresponding with artists (which takes more time and effort than you might expect). I hope to have all that wrapped up by this evening, however!

In other news, I've added a 15-second option to the turn timer (which is still crazy fast, but doesn't totally break the game).

I've also updated all of the in-game attacks with short mouse-over descriptions telling you what they do. Some just say things like "Basic sword attack," while others say things like "Base 50% chance to cause Stun." As you might have guessed, I'm doing this largely in preparation for the addition of status effects to the game, which is my next task.

[Craig Stern]

The status effect system is now in-game and working!

The system is simple: all attacks which can cause status effects have a 50% base chance of triggering their associated status effect. If the target has an elemental resistance that matches the attack, the chance of the status effect attaching is reduced (or increased!) arithmetically. Units with 50% resistance or greater to an element are therefore entirely immune to status effects of that elemental type.

So, for example: if a Pyrokineticist launches a Pyro Blast at a Swordsman (0% resistance to Heat), he has a normal 50% chance to set the Swordsman on fire. Against a fellow Pyrokineticist (25% resistance to Heat), his chances drop by 25, to only 25%. Against a Red Spriggat (50% resistance to Heat) he has no chance at all of setting his target on fire. Against a Lizardman, which is actually weak against fire, his chances of setting the target on fire become substantially higher than 50%.

Specific status effects that are working properly:

Burning - causes Heat damage at the beginning of the player's turn for a randomly-chosen number of turns within a certain range, but may be doused with the right Cold skill. Lizardmen are particularly vulnerable to this status effect.
Poisoned - causes Poison damage at the beginning of the player's turn for a randomly-chosen number of turns within a certain range. Lasts longer than Burning, but causes much less damage and does not affect Golems or Phantom Armor.
Frozen - the character cannot move or act for a randomly-chosen number of turns within a certain range, but may be thawed with the right Heat skill.
Stunned - the character cannot move or act for one turn.
Defending - the character gets a 50% chance to block all incoming, non-Mental attacks for 1 turn.

Status effects left to work on:

Slowed - the character loses movement range until the end of the battle.
Blinded - attack targets get an automatic 60% Dodge bonus for a randomly-chosen number of turns within a certain range.
Weakened - the character loses physical strength until the end of the battle.
Heavy - the character cannot fly for 1 turn.
Levitating - the character can fly for 1 turn.

[Craig Stern]

All right; I've just signed a superbly talented pixel artist to do the tiles/destructible objects for the game! Now, to sign a character artist/animator.

[Craig Stern]

--All status effects are now finished! Mousing over a character displays all active status effects affecting the character. Additionally, little pop-up messages announce when 1) a character takes on a new status effect and 2) when a status effect expires.

--Two new Mentalist attacks are in-game and working implementing the Levitating and Heavy status effects with 100% chance to hit:

Levitate, which makes the Mentalist move by flying for the remainder of the turn.
Gravity Spike, which drops a flying character to the earth, damaging it and making it lose flying for the rest of the turn. (A particularly nasty attack to use on a character that is hovering over lava.)

--A new Spearman skill is in-game and working implementing the Defending status effect with 100% chance to hit:

Defensive Stance, which gives the Spearman a 50% chance to block incoming attacks until the end of the turn. Combined with the Spearman's high health and resistance to physical attacks, this makes the Spearman an exceptionally good defensive unit.

[Christian Knudsen]

Units with 50% resistance or greater to an element are therefore entirely immune to status effects of that elemental type.

Isn't that very counter-intuitive? I'd think a character with 50% resistance would only avoid the effect half of the time?

[Craig Stern]

Units with 50% resistance or greater to an element are therefore entirely immune to status effects of that elemental type.

Isn't that very counter-intuitive? I'd think a character with 50% resistance would only avoid the effect half of the time?

Well, here's the thing: very few units have anything close to 100% elemental resistance to anything. And if a unit does have 100% resistance to an attack, the attack will deal 0 damage to them, so you would never want to attack them with it in the first place. The result: if I applied elemental resistance to status effects in that way, no unit could ever be fully immune to any status effect from any attack you could conceivably want to use on them.

From a gameplay perspective, I just think it's more interesting if certain units are immune to certain ailments in spite of still taking some amount of damage from their associated attacks.

