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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsThe Moon Fields - PvP Zelda
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oxrock
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« Reply #20 on: May 25, 2017, 07:41:12 AM »

I don't find bird's eye view games visually appealing. Because I can't really identify, or make a connection, with the top of a player's head. Maybe it's just me, but that's how I feel about it. 
I think if you're trying to make a 6 player single screen game, your choices are going to be extremely limited unfortunately. 

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« Reply #21 on: May 25, 2017, 07:50:31 AM »

Yeah, I don't find perfectly bird's eye view games very appealing, either. I really like the idea of spatial games, though, so I've been trying to figure out this 3/4 perspective. Some stuff is successful, but a lot of stuff is still a struggle (jumping! multiplanar or curving movements). Now that I have Pro Builder I am thinking about making it look even more like the original Zelda with non-Euclidean space, but I think that'll double down on the mind bending stuff. Though, Zelda did it fine a quarter of a century ago, so...

Example (and please excuse the terrible quality):


Edit: If anyone has played through the 3DS Zelda: Link Between Worlds do you remember how they dealt with pits like this?
« Last Edit: May 25, 2017, 08:35:52 AM by xix » Logged


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« Reply #22 on: May 25, 2017, 11:34:14 PM »

Had a play test. Did a recording. There's a new stage and a way complicated scoreboard. Link through the image below:



I picked two large melee weapons plus a really mobile shield and a mobile characters and went 1v1 vs. my friend who picked a heavy character, one of the same large melee weapons, a slower shield, and a crossbow.

You'll see a lot of footsies in this match. I lose a few rounds early on because I don't use my longer poke on my Grandblade. I win back a few because I remember to get the damage and range from the Grandblade Tilt. Then I stupidly do something stupid, and it puts me in a stupid position.

Other cool things you'll notice - I do some pretty good blocking with a Leather Shield. It currently only Returns Stun at 50%, and the Battle Axe has moves that Barrel Through defenses, so I'm really only using it to save my damage. I could have used a better shield with more Stun Return, but then I couldn't have moved so quickly and baited his crossbow bolts.

Lots of times his back shield really lets him determine the pace of the battle. I give chase and he's already turned around and blocks. I get some nice side swipes from both CW and CCW directions, but I make a pretty bad mistake in the last round.
« Last Edit: May 26, 2017, 08:37:18 AM by xix » Logged


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« Reply #23 on: May 26, 2017, 06:22:07 PM »



Combo Breaker is tomorrow! If you're there please come hang and play.
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« Reply #24 on: May 28, 2017, 04:51:36 AM »

Combo Breaker is the best place I've shown my game. Having professional competitive game designers play was super helpful for both finding good and bad parts of my game. I had some people find breakpoints in my game that I wasn't seeing on my own or with my friends. Day one (for me) was super amazing. Looking forward to more today.

Since I don't want to get out of bed yet, I'm just going to plop down some design heirarchies that I want to emphasize into the game.

Generally in short melee range I want Vertical/Stabbing attacks to beat out Horizontal attacks, Horizontal attacks to beat out mobility, and Mobility to bait Vertical/Stabbing attacks. There is a wrench thrown in there with Side Shields and a smaller wrench thrown in there with Back Shields.

Head on Side Shields can block Counter Clockwise Attacks whereas an escaping enemy will take CCW Attacks right to the gut. Clockwise Attacks do the opposite avoiding Side Shields Head On while eating Shield from an escaping enemy.

Because your character rotates the shortest way to your joystick direction, evading an enemy towards your right will rotate your shield toward them. This is a Safe Rotation. From the map perspective this is seen as moving Counter Clockwise around your enemy. Going Clockwise around your enemy and opening up your unshielded side is not a Safe Rotation.

From afar I want projectile wars to feel like shootouts. If you're not hiding behind a wall you either want to be aiming your shield at your enemy or you want to be aiming your bow at them. If you're doing neither you're doing something wrong. Shield beats Projectile beats Moving beats Explosive beats Shield. Tricky space control items break this. Placing Black Goo or Caltrops in the right spot will hurt an opponent's ability to move correctly. I want the explosive Magic Orb to go slow enough to also be disruptive for this heirarchy.

