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[BlueSweatshirt]

Freemium is like telling someone they can go watch a movie in a theater for free, but it turns out you have to pay to listen to each individual line of the movie's dialogue.
 

So anyway.
How's progress?

[JasonPickering]

progress is going smoothly. working on the effects now, as they will be what works most of the skills and special deaths. once I get those working I will be fine. I currently have the Fireball skill in and working. this damages any monster to the up, down, left, and right. I need to clean up the turn system a little. wondering if I should add little tokens above monsters to show what status they currently have and if I should give it a coutdown.

[st33d]

Freemium is pretty much the coin-op arcade. I used to love the arcades when I was a kid. Now I'm all grown up and jaded I wouldn't dare spend a penny on it, unless of course it was an old favourite.

I tried a freemium game recently called Stack King. You basically had to grind through a brutal first level or pay to unlock the second level. However, the first level is set in a warehouse stacking boxes - not really selling it to me. And what did I unlock? (Without paying for it - oh no, I'm a games dev thankyou.) The new level had identical gameplay to the one before, just with different graphics. Never before have I played a game that was unaware it was making an allegory about the drudgery of manual labour and how the rich avoid it. And with that, I uninstalled it from the iPad.

The starter pack price scheme is comparable to DLC. People will want to upgrade. Just make sure you market it as an expansion as opposed to say, hats.

Feedback: Tried the last test version that was up. Being forced to click a square adjacent to the hero is a bit unintuitive. Can't we just click anywhere around him and expect him to move unless the interface or a special tile is pressed? I only say because that's how most other games do it and it's a bit nicer.

[JasonPickering]

Yeah I might try that in the future. Do you think clicking on a single tile is to hard? or is it just tiresome when you need to do it constantly. would having to click a specific square for a skill be okay?

[Hangedman]

Clicking on the next square makes more sense than just clicking anywhere, because anywhere controls can be difficult to distinguish between at the diagonals.
Also, it guarantees you won't accidentally hit a menu button or etc.

[st33d]

It's not hard, it's just really fiddly and contrary to how all other games with this sort of interface work - especially on iOS. I'd say, stick with what you've got for now and then wait and see if someone else moans about it. (This is generally what I do.)

[Hangedman]

Yeah, I guess it's more a matter of preference.
Maybe: highlight the squares around you to make it more obvious that they're where you can move?

[JasonPickering]

Well I guess once this is actually on an Idevice I will know what works best. So I will hold off until then, but since everyone has been so helpful here is a build.

Try It

Now this build is an excellent vision of what the final game will be. It needs a lot of balance, which seems to be the main problem now, but all the combat is in. The player has two skills. these are built in for now but eventually the player will be able to choose which two they head into combat with.

They main thing I am going to do now is try some balancing, weakening stuff that is to strong and strengthening stuff that needs it. the yeti freeze is to powerful so I either need to make it weaker and just an AOE or make the Yeti very Rare.

One other thing that I would like some feedback on is the skill system. right now all skills cost 1 mana. one idea I had is to increase the cost. so your first use of heal costs 1 mana, but the next time you use heal it will cost 2. Now this will cause the player to be a little more cautious about their use of skills, knowing that now they will need more mana for the next use.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Nice update like the new look and think it works well.

Noticed that the shift and click onto enemies doesn't work anymore?

Also like the click on the player to bring up actions but think you should also be able to click on player to close it again.

[JasonPickering]

Thans yeah is removed the shift click as it didn't add enough variety. Originally you could click on the player to close it agains but problems arose when a player was at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes they could be behind the skill tabs among there was no way to close the tab without casting a spell.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Was thinking you could have both close techniques that way when skills tab is on top you'd just click the arrow otherwise at other times you could click on the hero if you wanted.

[JasonPickering]

that's something I will have to think about. Other then that its mostly balance work for the moment. I need as much feedback as possible at the time and would love to hear from everyone. I might cross post this into the feedback forum and see if I can get some help in there.

next up for me is doing the title, winning, losing stuff. and then moving on to the monster creation. fleshing out all the monsters needed. my final goal will be 10 different monsters and 3 areas. of course that's only my initial goal I hope to add much much more.

[JasonPickering]

Well I posted a thread in feedback and everything went fairly well, but I know some people follow this so I thought I would keep everyone up to date. plus I like talking about the development and mechanics in here.

So I am still refining combat. Wooo so much fun. so anyways right now I have been playing the game and saving any situations I end up in. Basically any situation where the player feels cheated or forced to take damage. so the main one people get into is this:



So the main problem is the player has no options in this situation. They can move forward and take 3 damage. now if they could skip their turn, by using a spell. like heal. then all the enemies will move right in front of you and get killed like a conga line. So neither situation is Ideal.

