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JasonPickering
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« Reply #40 on: April 15, 2011, 12:06:19 PM »

Chris: yes I really need to get the magic system in and working. Actually slimes will probably be taken out (they are going to be relegated to sidekicks, see below) and replaced with Rats. they will be 1 HP. I am still trying to decide if I want two enemies at a time or just one. even 2 slimes doing 1 damage can be super hard. so I don't know. if I switch to 1 guy per "room" it means I get to cut out HUGE chunks of code and it makes everything way easier.

speaking of strategy I hope to have lots of guys each one might have a spell or trait. before you go into battle you will be able to pick a slime side kick, each slime will also have a different spell or trait to use. so perhaps you are the cleric and you choose a drain slime. now you can heal yourself at will and the slime has a vampire trait where each time you do damage you get healed +1. I am hoping that builds a lot of strategy I am just afraid people will always pick slime clerics.

Kikaru: yeah I had a lot of ideas for the Items and upgrades, but keeping them as simple symbols limits what I can do. I tried many different ways to show info and these worked the best in the smallest screen space I originally had the idea to do items that gave more attack for less health but found it impossible to show.
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Chris Pavia
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« Reply #41 on: April 15, 2011, 01:01:26 PM »

The class/pet combo functionality sounds similar to the race/class combo in Desktop Dungeons, so you could look there for reference/inspiration.
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #42 on: April 18, 2011, 05:57:20 PM »

Well I have done a lot of rewriting of the code. I now have enemies loaded from XML and also Items. I have also added 3 different size potions and also a Rarity so larger potions are less frequent.
I have also been testing it a lot and have come up with a bit of a problem. magic seems to be pretty useless at this point. cutting the Magic out leaves the game much tighter and it comes down to more resource management, saving larger potions for the final battles as you forge on ahead. but this severally limits the scope of the game. so I am really at a loss. with the addition of magic it seems like its added in just to make the game bigger. so I am going to go back to my basic fighter class. they have no magic and I am going to look at what can be used to expand the game in a hope to add more strategy. I am thinking perhaps scrolls might work as one time use spells so we will see.
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #43 on: April 25, 2011, 08:20:17 AM »

Update: I have made a choice about Magic. Magic will be in, but will be slightly altered, each player will be given 3-4 skills/traits and no Mana will be used anymore. 2 are chosen before the player embarks on their adventure. for example a Fighter might have this

Berserk - next attack is double damage
Experienced Fighter - start with +1 Attack
Block - take no damage on next attack
Bloodlust - damage taken is added to net Attack

these will all be one time or passive use skills, although there will be a potion which will recharge all skills. this allows the player a little bit of a choice I tend to be more defensive and cautious so I would probably take "Block" and "Experienced Fighter"


Many People have been asking about branching paths, and I have been finding that the map in the bottom corner is really unnecessary in my experiences anyways, I usually just power right through never going back. so I have been looking into either dropping it altogether or making a more varied map to allow some exploring. below are some new UI ideas. although I do like the Map, I don't think it working for this project and will probably just shelve it for a later project. I really don't see a point to exploring at the moment, I believe exploring does make sense in certain games, and although it is a major part of Roguelikes (My original inpisrations) I don't think it fits into what my game has become so far.





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Hangedman
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« Reply #44 on: April 25, 2011, 11:00:23 AM »

I would like to see a merging of the first two, maybe? A little tab at the bottom right that you tap to bring up the map like in the second one. It could also serve as a pause screen or etc.
That way you maintain the fullscreen landscape feel.
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Doktor_Q
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« Reply #45 on: April 25, 2011, 11:11:50 AM »

I like that idea. Also, having a whole branching area to explore would be cool, but at that point, I would suggest having monsters stay defeated. That way, backtracking doesn't mean fighting through a whole 'nother hoard.
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #46 on: April 25, 2011, 11:36:22 AM »

The ones thing I wonder about is showing the movement. I don't want the map to come up after every battle. I tried that and it breaks flow. One idea I had is keep the structure as it is but on certain levels put off rooms. Not full paths just one room with a mini boss and a good item.
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BlueSweatshirt
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« Reply #47 on: April 25, 2011, 11:50:58 AM »

This game is beautiful and charming, for one.

But sadly.. Right now there's nothing fun about it.  Embarrassed It's just tap spamming ad nauseum! I'd love to see the gameplay fleshed out a little more. Do you have any plans to do so?  Grin
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #48 on: April 25, 2011, 12:19:41 PM »

Well I have really been trying, I have been trying lots of different stuff so far and trying to get as much feedback as possible. Do you have any specific ideas. The game is basically rpg battles and little else. So it's a challenge of making that fun.


