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[tamaster92]

Really badly stuck on something with anim states and rules on my main game :/

So I took a small break today and made this silly thing

http://i.giphy.com/3o7abG40tpm8nHKHwQ.gif

Basically trying to be similar to 1942 but a bit more actiony. Likely won't ever do anything with it but was nice to work on something random and make it work

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

I think I saw a fellow Gaffer's game in Kickstarter.
I just recognized the running woman's sprite and recalled that I saw it in this thread.
The game is named Nakiti Generations.

Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diablohead/nakiti-generations-metroidvania-2d-platformer

That's correct, and I notice he should probably update his stretch goal graphics

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Really badly stuck on something with anim states and rules on my main game :/

So I took a small break today and made this silly thing

http://i.giphy.com/3o7abG40tpm8nHKHwQ.gif

Basically trying to be similar to 1942 but a bit more actiony. Likely won't ever do anything with it but was nice to work on something random and make it work

Good. Always good to have a breather.

 

[LordRaptor]

Curious what people think of the following options for highlighting a selected unit;

1) No visible indicator
2) World object marker at model base
3) UI indicator component
4) Shader highlight

Not final look, more like what would peoples expectation be for a 'selected object' of the above?

 

[Jacksinthe]

Curious what people think of the following options for highlighting a selected unit;

1) No visible indicator
2) World object marker at model base
3) UI indicator component
4) Shader highlight

Not final look, more like what would peoples expectation be for a 'selected object' of the above?

I'd like to see these in context, tbh.

 

[Chaos]

Interesing new addon for Blender currently in Alpha, looks like its going to be a free Spine 2d cutout animation tool.


https://youtu.be/lRVnk1PMDTs


https://github.com/ndee85/coa_tools

 

[desu]

Stardew Valley developer was interviewed for Gamasutra: The 4 years of self-imposed crunch that went into Stardew Valley

Pretty insane amount of hours over this period, still a testament to where you can get if you are dedicated.

 

[correojon]

Curious what people think of the following options for highlighting a selected unit;

1) No visible indicator
2) World object marker at model base
3) UI indicator component
4) Shader highlight

Not final look, more like what would peoples expectation be for a 'selected object' of the above?

I like 2 and 4 most.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Curious what people think of the following options for highlighting a selected unit;

1) No visible indicator
2) World object marker at model base
3) UI indicator component
4) Shader highlight

Not final look, more like what would peoples expectation be for a 'selected object' of the above?

Use both 2 and 4 at the same time?

 

[LordRaptor]

potato cam quality gif for some context

yeah, each select type is a seperate type of effect so I can stack them if needs be, but I don't want too much visual clutter

e:
I think that I like 2 the most, but with a different icon than the gear texture I had already made that I used for a placeholder

 

[Ito]

Finished a new track for Spirit Huntress. I'm glad I'm starting to find the kind of music I want to make for this game

https://soundcloud.com/manuel-aragon-1/flowing-haze

(It's for an area of the game where there's a river and mist).

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

potato cam quality gif for some context

yeah, each select type is a seperate type of effect so I can stack them if needs be, but I don't want too much visual clutter

e:
I think that I like 2 the most, but with a different icon than the gear texture I had already made that I used for a placeholder

Yeah, a solid win for 2 within this context.

 

[Jacksinthe]

potato cam quality gif for some context

yeah, each select type is a seperate type of effect so I can stack them if needs be, but I don't want too much visual clutter

e:
I think that I like 2 the most, but with a different icon than the gear texture I had already made that I used for a placeholder

4 all the way. Looks the cleanest. I was pulling for 2 but seeing as how they float, 4 gives the best looks, IMO.

 

[correojon]

potato cam quality gif for some context

yeah, each select type is a seperate type of effect so I can stack them if needs be, but I don't want too much visual clutter

e:
I think that I like 2 the most, but with a different icon than the gear texture I had already made that I used for a placeholder

I definitely like 2 more in this context, 4 looks a bit "rough", maybe it would look better with a thinner border. Anyway, 2 looks great as it is.

 

[LordRaptor]

Thanks for feedbacks y'all - I'm still rooting for 2 personally, but I think its a bit overbearing as is - I think I'm going to thin it out and make it more translucent.