Today I think I'm going to really be watching my magician class. From everything that I've done in the past month I think the mage is getting really weak. It is "tricky" and beats people that don't understand, but it seems to be getting beat down. Looking at the heirarchies here it seems to have the weakest elements from each of their categories, but that might be because there aren't enough crazy magic things in the game for its mixup games.
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« Reply #25 on: May 28, 2017, 07:45:18 AM »

Glad you got some good feedback! I think the depth to which you are planning out the combat systems is very thorough, but also necessary. Just realize (you probably already do) that it will take lots of testing to find balance. Dark Souls 2, for example, ended up with some pretty well balanced combat, but it took two years of post-release patches to get there.

Also, to reference DS again, it's no surprise your magician class feels weak - maybe it really does need to be buffed back up, but typically, mage classes are always harder to play, and usually rely on a mixture of high player skill, as well as simply outguessing/faking your opponent.
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« Reply #26 on: May 29, 2017, 01:35:59 AM »

What are your thoughts on readability? From the gifs with the dim lights and dark backgrounds its surprisingly hard to get a quick glance understanding of what's going on and what's priority information.

I suppose in the heat of the moment you're constantly aware of which "square" you play but looking at it as a spectator I notice that most objects are about the same general square shape and size which makes quick distinction harder. I imagine this gets more pronounced with more players running around on the screen.
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« Reply #27 on: May 29, 2017, 04:37:12 AM »

Yeah, readability is a huge thing for the game. Obviously I need it to be readable for the 1v1 versus game. But obscuring information like in the dark needs to be "appropriate" as well. I'll get to that in the specifics below. If you're very interested please click through to the fullsized images.

The first stage I developed is the Forrest Training Stage. This stage is meant to be easy to read in the middle of the screen, but more difficult in the tall grass. Characters are identified by both their sprite and visible items. The sprite indicates how much HP they have total, and the rate of blinking indicates what percentage of HP they have remaining. The visible items indicate what attacks/options they have available to them. They also become indicators of what direction the player is looking in 3D space in addition to their Shield(s)' hitboxes. A shield's position is important because it is always blocking so you are trying to get a hit in by avoiding either the Back or Side shields.

Note: I don't think it's super easy to see the particular blocking direction in these smaller images, but I think you can still know which direction players are looking AND shields can only be in front or in their default place (left side or back), so you only need to know relative directions rather than 360*.

The second stage is the Enter The Dungeon stage. This stage is also meant to be easy to read in the middle lane with obscurances throughout the rest of the stage. One of my techniques to separate information is detail density. A lot of the flat planar backgrounds are flat so that the pop of any contrast pops more. This guarantees knowing player position, but some details like player direction and if they're shielding or not become more difficult to parse. Thematically it works because the darkness is supposed to be hard to read, but I'd like feedback on this.

This last stage is the Temple Steps stage. It is meant to be a place to play with verticality. There are two lanes of bushes on either side that players can hide in. Sometimes you are completely obscured. Sometimes you aren't. If you move through the bushes your position is revealed. You can cut bushes down (though now that I think of it you can't blow them up... that will need to get fixed). This stage makes it very clear where the Big Hat and Tree Lord are blocking directly. If you compare this to the Big Hat in the Forrest Stage you notice that the side leather shield is obscured by the sprite itself, BUT if you play for a while you know that the side shield should be looking up/left because the player is looking up/right. Sometimes I wonder if verticality is a problem, but through playtests it seems as though a few people pick it up pretty intuitively, so hopefully this is just a learned thing.

Videos from #ComboBreaker2017 (Sorry for the twitter link workaround. I'm getting weird blank vertical space issues when I post YouTube links directly):
6 Player Test
2 Player Test (where I get my butt kicked)

6P B&W Test, click through for 1080P


« Last Edit: May 29, 2017, 04:42:14 AM by xix » Logged


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« Reply #28 on: May 29, 2017, 05:03:11 AM »

Sorry for the wall of text that wasn't specific. Let's see if I can go through q by q:

What are your thoughts on readability? From the gifs with the dim lights and dark backgrounds its surprisingly hard to get a quick glance understanding of what's going on and what's priority information.

