@zeldarules28: Go You start sounding a little like blizzard Zelda. "Here! We are working on this super-hyper-awesome feature you guys are going to love it! We can't really show because it isnt finished." Just don't shelf the whole idea ok? ;-)
Hello! Remember me? It's that guy who is always very late on replying to requests. I know that you guys are gonna go ballistic when you hear this, and I know you probably aren't taking requests due to being so close to being finished, but hear me out.
Yesterday I had this Idea when I was doing some math homework:
X-cancel- (dark) (this would be a super move for a x- based legendary) takes your defense and turns it into an improper fraction(for example, let's say your starmon's defense is 20. The fraction would be 20/1.) and does the same thing to the foes. Then the move cross-cancels and turns the answer into a whole number, which becomes the move's power.
Cross-force- every time a cross-based move is used, (cross poison, cross chop, x-scissor, x-cancel)multiply the power of that move by 1.5.
If you use these, make sure that at least cross force would belong to a Starmon with at least some relation to the letter x. If you don't use either, I am sooo, sooooooooo soooorrrryyyy for wasting your time.
Ps. Will opponents starmon level up with exp? I always hated that you were the only one who actually leveled up their pokemon.
Ps. Will opponents starmon level up with exp? I always hated that you were the only one who actually leveled up their pokemon.
I'm not sure what you mean. Random trainers you meet on the road don't have their pokémon gain levels during battles, but it's not like this really matters. Everybody else simply has stronger pokémon as you advance throughout the game. What's the point in NPC's actually 'leveling up' their pokémon?
I don't think, that it would be needed for trainers to actually gain experience, but I would like something like at certain points in the story, the trainers you have already beaten go like "I became a lot stronger since we fought last time. Wanna try again?" and get some levels on their old starmon, probably new attacks and evolutions, maybe even a couple more monsters. However, for parts not relevant to the current story, this should be optional, since it would be frustrating having to face all trainers over and over every time you walk through an area.
Or maybe they just get stronger every time you fight them, so they can become really challenging and an effective way of training (with some sort of limit obviously).
An issue with trainers advancing as you play through the game is that vast majority of trainers are 100% random.
Making recurring preset trainers is a good idea. Already planned this for the Rival, and you'll have a rematch with all the milestone trainers near the end of the arena ladder (Where they use their actual high level team instead of their low level teams - It never made sense that Gym trainers had such weak pokemon, so here there's an explanation: They're milestone trainers, they're a sort of checkpoint you have to pass to be able to advance further in the arena, some sort of "quality control". They maintain low level teams for milestone challenges, while still having a powerful team with which they keep their actual arena rank)
We can surely have additional trainers relevant to the story progress over time. We could make one or more of the practically irrelevant Cipher grunts an actual preset trainer that has a party that keeps progressing (And his lines would indicate that he remembers you. But being just one of the many random guys you have to fight your way through, chances are you won't remember him, so it'd be a sort of easter egg :p ) It shouldn't really be that hard to add, we just have to keep in mind our recurring trainers.
For trainers levelling in battle: I don't think it's necessary, and more importantly, not worth the time: You need to lose quite a few high level starmon to actually give the enemy enough XP to level up... This happening would be so rare, we might as well just roll a number from 1-100 every time your starmon faints and have the enemy level up if it rolls a 100 (And no, I don't think we're gonna do this either...)
As for the moves, I'm not so sure about them. first of all I already made pretty much all moves we need and am not actively working on them anymore (Recently added a Dark Special Lifesteal move cause I felt like it, that's pretty much it since baton pass). The calculations may be messy to add into triggers, would need Zelda's input into this, but it might not be easy to explain (Tbh, I think I missed something in your explanation, 20/1 is for all practical purposes just 20, changing it to a fraction doesn't really change much. Did you want to divide defense by defense or what? In that case it could be more easily explained as a move that uses the Defense stat instead of Attack. Srry, I might just have missed something entirely. Slept little the last two days cause I'm busy moving so I'm kinda tired...)
You could go with the approach of Black&White (not sure if earlier editions had this as well): There are all kinds of trainers and most of them would be one-time only, but a certain kind would always fight you again when you came by. Granted, it was kind of crappy, because they never or only slightly leveled up, so it was more of an annoyance than any help, but with proper leveling in mind, this could work out great.
Also, random shouldn't be an issue, you can just randomize them at startup, then save their current monsters and restore them when fighting them again + add some random new ones.