4 is a nice and simple solution (AFAICS I can just c+p the 'outline' part of the toon shader code into the standard shader, but am a bit out of my depth in shader code) but is always going to annoy me in exposing how low poly my models are; I can fake a curved surface on whats basically a box with normals (in above capture the drones look waaaaaaay more spherical than the model actually is), but the shaders always going to expose the actual geometry :s

 

[Diablohead]

That's correct, and I notice he should probably update his stretch goal graphics

it's not at £1500 yet.

*edit* unless you mean you're not seeing each hit goal turn green, I am replacing the graphic so maybe its not updating for you?

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Anyone have experience doing menus? I was trying to work on my UI code for the game in field mode (not in a battle, in other words), and realized that it might be messier than it should be, after working on scripts for the components within the UI.

Any guidance on properly creating a menu system? Can't produce screenshot right now as I'm on the phone at the moment, but I can tell you how it's laid out currently.

The "Menu" button always exists and can be clicked to open the system menu. If the menu is open, it closes it instead.

The system menu consists of a location box, player character basic info+portrait box, a vertical list of additional buttons (grouped by a generic GameObject for organization and mass transform purposes), and a box for showing time, steps, and gold. I intend to let the player do all of the following:

When the player clicks on a character's box, said character's stat sheet pops up, and any skills or magic on that character may be accessed from there if any. (note: Neither skills nor magic are implemented in game yet)

Items, Save, Options, Exit Game: Self explanatory. Probably should pop a selection/confirmation for the last three, and the first one needs a proper UI. Again, items not implemented.

I think I'm still not very familiar on UI best practices when it comes to hierarchal things, so help is appreciated. (no need for code unless I really need it - I realized that I pretty much learned nothing wrt UI.)

(Am I doing things in the wrong order? Sorry, was feeling like rushing since I lost code.)

 

[JulianImp]

Curious what people think of the following options for highlighting a selected unit;

1) No visible indicator
2) World object marker at model base
3) UI indicator component
4) Shader highlight

Not final look, more like what would peoples expectation be for a 'selected object' of the above?

Hmm... I'm wondering if it'd be good for you to go for a "greater or equal" ztest on any highlight option you end up using so that you could see units even while they're behind other bits of geometry. It might also be a good idea to have a lighter/simpler version for unselected units, so that players can keep track of and select them with ease.

 

[LordRaptor]

I think I'm still not very familiar on UI best practices when it comes to hierarchal things, so help is appreciated. (no need for code unless I really need it - I realized that I pretty much learned nothing wrt UI.)

I have a lot of pop in / pop out menus, and the most useful tip I could give is have a blank Rectransform object with a Layout group component as each 'tiered' menu, and have generic setgameobject.active false / true toggles so you can show / hide components from multiple sources (like having toggle buttons and close buttons both do the same thing).
For popups, manually setting sibling index in their OnEnable function is crazy useful too, so active windows are always on top

Hmm... I'm wondering if it'd be good for you to go for a "greater or equal" ztest on any highlight option you end up using so that you could see units even while they're behind other bits of geometry. It might also be a good idea to have a lighter/simpler version for unselected units, so that players can keep track of and select them with ease.

I'm taking a lot of visual cues from things like RTSs, but its more of a Roller Coaster Tycoon type game, so the 'selected' highlight is like clicking on a visitor in RCT, where you can see what a unit is 'thinking' about how you're doing, and you can track where they're going / what they're doing - I'm not planning on having mass unit selection, so it will only ever show this effect on one unit at a time (my gif is highly misleading in that respect).
I'm also toying with having a little mini-follow camera of the selected unit, which would alleviate any z-issue problems.

Basically, as its a management type sim game, and I'm a bit worried that most of it boils down to waiting around for money to roll in and then build a new thing to help more money roll in that it might get a bit boring / too passive, so I'm trying to add some interactivity in letting you click things for information about whats going on, rather than abstracting it all out to menu screens

 

[Jacksinthe]

So doing a loop back around through a few scenes to a level you've already played without unloading it from memory is fun.

