Making a 'classic' RPG
scorelessmusic
Member Posts: 565
(This is a repost, but I figured it would be better to be in a design thread rather than to always bump an 'announce game' thread. I will be writing about development here instead)
There was a recommendation I read once someplace that suggested that keeping a log of your project helped to move it along, and sharing it with friends tend to keep one motivated (especially if they poke you) so...
Day 1 - Battle Screen Layout (proof of concept)
I'll also share a bit of the game development as I go along so that the screencaps make sense and people following can make suggestions for adjustments / insights / improvement. Hopefully some of the things that I'm actively developing might spinoff something that could help other creators here. (As recommended by http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=11217 )
For Wishstone Saga: Dusk of Dreams, I'm toying with the concept of a 'real-time' combat system where every party member's action can be performed in any real-time order. Once an action is performed, there is a cooldown timer before it can be used again.
The enemies also attack according to their action's cooldown timers. This makes the Agility and Spirit attributes important (for both heros and monsters) as it will affect how fast you can act and re-act (for physical and spirit actions correspondingly).
Since everything is in 'real-time', I have thought to optimise every possible desired action to just a single tap (or tap and slide). For instance, the bars next to the heroes are their Health and Spirit levels (with the exception of Hero 1 who only has a Health level, but that's more into the storyline). To drink any available health or spirit potion, simply tap the bar that you want to raise. So tapping a hero's health bar will make that particular hero drink a health potion. etc...
To attack (with physical or spirit), simply tap-and-drag the action icons above the respective hero to the targeted enemy to execute that action on that enemy. Upon activation, the icon will become inactive (maybe fade?) and the cooldown timer should kick in until it's ready again for use, maybe flashing slightly as a visual cue.
There was a recommendation I read once someplace that suggested that keeping a log of your project helped to move it along, and sharing it with friends tend to keep one motivated (especially if they poke you) so...
Day 1 - Battle Screen Layout (proof of concept)
I'll also share a bit of the game development as I go along so that the screencaps make sense and people following can make suggestions for adjustments / insights / improvement. Hopefully some of the things that I'm actively developing might spinoff something that could help other creators here. (As recommended by http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=11217 )
For Wishstone Saga: Dusk of Dreams, I'm toying with the concept of a 'real-time' combat system where every party member's action can be performed in any real-time order. Once an action is performed, there is a cooldown timer before it can be used again.
The enemies also attack according to their action's cooldown timers. This makes the Agility and Spirit attributes important (for both heros and monsters) as it will affect how fast you can act and re-act (for physical and spirit actions correspondingly).
Since everything is in 'real-time', I have thought to optimise every possible desired action to just a single tap (or tap and slide). For instance, the bars next to the heroes are their Health and Spirit levels (with the exception of Hero 1 who only has a Health level, but that's more into the storyline). To drink any available health or spirit potion, simply tap the bar that you want to raise. So tapping a hero's health bar will make that particular hero drink a health potion. etc...
To attack (with physical or spirit), simply tap-and-drag the action icons above the respective hero to the targeted enemy to execute that action on that enemy. Upon activation, the icon will become inactive (maybe fade?) and the cooldown timer should kick in until it's ready again for use, maybe flashing slightly as a visual cue.
Comments
Day 2 of development for WSS:DOD. Today, it's implementing the health bars to ensure that they move/scale properly. While creating an environment to test it, several other issues were handled, namely:
- visually showing a hit by changing background colour
- showing which enemy initiated a hit with a visual clue (enemy moving forward)
- changing facial expression when hit
- greying out when knocked out (HP = 0)
- spatial sound implemented (the 'hit' audio sound pans left-to-right depending on which character is hit)
For the bars, what I did was make a 8x50 graphic and then place it behind a window. I then used the following formula to drop the bar:
constrain attribute position Y = Offset height + ((current_health/max_health)*50)
At 100% health, the bar's Y = 56, so the offset height is 6 pixels. At full health, you will essentially get 6+(1/1)*50 = 56. As the current health drops, so does the Y in ratio until the bar completely disappears.
Even your placeholder art is awesome!
At least we're rest assured that the music will be great! The battle music from Final Fantasy VII is still one of my faves - I have it as my ringtone
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Woke up this morning with an optimization idea: Know how it is that people tend to recommend minimizing the number of constraints in your project, and it was nagging me that I already have 7 constraint for the health/spirit bars. So I changed that to the following:
[Rule] When current_health *not equal to* last_health then [Change Attribute] position Y
So the bar will only change position (drop or raise) when there is a change in health or spirit. What was previously a Constraint behavior now becomes a Rule-based behavior. I hope this will actually make some difference.
Day 3 of development for WSS:DOD. Today, it's implementing the party members attacking. WSS:DOD is going to attempt a sort of real-time combat that I think is not really seen on the iPhone yet for RPGs.
Basically, everyone can attack in any order. Just drag the attack icon to a target area on the enemy to execute an attack. Notice how red circles appear on the enemy? Wouldn't it be cool if you can specifically learn of weak spots, or always go for headshots, or disarm an opponent by attacking the hands, or slowing them down by going for the legs? Well, that's for future implementation. ^_^
It's starting to get complicated on the coding end real quick. But I hope this will truly bring something exciting to the handheld RPG scene.
-------
At the moment, while you are 'cooling down' for your next attack, your Attack Icon is faded away and not selectable.