wow ... that guy with the blue, glowing sword is going to need a doctor. Cool looking game ... I checked out the web site and it looks like a PC game? I couldn't really tell if it was iOS or PC. So regarding characters and lighting, I will definitely experiment a little bit. My wife actually gave me the same feedback about things being too dark when I showed her an early build. If placing a small, subtle spotlight on the main 6 characters looks good, then I'll go with that. Perhaps a more natural approach would be to give the wizards that carry magical glowing staffs a point light on the staff head. That way, the wizards will illuminate themselves and those around them in a natural way. I'll try a few different options and see how it looks. Since performance is key, in my view, I'll keep the extra character lighting as an option that players can toggle on or off and I may force it off on older devices. There are two major graphical features that my game lacks ... real time shadows and specularity. Specularity is where light shines off metal surfaces and real time shadows are those shadows under moving characters. The reason for that is because I want the game to run well on mobile devices and not cause those devices to heat up like crazy. That being said, the features are there in the system but just switched off by default. I will enable those features on the maximum graphics setting in the option but have big warning signs that say that the max graphics setting really isn't suitable for most mobile devices. I suspect the latest and greatest tablets and phones could handle it but as I don't have the latest ipads for testing, I actually have no idea. @ramzarules: I actually like your suggestions for the colours so I'll probably take on most of them. The duelist already has red hair actually. I was playing around with a gold trim on the elf paladin because I wanted to make him look different from the human knight I have so I may go back to that design. Otherwise, quick update from my side. I got the major bug I found fixed and will now continue to work on content. Hopefully will have another character preview video by the end of the day.
Hey guys, I need some ideas for the Illusionist class. She's meant to be a trickster wizard that uses things like illusions and mind magic to win rather than direct damage attacks. Here's a picture of what she looks like: Illusionist by raj_dhillon, on Flickr So far, these are the ideas I have for her abilities: 1 - Teleport to a nearby tile. 2 - Mirror Image - Basically summons an image of the illusionist in a nearby tile that doesn't do anything but will hopefully take some of the attention away from her. Enemies might attack the mirror image rather than the real thing. 3 - Lower Guard - A spell that tricks opponents into lowering their guard. Perhaps some illusions that make the enemy think they've already won or something. Reduces the target's chance to dodge and resist critical hits because they aren't really defending themselves. 4 - Mind Control - Makes a target unit switch sides for 3 turns (I love this ability ... it's so fun to have your enemy units fight each other). I need two more abilities that are illusion themed. To be honest, the teleport spell isn't really illusion themed either but it looks cool and some wizard needs to have it. I was thinking of perhaps something like an illusionary barrier or shield spell. Something that makes the wizard or her friends harder to hit? Also, perhaps she could summon some type of illusionary monster ... something that is really powerful and scary but insubstantial so has very few hit points. Perhaps the monster could have its own "scare" ability that it could do as well as its normal attacks? Anyway, please just throw ideas at me if you have them. I'll go with whatever is both coolest, in the theme of the character and is easy to code.
I've never loved being so involved with a game making process! And thanks for going with my ideas, from the name of the game to the colors! Moving to the illusionist, it's pretty easy as i come with a D&D background: 1) Scare : group of enemies confront their fears of the mind, either freezing in place or running away from the illusionist (pretty easy to implement i think) and the difficult comes now: 2) Phantasmal Killer: target's worst fear materialises and tries to kill him. In D&D, you roll dice for the illusionist's skill with magic versus the target's mental will. If the illusionist succeeds, the enemy is instakilled. if not, it takes some damage from the mental shock. How you could code this: If you have already coded mental resistance of some sort into the game for resisting spells for example, then go this route. Illusionist's magic stat vs the target's magic resist. If you haven't, make it a targeted spell attack, with chance hit % rising as the illusionist becomes more powerful in it, and lowering % for enemies with magic resist. It can also work on bosses. Make sure that it is significantly powerful, as she cannot attack with any other abilities, but at the same time not insanely powerful as it will take down bosses. Further sugestions: 1) Replace Teleport with an ability that makes her or her allies harder to hit % and 2) Add that she becomes invisible for the round she casts mirror image, until she acts again. Hope i helped this time too
As for the Teleport, please make a Time Mage (my current D&D character), and give him 1)Teleport, 2) Haste, 3) Slow, 4) Rays of Ageing (targets take damage and lower stats as their lifetime rushes to the final years or death) 5) Time Stop (all enemies freeze in time for a number of rounds) It would be awesome if you could add my character -or any time mage
oooh ... a Chronomancer. That sounds like too much fun ... and the abilities you describe are really easy to code. I might squeeze him or her in at the expense of another character. I'll see what I can shuffle around. I might have to scrap the Golem unfortunately because the 3D model I have doesn't have a proper death animation and I don't have an animator on staff that I can get to fix it. So I may swap the Golem for the Chronomancer. I also wanted to add an Ice mage but I might end up with too many wizards. I'll see how good I can get the Orc Berserker working ... if he ends up being a bit dull, I may switch him out or an Ice mage or Time mage as well.
exactly, a chronomancer! make it a him please -if you get him in. Good to hear that the abilities are easy, i hope i did well with the illusionist suggestions too!
