WYRM WARRIORS! THE LEGEND MUST GO ON!

Posts

Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=unity
Please volunteer your characters if this sounds like fun! If I don't get enough volunteers, I'll decide the missing positions in the lineup by myself. Thanks everyone! ^_^


I'll volunteer Jolanta for either position. She's healytank, so IDK if she'd be good for a starting character, but she's def. down with destroying the baddies!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Gourd, that's great.

ARG's map needs some help so don't worry too much about not matching it.

Unity, Rackward probably would make a good early recruit. I think having to actually recruit him makes sense though, since he's not exactly hero material.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=Arandomgamemaker
How about my character, Anna? She's a blue mage type character so I think it's best to introduce her fairily early. Maybe in the first dungeon I guess?


Good idea. Done. Anna will be found in the early area of the first dungeon. ^_^

author=Marrend
The way I imagine Roise, she's so overconfident of her abilities, that she'd go after the Wyrm Wizard as soon as inhumanly possible. Which might make her an interesting starting character when she founds out that his lair is LOCKED BY MAGIC and finds out that there's these other people she needs to find in order to break the spell.

I dunno. Maybe there's a better choice for the "starting fighter" slot.


She seems as good as any to me. But we'll see if anyone else has a fighter they want to volunteer.

author=Gourd_Clae
I tried a map. I'm not sure if it matches with ARG's though.


Nice! I like it, Gourd Clae! Is it for any specific location? We can certainly use it, either way.

author=Sooz
I'll volunteer Jolanta for either position. She's healytank, so IDK if she'd be good for a starting character, but she's def. down with destroying the baddies!


Awesome. Given the variety and uniqueness of characters, I'm not sure there are any that are completely suited for "starting party." It's more of having a nice set of characters to choose from in the start. We'll use Jolanta in either the starting or first recruitment list.

author=LockeZ
Unity, Rackward probably would make a good early recruit. I think having to actually recruit him makes sense though, since he's not exactly hero material.


I agree. We'll have him as one of the first ones you can recruit. Thanks! :D

On the subject of maps, I've been working on the government district of Cherusta. It's still lacking details, but I wanted to show it to get opinions on its size, if it's too big. Cherusta's a city, the largest town-type, but I don't want to go overboard either. This part has the government building, the Uiraran Barracks, the Hospital and the connected Medical School. Any comments and criticisms appreciated!

LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I like the way you used the paths and buildings to create a complex shape for the city, it makes it easy to navigate and gives it some structure while also making it look bigger. That crazy-ass building in the lower left could probably stand to be converted into three adjacent buildings though.

With that much of the city devoted to roads, you'll need to make stuff be happening on the roads. Lots of people pathing back and forth between buildings at the very least. And probably also a fair number of NPCs just standing on the side of the street doing their thing.
That map was for the Garanaath shrine you made. Also I think your map is pretty good, Unity. I especially like the foilage~ Maybe make it a little smaller? Or make good use of all that road. I'd have to see it with people and when it's all done.

E: Oh, good advice, LockeZ~
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=Gourd_Clae
That map was for the Garanaath shrine you made.


I thought so! ^_^ That'll work perfectly.

author=LockeZ
I like the way you used the paths and buildings to create a complex shape for the city, it makes it easy to navigate and gives it some structure while also making it look bigger. That crazy-ass building in the lower left could probably stand to be converted into three adjacent buildings though.


Thanks! And that's a good idea for the buildings; a medical school doesn't necessarily need to all be in the same building.

author=LockeZ
With that much of the city devoted to roads, you'll need to make stuff be happening on the roads. Lots of people pathing back and forth between buildings at the very least. And probably also a fair number of NPCs just standing on the side of the street doing their thing.


Good advice. I'll make that happen!


author=Gourd_Clae
Also I think your map is pretty good, Unity. I especially like the foilage~ Maybe make it a little smaller? Or make good use of all that road. I'd have to see it with people and when it's all done.


