NANA707'S PROFILE

Hello everyone! I'll reply to every post in order~
For anyone who wants to playtest the game as it is right now, please let me know and I'll send you a link!

author=Xbuster

The game is Virgo vs The Zodiac!
You can find stuff about it here: http://virgovsthezodiac.tumblr.com/

I thought of an on-demand difficulty option, accessible at any time by the menu. I don't know exactly how to do this without too much trouble other than giving the MC (there's only one playable character anyway) a passive state buff too all stats so they can win any battles by spamming attack on the first area, except for bosses.

Lots of players kept saying they died tons of times and when I asked they just sometimes didn't even equip a single new item. The first piece of equipment the player gets has an autorun event with her companion telling her that equipment adds abilities and stuff, I don't even know how to get into these people's heads anymore.

author=Jakoo56

That's exactly what I was doing!
For the whole game I don't want to add 'good' or 'bad' equipment, just different pieces that can be upgraded so players can make their own builds freely. As for flavor, so far there's a Ribbon that changes the player's sprite color and weapons with completely new animations.

author=unity

That's the hard part. No matter what I do, I can't unlearn the game to get into someone new's eyes. For a first-area demo I can at least calculate what possibilities they could do with X abilities/items in a linear path, but the system I'm creating kind of runs out of control as soon as the player has a tiny bit of freedom.
For example, there are 3 main stats that function as both attack/defense for the 3 main elements; an "Ambition" attack calculates it's damage comparing the user and the foe's Ambition, so the possibilities to ruin everything are far more complicated than the regular atk/def/mat/mdf. To make things worse I even added stat points being given through dialogue and interaction/choices.

author=Dyhalto

It's the kind of phylosophy I've been going. I think, however, the people interested in the game so far tend to prefer a more steamlined story-focused game with simple mechanics that they can quickly get to the next story section without much hassle. The game being actually having a lot of
dialogue, interaction and interconnected story-battling sections doesn't help, I guess.

author=Red_Nova

Oh, no, there are no instakills at full health! While you can't change equipment during battle, the first area doesn't require special items for special situations. All skills are being handled as 'physical attack' and the guard abilities always reduce physical damage directly.
A tutorial battle is perhaps the best way, though. I didn't want it to change the pace of the game in the beginning since the MC already knows her way in combat and the first enemy is a sentinent hostile...
Whenever I see tutorial battles the game's MC is a novice and someone else is teaching them in a harmless situation, it might become too immersion breaking otherwise.

author=Sooz

Lol, the easiest solution so far!

author=Liberty

Regarding information availability, players can access some tutorial images I've made through the menu or a shortcut (which is told them right on the first dialogue). I try to keep item/skill descriptions as informative as possible, HOWEVER, there's something I could never get the game to do for me.
I wanted the commands themselves (attack/guard) to show a tooltip in battle the same way a skill would. Since attacks and guards are different depending on weapon/shield, checking exactly what you have in battle isn't possible.

I made it so that through the skill menu the player can access their 'actions' skills, which aren't available in battle but are exactly their attack, guard and counter, with descriptions and stuff.
Other than that, I present tutorials constantly (1 or 2 per map. average map is around 30~40 long/wide) with short and straight to the point info on everything relevant for them to know by that point, or so I think.
I'm using a plugin for restarting battles as soon as you lose, with no penalty, btw. Perhaps adding a buff to the player that lasts for a single fight that increases every stat after X losses that gets reset on a win?
You can save the game anywhere and there's a character (the Save Dinosaur) that's placed around the world telling you to save and giving you healing items whenever a difficult battle is nearby.

And regarding my troubles with the game, whenever I play, I barely use healing items or die. It's totally a 'paying attention' issue if I do, or intentional handicaps for testing.

author=Kylaila

While I love SMT and it definitely influences me, doesn't a completely different system (no foe-recruiting, no elemental focus, no press turn) would turn people off completely? I'm not sure where to look at. About information, I don't say percentages specifically or damage numbers precisely (mainly because the interface plugins I use only allow for a single line of description on the menu, BUT IT LOOKS SO PRETTY). I may want to change some stuff to acomodate that, specifically how much damage is absorbed by the shield, though. And yes, only equipment grants spells!
Each piece tells you what it gives but I don't have space to explain the spells in the item description, which is terrible for buying items, though. Don't know how to fix that.

People who playtested it were some fans on tumblr who were interested in the game's premise/story/characters/graphics, the systems were explained in some posts there but nothing was actually saying the game was going to be terribly hard, just that battles required more thought.

author=Lockez

This would be a good idea if the Shield wasn't always displayed on her portrait/battle sprite. The save point idea is a great consideration though! That could remind players constantly. I'll possibly change an early enemy to fit this boss' role you say, coupled with a shield of his own, loved the immune to damage but not counters!