I think it's fine the way things are. If players want to battle endless but unexpected trainers why not set up a battle frontier that gives exp?
We sort of have that already in the arena system- you can just pick what trainer you want to fight, and go at it. Although I really like the idea of an "endless challenge" type mode. It should be relatively easy for me to add, actually, since the whole thing is randomized now anyways. And there could be rewards for getting through particular numbers of fights before dying.
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Maity, sorry if I didn't explain well enough. Also, in my example, say my opponent's def is 1. (I know that would never happen, but hear me out.) 20/1 and 1/1 are the fractions, right? So you would multiply the twenty on top with the one on bottom to get twenty, and the two ones to get one. Therefore, the resulting fraction would be 20/1 still, and that as a whole number would be 20, making the moves power 20. If you don't see what I'm talking about or it would be too hard to put in, don't mention it!
By the way what I meant by the NPCs gaining levels was if they would gain exp by killing your starmon. It was too easy when the NPCs would'nt gain exp in the main series, but whatever. I will just have to kill lots of NPCs again.
On my final request for this post, I ask will you PLEASE have the character change its outfit after beating the champion? The champions in the original games always had such awesome outfits. And I kept walking around in sweatpants and a tee shirt when the champ had capes and an awesome hairdo. Furthermore it felt kind of wierd throwing out my main legendary when I was dressed like I was going to school.
Hey :) Yea, I understand now what you mean now, but I don't think that will be viable - Stats get larger with levels, base power of moves doesn't (Well, it does a bit, low level starmon don't immediately get access to the most powerful moves, but somewhere between levels 20-40, in addition to TMs the decently powered moves start being learned and it doesn't get much higher (More powerful moves that get learned later on have drawbacks that make the previous moves better, like Hyper Beam and Solar Beam taking up two turns), which means multiplication would end up catastrophic. Early levels you could get powers of 20-80 or so, but then later on when stuff gets stats going past 100 you'll practically be firing hundreds of hyperbeams in one go :p
Also, the bottom number is always 1 or gotten how? Because if its constant, we can just skip the fractions part and straight up multiply defense by that number. Sorry if I'm being dumb again, been tired the entire day >.>
But back to the multiplication point: Division is what's needed if you want to compare stats in any way. There are already moves that compare for example the speed of both starmon, and depending on the % difference a set amount of power is chosen, something similar could easily be done for defense stats. Or altering the damage calculation formula to use different stats (There's already an attack that use Special Attack as the offensive stat, but regular Defense as the defensive stat for example.)
Another issue: How am I going to clearly explain it to the player? Having cool and interesting formulas is nice and all, but apart from Zelda and me no one is going to see them (Unless we post them publicly somewhere), and I don't have enough tooltip space to explain how math works to players.
Let's take the move where speeds are compared for example, its a super simple calculation, which makes it easy to explain in the tooltip: "The faster the user is than the target, the greater the damage." (That's the actual tooltip, or at least the part of it concerning power/damage)
For outfits:
I want people to be able to freely switch between many outfits. How I'm gonna do that I'm still figuring out, but I don't mean that I don't know how, but that I don't know what method I want to pick - It'll definitely work. Right now trainers are by default wearing a fancy tuxedo, but we also have some more traveller/hiker/ranger looking outfits as well as a thief. I'm gonna add more, I just have to get around to actually doing it. Creating an outfit unlocked by beating the game shouldn't be too hard I think.
For NPCs levelling as they beat your starmon:
As I said, it takes quite a good chunk of XP for a starmon to level. It seems fast for you because you can do multiple battles in a row. But if you're only going to see a trainer a single time, you're most likely going to have to sacrifice your entire party to get the trainer to have his starmon level up, which may be somewhat hard to do without actually knocking out the enemy starmon. And even if you manage it, you're most likely screwed already anyway and it won't matter. Yea, it's a cool addition, but it would take a good chunk of time to implement and would be used so damn rarely I just really don't think it's worth the trouble. If I could just flip a switch and it'd magically work immediately, I'd do it, but unfortunately that won't happen :( NPC Starmon are set up a different way, they use different variables to store their stats, etc. EXP isn't something that's stored for them because it wasn't necessary, therefore EXP calculation is not run when an AI starmon knocks out a player starmon, which means the EXP calculation/reward system itself doesn't currently have any way of handling AI starmon, and neither does the levelup system, which means the move learning system doesn't either, and the list goes on. Zelda would have to run through a lot of old functions just to add the EXP gain for AIs which will not be noticed about 99,99% of the time. It's just not worth the time.