I am slowly coming back to my original idea of Monsters not moving and the player is required to clear an Island to get to the next one. I think I would also work more player statuses if that was the case. so perhaps you kill a skeleton. now your attack power is doubled, so killing the skeleton then a the goblin would be ideal. this of course means I have to remove a lot of the ideas I had like the skeleton becoming a wall and the yeti stopping everyone.

Thoughts?

[BlueSweatshirt]

Some suggestions:

1. A mix of moving and stationary enemies

2. Enemies with ranged attacks

3. The ability(a spell?) to push enemies back to help avoid deathlock
FUS RO DAH!!
(sorry  )

4. Give the player more health so taking hits is less of an issue.(switch to a bar, graphically? Or do segmented hearts?)

5. Give enemies a chance to miss their attack entirely

6. Spread enemies out more and prevent them from clumping

[st33d]

Coin flip random I've seen work pretty well elsewhere.

I think with guaranteed damage you're making a puzzle like desktop dungeons. That situation with the three hits isn't guaranteed death in a standard roguelike, it's a gamble. One you might win.

If you want to work without random, then i think that people are going to expect the level generator to be a puzzle generator. You're going to end up building a graph of possible moves, and throwing away levels where there isn't a solution.

Random is the easy way out, but people love gambling. Making a puzzle is hard, but comes with the kudos of making a simpler desktop dungeons.

[JasonPickering]

st33d that's a pretty good summation. I really didn't want to design a puzzle engine and your right it seems like a puzzle now, but the level generation is letting you down. I also dont really have anyway of solving the levels if I did, because I would never know what skills the player would have. I think move it away from a puzzle and more into a dungeon crawler is the way to go. I think make it so damage is not an exact amount is probably the best.

Jakman These are some good ideas. mixing up the world with more varied enemies might be the way to go. I also think that the point about spreading out enemies is a valid one. in the later levels the world is way to clumped up. maybe I should focus on the player fighting a few tougher enemies then 20 easy ones. Also the more health is probably a better idea also.

[JasonPickering]

Hey guys. So working on a new combat test. Right now Player and Monsters have 1 in 6 chance of missing. it has actually changed the feel of the game. I was quite shocked. I also shrunk the amount of monsters present.

it usually helps to talk these things out. Here is my problem now.

right now all combat has a 1 in 6 chance of missing. All combat does 1 damage. So the other ideas I had were

1. All combat is a 1 in 6 chance of missing
2. Each character has an Attack Power. its that attack power in 6 that is your chance to hit.
 ex. rat has a 1 in 6 goblin has a 4 in 6
3. Each character has an Attack and a Defense and the Attackers Attack is Compared against the Defenders defense. there would also be some randomness so its not a strict calculation.

I guess it all depends on how many stats I want the player to see. the first one having no stats, the second having one, and the third having 2. If I do have stats I will probably allow the player some way to change them with short term or long term buffs. Right now I am leaning towards 2. It gives the player some control of their guy, knowing their chances, but also isn't a ton of stuff to worry about. the only thing is I am not sure how to show it. I need an Icon and a number. I wasn't sure if a sword would work, and how to do the numbers. so any suggestions are welcome

[BlueSweatshirt]

I think you need to raise your standard for health calculations.
For example, a guy who does 2 damage. If he rolls a 1 damage from randomization, that's a huge change. If he rolls a 3 from randomization, that is also a huge change. Unless you want to deal with decimals of  course, but that's applicably the same as raising your number standard.

[JasonPickering]

Oh no I was only using these calculations to say if damage is done. Not the actual amount of damage done. That will still stay as a simple 1 damage.

[JasonPickering]

So I added the posibility of Misses into the combat and it feels more like the mini dungeon crawl I started to make. I have added a Stat called Attack. It determines if you hit an enemy or not. You always do 1 damage though if a hit is successful. I wanted to keep stats to a minimum. the numbers break down like this:

Miss Percentage.
Attack 1: %50
Attack 2: %33
Attack 3: %25
Attack 4: %21
Attack 5: %17
Attack 6: %15
Attack 7: %13

I take a random number from the attack number and if its 0 its a miss. So an attack of 3 is 0,1,2,3. so a 25% chance of pulling a zero. the only thing is I like the Curve this gives, but I would like it if it started a little lower. maybe even like at 80%. A monster with high HP, but a terrible attack rate would be Cool. Any Suggestions on ways to code this differently?

try it out in the Feedback Forum