Edit: so I think adding more strategy to the game, making it about planning ahead would go a long way to helping make this more fun. I am still trying to nail that down. right now strategy comes from the skills you choose and using the upgrades you find. sadly only the upgrades help that gameplay at the moment as the skills are chosen before hand. I almost wonder what it would be like if you just built your guy and sent him off with a sword in his hand and a song in his heart seeing how far he could get tamagotchi style. but that might be better saved for later. but I definitely think adding strategy would help a lot. On thing I could do is do different attacks, like in paper mario, making some monsters weaker, or stronger against certain attacks.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2011, 02:18:01 PM by JasonPickering » Logged

BlueSweatshirt
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« Reply #49 on: April 25, 2011, 02:39:35 PM »

Well the problem right now is that there's no choices to make. I always tap to continue, and tap to kill always does the same thing.

Branching paths is choice, it would help give the player choose their strategic direction, but still it doesn't affect the true elements of your gameplay-- The engagements with enemies, like you said!
In Pokemon, which believe it or not has a battle system identical to yours, the strategic decisions come in with movesets, items, switching pokemon, etc. The decisions you make turn-by-turn greatly affect the outcome of the battle.

Right now even with your new slot idea, it remains fairly trivial when to use a potion or restorative item. HP is low? Potion away. There's no decision for the player to make!

It's very difficult to say *what* you could do to give the player more strategic options. Perhaps a sort of rock-paper-scissor system might fit your game? If you defend and they attack with a melee attack, they'll be left open and on the next turn you get a free move. If you attack with a polearm and they attack with a sword, you'll get the hit due to the polearm's advantage over the sword.
Just an idea, while trying to keep it simple. It makes sense in physical terms, so something like that would be easy for a new player to get used to.
« Last Edit: April 25, 2011, 02:46:02 PM by Jakman4242 » Logged

JasonPickering
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« Reply #50 on: April 25, 2011, 02:55:28 PM »

I agree. Sadly this was what killed the project the first time around was the attempt to add strategy to the battle system. One of the things I tried doing was listing all enemies as fire water plant normal. Fire water plant having a rock paper scissors effect. But this caused problems as it was hard to classify everything. I also tried a push your luck strategy where the player charged to do damage first to strike landed a blow. But maybe I need to go back and look at some battle systems like pokemon and paper Mario.
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #51 on: April 27, 2011, 04:17:58 PM »

Update: so I have gone back to the drawing board on the combat. I agree with what Jakman4242 has said about needing to add Choice to Combat, so Basically I have looked high and low, for combat ideas from board games, RPGs, table top RPGs pretty much everywhere. So Here is a basic idea I have

New Combat Model

a Cleric(HP 5) enters the Forest and goes against the Pixie(HP=2 Speed=2 Type=Plant)
the Cleric has two Attacks; Swipe which does 1 damage with a speed of 3 and Heavy Hit with a Speed of 1 and damage of three

Combat:
1. the player chooses the Swipe.
2. Combat is chosen randomly from an Array(based on speed) of (Player, Player, Player, Pixie, Pixie)
     - this adds in the random chance which I originally wanted but will probably be changed
3. if Player is Chosen
     - 1 Damage is done to the Pixie
4. if Pixie is Chosen
     - 1 damage to the Player

this adds the Choice as I was hoping. Bigger Attacks have a bigger chance of Backfiring on you, and could Possibly be lethal, if you had chosen the bigger attack and won you would have killed the Pixie but lost you would have taken 3 Damage almost killing you.

alright the next idea is the attacks might be chosen from decks. maybe the player gets to choose 4 attacks for a game and 2 are randomly chosen each turn.

next idea is attacks will be based on 4 elements. Normal, Fire, Plant, Water. using a fire vs a plant will do 1 extra damage meaning if that swipe had been fire based it would have done 2 damage and killed the pixie in one hit, but if it had been plant based, the same type as the pixie, it would have actually healed the pixie 1 hit point. not all Enemies will be Based on this, most will be Normal.
 
So thats it in a Nutshell. the only thing I worry about is people constantly using low attacks instead of taking chances with the bigger attacks.

I also have the idea of letting the player choose 3 attacks, but giving attacks PP points like pokemon. which seems like a better idea as it prevents the player from spamming the weaker attacks.

So what do you think. I have not coded anything yet, only paper prototypes and it definetly has added some strategy.
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BlueSweatshirt
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« Reply #52 on: April 27, 2011, 04:28:01 PM »

Well, if you don't give the player a real *reason* to use the heavy hit, then it has no reason to exist. If you make the weak more favorable, then most players will simply use the weak hits. The trick in game design is balancing the available options so that it becomes a matter of strategy, and then a less trivial choice. When the player has to think about the choices they make the engagement level goes up like crazy.  Wink

One imperfect suggestion:
What if the hard hit actually attacked faster, but had only a low 'success' rate? This would give the player a risk, but the benefit is that they could go the turn doing major damage. If an enemy is weaker, there would be incentive to use this hit as it would possibly completely kill the enemy, and the player would not have to be hit at all. On the other side, the weak hit is still much safer. The weak hit becomes your reliable general-purpose attack, while the strong hit offers a high-risk-high-reward model. The risk in using the hard hit is that you could miss, of course, and land no damage that turn, leaving you at a loss.

