QUOTE(Sheik @ Mar 15 2013, 03:32 AM)
One thought on the status effects: I think it would help the player keep track of what's going on if you made little "debuff" icons somwhere on the screen that indicate your current status, probably even with a timer. I know that this would be kinda much for ZC but since you are Schwa and all.. Thinking about it: Do you inted to add postive status effects too? Such as the Guardian Acorn and the Force Piece in LA maybe?
The little animations surrounding Felix ought to be enough indication. But you're right in that a little 8x8 icon in the Active Subscreen, like, right above or underneath his health gauge, wouldn't kill anything to add. At the very least that assures there's a way to tell if you have bad status even if the animations around Felix don't make it apparent. I'll probably do that. Thank you for the good idea!
Not a timer, though. I'll make the 8x8 icons flash if the timer is about to run out in like 3 seconds, but a visual timer would take away from the game experience. I want the player to be left in the dark, wondering if what he just blundered into was bad or if it was
really bad. In later dungeons for instance, there may be traps that Jinx you for several minutes straight instead of a couple seconds, and Poison usually does last several minutes straight, but one source might be much longer poison than another source. It adds to the feelings of suspense and adrenaline that I want my whole game to exude.
I will point out something important:
Poison never kills Felix. If he is down to his very last sliver of life, Poison stops dealing damage but also stops wearing out. Poison will only wear out after it's burned through x number of HP, so laming it out at 0.01 HP will not work, you have to heal up and not die until it's done running its course, or cure it with an Antidote sort of item (which, thankfully, I will make somewhat common-- buyable at shops right from the get-go before Level 1, and sometimes dropped from certain enemies). In addition, the Critical HP Glowing Red Borders will be green instead of red if you are Poisoned while at Critical HP. This way, if green borders all the sudden show up if you've let Poison stick around unattended, it'll immediately alert you "oh goodness this poison is actually a big deal now, maybe I should do something about it". And when they turn from green to red, you'll immediately know the poison is done running its course and that if you heal up you'll be healed up for good.
As for positive conditions,
in an old prototype I DID have a working Shard of Power. I'm still on the fence about it, but the more I think about it the more I think it would make a lot of sense to add them. If I can add a condition that halves your Attack and Defense, why couldn't or
shouldn't I add one that doubles it? The difference I'll do compared to the prototype is, instead of "collect this and get powerful", it'll be a one-time usable Inventory item, sorta like a Potion that temporarily boosts your damage or defense rather than healing you. This way, the player can choose to save it for the most useful occasion, such as a Boss battle, or something else he wants dead
quickly (over multiple screens to boot).
QUOTE(Sheik @ Mar 15 2013, 03:32 AM)
Edit: Watching the 'old' RCS videos. Schwa, you always say how the game visuals aren't your forte but I have to say that your screen design is pretty good (I love how clean it is) and the custom/edited tiles are quite stunning, too. (I mean, yes, it's not the best custom graphics I've seen, but it helps a lot that everything shares the same visual style etc). I also like how you are putting so much thought and care into all those small visual effects such as the shiny effect on the rupees and similar.
Well thank you!
It's uplifting to hear this. I feel like I need to go all-out on the little animations and effects and such because since the graphics
are more simplistic, I take a different route to make them more complex and sophisticated (and let's face it, graphics and asthetics are an important part of any game, personal preferences aside). Instead of direct art, I go with eye-popping special effects. That in turn emphasizes my strengths in scripting instead of my weakness in graphics-- playing to one's strengths is important.
QUOTE(Koh @ Mar 15 2013, 08:05 AM)
This can even be done simply. If there is a way to do this code wise, have the game draw sprites in the top left, that happen to be 16x16 tiles that you have setup to animate over 16 frames, each of which adds another row of black pixels vertically until the (de)buff icon is completely black, indicating it wore off, at which point the icon would disappear.
Nah man, I'd just draw it in primitives using Screen->Rectangle() or two Screen->Line()s.
That's how I did Felix's Life Meter, if you must know! It's currently four Screen->Line()s with each of their X,Y coordinates offset by 1 more than the previous, to make the parallelegram shape, set to gauge ((Felix's current HP / Felix's Max HP) * number of pixels the total Gauge is). This way, no matter how many Heart Containers Felix has, whether it's 3 or 100, the Life Gauge will always be the same size and it will always accurately depict "how much Life you have left".
I'd do something similar if I were making gauges for status conditions. But I am not. Except that I will be making little 8x8 icons next to his Life Meter courtesy of Sheik's advice, and when there's like 2 or 3 seconds left, that icon will flicker to tell you you're almost safe.
I am making a handful more negative status effects, by the way. At least four more,
possibly five,
big maybe a couple more later-- I only want to make ones that will see realistic use in the game, and not be used by like, just two or three things ever. I'll describe these a bit later if people are curious ^^
And now that I'm considering Positive conditions to add, probably like... three or four of those to start; the basics Attack+, Defense+, Regeneration, and Haste. Haste is a maybe, though, I don't want it to be overpowered and I don't want to make it too hard to control either. Something like 1.5x movement speed and attack speed perhaps, but definitely not 2x.
And right now I'm working on the first Overworld area, not script-work. Placing combos down and making screens... it's a feeling I've missed.
It's a welcome break from scripting. Much as I love scripting it does tire me out after a while (which is a good thing, it means I'm engaged). So I'll worry about this status effect stuff another time.
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