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[DangerMomentum]

It's time to start diving into Roggle's game mechanics. First up on the list is the simplest- basic combat! At the core of any RPG is how it resolves combat. There is a huge variety of approaches to take, from D&D inspired dice rolling to Pokemon's mostly deterministic mind games. Roggle leans towards Pokemon's system- damage values are deterministic. The only thing up to chance are special occurrences like critical hits, dodging, followup attacks, and so on. This keeps combat interesting, but you can always make a pretty good prediction of what kind of damage you'll be doing.

Every weapon and unit has a base damage value. This is pretty simple- all other things being equal, a weapon with 5 base damage deals 5 damage. There's a little more to it than that, though. As you can see in some of the above screenshots, every unit in Roggle has three main stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence. Of particular interest is the lack of Vitality, Constitution, or any other defensive stat; instead, these three stats act as both offensive and defensive stats.

Here's how this works: every weapon has a listed damage type of OFFENSE STAT vs. DEFENSE STAT. For example, a bow is DEX vs INT. This means that when you attack with a bow, it compares your Dexterity to your enemy's Intelligence. For a quick reference, having double the stat means you'll be doing 150% damage with that weapon. The actual formula is something like this:

Final Damage = Weapon Base Damage * (Your Offense Stat / Their Defense Stat + 1) / 2

Originally, having double the stat would deal double the damage, but it was just too swingy. Instead, I averaged the damage ratio with 1 so that the lowest amount of damage an attack can do is half of the weapon's base damage. What all of this amounts to is that every stat is useful to every character- you may decide to focus on Strength weapons, but a hat that gives you some Intelligence is still useful, because it reduces the damage of a third of the game's weapon types. We'll get more into weapon types with fusion, but there are nine main types, not including unarmed. Each combination of STAT vs STAT has its own type. Unarmed is a special case, and has a similar but unique damage formula.

There's one last piece of the puzzle: Armor!. Armor is handled very simply- the defender's armor value is just subtracted from the attacker's base damage before the ratio is applied. So including armor, the damage formula looks more like:

Final Damage = (Weapon Base Damage - Defender's Armor) * (Your Offense Stat / Their Defense Stat + 1) / 2

So when you're gearing up your character in Roggle, you'll have to make some hard choices- do you go all in on a two-handed weapon with strong damage in one stat, or do you dual up and divide your focus between one in each hand? Weapon switching only takes one turn, so it's a good idea to keep a few backups in your bag just in case.

That's just the surface, but it should give a pretty good idea of how you'll be approaching combat. I've made some big strides on AI, so I'll probably be posting a video showing that off this week. Which do you prefer, videos or gifs? A mixture of both? I'm happy to prioritize whichever format you guys prefer, so let me know. Thanks for reading!

[Kyzrati]

Sounds like the right kind of system--simple to understand on the surface yet allowing for complex situations and decisions. (Aside: The next next /r/roguelikedev FAQ Friday is on combat algorithms etc, so I see you've already written yours )

I prefer gifs.

[deab]

Nice simple system - I really like the dual use of the main stats, very clever.

[DangerMomentum]

Spent a lot of time working on new menus this week. Here's the new character sheet:



And a non-moving version here, at a higher resolution:



I managed to fit every stat into one page, it's a lot nicer to use than the last one. I'm currently working on a new generic list menu that I can use for equipment, inventory, shops, and more. I plan to replace nearly every menu that's currently present in the game- they worked fine for playtesting, but I want the actual game to have the best UI possible. Roguelikes have a pretty terrible track record when it comes to usable user interfaces, so my goal is to make navigating the menus as quick and painless as possible. I want Roggle to bridge the gap between people who would like to play roguelikes, but can't get over the antiquated look and feel that many of the classics have. I'm hoping these tabbed menus will be a good compromise between avoiding information overload and having necessary information be accessible at all times.

Lots of AI work happened this week too, but it's much harder to show off in a screenshot- it'll have to wait until the next gameplay video. This week I should finish up the new inventory and equipment pages, and then I'll be able to start on the in-game database. Roggle will have a complete database of creatures, status effects, and abilities for you to refer to at any point in time. It will start out empty, but as you encounter new things, it will slowly fill up. This will be the main aspect that persists across play sessions- you won't lose your acquired information on death.

[Kyzrati]

That character sheet pop-up animation is amazing.

[TopherPirkl]

Hey good to see such a detailed devlog here! I've been following the development of the game on SA for a while but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the logs here too! I'm the one who emailed you about audio recently, btw!

[chiguireitor]

Said it on reddit, and will repeat it here, that UI is giving me a bad case of jealousy... in a good sense.... that's a thing, isn't it?

[DangerMomentum]

More menu gifs? More menu gifs!





(Item descriptions are definitely placeholders)

[Fenrir]

Nice menus and animations!

[Noyemi K]

I was about to send you a message but then I noticed... this game looks familiar...

So, howdy! 

[flipswitchx]

sexy pixels! I like the jib of your pixels, sir.

And I envy some of the enemy names I see. Woodle... Ha! 

[DangerMomentum]

sexy pixels! I like the jib of your pixels, sir.

And I envy some of the enemy names I see. Woodle... Ha! 

Thanks! The enemy names are all me, but the pixel art is all DragonDePlatino's DawnLike tileset. I did the menus / fonts and a few effects, but it's 99% his stuff.

Speaking of menus, though, I've revamped altars a bunch. Now alignment actually matters, and you can even join sides!



I've done a bunch of work on the fusion menu as well, but it's not quite ready to show off. More coming soon!

[mankoon]

This games looking pretty dope. I love the pixel art, animation and debug screenshot. I don't know why you left the cow there though. posting to follow.

[DangerMomentum]

Here's a shot of a new area. Portals to No Man's Land will appear on the first floor of an area. It serves as a safe retreat from the hostile surface of The Fracture, and contains a random assortment of useful shops and stations.



This is also the final appearance of the fusion menu- now it actually shows the selected catalyst and the amount of Rogs you want to contribute to the fusion.

[DangerMomentum]

Screenshot Saturday! While I redid the menus I took the time to make them skinnable. Here's a taste:











Each one is inspired by another RPG- I'm sure you guys can spot a few of them.

[Kyzrati]

These RPG skins are great! I assume this is to allow players/modders to skin it themselves, and if so how are they defined? (Or is this just to make it easier for you to add alternative options?)

[DangerMomentum]

They'll be selectable in the options menu, kinda like the menu options in old Square RPGs. No reason they can't be player modifiable, though. I figure some customization is nice and it turned out to be surprisingly easy to swap these on the fly.

[nadia911]

When can buy this beautiful game? 

[DangerMomentum]

Hopefully in a few months! I've got some goal features I want to accomplish before I really start pushing for visibility, but I'm planning to launch a Greenlight campaign and probably some sort of funding like Kickstarter around Summer. We'll see if I can keep up with development (and real life), but I'm confident I'll be able to make that happen this year.

My website is down right now, I'm in the process of fixing it with my host. In the meantime, my Tumblr link is http://dangermomentum.tumblr.com and my Twitter is at https://twitter.com/dangermomentum/

[s0]

looks promising, following.