I revamped how I unload scenes and assets and forgot to flip it back on when I was done.

Drove me nuts for like 5 minutes. Shit was bonkers.

 

[Jobbs]

cooking up something revolting, guys.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Jobbs you never fail to revolt me.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

I have a lot of pop in / pop out menus, and the most useful tip I could give is have a blank Rectransform object with a Layout group component as each 'tiered' menu, and have generic setgameobject.active false / true toggles so you can show / hide components from multiple sources (like having toggle buttons and close buttons both do the same thing).
For popups, manually setting sibling index in their OnEnable function is crazy useful too, so active windows are always on top

Hmm, I was setting their canvas groups to have zero alpha and non-interactable when hiding them, and the reverse when showing them. Would I need to change the way I'm doing things? (Does having the gameobjects themselves set to disabled disable tied scripts, too? That is the thing I do not want to happen, as the way my UI code is configured, it relies on being able to grab a window's script and call the Show/Hide function to do what it wants.)

Assuming that each and every piece of UI window has a script associated for their text, too, how would one enable these scripts to access external text resources without much fuss? Planning to make the game's text easily editable outside of the Unity editor and make it easier to localize/edit should the need arise. Right now, the text's still hard-coded in scripts...

 

[desu]

cooking up something revolting, guys.

Damn, that looks fantastic!

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Mechanics question.

3 classes (Warrior, Rogue, Wizard), 10 subclasses/Lores with any number of cosplay (costumees) each. Every Cosplay has 4 skill slots for RNG skills picked from a class pool. There are a few options for me here:

1) Unique and static skill in slot 1. Slots 2,3,4 are RNG. Cosplay's Primary skill is added to the class pool for other Cosplay's 2,3,4 slots.

2) Unique and static skill in slot 1. Slots 2,3,4 are RNG. Cosplay's Primary skill is not added to the class pool, so only that Cosplay can have it.

3) Each class has three (or so) specialty Lore, and those can have Primary Skills in their RNG slots. All other Cosplay cannot.

 

[GroundCombo]

(Does having the gameobjects themselves set to disabled disable tied scripts, too? That is the thing I do not want to happen, as the way my UI code is configured, it relies on being able to grab a window's script and call the Show/Hide function to do what it wants.)

Assuming that each and every piece of UI window has a script associated for their text, too, how would one enable these scripts to access external text resources without much fuss? Planning to make the game's text easily editable outside of the Unity editor and make it easier to localize/edit should the need arise. Right now, the text's still hard-coded in scripts...

You can call scripts in disabled objects/components, but they can't start coroutines while disabled. My UI panels have a Show(bool animated = true) method that essentially does gameObject.SetActive(true); and moves or fades in using DOTween if needed.

For text, we're using SmartLocalization in this project. It's a pretty simple and lightweight thing and doesn't support localized UI sprites out of the box (only textures), but it's free/cheap and easy to use. I might evaluate some other assets for the next project or roll my own.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

it's not at £1500 yet.

*edit* unless you mean you're not seeing each hit goal turn green, I am replacing the graphic so maybe its not updating for you?

Oh, right. Now that I've pledged, for some reason it's showing the goal in dollars now instead of £

 

[LordRaptor]

Hmm, I was setting their canvas groups to have zero alpha and non-interactable when hiding them, and the reverse when showing them. Would I need to change the way I'm doing things? (Does having the gameobjects themselves set to disabled disable tied scripts, too? That is the thing I do not want to happen, as the way my UI code is configured, it relies on being able to grab a window's script and call the Show/Hide function to do what it wants.)

As with most things programming related - and I'm not a very good programmer - there's no universal right way of doing things; all I can tell you is why I use gameobject.setactive for my UI components. If you have good reasons to do things a different way, there's no need to do things the way I do just because.
I personally use gameobject.setactive for the following reasons;
- it works very nicely with the content size fitter and layout group scripts provided to dynamically resize panels
- There are existing triggers for OnEnable() and OnDisable() I can add code to if needed, and there are existing functions to check if a gameobject is active or not
- As mentioned earlier in the thread, I find storing gameobject references more useful than directly storing gameobject components (like Transforms)

e:
For your translation question, as you're already using XML stuff, surely translations would just be an extra key in your XML dictionary...?