If you meant NPCs keeping up with your team in levels, but not levelling directly in battle, that's already in. Trainer levels are calculated based on your parties average level and clamped between two values based on the zone and possibly some other things (So zone X won't go higher than level Y, but Y will always be pretty high (First zone is by default levels 3-6 for wilds. Trainers will be able to scale up to level 20 or so, if not higher, as your own party reaches those levels). Trainers are completely randomized: We've got some preset lists of starmon they can have, the chances for them and such things, and even three tiers of lists for them, which list the starmon are taken from is dependent on the trainer level. The trainers themselves also don't always spawn in the first place, and not always in the same amounts. The forest can have between 4 and 7 trainers I think atm and will have about 15-20 possible spawn locations.
TL;DR: You'll never have a problem finding a trainer whose levels match that of your party, and if your starmon are high enough levels that it actually does become a problem, the arena will still be able to give some fairly randomized trainers to fight for all levels, and who knows what else we'll add.
Very Well thought out gameplay, can't wait to play.
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Blizzard Fan since Starcraft. The Single Player story is AMAZING IMO, I can't wait for the Expansions. In Warcraft 3 I only enjoy the Custom Maps scene (& Blizzards...
The first zone could use a good variety. Ratata and pidgey equivalents are boring. Psychic, fighting, fire, or ice would be an interesting change.
I don't mind the first few zones being a little more basic, however I would like those basic Ratatas and Pidgeys evolve into something quite epic and powerful, like for example in Black&White you had Lilipup, your basic starter trash, which evolved into Stoutland, who was kinda badass and quite powerful as well, with decend stats, a strong ability and not a bad movepool (especially with Return, one of the strongest normal-type moves available, available very early in the game as a TM). Patrat, which was your Ratata didn't do quite as well, his Watchog evolution was one of the best HM bitches early on, though, who could learn cut, strength, flash and... stone smash, I believe?
Of course, there were others that were totally useless in the beginning as well as later on, well.
I would love to see a different set of starters as well, its always the same fire/water/plant stuff. Granted, the stone-scissors-paper system makes these types obvious choices, but there have to be other similar combinations, right?
Seeing as we won't have hundreds of starmon I think it's quite important I make the few we have count, so I think it'll be really rare that any starmon will be at a disadvantage base stat wise. I'm sticking to somewhat simple/boring first zones (The bug chains, a sort of rattata, meowth and doduo, and I need to replace the starmon that is currently the pidgey equivalent - I no longer want to use the models it currently has)
The rare starmon are gonna be better though. You've got Probichu in the forest as well as Skaropede (Evolves into badass fire+ground scorpion), Odoron (Poison tank) and I think Oculus (Somewhat beefy psychic) in the first zone. Rares have a 5% spawn chance and differ depending on day/night.
Oh, and the forest has the Aravon (Ancient protector/ent/tree that wants to murder you) encounter, but you'll probably want to wait a bit before fighting those (Minimum level is 25)
As for starters, we're sticking to the original three, they even have base stats and move sets similar to Bulbasaur/Squirtle/Charmander, mostly for nostalgia's sake. The first impression of the game is somewhat important, and reminding people of the good times they had in the pokemon games with a similar starting choice is I think more useful to us than having more varied starters. If we ever do a part/generation 2 though I wouldn't mind mixing up the starters a bit (That of course has nothing to do with the lack of models for grass starmon, nothing at all *whistles innocently*)
Hey thanks, maity! If it would really be that complicated then don't worry about it. I understand that you are probably quite comfortable with your move sets already and I actually don't know the answers to most of the questions you asked. By the way, I was thinking that if you were ever going to make a Pokemon style remake I have the perfect evo chain for you for a sequel requiring hots- nuydus destroyer-> Ash worm-> Yagdra
With a retex it could work
@TheAlmaity: Go I asked you which types needed more models and I remember you told me grass type had already enough models... Now I'm here getting lazy to finish a water type >.>
We've got enough for now, and I might be able to find some more models suitable for either non-evolving or only once-evolving starmon, but starters are always supposed to be 3 stage ones, and that's when it becomes an issue, but that issue is pretty much present for all types :p Currently have 10 three-stage evolution chains (One of which splits at the last stage into 2 starmon), plan at least two more (don't think I have the models for more), but one of those 3-stage chains will have to be replace (It's using Sc2 models which really don't fit.)