Thanks! I had to redo the foliage a couple of times to get it to look right. I think your advice about making it smaller is spot on. I'll try redoing it and making things a little more compact.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I'm still working on this, though it's going slowly as I'm also doing other projects. But I've got a new title screen! Huge thanks to Sooz who made the great dragon art!

Seiromem
I would have more makerscore If I did things.
6375
Nice work, and good work by Sooz with that dragon.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
The Wyrm Warriors gamepage is live and available! I'm still working on the Character page for it, but should have that done soon!

Work on the game is going slowly but surely, as I'm dividing time between WW and my other game. The next goal is to have a working demo.

EDIT: And now we have the Character page!
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
We believe in you, unity. You are the arbiter of good things. I have faith that if you are able to make a great game like Luxaren Allure, you can pull off an ambitious project like Wyrm Warriors with aplomb.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Thanks very much! ^_^ Here's hoping I can live up to the faith you've placed in me! And I'm counting on everyone's feedback and ideas to really bring the game to greatness!

I'd like to give a little progress report of what I've gotten done in the past few days:

The Battle System is coming along great in almost every area. I've been able to create the system that LockeZ put forth on page one of this thread, with the level cap that raises every dungeon working perfectly. Thanks to Travio and Marrend, the menu will display the current Level Cap (which is explained in-game as a curse that the Wyrm Wizard has placed on the land; beating bosses lessens his curse and thus raises the level cap) as well as your Spirit Energy (name subject to change) which equals the amount of Wyrm Warriors you've recruited and allows you to break the seals that the Wizard has placed on dungeons.

The snag I've hit is using both the "each participating character gets one level up with each battle" with other systems I have in place, mostly Yanfly's battle results, which I don't want to get rid of, as it puts character personalities on display. But as I think about it, there may be merit in sticking with EXP as long as the result of "using the same characters should leave you with them all at the level cap" at the end of the battle, such as I can vary the amount of battles that each dungeon has. And the first battle in any dungeon will always give enough EXP that all characters at the previous cap will gain a level. I think this still follows the spirit of LockeZ's system with a little more wiggle room (and a lot less headache for me :P )

Mapping's going smoothly as well. Castle Aremen is almost done, and the part of the overworld where the game starts is finished. Also, none of our locations really fit the start of the game, so I'm making a new, small burg just south of Castle Aremen to serve as the starting town. Don't worry, the rest of the locations will be in the game, but I needed a small town that could be isolated in the starting area.

Also, I took a window skin that Liberty made in the resources section and edited it a little to make this:

I personally find it to be a lot more pleasing than the default windowskin, but I'm open to opinions.

EDIT: I've also made the items, base weapons, basic magic for every element, animation for said magic, and the scoring system for item usage. Basically, you're given a set number of each item, and can gain medals at the end of each dungeon that can be traded for goodies based on the items you have remaining.

I can't wait to get this project to the demo phase! Thanks for everyone's help ^_^
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
Frick, this looks awesome.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
We could use some help if you want to join in! Especially with mapping. But also dungeon design, I think. Please join in!

author=unity
But as I think about it, there may be merit in sticking with EXP as long as the result of "using the same characters should leave you with them all at the level cap" at the end of the battle, such as I can vary the amount of battles that each dungeon has. And the first battle in any dungeon will always give enough EXP that all characters at the previous cap will gain a level. I think this still follows the spirit of LockeZ's system with a little more wiggle room (and a lot less headache for me :P )
Yeah, this makes sense. Same basic end result. And it'll let you make a longer early-game dungeon if you want to, before the player has very many characters. The length of the first couple dungeons would have to be very short if you were not using XP at all.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Excellent. We'll go with that, then.

I've gotten the game's introductory scene done. I thought I'd throw some questions out for discussion while I finish putting together the first town, dungeon, and outlying regions.

1) In a game where you'll end up with a 30 character party, what's a good way to handle equipment? The normal way? Or will players get annoyed buying stuff for that many characters?

Would scaling equipables so they don't affect performance as much help? Or would players not bother upgrading? Since items will be provided, will putting a lot of chests with optional gear help?

