4964 replies to this topic

[tox_von]

i finished the level paths in my tower of time quest if anyone wants to playthrough and give comments i can finish it quicker and have a list of stuff to fix.

[SpacemanDan]

Finished the last enemy I wanted to complete for the 4th dungeon. And I have the mini-boss done, too! This leaves me some misc puzzles, traps and the boss. The 4th dungeon isn't far from completion!

[Russ]

Today, I finished the last level of The Darkness Within. It's full of scripted puzzles and tough enemies, and makes you alternate between acting fast and stepping back to observe before you go. I wouldn't say it's the best dungeon I've ever made, but I think it does an excellent job of wrapping up the quest. Now, on to scripting the final boss.

[Jared]

Today I made a few screen in Relic of The Past. I'm glad progress is going swell.

[SpacemanDan]

Finished the boss of the 4th dungeon! I'll need to play test it to make sure it's fair, but I'm glad it's done! Honestly, it was probably the easier of the things to make. But regardless, I'm happy with it. This leaves me filling the dungeon with enemies, traps and a few puzzles. Then I can move on with the quest.

[Schwa]

Oooh. Yesterday I finished the script that took me a week: the improved Skirmish System.

Here's a preview shot!



You fight waves of enemies, and at the end, are scored on Offense, Defense and Speed, and ranked from E (lowest) to S (highest). You may also get special item prizes for ranking B or higher, A or higher, or S! Furthermore, each Skirmish screen saves your personal High Score for that Skirmish, so you can keep replaying it to try and get S-Rank on all of them and unlock the best items.

I kinda deviated from my plan of just finishing the Tutorial Stage first, but no worries, this thing was very important either now or later and I'm glad I got it done now!

Still needs some bug fixing, though, which I'll be gradually doing over time. I think I can improve parts of the system and I'll need a clearer idea how first.

Um... 8. The very last one triples instead of doubles.

That's 384 enemies total, you know. Didn't do our math in advance when we made this guy, now, did we?

[kurt91]

Lv1 = 1 slime
x2
Lv2 = 2 slimes
x2
Lv3 = 4 slimes
x2
Lv4 = 8 slimes
x2
Lv5 = 16 slimes
x2
Lv6 = 32 slimes
x2
Lv7 = 64 slimes
x3
Lv8 = 192 slimes

Eight levels of slime enemies, the last multiplication is a triple instead of a double. This results in a final count of 192 of the weakest level slime if the player is not planning their attack properly. How'd you get 384?

[Schwa]

Eight levels of slime enemies, the last multiplication is a triple instead of a double. This results in a final count of 192 of the weakest level slime if the player is not planning their attack properly. How'd you get 384?

Oh! So 7 splits, not 8. I was counting 8 splits and counting the final form as a Level 9 version!

Still, nearly two-hundred enemies tops on the screen for the first boss? Even thirty things on the screen is insane. (Think about Bat Wizzrobes and if you can't kill one fast enough for instance.) I'm not trying to bash your work, I'm just a bit astonished.

[kurt91]

Told you it was too difficult. I'm going to see if I can try to keep it as close to the original idea as possible but tone it down a bit.

[SpacemanDan]

The 4th dungeon is pretty much done in terms of laying everything out. There's still plenty of bugs I need to fix before I'm willing to call it 100% complete. But it's really close now. I still want to add a puzzle or two to a few rooms. So that'll be a thing to do. >_<

All this progress...It's probably the most I've made in a loooong time. And damn does it ever fell good. X3

[Russ]

All this progress...It's probably the most I've made in a loooong time. And damn does it ever fell good. X3

That feeling. It's such a wonderful feeling, isn't it?

So today, I worked a lot on the first phase of my final boss. The movement, attacks, vulnerability patterns, and all that are all finished. All that's left is to script the desperation attacks it switches to when it gets below a certain health (I'm think 2/5). After that, there's a lot of event scripting, and then three more bosses to script. Let it be known that making good final bosses is really hard and time consuming.

[Schwa]

Took the entire day, and many frustrated attempts. But I got the tutorial diagrams working.



Errrr, well, that is... "working" as in they exist... yeah, these things need some more tuning eheheheheh...

But I'm so close!! Just got to tinker with the X,Y data tables I set down. The system to generate them works fine, and that's the hard part! Progress is indeed a wonderful, satisfying emotion.

Oh right, the part where they light up when you do the different buttons to indicate that you did it right... that's not implemented yet. I don't even know how I'm going to go about implementing that. But I know that I'm going to do it.

Let it be known that making good final bosses is really hard and time consuming.

Fixed? Though that goes without saying. Good luck to you, man.

[kurt91]

Hold R, Hold R, Charge, Back, Hold Left, Side, Side, Right, Forward, Max Power, A, and A is the combo for a Spin Attack...

Um... This looks kind of difficult, Schwa. I'm getting a bit scared, here.

Anyways, I'm nearly done putting together some more custom enemies for my quest, though I'm just using the Enemy Editor. I'm pretty sure I can get my replacement first boss to work right, it's just that doing the artwork took a while. Now watch, this one's going to be too easy. (Mine-laying summoner. Slowly turns the battlefield into a labyrinth of indestructible obstacles)

Edited by kurt91, 05 March 2013 - 04:50 AM.

[Schwa]

Hold R, Hold R, Charge, Back, Hold Left, Side, Side, Right, Forward, Max Power, A, and A is the combo for a Spin Attack...

Um... This looks kind of difficult, Schwa. I'm getting a bit scared, here.

Nah. I botched the diagram. The proper sequence ought to be [R][(hold)R] for the charging pose, [Back][Side][(hold)Fwd] to reach max charge, [A][A] to fire off the Spin Attack.

Basically you do a semi-circle motion with the arrows while holding R, and then double-tap A to let loose. How fast can you do "Down, Left, Up" on the arrows? Or "Right, Up, Left" also works. Any three-button semi-circle is valid, in either clockwise or counter-clockwise. The reason you double-tap-and-hold [R] is because holding [R] normally is the Guard Stance. Two [R]s combos from Guard Stance into Special-Attack-Charging stance (which combos into any of Felix's "super arts" such as Spin Attack or the ones he gets later on that can deflect meteors back at dragons or cross the screen in one frame or even wilder things, depending on the button sequence you fire off).

That and you can do the buttons slowly or quickly, your choice-- even taking several seconds to do the buttons is viable, provided you don't get hit. So, I reward more-skillful players who can hit the buttons more dexterously and swiftly, as those players will be able to pull Spin Attacks out of nowhere at exactly the moments they want it most.

[kurt91]

Still leaves me happy that I own a PC controller. It's a lot faster and easier to twirl a Control Stick than it is to mess with the arrow keys like that. Of course, if I wanted to take the cheap way out, I could always just set it up so a single button would take care of all of that for me. (I wouldn't do that, though.)

That gives me an idea, is it possible to count the frames it takes for a player to input a combo like that? If so, you could punish players who try to do a sneaky trick like binding the full combo to a controller button by seeing if they pull it off faster than what's obviously possible (pulling off a Spin Attack in a single frame), and then make Felix trip or something instead. (I would laugh if you pulled something like that off.)