SVIEL'S PROFILE

author=LockeZ
I would really love to hear examples of how you're doing this kind of stuff. How about an in-depth analysis of one of the characters and how his/her skills interact with the rest of the party, and the creative process behind how you chose each of those effects, as a future blog post?

At the moment, I'm not giving specifics because everything is subject to change over the next month. I'm luring people over with promises of pizza and fun times to make sure through testing that I've been at least somewhat successful. Just yesterday, I made some major changes to two of Juno's skills because no one really used them, despite saying they felt useful. If I have to completely rework a character, I really don't want to have to explain away a blog post on them.

Though, in the last two weeks before release when things are more solid, I'd be happy to go in-depth with each character.

author=unity
I know almost nothing about Zoids, but I'm very interested in game just on the merit of the way you're describing combat reinforcing characterization (Not to mention a new cast would allow me to get into it without knowing the source material, probably XD)

Zoids are so niche that making sure non-fans had a smooth ride was a main priority. That's why I didn't want to try to work in the maddeningly splintered political canon.

You can also give enemies a dummy Armor state, then make piercing attacks use a different formula against them.

b.state?(ID of Armor state) ? 100 - b.def/4 : 100 - b.def

It only uses a quarter of defense to calculate damage if they're in the Armor state, but the full defense otherwise.

The hardest part is eliminating those problems without introducing other problems. I'm hesitant to claim that I can make a problem free combat system, but I feel comfortable saying that I've avoided the problems I can see and, if I've introduced new ones, they're not as obnoxious.

I start with a setting and spend a few weeks fleshing that out, then pick some interesting point where something climactic is happening and start working on that specifically. Somewhere in here, I work out the basic gameplay.

Then, I write one outline by hand to get the general flow down. I copy that into a digital document and make changes as needed. Then, I expand that into a detailed outline separated by distinct areas of gameplay. For example, if I was designing a Zelda game, each temple would be its own section.

Next, I run through each character's actions to make sure they're consistent, because I feel like an idiot if they aren't and the story suffers to boot.

That all being done, I know all of the maps I'll need and all of the major characters. I can get an alpha built and then iterate over it to make improvements and optional content, like side-quests, if it's an rpg.

If I get a story I like and can't make it work within a game, I'll axe it in the beginning and write it as an actual story to avoid making a bad game out of it. Gameplay, on the other hand, is more versatile, so it's easy to fit a good gameplay idea into something.

author=RedMask
Although I wish you had played more of the game it seems you never got past the first few parts of the game. I intended the game to have an old school difficulty maybe easy mode would have benefited you more.

The difficulty was not the problem. Even if all of the enemies did 0 damage, most of the issues would remain. If anything, I thought their damage was fair. Is there something else that changes on difficulty? Like AI?

@Ladder
Perhaps it's because I don't play games in that tileset on a regular basis.

@Direction
Not knowing where to go all the time is ok when the maps are small and there's at least some general idea of what's supposed to happen. The first condition is never met, here, which the second is on and off.

@Z Button
Would it be possible to disable the animation until it becomes useful? When players see that, they're going to experiment with it to try to find out what it does. If it's a simple switch, it would really be worthwhile.

@C Button
That's possible. I'm pretty sure I've played an XP game before, but perhaps it was just XP tilesets.

@ORANGE ALIEN DEVICE
Ok, well that's cool. I don't really have an issue with a delayed explanation there.

@Milk and Blood
This needs an immediate explanation, though. Even though blood offerings are not uncommon, they generally don't appear in games outside of the horror genre or with a specific reason. It's fine to include, but, at least for me, it seemed super out of place.

Perhaps, if I was already familiar with African culture, this would not be the case...but since neither I nor your target audience is, it'd be best to ease us in slowly.

@FANTASY game.
Fantasy means there's a world with a different set of rules, not no rules at all. There was nothing to indicate that, below a village with no evidence of plumbing or electricity, there would be pipes and machinery. The lava is another 7-league step in the direction of HUH. Then, to drive the point home, LANOA reacts to a few physics equations, but not to the lava or machinery. This gives the impression that I'm supposed to be totally ok with those things as they are perfectly normal...but kinematics equations? Foreign stuff right there.

@Healing Spell
It worked fine once I figured out how to use it.

@Sound Effects
I had no problems with them, though, being unable to hear audio, I had no interaction with them at all. I just wanted to mention to anyone reading the review that my earlier observations about not knowing when I leveled up were at least partially remedied by a sound effect.

@Zelda
Is that what it is? This isn't the first game I've seen on this site that had a puzzle like that, though I've never played w/e Zelda game it's in.

Assuming the clues are not as indecipherable as they seemed, all that really needs to happen is a removal of enemies (and a smaller map). The focus should be on figuring out the puzzle, and situations like getting trapped against a wall when trying to get the next hint should really not happen. If you want to keep the enemies, at least put a safe zone around the statues.


I'm not against second chances, though. If you've made some significant updates, I'll check back in a week or so.