2) Recruitment methods for new party members. Several of the recruitable characters in the first area are super-easy to get; since they already want to stop the Wyrm Wizard, they just need to be talked-to to recruit them. I don't intend for all characters to be like this, of course, for both character motivation-reasons as well as gameplay reasons.

Do you all have any neat ideas for how you'd like to see recruitment done? Fetch quests? Finding an item that the character needs? Dialog trees? Or would that be tedious? Any ideas would be great!

3) We have a limited amount of monsters in the world. When you kill the boss of each area, your max level increases, and everyone's brought up in level to match the previous max level. With that said, when you beat the boss, do all the monsters go with him/her/it? That would keep people from using the leftover monsters from previous areas to grind to get to the next level-cap prematurely.
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
1) In a game where you'll end up with a 30 character party, what's a good way to handle equipment? The normal way? Or will players get annoyed buying stuff for that many characters?

I don't know that much about how you're organizing the actors in the party, but I think it would be a cool idea to have shared equipment that you don't have to manually equip. If there's a way to automatically optimize the equipment each character wears, that would be fantastic. e.g. You buy 5 daggers, and they automatically equip with those who can wield daggers. That way, gaining equipment via chests or buying it would provide some bonus, but without having to micromanage every single piece of equipment.

If auto-optimization is out of the equation, you can always group party members into classes, and then provide equipment for each group of classes. e.g. You have a group of heroes called "Warriors", and you can equip "Iron Swords" into the Weapons Slot. I'm not sure if either idea is viable, but it certainly looks cool in my head.

2) ... Do you all have any neat ideas for how you'd like to see recruitment done? Fetch quests? Finding an item that the character needs? Dialog trees? Or would that be tedious? Any ideas would be great!

Having 30 fetch quests for 30 characters might be a bit tedious. I think perhaps you can group characters into locations, and then do a single fetch quest to unlock, say, 4-5 characters. Then you can switch whatever party members you want in a pub setting, or something.

3) ... when you beat the boss, do all the monsters go with him/her/it? That would keep people from using the leftover monsters from previous areas to grind to get to the next level-cap prematurely.

I think that's a good idea. I just hope that there won't be a situation where the player can't overcome the next dungeon or grind for it. Did we discuss a way to allow a place for grinding to happen if the player ever gets stuck progression-wise (from killing too few monsters before the boss)?
2) Any ideas is fine. Having mass recruits from a single sidequest is probably a bad idea, since you don't feel like you know the character somewhat before they're in the party. Unless, perhaps, they have a conflict between each other that needs to be resolved.

For Example:
Merchantie the merchant: That mean thief stole my broach! Find him and I'll give you funds for your adventure!
Thiefy the thief: That old money grubber bankrupted me! Help me steal his gold and I'll help you out!

3)I say you keep the enemies in the area, but remove the experience they give. This will let people farm for item drops and gold if they want to, which is important if a character is an Alchemist who needs ingredients or a Blue Mage who hasn't learned a certain ability yet.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
If you have more of a traditional equipment system you actually get an interesting new option - which is to have any equipment given out by a sidequest be extremely good and last way longer than it would in other games. You might get a weapon 25% of the way through the game that is surpassed only by the game's ultimate weapons - and then you might get another one like that in another sidequest, and then get two epic shields in a third sidequest, and a masterwork piece of armor in a fourth sidequest. All before the game is even half finished. And your party still won't be overpowered, because that only covers less than 10% of your equipment slots!

Not saying this is the only way to do it, just saying that it wouldn't necessarily be annoying, it could actually be pretty neat.

Looking at games like Suikoden and SaGa Frontier as popular examples, people seem to like it when characters are gained in a wide variety of ways, instead of using a standard formula or lumping them together. Some require an entire sidequest, but that sidequest also gets you a great piece of armor and a ton of gold, and maybe there's a second optional character hidden halfway through the sidequest (a miniboss who joins you if defeated). Often one is hired with gold. Many will surely join automatically during the story. Some might require learning information and clues around the world before they can be talked into joining you. Having to already have one specific character to recruit another specific character is often a good way to add some characterization. Etc. I think having some more easy ones is fine as long as they require other things to have happened in the game first - either waiting until you have other certain characters, or waiting until you've progressed the plot beyond a certain point.