It's named 'Shield' through the command, as in 'use your shield' kind of thing since there should be some much later shields that add abilities other than guards such as a stunning bash. Not sure if this also carries a bad feeling to the stuff, though...

author=EDPVincent

Well, players do begin the game fighting a couple foes that can be beaten by spamming attack (which leaves the player with very low health, though, but they 100% drop a healing item anyway)
As for enemies, I perhaps added a foe which breaks your guard when you try to do so, preventing a counter a lot earlier than I should. By using info gathered in this thread I'll very possibly remake him so to fit a tutorial boss' purpose.

author=Lockez

I agree wholeheartedly. Before reading your post I didn't even know NPCs can be reset! I always only killed right away if I accidentaly hit them or something. Even the stats are a burden of knowledge. Adaptability on DaS2 anyone?

author=Liberty

This was something that sometimes pissed me off some games. Especially turn-based ones which only give you an attack option for the first few battles. I felt it wouldn't be difficult to figure out what's been given to the player right off the bat, especially since I grew up with Pokemon and you always start with a debuff skill in addition to the attack and soon learn some new skill.

I try not to give players new abilities and equipment until some maps are travelled through, but perhaps I didn't add enough practice enemies?

There's no random encounters and once beaten, enemies stay dead forever. I may want to change that to acomodate this kind of 'getting used to' for different kinds of people with different backgrounds though.

And no! No OHKO kind of thing, unless perhaps players avoid equipping new stuff and purposely avoid battles to rush to the boss, but even then, by drinking the only available healing items, they'd buff their stats enough to survive the most damaging hits while naked.

I loved the stun idea! While it doesn't actually kill the player, stuning is just annyoing and they'd want to avoid that. Any tips on how I could make these kind of skills? I know how it could be done to stun only if you're not guarding but how to retaliate that back to the foe?

author=Red_Nova

I most definitely agree! And considering DaS2, I've made every tutorial info thing on Horoscope Pillars, which are bright red and always placed somewhere it seems important, but they're never obligatory to interact with. In the very first dialogue, the player companion tells her to read
them and there's one a few steps away. Considering the whole area is greyed out and these are the only bits of colour here and there, I don't feel they'd be easily missable.

author=Kylaila

I tried to make some of my systems based on that, as well. I remember reading a post about the Grim Dawn devs saying they changed the main stats so that the player wouldn't automatically assume what they did and went to read about them, so their functionality could vary from the norm.

Whenever I get to play a new game with differently called stats/elements I get totally more hooked into it and once the game's system hooks me, my incentive to keep playing despite possible flaws is drastically minimized.

author=Liberty

One issue with trying new things is perhaps how hard-hitting the foes could get? I mean, I wouldn't want to experiment in battles that could kill me, but in the same sense I don't want to add easily killed filler enemies exclusively to serve that purpose...

author=Irog

After reading through the replies, that's kind of what I'm about to do. Set up an obligatory foe that will do that somehow.
The difficult part of 'This is too easy' is knowing when to stop. I think that developing games in a team, with specialized people to do their jobs and often testing the game themselves is the only thing I miss when working on the game alone. The freedom that comes from not having a team disagree with your ideas definitely harms the testing development more than any other part. I can never unlearn the game, only pretend to play wrong...

Hello!

Anyone uses Moghunter interface plugins and knows a little bit about coding to give me some help?

I'm desperate in here trying to deal with his HUD plugins right now and making them fit my game.

I'm using Variables HUD, Actor HUD and Gold HUD all together, but the thing is, I have the hugest trouble making all of the HUDs disappear when I want them to.
Both the Actor and Gold HUDs disappear nicely when I use the plugin command for that, but the Variables HUD doesn't.


I had to change some lines to make the Variables HUD stay visible whenever a message box is active (I did the exact same for Gold and Actor, because the plugin itself doesn't let me keep them visible through options or commands) but doing that on the Variables makes it so that whenever a message box is active, the HUD will show itself, even if the plugin command tells it to stay hidden.
Therefore, I can either have the HUD disappearing every single box (and coming back for a split second when some actor moves or turns around) or having it completely visible at all times (which is tremendously anticlimatic because there are many scenes in the game, especially the intro)



Apart from all that, using Variables HUD, Actor HUD, Gold HUD and the other Treasure HUD plugins all together with a constant 2x zoom on my screen and everything behaves VERY differently.

For starters, Actor HUD zooms in with the screen, but extremely blurred! This is unlike the Gold HUD, which zooms in quite nicely and fits the pixel art style of the game very well.
The Treasure HUD cuts part of the text and also blurs them weirdly, but shows icons perfectly. The Variables HUD, however, is always the same size, no matter what zoom I put in.


But the Actor HUD doesn't get entirely blurred, though. The HP/MP bars stay sharp and so does the States icon (which looks huge btw). Just the numbers and the HUD itself looks terrible. I managed to "fix" that by hiding the numbers and using the Variables HUD to display the images right on top of the Actor HUD thing, but it screws up when I play a screen shake or stuff like that.
This issue, though, is mostly passable, the real trouble is that god damn thing not being hidden through commands.


tl;dr 3 plugins from the same person that do basically the same thing behave completely different from each other and I need them to disappear through plugin commands ONLY. 2 of them do it perfectly but the third doesn't.