The project seems to be progressing. Figured I'd ask you guys if anything important happened in the last 17 days. Any newly mapped areas, or screenshot worthy game-art? Maybe there's some update on how "soonish" alpha is coming? I know that spring is stressful and busy for many (as a Senior in school, I am very busy too) but I would welcome news!
Off topic, Anyone notice how many of the new features in X/Y are exactly the same thing this awesome duo+ is working on, just with Game Freak's finances? Outfits, 3d (though, 3ds is a bit cooler than sc2), but you guys also have a more "open" RPG thing going.
Would it be possible if (when Karma is dark enough) a player could become the leader of team evil? I would honestly LOVE to be Giovanni for one game. Everyone wants to be the Fire Emperor!
The project seems to be progressing. Figured I'd ask you guys if anything important happened in the last 17 days. Any newly mapped areas, or screenshot worthy game-art? Maybe there's some update on how "soonish" alpha is coming? I know that spring is stressful and busy for many (as a Senior in school, I am very busy too) but I would welcome news!
Zelda's been busy, and apart from moving to a new house I've also been pretty lazy :( So yeah, for about two weeks absolutely nothing happened.
BUT a couple of days ago we finally made some concrete plans regarding the storyline (We had tons of ideas and vague outlines, what I mean is that I wrote up very specifically what should happen, no vagueness, a concrete plan). Its not much, but it's what we want to have in the alpha (We're gonna cut it off at a somewhat interesting point :) )
Would it be possible if (when Karma is dark enough) a player could become the leader of team evil? I would honestly LOVE to be Giovanni for one game. Everyone wants to be the Fire Emperor!
Hehe... Hehehe... HEHEHE... MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Something similar may or may not happen ;) But there will definitely be a lot of interaction with Cipher (the bad guys) if you want to play it that way.
Figured I'd ask you guys if anything important happened in the last 17 days. Any newly mapped areas, or screenshot worthy game-art? Maybe there's some update on how "soonish" alpha is coming? I know that spring is stressful and busy for many (as a Senior in school, I am very busy too) but I would welcome news!
I was just coming over here to let you guys know we're not dead, but maity beat me to it :P I've been taking exams at my school but I'm just about finished now, so I can resume work on the map. Maity's been writing up the first official plot details (before this it's only been pre-game lore and general ideas). We're not going to be spoiling the story for you, but it's pretty awesome. I'm going to be working hard to do the story justice with the quests. As you could probably tell by Maity's devious laughter, we're planning some pretty cool stuff for the story. ^.^
Speaking of quests, I'm also going to start cranking out more of those- it's one of my next goals. The main storyline quests, at least up to the cutoff point for the alpha, are planned but not yet programmed. We're going to be adding in some sidequest stuff as well to keep people entertained between the story. The "core quests" of the story will probably be about 10(ish) levels apart, so we're going to fill the in-between time with sidequests.
I also know we promised a pair of 2 videos a while back, to show off two new things. The first thing is almost ready to show off, so you should hopefully see a video soon. The second feature ended up taking me longer to program than expected- it's not finished yet, but it's almost ready enough to show off.
So anyways, we're not dead, but we did have to take a break from development. But now we're back on track, and you should start seeing some cool stuff in the future.
Sounds like two Very Impressive videos coming to look forward to can't wait thanks for the Updates.
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My Projects:
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Blizzard Fan since Starcraft. The Single Player story is AMAZING IMO, I can't wait for the Expansions. In Warcraft 3 I only enjoy the Custom Maps scene (& Blizzards...
BUT a couple of days ago we finally made some concrete plans regarding the storyline (We had tons of ideas and vague outlines, what I mean is that I wrote up very specifically what should happen, no vagueness, a concrete plan). Its not much, but it's what we want to have in the alpha (We're gonna cut it off at a somewhat interesting point :) )
Yeah? Sounds good. Story is like, the second most important part of world building in an RPG. (Art comes first, including audio, IMO) And you don't have an RPG without a fantastic world. I really hope I get to play with the map soon.
I'm going to be working hard to do the story justice with the quests. As you could probably tell by Maity's devious laughter, we're planning some pretty cool stuff for the story. ^.^
The main storyline quests, at least up to the cutoff point for the alpha, are planned but not yet programmed.