 

[tamaster92]

Shooting guns now works

Now to do ammo and reloading and i've officially caught up to where I was before I had to restart - AND it's much smoother and better now.

Lot of work but so worth it

 

[asa]

Whee! Google play featured Power Hover on their New & updated section in 72 countries, should give us pretty good amount of new players

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

As with most things programming related - and I'm not a very good programmer - there's no universal right way of doing things; all I can tell you is why I use gameobject.setactive for my UI components. If you have good reasons to do things a different way, there's no need to do things the way I do just because.
I personally use gameobject.setactive for the following reasons;
- it works very nicely with the content size fitter and layout group scripts provided to dynamically resize panels
- There are existing triggers for OnEnable() and OnDisable() I can add code to if needed, and there are existing functions to check if a gameobject is active or not
- As mentioned earlier in the thread, I find storing gameobject references more useful than directly storing gameobject components (like Transforms)

e:
For your translation question, as you're already using XML stuff, surely translations would just be an extra key in your XML dictionary...?

Hmm... I guess I probably should stick with the way I'm doing right now with the UI, as it works well for what I plan to do for the time being. I guess it isn't exactly a matter of "best way"...

Though one does wonder how does one ideally make a UI keyboard/controller selectable? Right now, the buttons can only be clicked by using a mouse. Escape/X Button toggles the menu, and nothing more. Ideally, it'd have a cursor that can be moved between "clickable" elements...

Well, the XML stuff right now is pretty much for loading/saving only for now. Speaking of which, I'm considering making the game reload the scene on load. Maybe then things will be a bit more clean

As for translation/localization, that is probably secondary to having things not be hardcoded to scene/scripts. Makes it much easier to edit text Going to check out SmartLocalization and other options to simplify it, though I'm certainly thinking of doing it myself.

Apparently setting the managers and their instantiated items to not be unloaded on a scene change... broken the audio system a bit in the sense that it always play the default music of the very first loaded scene. Is it theoretically possible to have it so that on load, if the scene's manager's music to be loaded is different from the kept-in-memory's, reload music?

As for game development progress, well, I'm still working on tile sets for the first town. It's almost there, and pretty close to producing a usable town. And tweaking the code for the warp handler so that it stops the music smoothly and fades the screen out.

You've been pretty helpful with development help, really. No worries there!

 

[LordRaptor]

Though one does wonder how does one ideally make a UI keyboard/controller selectable? Right now, the buttons can only be clicked by using a mouse. Escape/X Button toggles the menu, and nothing more. Ideally, it'd have a cursor that can be moved between "clickable" elements...

I haven't played with it too much (because my game is about as PC-ass as you can imagine), but the built in Button UI has a 'navigation' setting that AFAICS will let you enable gamepad navigation between UI elements directly, setting default selections and how different inputs will move the selection - the visualise button there should show how all of your buttons are linked and what inputs move between them in the scene view.

The alternative would be to create a virtual cursor, and then raycast from its screenspace position to see what it is hovering over, but from what I can tell you're making a Final Fantasy type game, so I'm not sure that would be the best solution in your case

Is it theoretically possible to have it so that on load, if the scene's manager's music to be loaded is different from the kept-in-memory's, reload music?

There's a built in trigger for scene changes (level loads), so one way might be to have all of your music in an array and just do something like (pseudocode)

void OnLevelWasLoaded() 
{
     audioclip.play myMusicArray[level];
}

But it might be better to do a coroutine so that it starts playing the level music on level load in addition to the already playing music, but start new music at volume 0 and fade it up, while fading down existing music to 0
I dunno how cacophonous that would sound if you're not careful with matching tempos and stuff though

You've been pretty helpful with development help, really. No worries there!

Half the time I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark, so if I can offer someone else a glimmer of light I will

 

[Jobbs]

Damn, that looks fantastic!

