..Crickets..

[dmpdesign]

Anyone out there? ‎  Hehe.

No new posts for a few days, just wondering how all the game making is going on the various projects that are floating around.

Ive hit writer's block on my game, its 99% done and I just can't get myself to finish it.

A few of the reason:

I am now at the point of having to tweak enemy strengths vs equipment vs leveling strength which is a bit annoying. ‎  My game is so damn huge now and i was worried that it wouldnt be big enough. ‎  Its becoming annoying to run through and test this stuff. ‎  Oh well. ‎  That and I have decided to retexture most of my custom models because the cheesy, thrown together textures of them are clashing with some of the more recent stuff i did.

It should still see light of day soon. ‎  Hopefully some other games will as well.

[Holy_Diver]

^Whatever happened to the playtesting idea?

I've been so much at my wit's end dealing with moving digitaldevildb.com, I've been avoiding the internet like the plague.


I have been working with SoM (actual game tweaking) a little, but I've been meaning to try that VMware setup of yours before I really pick it back up. I have a hard time grasping the damage functions. I think an obvious thing we need though is a little damage calculator program. Something that would let you put in like if the player is setup thusly versus this monster setup, then how much defense should the monster need to have in order to kill it in X hits... compute.

Just adjusting a monster then jumping into the game to test it is impossible I think... if you really want control over the experience that is.

Not being more transparent the damage formula should have just been linear I think. It might've been more restrictive that way, but at least you could wrap your head around it without being a fucking rocket scientist (though I'm sure once I do figure it out, the formula will probably be very simple)


Like I am slowly learning the limits of my project (which has fairly tightly constrained parameters in the first place) ...but just setting up the Termite Queen boss (though I'm pretty sure I've changed the name to Antlion unless Tom cries foul) ...I have it so if you hit a Termite with the mourning star (they're weak to smash) with full swing at the beginning of the game they die in one hit. Every monster in my game has 100hp (makes things a little tricky overall but eliminates a variable for me) ...but anyway their base is 16def. Then if I set the queens base to 64, she dies too fast to be a challenge. But if I set it to say 96, she never dies ever (I'm beginning to think the hp regen option actually slowly regens hp) ...so there is a huge non-linear disparity going on there. I think the magic number was like 72, but she was still too tough. I think you're expected to get increasingly more powerful weapons, so everything ramps up pretty quick. I have a general idea of what the window is I have to work in, given I actually let the player start the game with the best weapons more or less (all the weapons are balance Armored Core style) ...but I still have trouble dealing with the non-linear ramps when setting the adjust parameters, they're just so damn sensitive, and I'm afraid I'm making some attack types too powerful versus others, which isn't so bad... but they also all add together in the end, so that's hard to get a hang of too.

Still seems crazy to tweak on a one at a time basis. Strength doesn't seem to make a whole heck of a lot of difference in my situation thankfully. The player gets more of a benefit from being able to swing faster than actual damage potential. I did notice I'll have to adjust my "encumbrance" system some, because by endgame strength the player can carry around like 3 full sets of armor and still use the dash function with the current events.


Not to hijack the thread. But I recently picked up "Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection" (you can't argue with 40 classics/virtual console type games for 30$) which has a game called Fatal Labyrinth... not quite as good as it's Master System (MarkIII) predecessor Dragon Crystal... neither especially spectacular. But these games actually have gameplay systems very similar too all the different stuff I'm doing with my project (a Maunstraut remix for anyone not in the know)

^That is your HP regenerates, while your other stat is your general condition (sleep/food/thirst) which ultimately begins to gnaw away at your HP if not kept in check. There are also other elements very similar. Kind of inspires me to make one of the towers in DoM mimic the format of these games somehow. Mostly randomized floors, and once you enter you can't save/leave, and if there is some way to leave you loose all the items associated with the tower and must start anew. That's a good premise for a remake of the final area I think.