I also know we promised a pair of 2 videos a while back, to show off two new things. The first thing is almost ready to show off, so you should hopefully see a video soon. The second feature ended up taking me longer to program than expected- it's not finished yet, but it's almost ready enough to show off.
So anyways, we're not dead, but we did have to take a break from development. But now we're back on track, and you should start seeing some cool stuff in the future.
Nice! Gimmie all the goodies!
Just a though, would giving the player a jetpack to access late areas be doable? That's one way to "instance" pathing, give the character's cliff walk/hopping abilities. It might be more work than it's worth (cliffs are not enough to block someone in anymore) but using it as a barrier to the legendary's home would be nice (or allow hopping ledges back to pallet town).
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@zeldarules28: Go You start sounding a little like blizzard Zelda. "Here! We are working on this super-hyper-awesome feature you guys are going to love it! We can't really show because it isnt finished." Just don't shelf the whole idea ok? ;-)
Hello! Remember me? It's that guy who is always very late on replying to requests. I know that you guys are gonna go ballistic when you hear this, and I know you probably aren't taking requests due to being so close to being finished, but hear me out. Yesterday I had this Idea when I was doing some math homework:
X-cancel- (dark) (this would be a super move for a x- based legendary) takes your defense and turns it into an improper fraction(for example, let's say your starmon's defense is 20. The fraction would be 20/1.) and does the same thing to the foes. Then the move cross-cancels and turns the answer into a whole number, which becomes the move's power.
Cross-force- every time a cross-based move is used, (cross poison, cross chop, x-scissor, x-cancel)multiply the power of that move by 1.5.
If you use these, make sure that at least cross force would belong to a Starmon with at least some relation to the letter x. If you don't use either, I am sooo, sooooooooo soooorrrryyyy for wasting your time. Ps. Will opponents starmon level up with exp? I always hated that you were the only one who actually leveled up their pokemon.
I'm not sure what you mean. Random trainers you meet on the road don't have their pokémon gain levels during battles, but it's not like this really matters. Everybody else simply has stronger pokémon as you advance throughout the game. What's the point in NPC's actually 'leveling up' their pokémon?
I don't think, that it would be needed for trainers to actually gain experience, but I would like something like at certain points in the story, the trainers you have already beaten go like "I became a lot stronger since we fought last time. Wanna try again?" and get some levels on their old starmon, probably new attacks and evolutions, maybe even a couple more monsters. However, for parts not relevant to the current story, this should be optional, since it would be frustrating having to face all trainers over and over every time you walk through an area.
Or maybe they just get stronger every time you fight them, so they can become really challenging and an effective way of training (with some sort of limit obviously).
An issue with trainers advancing as you play through the game is that vast majority of trainers are 100% random.
Making recurring preset trainers is a good idea. Already planned this for the Rival, and you'll have a rematch with all the milestone trainers near the end of the arena ladder (Where they use their actual high level team instead of their low level teams - It never made sense that Gym trainers had such weak pokemon, so here there's an explanation: They're milestone trainers, they're a sort of checkpoint you have to pass to be able to advance further in the arena, some sort of "quality control". They maintain low level teams for milestone challenges, while still having a powerful team with which they keep their actual arena rank)
We can surely have additional trainers relevant to the story progress over time. We could make one or more of the practically irrelevant Cipher grunts an actual preset trainer that has a party that keeps progressing (And his lines would indicate that he remembers you. But being just one of the many random guys you have to fight your way through, chances are you won't remember him, so it'd be a sort of easter egg :p ) It shouldn't really be that hard to add, we just have to keep in mind our recurring trainers.
For trainers levelling in battle: I don't think it's necessary, and more importantly, not worth the time: You need to lose quite a few high level starmon to actually give the enemy enough XP to level up... This happening would be so rare, we might as well just roll a number from 1-100 every time your starmon faints and have the enemy level up if it rolls a 100 (And no, I don't think we're gonna do this either...)
@BladeOfAiur: Go
Nice to hear from you again :)
As for the moves, I'm not so sure about them. first of all I already made pretty much all moves we need and am not actively working on them anymore (Recently added a Dark Special Lifesteal move cause I felt like it, that's pretty much it since baton pass). The calculations may be messy to add into triggers, would need Zelda's input into this, but it might not be easy to explain (Tbh, I think I missed something in your explanation, 20/1 is for all practical purposes just 20, changing it to a fraction doesn't really change much. Did you want to divide defense by defense or what? In that case it could be more easily explained as a move that uses the Defense stat instead of Attack. Srry, I might just have missed something entirely. Slept little the last two days cause I'm busy moving so I'm kinda tired...)