Cool .. when I get to coding him, I'll send you a few options for 3d characters and you can tell me which you think is most well suited for him. He (or the golem, if I decide to go that route) will be one of the extra characters released after release. So far, I think the Samurai, Golem or Chronomancer, Human Knight or Ice Mage, Centaur and Vampire will be added after release. So release should have 15 characters with the remaining 5 added before chapter 2 is released.
Thanks for the ideas. A mass scare spell should be easy ... just a debuff on the unit's melee stats. Perhaps reduce attacks and movement or something for a few rounds. I don't know if I can do an insta-kill spell without heavy re-coding. I could make it a damage spell that does 100 or 1000 points of damage but that could lead to insta-kill of bosses and that would be tricky to balance. I do like the idea of a phantasmal killer though ... perhaps summoning a ghost or something that has a high damage melee attack but only 1 hit point so is killed as soon as it's hit?
Just doing some tweaking and playtesting on my end. I've managed to get it so that the first level is actually really fun. The starting stats of the characters combined with revised ability costs makes the first level really challenging but enjoyable. Of course, it now crashes at the first level for some weird reason ... but I'll figure that out.
Okay, figured it out. Seems like the XP / leveling code didn't take into account the possibility of characters actually getting killed during battle. That's going to take some recoding ... might not have another character preview today. Sorry.
@rjm, i'm glad you agree with me about Path of Exile, this game got the "darkly colorful" perfect and this game's style strongly reminds me of it! @Wavelight thanks for the Chronomancer, it's no problem to add characters after release. It will even be useful so you keep updating content/ bumping the game! For the "look and lighting", take a look at the picture of POE in the previous page, both me and rjm (and i think others) agree it would work perfect. Yes, it's for PC, but get the color/ style from there as a basis And for the Phantasmal Killer, how about you do it as a "death ray" with spell hit chance % what the normal character level of the normal enemy % is, and detract some % chance for it, in exchange for instakill chance if it hits. ex.: if a mage's spell ray hit % vs a nomal monster would be 85%, make the change -50% for the Phantasmal killer, giving it a chance to work of 35% If that mage cast the spell vs a boss monster, his chance to hit with a normal spell would be only 70%. So, the phantasmal killer of the illusionist would have a chance of 20% to instakill a boss. Also, make it useable only 1/per battle.
Quick update ... I fixed the bug that was causing the level to crash if a character in the player's party died. I had to completely re-write the code for my leveling up / XP system but that's cool. I'll experiment a bit with lightening up colours of the characters and will see what attaching small lights to each of the player characters does. I have to admit I don't fully understand what you guys mean by referring to Path of Exhile. The screenshot that was posted was clearly in daylight on a beach. My game is entirely in an underground city without any natural light so I'm not sure I can really get them to look the same. I also prefer my game's grunginess. Anyway, I'll see what I can do. Probably another day of bug fixing and tweaking tomorrow. I don't think I'll have a build ready for external playtesting this week after all. Should be early to mid next week. I'll try to have another character video made tomorrow.
The fact you so openly listen to feedback and opinions, instant support from me! Can't wait to see this beautiful SRPG to come out! Wishing the best!
The Path of Exile reference was about the colors, that you can include that kind of color palette exactly without your game losing its grunginess, but you are already on the colors -respect I'm eagerly waiting for the playtesting, and as usual, i'll be here to give ideas on whatever you may need!
Whoaaaa...you got me over the fence dude... instabuy title.... hope everything will workout financially like wayward souls dev did... i'm subscribed to this thread
Thanks, I'm looking forward to playtesting as well. At the moment, I don't have a fully fleshed out story for chapters 2 and 3 ... just the foundation of the story that's explained in chapter 1. So I'm hoping to get feedback and input on how the story should progress as well as technical aspects of the game. I think my colour palette is actually very close to what you showed in PoE but the major difference is that metal objects are reflecting light in that screenshot whereas in my game, metal just appears as a light grey. That's a limitation that I imposed on myself because I wanted it to run well on mobile platforms. However, I'll write some code for chapter 2 that allows for reflections but only on the maximum graphics setting. That should make the shiny bits on the characters stand a lot more and make the characters themselves pop out without making the unreflective parts of the dungeon look weird. Also, the game engine I'm using (Unity3D Pro) is going to receive a major update some time in the next 3 to 6 months that will actually allow for reflections on metal objects without a major performance hit. So when that's released, I'll update the game with those changes and it should look a lot better without affecting performance. I'm currently testing the beta of that new version and it looks really promising.
Thanks ... your support and feedback means a lot. I hope to continue these types of threads for all my upcoming games.
Thanks ... hope so too. Though, if it doesn't .... I still have the day job. I just hope it makes enough so I can continue to justify spending my nights and weekends (as well as all my disposable income) on game development to my wife. My first game (Gun Frenzy) seems to have been a flop so her patience is running thin.
