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Git're done
Skill Design - Forget mathematical balance, balance the feelings instead
I read a Gamasutra article once that talked about a similar issue. An FPS developer was having trouble getting people to use a particular shotgun in playtesting. He tried to tweak the numbers to make it better, but people still passed it over and said it was too weak.
The solution that worked? Improve the sound effect. It was nothing at all to do with actual game mechanics. People were fooled into thinking the gun was much more powerful once the sound of firing it was enhanced, and they said "Toldja that gun needed to be stronger, it plays much better now." These were professional developers and playtesters too.
The solution that worked? Improve the sound effect. It was nothing at all to do with actual game mechanics. People were fooled into thinking the gun was much more powerful once the sound of firing it was enhanced, and they said "Toldja that gun needed to be stronger, it plays much better now." These were professional developers and playtesters too.
Disposable equipment
Indeed. One of the peculiar things about how Fire Emblem handles it is that a unit can switch its currently equipped weapon without penalty. The only potential downside is that once you've taken action with that weapon, you're stuck with it while the enemy side takes their action, so they could take advantage of the game's rock-paper-scissors weapon priority system, attack from long range while you're armed with a short-range weapon, etc. I'm sure you know all this already, I'm just stating it for general discussion.
In Forgotten Gates, I could probably mimic this by using RM2K3's option to activate a skill when a weapon is "used" from the Item menu in battle. The skill would both switch out the actor's current weapon and act like the standard Fight skill. I unfortunately wouldn't be able to let the player switch weapons and use whatever skill or ability they like, but letting them do a basic attack would at least make weapon switching a bit less costly of a move.
The visual warning of BotW is an interesting approach too. I could theoretically use a battle animation to indicate to the player that a weapon is close to breaking. Still, I think I'd better have a way for them to look at a weapon in the menu and see how many uses it has left, since there are four heroes at a time in this game all using various weapons as opposed to traditional Zelda's one.
In Forgotten Gates, I could probably mimic this by using RM2K3's option to activate a skill when a weapon is "used" from the Item menu in battle. The skill would both switch out the actor's current weapon and act like the standard Fight skill. I unfortunately wouldn't be able to let the player switch weapons and use whatever skill or ability they like, but letting them do a basic attack would at least make weapon switching a bit less costly of a move.
The visual warning of BotW is an interesting approach too. I could theoretically use a battle animation to indicate to the player that a weapon is close to breaking. Still, I think I'd better have a way for them to look at a weapon in the menu and see how many uses it has left, since there are four heroes at a time in this game all using various weapons as opposed to traditional Zelda's one.
Disposable equipment
Brainwave on this. I've come up with a variation on the second of the above methods which would be a bit more workable.
- Have multiple copies of each breakable equipment in the inventory and allow the player to have only one of each copy at a time. In other words, the first time the player finds a particular sword, they'd see one of it in the inventory; the second time, they'd see two singular, separate swords of the same name in the inventory; and so on.
If you're quick on the uptake, you might now be wondering, how then would I know when a piece of equipment should break? Well, I'd have to track that with variables, which shouldn't be terribly difficult. The tricky part would be how the player could know how many uses are remaining. I could leave it up to the player to remember how many times they've already used a particular piece of equipment, which some would argue could make for intriguing gameplay -- "I know this weapon is close to the breaking point, should I Throw it, or risk a couple more whacks first?" But I think it'd probably be more aggravating than fun for most players. So it's DynRPG to the rescue again! As I track how many uses an item has remaining, I should also be able to rename that item with the number of uses left. It would look something like "Flamberge (4)". Since each item would be a separate entity in the database and in the inventory as shown to the player, I'd be able to show the uses remaining individually.
It's not an entirely perfect system still. I'd need to have quite a few copies of each breakable item, say at least 20, and I'd have to track their uses with variables. That won't take nearly as many variables as you might think thanks to my data compression algorithm, but it'll be a little work to set up a system for handling it. Letting the player buy equipment will be tricky too, since in the shop menu provided by RM2K3 they can buy as many of a particular item they want so long as they have the cash for it. At first I was thinking I'd have to have an entirely custom shop system, at least for breakable items, but as I was writing this I thought of an easier solution: have one copy of each breakable item reserved as a "shop" version, let the player buy as many as they like, then immediately after shopping call an event which checks how many items were bought and distributes them as "working" versions of that item. It would also have to alert the player if they bought more than the maximum (another minor quirk of this system) and refund them, which would be a little less convenient than the shop system stopping them from buying them in the first place. Still, I think this might be an acceptable solution.
Character spotlight: Fallon
That actually sounds very much, on a mechanical level, like the Geomancy ability in Final Fantasy 3. It would randomly pick from two or three possible spells based on the current terrain, which was always essentially the same within a given dungeon. Doing that would certainly cut down on the total number of effects, but I think I'd rather go with an individual effect for each terrain (which in this game would translate to six per dungeon) or come up with something entirely different. Thanks for the suggestion though. :)
Devlog 82: I quit!!! ...
6. The book then talks about the Integer types. This is something I didn’t really understand. If integer can go from -2 billion to 2 billion, what’s the point of using different types of integer?
Memory usage. The variable types with bigger range/more precision take up more memory. With the exception of systems that use large amounts of variables (like hundreds or thousands) though, it's generally not something you have to worry about too much in this age of computers with gigabytes of RAM.
9. I’ll admit the floating point thing is sort of confusing to me. I understand that it has the advantage over an integer to take into account the decimals. According to the book you can’t count using floating points. Also, it’s difficult to compare floating points because of the decimals. The computer doesn’t understand that 1.000001 is basically the same as 1.000000 (or 1).
If you're saying, "If I ask the computer whether 1.000001 is equal to 1.000000 it'll say no," then of course it would, they aren't equal. X) 1.000001 is 0.000001 more than 1.000000.
Not to discourage you from learning to program -- it's something practically any designer can benefit from knowing at least the basics of, if only to communicate better with programmers and have an idea what can be done and how difficult it would be -- but it's a huge endeavor. I wouldn't count on the investment paying for itself with time taken off your dedicated programmer's shoulders within this project alone.
Bombercan Post-mortem
Triple Triad Minigame - I am at a loss (Help?)
I don't know just how much TMs might throw off early game balance for you, but the idea of getting a TM that lets you blow through the tough battles more quickly doesn't sound all that bad to me. Think of it as an alternative game path--instead of spending a lot of time grinding their team up a few levels to get over the hump of the current pokemon gym, the skillful player can tackle a strategic card game and be rewarded with a power that lets them blaze on through. It won't affect the late game so much because by that time the pokemon will be naturally learning the more powerful moves, but at least it gets the player up to the late game quicker, where they can get a higher XP rate for their grinding effort and thus spend less time on it overall.
The story of my woes and frustrations in creating this game
So my initial idea was to make a clone of Snake because that was easy to do, right?
Yeah, after doing a few of the tutorial projects in Unity, I decided to try making a Bomberman clone, because that would be fairly simple, right? I could knock it out in a weekend if I was focused and lucky.
HAAAAAAAhahaha...
Open question: mana restoration
author=LightningLord2
The actual Zelda games make you refill magic by collecting pots from defeated enemies or by cutting shrubbery and other things. How about making it something like that?
That's pretty much what I mean by instant-use resource drops. You beat an enemy, they have a chance of dropping a vial that restores a little of your party's mana (or a heart that restores health, or a larger refill if it was a tough enemy, etc.). It's a good point that I could also include events on the map (the shrubs) that work similarly, though. Thanks for the suggestion. :)
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