You could go with the approach of Black&White (not sure if earlier editions had this as well): There are all kinds of trainers and most of them would be one-time only, but a certain kind would always fight you again when you came by. Granted, it was kind of crappy, because they never or only slightly leveled up, so it was more of an annoyance than any help, but with proper leveling in mind, this could work out great.
Also, random shouldn't be an issue, you can just randomize them at startup, then save their current monsters and restore them when fighting them again + add some random new ones.
We sort of have that already in the arena system- you can just pick what trainer you want to fight, and go at it. Although I really like the idea of an "endless challenge" type mode. It should be relatively easy for me to add, actually, since the whole thing is randomized now anyways. And there could be rewards for getting through particular numbers of fights before dying.
Maity, sorry if I didn't explain well enough. Also, in my example, say my opponent's def is 1. (I know that would never happen, but hear me out.) 20/1 and 1/1 are the fractions, right? So you would multiply the twenty on top with the one on bottom to get twenty, and the two ones to get one. Therefore, the resulting fraction would be 20/1 still, and that as a whole number would be 20, making the moves power 20. If you don't see what I'm talking about or it would be too hard to put in, don't mention it!
By the way what I meant by the NPCs gaining levels was if they would gain exp by killing your starmon. It was too easy when the NPCs would'nt gain exp in the main series, but whatever. I will just have to kill lots of NPCs again.
On my final request for this post, I ask will you PLEASE have the character change its outfit after beating the champion? The champions in the original games always had such awesome outfits. And I kept walking around in sweatpants and a tee shirt when the champ had capes and an awesome hairdo. Furthermore it felt kind of wierd throwing out my main legendary when I was dressed like I was going to school.
Thanks so much!
@BladeOfAiur: Go
Hey :) Yea, I understand now what you mean now, but I don't think that will be viable - Stats get larger with levels, base power of moves doesn't (Well, it does a bit, low level starmon don't immediately get access to the most powerful moves, but somewhere between levels 20-40, in addition to TMs the decently powered moves start being learned and it doesn't get much higher (More powerful moves that get learned later on have drawbacks that make the previous moves better, like Hyper Beam and Solar Beam taking up two turns), which means multiplication would end up catastrophic. Early levels you could get powers of 20-80 or so, but then later on when stuff gets stats going past 100 you'll practically be firing hundreds of hyperbeams in one go :p
Also, the bottom number is always 1 or gotten how? Because if its constant, we can just skip the fractions part and straight up multiply defense by that number. Sorry if I'm being dumb again, been tired the entire day >.>
But back to the multiplication point: Division is what's needed if you want to compare stats in any way. There are already moves that compare for example the speed of both starmon, and depending on the % difference a set amount of power is chosen, something similar could easily be done for defense stats. Or altering the damage calculation formula to use different stats (There's already an attack that use Special Attack as the offensive stat, but regular Defense as the defensive stat for example.)
Another issue: How am I going to clearly explain it to the player? Having cool and interesting formulas is nice and all, but apart from Zelda and me no one is going to see them (Unless we post them publicly somewhere), and I don't have enough tooltip space to explain how math works to players.
Let's take the move where speeds are compared for example, its a super simple calculation, which makes it easy to explain in the tooltip: "The faster the user is than the target, the greater the damage." (That's the actual tooltip, or at least the part of it concerning power/damage)
For outfits:
I want people to be able to freely switch between many outfits. How I'm gonna do that I'm still figuring out, but I don't mean that I don't know how, but that I don't know what method I want to pick - It'll definitely work. Right now trainers are by default wearing a fancy tuxedo, but we also have some more traveller/hiker/ranger looking outfits as well as a thief. I'm gonna add more, I just have to get around to actually doing it. Creating an outfit unlocked by beating the game shouldn't be too hard I think.