Agree with Arandomgamemaker on point 3. Once the EXP cap for a dungeon has been hit by a certain character, that character can't gain any more EXP there, no matter whether you hit it from the boss or from the normal battles. Actually you should probably consider tracking the EXP cap for each zone separately - what if the player leaves a dungeon before finishing it and goes to another one? They should have a separate 5 levels they can gain there, unrelated to the levels gained in the dungeon they abandoned.

Possible situation:
1) With everyone at level 20, party enters Dungeon A.
2) Five of the characters gain three levels each, advancing to level 23.
3) The player leaves and enters Dungeon B.
4) One of the level 23 characters gains five levels, advancing to level 28, and four other level 20 charactersalso gain five levels, advancing to level 25.
5) At this point, none of the level 25 characters can gain any more levels in Dungeon B. nor can the level 28 character. They have each gained their five levels in Dungeon B.
6) However, if the player heads back to Dungeon A, the level 23 characters and the level 28 character can still each gain two more levels there.
7) The player heads back to Dungeon A and defeats the boss. This advances the level 25 and 28 characters to level 30, and everyone else to level 25. Everyone now has their five levels from dungeon A.
8) The player heads back to Dungeon B and defeats the boss. Everyone advances to level 30.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=CashmereCat
I don't know that much about how you're organizing the actors in the party, but I think it would be a cool idea to have shared equipment that you don't have to manually equip. If there's a way to automatically optimize the equipment each character wears, that would be fantastic. e.g. You buy 5 daggers, and they automatically equip with those who can wield daggers. That way, gaining equipment via chests or buying it would provide some bonus, but without having to micromanage every single piece of equipment.

If auto-optimization is out of the equation, you can always group party members into classes, and then provide equipment for each group of classes. e.g. You have a group of heroes called "Warriors", and you can equip "Iron Swords" into the Weapons Slot. I'm not sure if either idea is viable, but it certainly looks cool in my head.

These are both awesome ideas, but I have two potential problems with them. 1) Most characters can equip multiple weapon types and armor types. A straight by-the-numbers optimization would exclude weapon features, say, for example, swords are pretty standard but axes hit slightly less often but crit slightly more often. If we're going by pure numbers-optimization, there'd be no choices, as every piece of equipment would need to be strictly better or worse than every other piece of equipment, with no grey areas.

2)Some people actually like the fiddly details of equipping everyone. While I may not be able to satisfy everyone's playing style, I at least want to try to have a system that's fun for everyone.

Even having said that, I still think these ideas have merit and are a creative way to solve the problem, so I'm not dismissing them either. Though I'm honestly not good enough at code yet to figure out how to, say, optimize everyone's equipment at once (I'm sure it's possible and not that complicated, maybe! ^^;;)

author=CashmereCat
Having 30 fetch quests for 30 characters might be a bit tedious. I think perhaps you can group characters into locations, and then do a single fetch quest to unlock, say, 4-5 characters. Then you can switch whatever party members you want in a pub setting, or something.

Craze already has a system built-in where you can switch characters at any time, even in the middle of battle! And while I'm not against the idea of recruiting some of the party memebers in groups, games of this style like Suikoden and Chrono Cross tended to feel more fun when you had to go out of your way to recruit individuals, even if it just meant finding them. But like you said, 30 sidequests is pushing it...

author=CashmereCat
I think that's a good idea. I just hope that there won't be a situation where the player can't overcome the next dungeon or grind for it. Did we discuss a way to allow a place for grinding to happen if the player ever gets stuck progression-wise (from killing too few monsters before the boss)?

This is a major concern of mine, because when you remove grinding from the equation of the RPG, you, as a developer, have even more responsibility to balance things as the player can't just get a few extra levels under their belt to make the game more manageable for them. However, I've seen it done and done well, so I think that it should work with a lot of effort to make sure everything's fair.