*Never realized "gnaw" was spelled that way. There should be a GNU app called gnaw (if there isn't already)


Anyway, I agree that the balancing act is the most daunting aspect of a SoM project. I'd really like to focus on making it more manageable somehow any way possible. We really need to try to document it and prepare tutorials on this subject as much as possible. Don't make all your work in vain. Try to make sense of it and write it down.

[dmpdesign]

The worst part about it all, is I thought I had a decent system going, modifying weapons etc to fit into the end game.

Then the strength stat really monkeys with it too, which is another non linear problem.

Literally the same weapon with strength 10 may take 4 hits to kill a monster, increase strength to 20 and its 3, then increase it say 25 and its a one shot. ‎  I cant figure the scale at all.

Worse yet...strength affects your defense as well. ‎  A naked guy with 50 strength takes hits far better than a fully armored guy at 1 strength...so that also throws a wrench in figuring enemy strengths as well.

If i ever get a system in place, I will certainly try to document it!

[Hguols]

Well, I recently moved to a much nicer place. ‎  That has taken all my free time except for a little Arx Fatalis playing. ‎ 

I've been reading this almost every day, but haven't posted anything in a while.

.....what's that called, here in spirit?
^_^

[Holy_Diver]

^Called lurking

[Holy_Diver]

Wait a second Todd?? You really think Strength effects defense?

That would be interesting, but I haven't seen this. I should know... because in my project all my equip are really low defense, and I regularly boost strength up (to test what an area is like at endgame) and I see myself taking the same sort of damage. But I'm definitely open to any evidence, but I haven't seen it... and would have expected to by now (though I haven't tested that specifically)

One thing I've noticed is there are different formulas for different types of games. So if you never set an enemies defense stats for example, a different damage formula is used. So just maybe if you have a project with no armor, strength becomes the determining factor??? Anyway, if there is an effect, it must not be by much. I also drop all my armor a lot to get an idea of what sort of damage is done without armor, and I don't see Strength appearing to play a role. If so, it would seem to be within the margin of error I normally expect to see.


PS: It's funny btw you see strength playing such a role in your weapon damage. I don't see it making much of a diff, but I never set equip stats over 9 and try to keep them balanced overall (save for the stuff you should just sell for coinage -- carry quests) ...I remember my experiments seeming to demonstrate otherwise however, which I gotta say had me worried I'd be in the same boat, until I jumped in the game to see for myself what would happen.

I have a feeling you want to stick pretty close to whatever rates the KF1 demo do. That is to say, for a game like DD I'd start by mirroring the KF1 remake stats, because whatever the formulas are you can bet they are based on this game, and not the other way around. In my project's case I'm fortunate in keeping everything simple, so I don't expect to have much trouble. But I'm going for a more arcade feel, so you don't really get the RPG like boy2god experience (just man to a man with a slight advantage... who'd be wise to depend on his arsenal of magic weapons and armor for an upper hand)

[dmpdesign]

Well here is how I tested it.

Ran a game at level 1, made the test guy have 999 hit points, 50 strength and 999 mp and 50 magic power.

End game enemies were hitting me for about 25-50 a swing. ‎  I reran the test making the test character have one strength and they were taking over 300 a hit. ‎  I am not certain why, but try that and see what happens to you?

[Holy_Diver]

^Hmmm, put some armor on him and see what happens...


PS: I will run my own simple experiment with my real project....

[Hguols]

Hmmm... ‎  No one has posted for 3 days.

*looks around*
*continues lurking*

[dmpdesign]

I think you need to start working on a new game Tom!

You are the only one that seems successful at finishing stuff up on time...

I burned the labels in my first 6 DD dvds last night, I like the way it looks. ‎  Finishing the manual printouts soon and working on the foldout map this week.
Got the cases off amazon I wanted in the mail today, ‎  yay.

All thats left to do is finish the ending, opening sequences, tweak a bit more enemy/item stats and just do another sweep through of debugging and I should be all set.