Second, somewhat ignorable issue: they all interact differently with the screen zoom and one of those looks terribly blurred.


I appreaciate any help with this. I'm stuck with this issue for months now and google has nothing on it.

I'm including a dropbox folder with all these plugins with the edits I've made on them as well as the zoom plugin.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p8lnqps7knebzp1/AACMw5Du4MvKd29cNa6w17Uba?dl=0

It's 15$(usd) per character + expressions :3 Or do you want to know possible promotional prices? This would depend on the project and complexity!

(Also, thank you very much! Glad you like it!)

More portrait examples, @mirak? I'll be updating here when I have more! :3

Hey everyone! I'm in dire need of money, so I'm offering very affordable prices for my pixel art faces! I won't do full busts, as I don't have the time (I'm working on my game as well, you can check more of my work here), so this offer is only for pixel art faces fitting RM ones. If you order a large bundle of portraits I'll give you promotional prices.

My rates:

15 usd per character + expressions
(this is the base pricing, and it may vary)
I accept payment only via paypal.

Example of the faces:



Recent comission:

PS: I work with anime art style, so if you want anything other than anime art is probably best if you ask for another artist, since this is my specialty.

author=LockeZ
1) If you just want a hard floor on damage you can build a conditional branch into the damage formula. If you're using the damage formula boxes on the skill page, the syntax x?y:z will work like a conditional branch meaning "if x, then y, otherwise z." So for example if you want the damage formula a.atk * 10 / b.def, but with a minimum of 50 damage, you could type a.atk*10/b.def > 50 ? a.atk*10/b.def : 50 to get that result.

However this will mean that at low attack stat values or high defense stat values, buffs and debuffs and new equipment will have absolutely no effect whatsoever, which means that your game is lying to the player in many situations. You should not really do this. It's bad design. I'm only listing it because it most closely matches what you asked.

Unfortunately we're not using divisive damage formula because of low numbers, but we kinda wanted to.
We actually do use conditional damage of this sort of thing for specific moves that target status effects or some other things but in a general sense it feels too static indeed.

author=LockeZ
2) If you just add +50 to the end of your damage formula then everything will do 50 more damage. This is a better method with fewer side-effects. If you do this, you probably shouldn't make this number very high, because it makes stats worth less at the beginning of the game. The higher it is, the less stats are worth at the beginning of the game, and the more they're worth later. This makes the player's first few upgrades and level ups feel kinda lame, and also makes grinding become more and more effective the more you do it (which is typically the opposite of how you want grinding to work).

You can directly undo this side-effect by applying an exponent between 0 and 1 to the attack and defense stats in the damage formula: for example by replacing a.atk and b.def in the damage formula with a.atk^0.9 and b.def^0.9. This will cause stats to have slightly dimininishing returns, which is more in line with how most games work. A low enough exponent like 0.5 will also sharply reduce the effectiveness of grinding extra levels.

It's pretty cool to have a set precise number that will be in the formula disconsidering stats altogether. It does exactly what I wanted, never thought of that. Do you think it could work together with base damage, or if it's best to not have a base damage at all? Or if it's better to have something like: ((10+a.atk)-b.def)+5?
However, if so, this would cripple defensive buffs way too much and make offensive ones less effective.

Using atk^0.9 or another number, would it be possible to have a low stat divisible formula in which buffs and debuffs don't completely break the game? And if so how much should a buff or defuff increase or decrease? We're using 50% of the stats. Or would exponents just give the same results? For example a.atk^0.9 - b.def^0.8 or something? We're really bad at math here, sorry.

author=LockeZ
If the strongest enemy's defense is 10x as high as a level 1 player's attack power, and a max level player's defense is 10x as high as the weakest enemy's attack power, then multiplying the attacker's attack power by any number higher than 10 will ensure that the player always does damage. 10x probably isn't the right number for your game, but some number is right - you can compare last-dungeon defense to first-dungeon attack power and figure out how big a number you need to multiply the damage by. However, if your game is long and the player and enemies' stats grow by a lot by the end of the game, this method will be impossible, because the multiplier will be so high that you'll need to give players and enemies a hundred thousand HP to survive attacks.

---

About how high are your players' and enemies' HP at the beginning of the game and at the end of the game? Based on that info I think I can probably give you a pretty reasonable damage formula based on what you've said you're doing and what you've said you want to be doing.

>> At the beginning of the game, the first character's relevant stats are:
30 HP
5 ATK (initial weapon increases it to 12)
1 DEF (first equipment increases it to 3)

First enemy is
22 HP
5 ATK
2 DEF


We're 100% unsure how the last levels should look like, but I don't want them to go way too high, something like 500 HP at the last dungeon should be the highest I guess? But it's totally open right now. Since we're not using the stat growth curves from RPG maker to go with our own stat increasing items throught the game, this kind of thought becomes rather blurry.