[Christian Knudsen]

Oh, I think I misunderstood then. Status effects are like a secondary result of an attack? I.e. first damage is dealt, where 50% resistance means half damage dealt (or damage dealt half of the time, or however it's done), and then there's also a chance of the attack resulting in a status effect, but that chance is at it's base 50%, which is then further reduced by the targets resistance?

[Craig Stern]

Oh, I think I misunderstood then. Status effects are like a secondary result of an attack? I.e. first damage is dealt, where 50% resistance means half damage dealt (or damage dealt half of the time, or however it's done), and then there's also a chance of the attack resulting in a status effect, but that chance is at it's base 50%, which is then further reduced by the targets resistance?

You've got it! That's exactly right.

[Craig Stern]

I'm currently focused on finishing up Telepath RPG: Servants of God while my artists pump out assets for Telepath Tactics, so there isn't a whole heckuva lot new to report here at the moment.

However, I did manage to squeeze in some time today while riding the train to fix a couple of small issues that were bothering me in TT:

--clicking an enemy after you've already clicked it now toggles its viewable movement area off again. Hence, you can keep clicking the same unit to toggle its viewable movement range on and off.

--fixed a depth sorting issue that sometimes arose when characters shared a space with destructible objects (for instance, if an Assassin leapt into a tree and ended its turn, or if a flying character decided to end its turn hovering over a boulder). Characters now always appear above objects in their same row. I'm pretty proud of the code I came up with to fix this, too; it entails virtually no increase in memory or processor use. I'd even go so far as to call it "elegant."

Further updates of the graphical variety should be coming in the next week!

[Craig Stern]

Took a little time to add a couple of things I've been wanting to put in the game:

--A visual countdown timer now appears in the top-left corner of the screen during timed matches. It shows minutes and seconds; it toggles on and off with the T key, or via the "Show/Hide Turn Timer" option in the right-click menu.

--Characters now have unique, randomly chosen names that last for the duration of the match. For one thing, it's decidedly more fun to have "Bartholomew the Bowman" rather than just "Bowman." More than that, though, this will help the player keep different units of the same class straight.

As of right now, the names generate at the start of each match and last for the remainder of the match. However, I'm considering taking the naming process another level higher, allowing players to name their units in the army setup screen. The way I see it, there is one big advantage and one big disadvantage to doing this:

Advantage: allowing the player to customize character names gives him/her a sense of ownership, helping the player grow attached to his/her characters over the course of many matches.
Disadvantage: slows down the whole match creation process--the moment any player decides to change his or her army, there is a risk that they'll feel the need to rename all the new characters.

I'm leaning toward leaving the names transitory, but I can be swayed by a good argument. What do you guys think?

[Inane]

I think transitory would be better. I like character customization but naming each character of your army seems excessive unless it's like, just setting the name regardless of class.

[Craig Stern]

Yeah. I think I'll just leave the names transitory for now; there's really no reason to actively encourage players to take forever setting up in a multiplayer game.

[Craig Stern]

I realized this morning that I had forgotten to have the game dynamically load tiles out of the tile folder--it was still relying on pngs baked  into the game itself. No good! That's fixed now, however. This will make it a zillion times easier for me to update the game's tiles. Even cooler, it also means that you can create and use custom tiles.

Next on the to-do list: fog of war.

[Christian Knudsen]

Where you storing the PNGs as arrays of data in the source code?

[Craig Stern]

Nope. This game is being developed in Flash; the images were in the game's library, and were getting compiled along with the rest of the game's code and assets.

[Craig Stern]

Fog of war is go!



Like unit pass-through and turn time limits, fog of war is an option you can toggle in the New Game menu.

Different unit types have different perception scores which determine how many tiles of fog they can uncover. Golems have poor perception, and can only unveil 3 tiles of fog in each direction. Assassins have excellent perception, and can see up to 8 tiles away. Most units see 5.

Whenever a character uncovers more of the fog, the game automatically prevents it from undoing its move, so it pays to use fast characters (assassins and shadowlings) to scout, leaving part of their move to run away again if they happen upon something unpleasant.

[Craig Stern]

A small update: when fog of war is active, Blinded units now uncover only one space in each of the four cardinal directions.