Jobbs you never fail to revolt me.

hehe, thanks guys.

it's going to get more revolting, just wait

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

I haven't played with it too much (because my game is about as PC-ass as you can imagine), but the built in Button UI has a 'navigation' setting that AFAICS will let you enable gamepad navigation between UI elements directly, setting default selections and how different inputs will move the selection - the visualise button there should show how all of your buttons are linked and what inputs move between them in the scene view.

The alternative would be to create a virtual cursor, and then raycast from its screenspace position to see what it is hovering over, but from what I can tell you're making a Final Fantasy type game, so I'm not sure that would be the best solution in your case

Apparently, automatic visualization indicates that nothing's wrong with the navigation. Nothing's budging or is being highlighted when I hit the arrow keys, though... am I missing something?

There's a built in trigger for scene changes (level loads), so one way might be to have all of your music in an array and just do something like (pseudocode)

void OnLevelWasLoaded() 
{
     audioclip.play myMusicArray[level];
}

But it might be better to do a coroutine so that it starts playing the level music on level load in addition to the already playing music, but start new music at volume 0 and fade it up, while fading down existing music to 0
I dunno how cacophonous that would sound if you're not careful with matching tempos and stuff though

I think I'll opt for fading out the current music (stopping it) in sync with the display fade out I'm about to implement, and once the screen is black and the audio is silent, load new scene. That seems to be a bit faster, though I'd need to write in an extra function (or variable on function) to determine if the caller wants to keep playing. Best to have functionality for both continuing and reloading music.

I wrote extra scripting so that each piece of music can be duct taped together as a GameObject, and the music script selects the correct portion to play, for songs that have split beginning and looping parts. It'll always loop once it loops.

(What would be best as coroutines instead of standard functions?)

Half the time I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark, so if I can offer someone else a glimmer of light I will

Heh! Game dev is hard, but it's also somehow fun, when you take it casually. I'm in no real rush, though sometimes failures make you want to do more.

 

[LordRaptor]

Apparently, automatic visualization indicates that nothing's wrong with the navigation. Nothing's budging or is being highlighted when I hit the arrow keys, though... am I missing something?

I believe it uses the standalone inputmodule thats automatically added as part of the events system when you add a Unity UI component, so by default its looking for horizontal and vertical inputs for that movement (ie a controller analogue stick).
I'd guess modifying the input axes to take keypresses or explicitly setting vertical and horizontal inputs on your keybind scripts would work...?
(sorry, haven't really looked into it properly - there's probably a UI tutorial that covers it)

e:

(What would be best as coroutines instead of standard functions?)

Well, anything you want to run in parallel to a main thread is generally best as a coroutine IMO, and I find it general good practice to put 'repeat' functions (things like 'fade over time') into a coroutine or Ienumerator just so I don't have to have too much going on in Update()

eg

IEnumerator FadeBackground()
	{
		for (int i = 255; i >= 0; i--) 
		{
			background.color = new Color(background.color.r, background.color.g, background.color.b, i/255f);
			yield return new WaitForSeconds(0.75f);
		}
	}

 

[SeanNoonan]

Curious what people think of the following options for highlighting a selected unit;

1) No visible indicator
2) World object marker at model base
3) UI indicator component
4) Shader highlight

Not final look, more like what would peoples expectation be for a 'selected object' of the above?

3. It clearly shows what is selected and doesn't interfere with the aesthetics. It is scalable to almost any footprint or design.

I would assume 4 would be a popular choice, but the outlining method highlights imperfections and isn't very scalable to more intricate shape and designs.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

I believe it uses the standalone inputmodule thats automatically added as part of the events system when you add a Unity UI component, so by default its looking for horizontal and vertical inputs for that movement (ie a controller analogue stick).
I'd guess modifying the input axes to take keypresses or explicitly setting vertical and horizontal inputs on your keybind scripts would work...?
(sorry, haven't really looked into it properly - there's probably a UI tutorial that covers it)

Doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the default axes...

Hmm, I changed a few things around so that highlighted and clicked states are incredibly obvious now.

I get the problem now: it's very inconsistent on whether keyboard input even works. Usually, it doesn't respond to any keyboard input. If it does, the "highlight" state eventually goes poof once you move the cursor enough times, or to the "Menu" button. For reference, here's the UI as it looks like right now, when in the first level of the system menu. Second one is with visualization turned on.

