Wow it's almost been 2 weeks since my last entry. I was only a hundred or two away from hitting 10,000 views so I was going to wait and say "yay!" but then the big one-oh came and went while I worked on game. I know it's not really a huge achievement and that a lot of games hit that pretty fast but at the time I thought it was neat.

Anyway, I was hoping to do something special for the 10k but unfortunately I don't have anything monumental to give. I thought about posting my old demo at this site since I never shared it here but it sucks and is really not representative of the current version. Even when I released it, the old demo was not actual gameplay from Dragon Warrior Tactics as it existed at the time but rather a mini adventure that took place in a different time.

I decided not to set the game as a download on the game profile. I don't want people rating the game based on it and like I said it is really nothing like the current game. People would probably give a lot of suggestions about the game that just aren't applicable anymore (like fixing the font, difficulty, etc.)

With that in mind, if you want to play the old "demo", feel free to check it out here (without the RTP) or here (with the RTP) if you haven't already punched yourself in the crotch today.

It is frustrating and ghetto but I had fun playing it when I made it. + If you finish it, you get:



Enjoy (or don't)!

Last post I made a list of things that I wanted to accomplish in the near future. I had an idea for a custom event-based system and it took 2 days just to conceptualize how it could be done. I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to do it so I put down a foundation and moved on.

I have been working pretty hard on the storyline. It is already written on a text-only plot point storyboard or flow chart or w/e you want to call it. However, it is taking a lot of time converting it to dialogue and plugging it into the game.

One of the problems I ran into with the text/dialogue is that my font does not fit the same way as the default font. Consequently, I can't use the little arrow to figure out if it is going to fit, fill the box, or spill over resulting in cut off dialogue until I test play it. So, what happens is I write some dialogue and then run through and test it all, write some dialogue and then run through and test it all, lather rinse repeat, lather rinse repeat.

Dragon Warrior Tactics dialogue is also complex. Since it varies depending upon your actions, how far you are into an arc, etc. there are multiple sets of dialogue for each situation that needs to be written/tested.

That alone would be time-consuming. However, there's more. Since I didn't do everything in one sitting, some npc's and cut scenes had their name or another identifying word at the start of their message while others did not. As a result, some npc's would sound like this:

"Guard: This area is off-limits."

while others would say things like:

"Can I help you?"

A small detail for sure but one that bothered me for its inconsistency. In the end, I decided to remove the identifier/name for normal 1-way interactions like those you get when you walk up to an npc and talk while leaving in the identifiers/names for dialogue that is a back and forth between 2 or more people so that you know which person is saying what.

Another thing I realized is that the characters start out using Dragon Warrior I type dialogue "Hast thou" and then become "Have you" type dialogue. I know I'm going to have to fix it, I just can't bring myself to tackle this right now.

After that, I decided to work on the facets of the battle encounters. This seems to be a pretty popular topic at the forums so I'll just give a short blurb thesis of confusion and indecision of where I am right now. This is the current battle system:

As I previously mentioned, when you touch certain squares, there are story/side-quest battles. You should know that the battle is there (I haven't added a mark yet but I may do so in the future). Once you fight that battle, the square becomes a "random battle" square. When you step on the square a coin is flipped and you have a 50/50 chance of encountering an enemy. This is all old news. However, there's more ;)

The system I'm currently using is a 100% run success (just x out of the battle setup). But, there's a penalty! This is the new part. If you "run" or cancel a random battle you are penalized. Right now I am leaning towards a % of gold loss if you run or losing an amount of gold that is equivalent to the amount you would have received if you won the battle.

Currently your health point is regenerated 100% at the start of every battle. I didn't realize Tomoaky's SRPG did that. This is particularly confusing considering that the sample encounters that come with the script have the line "recover all: party" in the event that calls them. If parties regenerate automatically, then why does it include this? I removed the line but it still regenerated the characters. I suspected that it is somewhere in the script's settings but I haven't found anything in it yet so I will probably ask around.

However, I don't really mind the regeneration. If I remember correctly, Final Fantasy Tactics used a 100% regeneration between battles. I like games that test your endurance. It is fun to play a game with hp loss that carries over from battle to battle, watching your limited stock of herbs dwindle, and wondering if you are going to make it to the target or back out again. I love the feeling of victory when you make it to town praying you don't encounter another enemy with your 2 hp and no healing supplies/mp remaining. But I'm adapting.

One of the ways I've adapted is that if one your party members dies in battle they're dead forever. That's right lol. The wizard you just leveled up 20 levels who fell during battle: gone. If your main character dies, you get teleported to your last save spot where you get resurrected at the cost of 1/2 your gold.

I'm probably going to add banks so if you deposit all of your gold before you go out adventuring, you can limit your losses.

I could also do away with the option/ability to run which would also remove the ability to choose which party members fight but would remove the penalty. To balance things I could remove the massive penalty on a dying party member. But I think I like the way I have it. You have a choice to fight or not. If you chicken out, you lose a little coin. But if you fight you better make sure you can win because the stakes are high.

Another way I could soften things up for the player is by removing the member from the party but allowing you to pay a hefty fee to re-hire him with the same stats.

To summarize:

1. You can see story/side-quest battles coming and choose yes/no to fight. However, a "yes" may be required to progress.

2. Once a battle has been fought on that square, it becomes a random battle spot with a 50/50 chance of encountering an enemy.