I suppose in the heat of the moment you're constantly aware of which "square" you play but looking at it as a spectator I notice that most objects are about the same general square shape and size which makes quick distinction harder. I imagine this gets more pronounced with more players running around on the screen.

Re: Readability - I have a lot of thoughts about readability! Ha.

Re: Spectators - I'm guessing you're talking about people watching the game? I think it's easy to tell position and direction especially if you're familiar with how certain items are oriented around a player character. Tbh, I think that's all I want spectators to be able to tell at a glance. Some stuff is difficult to catch like arrows or crossbow bolts. I'd be interested to see this game at 144hz 4k (instead of 1080p60 on my iGPU setup). I think this is one situation where resolution helps, but I might just be blowing smoke here.
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« Reply #29 on: May 30, 2017, 06:41:35 AM »

Re: Readability - I did the Color/Black and White breakdown and now I've gotten some Flat Saturations.





I actually never tested the flat saturations of these maps, but I'm pretty happy with the results. I'd prefer for less danger red in the middle alley of the Dungeon level, but otherwise this looks like a good separation of what to expect mentally of what's going on in the levels. Flat backgrounds with points of interest.
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« Reply #30 on: May 31, 2017, 07:33:29 AM »



And the prettification begins.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2017, 07:38:46 AM by xix » Logged


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« Reply #31 on: June 02, 2017, 12:19:38 AM »



Been cleaning things up and trying to make the environments a little easier on the eyes. A benefit of the maintenance is that things are also more efficient. The goal is to have a few shadowed light sources in play on an iGPU for the single player mode. I don't know how necessary that'll be in multi, but I am looking at ~40FPS with 4 lights...

Outside of making a new weapon (Halberd!), I've added a new shield (Wood Door), and the ability to push the environment with your shield.
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« Reply #32 on: June 02, 2017, 05:24:48 AM »

you're making some good progress, I'm excited to see where this goes!
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« Reply #33 on: June 02, 2017, 02:24:27 PM »

Prettification indeed - these new shots look great!
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« Reply #34 on: June 03, 2017, 09:44:46 AM »

I'm reworking the collision system in the game. I'm curious how any of ya'll have treated melee + enviro in your games.


I'm going to think through things and probably come up with something near the end of the post.

1) Dark Souls style hitbox inside of a hitbox system.
The larger hitbox checks for player collisions (and at least in my game shield collisions as well) while the smaller hitbox checks for environmental collisions. If the smaller hitbox hits the environment it cancels the attack animation and stuns the attacker. Bigger, unwieldy weapons can have small enviro-hitboxes while precise weapons like spears or rapiers can have enviro-hitboxes that are almost 1:1 with the larger hitbox.

Pro: Tweakable
Con: I don't like the idea of a heavy axe clipping the environment and having its animation canceled at any length. I guess I can solve this by not giving it any enviro-hitbox or most likely combining with some of the below.

2) Temporarily Disable Collisions
Hitting the environment disables collisions w/ the weapon for a period of time. In general smaller stabby weapons delay for a long time and bigger slashy/slammy weapons delay for less. Different environments/shields that are hit also yield different multipliers:

Code:
A guideline that will definitely be broken
........ point ... flat  ... edged ...
small  |   5    |    4    |    3
medium |   4    |    3    |    2
large  |   3    |    2    |    1
xlarge |   2    |    1    |    magically impossible 0

Code:
A similar guideline
............... multiplier ...
light shield |     1
hard shield  |     3
parry shield |     5
environment  |     3

A quick spreadsheet yields these frame numbers:



I colored in different breakpoints. The white squares mean you brush off the attack and continue as normal. The red means that your attack is canceled and you take that amount of stun (or maybe modify it by the threshold amount?). The orange just means it's a long time that you probably won't be able to get another hit in.

I was thinking I'd have a universal #frames to outright cancel the attack, but I'm not exactly sure. I broke the rules for weapons' framesToDelayAttack only once for the BlackBranch (small pointy mace, I pretended this is a smashy medium weapon). Some interesting points were the Knights Sword which has a neutral slash and the Halberd which has attacks that alternate between stab and slash.

Pro: Solves the problem above
Con: There will be edge cases where things delay for a weird amount of time. Also, kinda *definitely complicated*.