Think about stuff like that.  Smiley
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Doktor_Q
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« Reply #53 on: April 27, 2011, 04:57:36 PM »

Sounds like the Heavy Attacks from PSO. Hopefully these won't be quite that prohibitively inaccurate.
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #54 on: April 27, 2011, 05:31:05 PM »

Jakman: thats actually how I am using the "Speed". It is only used to decide probability. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual speed of the attack.
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Doktor_Q
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« Reply #55 on: April 27, 2011, 05:44:12 PM »

"Accuracy" or "Hit" would probably be a better name for it, then. Just a suggestion.
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #56 on: April 28, 2011, 07:51:58 PM »

Update: moving ahead with reworking the combat plan. working on resolving the above combat now. I am trying to figure out a couple ideas.

1. use an Array based on Speed like in the above idea
2. use the speeds in combat. your speed is 3 (0,1,2,3) and monster's is 1 (0,1) chose random numbers winner gets to attack

the main problem is I keep getting screwed over. I was killed by a mouse earlier because i kept having things not go my way.

another idea I had is based off an older plan. Attacks would be diced based. you would have 3 dice. that are color Coded. (normal,Fire,Plant,Water) each one would have possible damage and you could activate 1, 2, or 3. so basically the way it would work was each one could do damage but each dice would have a fail on it. if one fail comes up you lose and take damage. so more dice would mean more damage, but a better chance to Fail.

this is two fold, it brings the randomness up front to the player and makes it more understandable and abstracts the combat taking out a lot of unneeded information that would need to be explained. I am thinking of it almost like yahtzee or Pig, where you decide to roll a dice and then when it comes up and you lose you say "shouldnt have rolled that dice" where as usually in games people immediately think the game screwed them because of the level of abstraction.
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Doktor_Q
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« Reply #57 on: April 28, 2011, 08:15:41 PM »

The one thing to make sure is that the player actually has some reliable way of controlling what happens, otherwise it's like playing a three-card monty (crooked dealer optional). It makes the game more fun and engaging, as well as more practical to beat.
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JasonPickering
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« Reply #58 on: April 29, 2011, 04:43:07 PM »

yeah this has been the problem and I don't know if its just me, but every time I play I just go with the safer option, I don't know how to entice the player because I cant find a good reason to use a more powerful attack. this might possibly be something with the way I play but if I have a better chance I just play it safe and take the damage. I may need to bring this up to the Design board because I am just stuck on how to make the combat different because I cant answer the question of "Why should I use this attack if it will fail"

My Main problem now is with Heavy Attacks. I cant find a good reason to want to do 3 damage over 1 damage. yes you will kill the enemy faster, but a certain 1 is better then a maybe 3. is this just my broken mind playing it safe, or am I making sense?

The problem is that I am focusing to much on the Damage done while most people only have 1 or 2 health. I need to focus on determining if damage is dealt.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2011, 05:02:41 PM by JasonPickering » Logged

vinheim3
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« Reply #59 on: April 29, 2011, 05:31:20 PM »

Here's my 2 cents on the whole power/speed confusion:

Usually, when I play RPGs, the benefit of higher-hitting attacks is how its power falls less to defense. If I do 3 attacks of 5 damage to an enemy with 3 defense, I get 3 attacks of 2 damage or 6 damage. If, however, I get 1 attack of 15 damage, it is 1 attack of 12 damage when subtracting defense, which is twice the damage than if I chose 3 attacks 1/3 damage.

The benefit of faster attacks is if the enemy is either close to death or you include buffs in your game. If I have a buff that does +3 damage per attack, 3 attacks of 5 damage would be 3 attacks of 8 damage or 24 damage. If I do 1 attack of 15 damage, it would be 1 attack of 18 damage only. Also, if an enemy has 7 health, I'd choose 2 faster attacks of 5 damage each rather than a slow attack of 15 damage each.

There's even more confusion with speed, but here's my idea:

Speed determines how long a bar charges until you attack (the bar should charge quickly, since it is just for display). So in the scenarios I made above ^, you would get 2 swipes in while the pixie gets 1 attack in. Or, you could get 1 heavy attack in, but after 2bars have charged, the pixie had an attack in; once you get your heavy attack in, the pixie is half way towards its next attack.

Now, what if you and your enemy (or enemies, if you include more than 1 in a fight) attacks on the same turn? You could handle this by a different speed stat, OR have it randomized (you and multiple enemies will have the attack order randomized in a list), OR just make it so that you go first, and enemies attack from left to right, but then you can't include debuffing of speed in your game.
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