Do I have the UI put too tightly together? Am I missing something that should force the keyboard to get focus? (If Visualize is turned on, the arrows between the buttons at the top get bunched up, if it's worth anything.)

Help with regard to the fickle EventSystem and/or buttons would be great!

e:


Well, anything you want to run in parallel to a main thread is generally best as a coroutine IMO, and I find it general good practice to put 'repeat' functions (things like 'fade over time') into a coroutine or Ienumerator just so I don't have to have too much going on in Update()

eg

IEnumerator FadeBackground()
	{
		for (int i = 255; i >= 0; i--) 
		{
			background.color = new Color(background.color.r, background.color.g, background.color.b, i/255f);
			yield return new WaitForSeconds(0.75f);
		}
	}

All right! Time to rewrite my faders...

 

[Jacksinthe]

I just use lerp for greater flexibility.

Color.Lerp (colorA, colorB, all kinds of fun math or time)

Also i believe if you use Color32 you don't need to divide by 255 every yield. Just set the color directly:
255, 255, 255, 255

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

While we're in the mood of talking about game dev in Unity...

Was thinking about audio volume and grouping. Right now, I have a master mixer of which the music, sound, and UI mixers are children of, and I also have the music, sound, and UI AudioSources which have the appropriate output mixer connected respectively.

Hmm... seems like I can't just have a "master" audio source, no? If I want to have a "master" volume control, I'd have to do it in a "master volume * group volume" on the relevant AudioSource, no? A bit of a kludge, but I think it would still work.

I think I'd probably be adding 1/60f each 1/60s. 1 second fade, anyone?

Also, does the Unity UI stuff have a something that's like "fire when button highlight changed/clicked"? Would make triggering UI sounds real easy. To be honest, I think the Unity manual kind of stinks...

 

[Jacksinthe]

While we're in the mood of talking about game dev in Unity...

Was thinking about audio volume and grouping. Right now, I have a master mixer of which the music, sound, and UI mixers are children of, and I also have the music, sound, and UI AudioSources which have the appropriate output mixer connected respectively.

Hmm... seems like I can't just have a "master" audio source, no? If I want to have a "master" volume control, I'd have to do it in a "master volume * group volume" on the relevant AudioSource, no? A bit of a kludge, but I think it would still work.

I think I'd probably be adding 1/60f each 1/60s. 1 second fade, anyone?

Also, does the Unity UI stuff have a something that's like "fire when button highlight changed/clicked"? Would make triggering UI sounds real easy. To be honest, I think the Unity manual kind of stinks...

I use master then music and sfx channels with a while shitload of others routing to sfx.

Time.deltaTime until == 1. This way you can have variable framerate instead of being locked to 0.0166f math.

 

[tamaster92]

Edited the UI a bit for readability during building.

Working on adding the pistol so I can finish the ammo stuff but hit another wall

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

I use master then music and sfx channels with a while shitload of others routing to sfx.

Time.deltaTime until == 1. This way you can have variable framerate instead of being locked to 0.0166f math.

Hmm, I think there's probably a master volume control in the engine that I'm missing.

I think doing it the deltaTime way should be nice. Will see if I can do something with regard to it.

 

[LordRaptor]

I would assume 4 would be a popular choice, but the outlining method highlights imperfections and isn't very scalable to more intricate shape and designs.

Yeah, 4 is an easy solution, especially as its shader based, but it using model geometry was bugging the hell out of me in exposing the flaws in my low poly models.
I guess potentially I could adjust it to use my normal map instead of the geometry, but I'm frankly at a bit of a loss when it comes to shader code, and feel that would be a big time sink to solce a 'rpoblem' many players would never actually notice.

Also i believe if you use Color32 you don't need to divide by 255 every yield. Just set the color directly:
255, 255, 255, 255

I just grabbed a codeblock from a project I remembered using a coroutine on XD

That code basically makes an image go from full opaque to full transparent over a course of 3 minutes, so is slow enough and subtle enough that I could just straight up modify the alpha channel directly.

