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Miscellaneous

New Relics

I've finally come around to adding new relics to the project... I've now added two more to the repertoire, making a total of 3 so far.

You remember the old Charge Boots, mentioned in a blog entry from times of yore. (They're basically pegasus boots).

Introducing: THE FLIPPERS! (Real original idea, Narc)


These are the flippers in action. As you can see, the sprite used is simply a modification of the normal, walking sprite... except now it's just a head. So awesome.

Swimming is a lot like walking, except in the water. Hitting waterfalls will send you coursing down their current. You can enter the water by equipping the flippers, and then diving in at an access point (marked by stairs for now).

The flippers weren't too difficult to code. I knew exactly how I wanted to get it done beforehand, so it went relatively quick. A lot of bugs kept coming up, but they seem to be completely functional now.


And also... THE CLIMBING GLOVES!


The climbing gloves allow the player to scale walls! You can move vertically or horizontally across the walls. To do so, simply equip the gloves and use them while facing a wall. You'll then latch on and be able to start scaling! Touching the ground puts you back on the ground, while touching water puts you in the water... which will have you swim if you've got the flippers. If not, you go back to where you started climbing.

These were WAY harder to code in, and for one reason only: Diagonal walls. I got it to a point I wanted it to be at, but man... what a headache that was to get working properly.


More relics and stuff to come: Invisibility Cloak, Clone Device, Teleporter, Tunneler, and more... or maybe not more. I haven't quite decided how many things I want in this game. And I've got to put a cap on it eventually.

Miscellaneous

Menu interface updates!

I got around to updating the interface for the Rune status menu (which is reached by accessing the regular Status menu, and pressing the right arrow key). With the addition of about 30+ spells, it became obviously necessary to be able to view each every single one that you've learned over the course of the game.

I tackled this obstacle thinking it'd be mindless and easy, but it ended up involving 12 sets of 36 conditional branches nestled into each other (do the math: that's 432 conditional branches.. and that's only to display the names of the spells... Phew!). At least it's done now, though. And functional!



In the new menu, the left and right arrows navigate between tabs, each of which house a single Rune that you've collected. The main portion of the menu shows what level the rune is, how many rune points are needed til the next level, and finally how many spells can be accessed through using this rune. Pressing "Shift" will allow you to highlight a rune, and pressing "Shift" again will tell you what the spells does, it's MP cost, and it's general cast time.

The "Passive" portion of the menu is something I intend to change. Still not sure what I'm doing with that, but will most likely be something that will show what this rune does when used outside of combat.


And once again, I've tinkered with the interface. The player portrait is now shown in the top left corner, and the HP/MP are now shown in a numerical fashion instead of with a simple bar meter. As much as I like the bar meter, I feel like it's important to be able to know exactly how much HP and MP the player has, and not just a bar representation.

Anyway, more to come. Stay tuned or whatev.

Miscellaneous

Status effects

I think I pretty much have an idea of exactly what status effects I want in the game.

Status effects are divided into two categories: Magic and Physical. Magic effects persist only during combat, and can only be removed with items. Physical effects persist outside of battle, and can be removed using items and certain spells. Most status effects are magic.

Some of these are pretty self-explanatory. The rest have a little explanation included.

---MAGIC BUFFS---
Haste
Str Up
Int Up
Def Up
Agi Up
Focus (Never Miss Phys Attack)
Quicken (Two actions per turn)
Clarity (Instant cast times)
Blessed (%Reduced Mag dmg taken)
Harden (%Reduced Phys dmg taken)
Lucid (%Increased Mag dmg dealt)
Striker (%Increased Phys dmg dealt)
Barrier (Prevents the next X dmg)

---MAGIC DEBUFFS---
Slow
Silence
Stun
Str Down
Int Down
Def Down
Agi Down
Disarm (Disables the "Fight" command)
Perplex (Disables the "Item" command)
Clouded (%Increased Cast time)
Cursed (%Increased Mag dmg taken)
Expose (%Increased Phys dmg taken)
Burn (Fire Damage over Time)
Frostbite (Frost DoT)
Degen (% Based DoT)

---PHYSICAL DEBUFFS---
Bleed (% Based DoT)
Poison (Phys DoT)
Leak (MP loss over time)
Blind (60% Miss rate on fight)




I've finished making icons for all these effects. Alot of these will be re-used with different colors to signify a buff or debuff, for example, the Shield icon will be Defense Up, and will be colored red to symbolize Defense Down.

Miscellaneous

More Progress

I feel so robbed. For the past week, I've wanted nothing more than to crack down on this game, and I've been doing exactly that. But today I'm going on a week-long stint of playing music along the west coast, so I won't really be able to do much of working on this stuff.