I'm using the whole "save anywhere" mechanic, and the boss should always be clearly labeled, so if the party is having trouble with the boss, they will have free access to seek out the rest of the monsters to get the extra EXP.

author=Arandomgamemaker
2) Any ideas is fine. Having mass recruits from a single sidequest is probably a bad idea, since you don't feel like you know the character somewhat before they're in the party. Unless, perhaps, they have a conflict between each other that needs to be resolved.

Good point. I want the first impression you get of each character to be somewhat strong so you feel like you know them a little.

author=Arandomgamemaker
3)I say you keep the enemies in the area, but remove the experience they give. This will let people farm for item drops and gold if they want to, which is important if a character is an Alchemist who needs ingredients or a Blue Mage who hasn't learned a certain ability yet.

This is a good idea, but may clash with some elements I'm working with. I'm going to discuss a compromise when I address LockeZ's comments below; let me know if that seems like a good idea.

author=LockeZ
If you have more of a traditional equipment system you actually get an interesting new option - which is to have any equipment given out by a sidequest be extremely good and last way longer than it would in other games. You might get a weapon 25% of the way through the game that is surpassed only by the game's ultimate weapons - and then you might get another one like that in another sidequest, and then get two epic shields in a third sidequest, and a masterwork piece of armor in a fourth sidequest. All before the game is even half finished. And your party still won't be overpowered, because that only covers less than 10% of your equipment slots!

This opens up a lot of fun potential! I likey. It still goes back to you having to manage the equipment for thirty different characters, which still seems a bit tedious, but being really generous with loot to spread across the party seems like a great idea.

author=LockeZ
Agree with Arandomgamemaker on point 3. Once the EXP cap for a dungeon has been hit by a certain character, that character can't gain any more EXP there, no matter whether you hit it from the boss or from the normal battles. Actually you should probably consider tracking the EXP cap for each zone separately - what if the player leaves a dungeon before finishing it and goes to another one? They should have a separate 5 levels they can gain there, unrelated to the levels gained in the dungeon they abandoned.

This throws a bit of a wrench into how I'd set up the system. Rather than individually tracking how many levels each character gets in every dungeon, I have merely set up a hard and fast level cap (displayed right in the menu) that clearly shows how high a level any character can get until they remove the next curse (by killing the next boss), at which point everyone is raised to max level and then the max level is increased by 5.

I now see that I failed to think this all the way through, as it assumes a completely linear game, which isn't exactly what we've been shooting for. And while I'm sure making a system that individually tracks where each character gained each level and prevents them from gaining over five levels in each dungeon this way is totally possible, it's beyond the scope of my abilities, I'm sad to say.

Unless someone knows how to do this and can teach me, I think a compromise would be a better solution. How does this sound? All main-plot dungeons must be done in linear fashion, they use the level cap, and you cannot access the next plot-dungeon until you've beaten the previous one. Once you beat the boss of a plot-dungeon, all the monsters in that dungeon go bye bye.

But wait! The optional dungeons operate differently. Monsters in them are easy to avoid, and give no EXP. They instead give increased gold and often drop great loot and rare items. They also use the same kind of "blue magic" (aka enemy skills that our Nature Mage can learn) as their counterparts in plot dungeons.

This is a bit of an awkward solution, but if the player knows that this is how the game operates, then I think it will work. You're already going to have to use your "spirit power" to unlock the plot-related dungeons, which will further separate them from the optional ones. And if you're having trouble with the plot-dungeon, you can explore optional dungeons for the better loot and such that will make the plot-dungeon easier for you. How does that sound?
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I haven't been following this thread so you'll have to forgive me if this was answered. However, my question is, how do you determine what levels new characters would start at? I'm guessing the initial party can probably start at 1, but what about after that? Getting characters is probably a non-linear thing, so my thought is to set them either by determining some kind of average party level, or get the highest level from among the available party members.

*Edit: I know that I've set a character's EXP value every time he/she joins the active party in an attempt to reduce the amount of grinding needed, but I did it by using the main protagonist's EXP value. Which isn't going to work for this game.