Also, does the Unity UI stuff have a something that's like "fire when button highlight changed/clicked"? Would make triggering UI sounds real easy. To be honest, I think the Unity manual kind of stinks...

The introduction of Unity UI also introduced Unityevents, but they're sort of... really crappily documented.
Basically, you can rewrite the IEventSystem handlers with your own scripts to make any generic UI specific behaviours apply to all UI elements.
Alternatively you can just treat UI components as gameobjects and use the standard OnMouseOver / OnMouseExit etc functions on a custom script

 

[Sölf]

Guys, never try and create a dungeon crawler. The balancing will drive you nuts. I've tried to create an Etrian Odyssey clone for the RPG Maker 2003 back in 2012 and I've been working on an off on it for the last 4 years now. I finished 12 floors so far and I get the feeling, each time I start working on a new version after a longer break I rebalance the whole game. This time: ATK and DEF received from level ups were to strong compared to new equipment. So I basically halved what you get from level ups and increased the stats in equipment, but not by the same amount (it's now lower overall). So I am now playing through the whole thing again and rebalance more or less every enemy, because everything is murdering me.

I wonder if I will manage to finish floor 13+ this time before I loose interest again for a year... xD

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Guys, never try and create a dungeon crawler. The balancing will drive you nuts. I've tried to create an Etrian Odyssey clone for the RPG Maker 2003 back in 2012 and I've been working on an off on it for the last 4 years now. I finished 12 floors so far and I get the feeling, each time I start working on a new version after a longer break I rebalance the whole game. This time: ATK and DEF received from level ups were to strong compared to new equipment. So I basically halved what you get from level ups and increased the stats in equipment, but not by the same amount (it's now lower overall). So I am now playing through the whole thing again and rebalance more or less every enemy, because everything is murdering me.

I wonder if I will manage to finish floor 13+ this time before I loose interest again for a year... xD

Ouch! I hope I don't end up in a rebalance loop once I implement enemies...

My game doesn't even have battles yet. So at least you're ahead of me

Been thinking about the stat system in use in my game.

Strength and Defense govern physical attack and damage reduction, Magic and Resistance are magical equivalents, Skill affects hit and critical rates, speed affects hit and evasion, luck affects hit, evasion, and critical rates, as well as critical evasion.

Been thinking about how should damage be calculated, really.

((Attacker's Strength + Attacker's Weapon Power OR Level) * Attacker's Weapon Power) - ((Defender's Defense + Defender's Armor Power) * Defender's Armor Power)

Where Level is reserved for a main character's unique physical attack and will run the level as the weapon strength.

I'm thinking that this has the effect of making sure that you need the stats to back yourselves before you can actually dish out damage and the like, though I don't know if it actually pans out in practice. I really like how in this formula, a weapon with double the relative power to a previous one should result in double the damage.

Though I think a fight between level 1s would take forever, so I expect a global multiplier will be applied to prevent that. Probably about 5x.

 

[LordRaptor]

Guys, never try and create a dungeon crawler. The balancing will drive you nuts.

Have you considered making equipment proportional to players stats rather than absolute?
eg +10% damage rather than +10 damage

 

[Sölf]

Have you considered making equipment proportional to players stats rather than absolute?
eg +10% damage rather than +10 damage

I am using the RPG Maker 2003, that one can't do % damage. And since much of the game already been done I don't want to port it to a newer engine, because I know I would loose interest then.

 

[LordRaptor]

I am using the RPG Maker 2003, that one can't do % damage. And since much of the game already been done I don't want to port it to a newer engine, because I know I would loose interest then.

wow, I had no idea RPG had that kind of limitation - I can only imagine the frustration of rebalancing :S

 

[Jacksinthe]

Hmm, I think there's probably a master volume control in the engine that I'm missing.

I think doing it the deltaTime way should be nice. Will see if I can do something with regard to it.

AudioListener.Volume

Returns 0.0-1.0

 

[Sölf]

wow, I had no idea RPG had that kind of limitation - I can only imagine the frustration of rebalancing :S

The newer versions (XP and onwards) have scripting and stuff, there you can do % damage. But I didn't like XP, never owned VX and only bought the VX Ace after starting this. So, well, yeah. xD