In any case, I've just about got all the spells working. I still have to make enemies react to negative status effects (stuns, slows, stat reductions etc), but that shouldn't take too terribly long.

Once I get those things in working order, I think I'll start working on Combat Items, and then on to other forms of equipment.

And then I can finally start plotting out the dungeons.. phew, it's going to be a long arduous road, but hopefully it works out.

Miscellaneous

Resuming progress, kind of!

Today I finally got myself motivated to do some work on this project. I haven't touched this in quite some time! It took some re-learning and interpreting of code to get the ball rolling again, but things are underway.

Right now I'm at a point where I can't really do much besides plan things out. And more or less all I've been doing. Planning dungeons, equipment, monsters, etc.

In terms of actual physical development, today I added every single spell into the game. Well, none of them actually do anything yet, but you can select them during combat.
Each rune has 3 spells to offer.
Every combination of 2 runes has a "Doublespell"
A few combinations of 3 runes has a "Triple Spell"
So far there are 36 spells to speak of. Like I said, most of them don't actually do anything yet, but I know what I want them to do.

Anyway, just wanted to pop in and say things are coming along. Leave me good words of encouragement. Love you all.

Miscellaneous

Progress has slowed!

I'm in the process of moving from one city to another. Times have been stressful! As such, progress on this game has pretty much halted for the time being. I don't plan on quitting this ever, but just throwing a bone to those following this. Hopefully I'll have much more free time in the coming weeks, but until I get moved and settled in, my life is chaos, and RPGMakin' has been placed on the bottom rung of the priority tree.

Love you all.

Miscellaneous

Story synopsis added

Well, it's more of a prologue. Check the main gamepage navigation to see it. It's written in the first person form, in the eyes of the main character, who is sort of a nameless hero. Check it out!

Miscellaneous

Contrast fixes, introducing Relics.

So, today, I did a bunch of graphical things... I'm not very good with graphics, but I decided to adjust the level of black on the tileset I've been working with to match the character sets. It looks alot better. Also did some sprite editing and such.

And with that, I've begun working on Relics!

Relics are items that do things outside of combat when you hit shift. That's basically it. The first item I've added are the Charge Boots (working title). When you have them equipped, holding down shift will put you in a "charging" state. If you charge up long enough and then release the shift key, you will be sent flying at high speeds across the screen.

Here is both the contrast fix and the charge boots in game:


Here you must charge across a bridge that crumbles when you step upon it. If you just walk regularly, the bridge will break beneath your feet and send you down into the pit, but by dashing, you avoid this hazard easily.

This is a pretty standard item for this kind of game, I think. Works alot like the Zelda LTTP "Pegasus Boots". Even ripped off the icon.

Miscellaneous

Still working...

I managed to squash several bugs that were corrupting my battle system. This felt very good.

This project started as me dicking around with RM2k3. I liked the idea and kept expanding upon it. It has been growing and growing, but because it started off without a real goal or purpose, the foundation of the system itself has very little integrity, and has many bandaids all over it to keep the bugs from showing.

Well now I've begun to consolidate the events and make things alot cleaner. Everything is getting easier to work with. I have a very set standard battle system.

I also managed to finish putting together the first boss in the game! It's the Spider Queen, who will encase herself in a shroud of webs while she regenerates hitpoints, and summons spiders to assist her in battle, spiders which can slow you and deal great amounts of damage. The combat in this game is extremely simplistic right now... I intend to create more things to do in and out of battle. But as it stands, I enjoy it, hopefully someone else will.


Thanks to those following this. This blog is mostly for me. It helps me know that I'm making progress.

Miscellaneous

Progress update

Here I'm going to keep a list of things updated so far since the 'tech demo' was put up.

A few UI changes
-Healthbar/hotkeys now on top-left, instead of bottom-left
-Battle window now stationary near top of screen when in combat (instead of appearing next to the player sprite). Adjusted health and mana bars visually to be more distinct.
-Cursor changed from the crappy looking quill (yeah, it was a quill) to a nicely shaded right-triangle.

Rune changes
-"Rune Slots" were added. Can have up to 3 slots. Can equip a rune to each slot. Using the "Skill" option in combat now prompts you to select an equipped rune, after which you will use the skill associated with that rune.
-Updated the interface to display all 3 runes equipped. Can use any of the 3 runes equipped on the field by pressing the 1, 2, or 3 keys.

-The "Frost" field ability now has a larger radius, and freezes enemies reliably.



UPDATED 3/26/2010