SO IN CONCLUSION
I think both of these systems would work well together. Combined it would look like this:

Each weapon would have two collider boxes, a float for framesToDelayAttack, and a float for delayFramesToCancelAttack. Each environment has a different weaponCollisionDelayMultiplier

If the larger collider hits the environment, nothing happens (or maybe sparks fly!).

If the larger collider hits a player, you deal damage.

If the larger collider hits a player's shield, TempDisableCollisions(framesToDelayAttack * weaponCollisionDelayMultiplier) and CheckToCancelAttack(delayFramesToCancelAttack).

If the smaller collider hits the environment, also run TempDisableCollisions(ftda) and CheckToCancelAttack(dftca * wcdm).

If the smaller collider hits a player or shield, nothing happens.



Alright, I'm going to let this thing simmer for a while. Cheers.
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« Reply #35 on: June 04, 2017, 07:50:38 AM »



Playing with lighting a little bit. I really like plain white lights when I'm "serious deving", but when I'm trying to make something that looks great, I usually lean towards gradients. This is a struggle I live with in my day to day life.
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« Reply #36 on: June 05, 2017, 07:53:19 AM »



1) I'm getting pretty close to the final version for a lot of my weapon animations. I'm currently looking into either tutorials or Unity asset store assets to get high fidelity weapon trails.

2) I need to get this to work with damage turned on.
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« Reply #37 on: June 07, 2017, 01:10:38 PM »



1) Got weapon trails working! Thanks to X-Weapon Trails on the Unity Asset store. Yeah, I am admitting I got assets from someone else. They did a dope job. AFAIK it's super lightweight and it took 2 lines of code to make this thing work with my workflow. Get iiiittt.

2) Started working on some magic effects!

The first three are the Book Of Glory that have 3 "holy" type attacks. The Healing Circle will slowly generate health as you stand in it. If you see someone cast it you might want to threaten them to steal the spot! Or you can be polite to let them heal all the way. I'm calling the yellow matrix hexagon (really a cube) Light Shell which will defend you from one attack. It's supposed to encourage you to get into the fray. And the lightning bolt won't do much damage but it'll stun players and push back any physical traps people have left.

The next purple sphere spell comes from the Codex of Power and has two variations. I'm either calling it Magic Orb or Magic Sphere. My intent is to quickly shoot the Slow Spheres and then when your opponent is distracted you can shoot the Fast Sphere. The spheres explode on contact, so you can't shield against them, but they should be slow enough that you can dodge them individually. I am considering making the spheres different sizes/damages/etc and the ability to get different damage out of them, but that's a balance tweak.

Offensive magic casters will have their skills spread about a bunch of books so they can mix and match to create their "class". This is different than the support casters which will have premade packages that may or may not make it easy to cast the spells. I'm sure that doesn't exactly make sense, but once spells start overlapping from different items you'll see.
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« Reply #38 on: June 09, 2017, 10:32:15 AM »

Love the aesthetic, looking forward to seeing how the single-player comes together.  Good luck!
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« Reply #39 on: June 10, 2017, 05:21:51 AM »

Thanks acatalept! I'm getting pretty excited about it, myself.



I'm in the middle of creating a set of items that can be used both for "puzzles" and for combat. I put puzzles in quotations because I don't want too many items-as-keys. I think there will be a handful of items that can fit into the "same lock", but I don't want to hard lock many areas of the game on an item by item basis. E.g. I might have switches that are reached by using projectiles or trap rooms that are much easier with a shield, but you can use any projectile or any shield. I have a few more obscure things I have in my notes, but I'm letting those ideas cook a little more.

Anyways, the GIF above is the hook*chain*. As the tip leaves the device it creates chain links that tighten as the device turns. If you hookChain a thing it checks to see which is the heavier of the two objects and pulls the lighter towards the heavier.

If you're incapacitated vertically or if navigation through the air is difficult, the Hook Chain will make navigating horizontal space easier. It'll also nab pesky enemies and bring them to you (or you to them, depending on your weight!). Initially I tried doing this with real physics and ratios of each object pulling each other, but it didn't feel very good as a game. So I might change that depending on how feedback goes, but this is how it is for now.
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