3. If you run/cancel the battle, you drop gold.

4. If you fight and win the battle but lose a party member in the process, the party member will be gone.

5. If you fight and lose your main character, you keep your experience but lose half your gold.

The one thing that I'm struggling with is the decision of how to handle battles in dungeons. I don't think I can do the random encounters the default way. Battles are started by events with lines of script in them so if I add some random enemies in caves, I will have to put visible or invisible characters that wander on the dungeon map and get triggered by touch/talk. The thread and articles have some interesting stuff (like proximity encounters instead of touch).

I could also put mandatory stationary battle event triggers at strategic locations like at the entrance, mid-point, at chests, or at the end of the dungeon but it is kind of boring to have the player walk through a cave without filling it with enemies.

Ideally I would have a single battle or series of battles that trigger one after another when you touch the cave entrance. However, I already created the damn dungeon maps so I'd like to use them.

I just don't know.

It's been about a week so I thought I'd write a little update on what is happening with Dragon Warrior Tactics. Since the last time, I've fixed the battle formula. Now the game uses the simple attack minus defense equals damage battle formula.

One of the problems (minor) that I notice with this system is that once the enemy gets outleveled, you start to take zero damage 100% of the time (because your defense is higher than their attack). To counter this, I'll probably give each enemy an unblockable skill attack that does a set amount of damage.

I've also been experimenting with my "random" battles. Basically this is how it works right now: There are spots on the map that have story or sidequest (proposition) battles. Once you have cleared those spots, they become a spot where random battles can occur (much like Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre).

As of right now even the random battles are "optional". The way that it works is that you touch the battle-zone for example by crossing a bridge, and a virtual coin is flipped. You have a 50% chance of that crossing causing a random battle. However, before the random battle begins, you are presented with a window to choose which party members you want to fight. If you press "x", you run with a 100% guaranteed success (actually the encounter is just cancelled but it can be conceptualized as running.)

Another thing that I added was that I set the number of enemies to equal the number of members you have in your party (not necessarily the number you are deploying).

What this means is that if you have 1 party member, your hero, random battles will only ever include 1 enemy. However, if you have 2, 3, or 4 party members, then you will be attacked by 2, 3, or 4 enemies respectively. Now, if you have 4 people in your party and only deploy 1 of them to the battle, you will still have 4 enemies vs your 1.

One of the things that I was considering doing was making it (the # of enemies you face) entirely random, regardless of the number of people in your party that are available to deploy. Any thoughts?

Let's see, what else is going on with the game? Well, part of the storyline requires that the player sail from Hamlin in the Southern continent of Torland to either Northern Torland or to the Free Cities, so, I had to create a port city that did not exist in the original series. It is a pretty small city (probably more like a village) and will function almost solely for the purpose of containing the Lord of Hamlin's ship. I think I did a really nice job of tying it into the original series though.

Otherwise, most of my gamemaking time has been spent creating dialogue, townspeople, etc. Anyway, thanks for watching. Stay tuned!

Today I realized that it's been a while since I posted an entry so I thought I better get writing. The reason why I haven't posted much this week is because I haven't made much progress this week. Well, that's not true. I have done a lot of work and have accomplished a lot but most of it has been catching up to where I thought I was a week ago.

One of the things that I thought was finished was my transition to the SRPG2 battle system. Unfortunately, there was a lot of things that needed fixed that wasn't obvious at first. So this week I focused on finalizing the transition that I thought was complete last week.

Another thing that I did was create a new sheet of icons for use with the new battle system and for the player's inventory. The images for the inventory do not match the game's 8-bit graphics so I'm not even sure if I am going to use them but at least I have them now if I do decide to use them.

I regret not writing about a general rpg making topic this week in place of a progress blog but I guess I'll save that for another day. If anyone has any suggested topics, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I'm also taking questions about DWT. If anyone has any questions about DWT, let me know and I might turn it into a blog entry too.

Stay tuned Space_Gamemakers!

It's been a few days so I thought I'd just give a quick update on what is happening with Dragon Warrior Tactics. For a long time I wrestled with bugs in my game. Most all of the problems are related to battles. I'm not blaming Gubid's Tactical Battle System. I still love it. Maybe I am not smart enough to figure out what is causing the problems but it seems like every time one happens, I start moving backwards to an older save file to a time when the problem didn't exist. Needless to say this sets me back a lot. Furthermore, the crashes and errors simply reappear.

So, tonight I decided to revisit Tomoaky's SRPG battle system. It's a tactical battle system. It wasn't in English so I toyed around with the untranslated version for a little while before looking around to see what I could find. I'm happy to say that I did find a translated version. I have looked through it and I am feeling optimistic about using it for Dragon Warrior Tactics.

The next step is going to be to experiment with it and see if I am capable of using it for DWT. I am pretty bad at setting time-frames for this stuff; I tend to set target dates sooner than actually accomplished but I am hoping to familiarize myself with the system more tomorrow. If all goes well, I hope to have Tomoaky's SRPG battle system full implemented over the weekend.

If it doesn't work, then I guess I will spend the weekend taking an ancient DWT project file and try to bring it up to where I thought I was this morning.

Either way, I remain undeterred. I have come too far and put in too much work. This game will be made and it will be made right come hell or high water.

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