For NPCs levelling as they beat your starmon:
As I said, it takes quite a good chunk of XP for a starmon to level. It seems fast for you because you can do multiple battles in a row. But if you're only going to see a trainer a single time, you're most likely going to have to sacrifice your entire party to get the trainer to have his starmon level up, which may be somewhat hard to do without actually knocking out the enemy starmon. And even if you manage it, you're most likely screwed already anyway and it won't matter. Yea, it's a cool addition, but it would take a good chunk of time to implement and would be used so damn rarely I just really don't think it's worth the trouble. If I could just flip a switch and it'd magically work immediately, I'd do it, but unfortunately that won't happen :( NPC Starmon are set up a different way, they use different variables to store their stats, etc. EXP isn't something that's stored for them because it wasn't necessary, therefore EXP calculation is not run when an AI starmon knocks out a player starmon, which means the EXP calculation/reward system itself doesn't currently have any way of handling AI starmon, and neither does the levelup system, which means the move learning system doesn't either, and the list goes on. Zelda would have to run through a lot of old functions just to add the EXP gain for AIs which will not be noticed about 99,99% of the time. It's just not worth the time.
If you meant NPCs keeping up with your team in levels, but not levelling directly in battle, that's already in. Trainer levels are calculated based on your parties average level and clamped between two values based on the zone and possibly some other things (So zone X won't go higher than level Y, but Y will always be pretty high (First zone is by default levels 3-6 for wilds. Trainers will be able to scale up to level 20 or so, if not higher, as your own party reaches those levels). Trainers are completely randomized: We've got some preset lists of starmon they can have, the chances for them and such things, and even three tiers of lists for them, which list the starmon are taken from is dependent on the trainer level. The trainers themselves also don't always spawn in the first place, and not always in the same amounts. The forest can have between 4 and 7 trainers I think atm and will have about 15-20 possible spawn locations.
TL;DR: You'll never have a problem finding a trainer whose levels match that of your party, and if your starmon are high enough levels that it actually does become a problem, the arena will still be able to give some fairly randomized trainers to fight for all levels, and who knows what else we'll add.
Very Well thought out gameplay, can't wait to play.
I don't mind the first few zones being a little more basic, however I would like those basic Ratatas and Pidgeys evolve into something quite epic and powerful, like for example in Black&White you had Lilipup, your basic starter trash, which evolved into Stoutland, who was kinda badass and quite powerful as well, with decend stats, a strong ability and not a bad movepool (especially with Return, one of the strongest normal-type moves available, available very early in the game as a TM). Patrat, which was your Ratata didn't do quite as well, his Watchog evolution was one of the best HM bitches early on, though, who could learn cut, strength, flash and... stone smash, I believe?
Of course, there were others that were totally useless in the beginning as well as later on, well.
I would love to see a different set of starters as well, its always the same fire/water/plant stuff. Granted, the stone-scissors-paper system makes these types obvious choices, but there have to be other similar combinations, right?
Seeing as we won't have hundreds of starmon I think it's quite important I make the few we have count, so I think it'll be really rare that any starmon will be at a disadvantage base stat wise. I'm sticking to somewhat simple/boring first zones (The bug chains, a sort of rattata, meowth and doduo, and I need to replace the starmon that is currently the pidgey equivalent - I no longer want to use the models it currently has)
The rare starmon are gonna be better though. You've got Probichu in the forest as well as Skaropede (Evolves into badass fire+ground scorpion), Odoron (Poison tank) and I think Oculus (Somewhat beefy psychic) in the first zone. Rares have a 5% spawn chance and differ depending on day/night.
Oh, and the forest has the Aravon (Ancient protector/ent/tree that wants to murder you) encounter, but you'll probably want to wait a bit before fighting those (Minimum level is 25)
As for starters, we're sticking to the original three, they even have base stats and move sets similar to Bulbasaur/Squirtle/Charmander, mostly for nostalgia's sake. The first impression of the game is somewhat important, and reminding people of the good times they had in the pokemon games with a similar starting choice is I think more useful to us than having more varied starters. If we ever do a part/generation 2 though I wouldn't mind mixing up the starters a bit (That of course has nothing to do with the lack of models for grass starmon, nothing at all *whistles innocently*)
Hey thanks, maity! If it would really be that complicated then don't worry about it. I understand that you are probably quite comfortable with your move sets already and I actually don't know the answers to most of the questions you asked. By the way, I was thinking that if you were ever going to make a Pokemon style remake I have the perfect evo chain for you for a sequel requiring hots- nuydus destroyer-> Ash worm-> Yagdra With a retex it could work
Thanks again
@TheAlmaity: Go I asked you which types needed more models and I remember you told me grass type had already enough models... Now I'm here getting lazy to finish a water type >.>
@SoulFilcher: Go
We've got enough for now, and I might be able to find some more models suitable for either non-evolving or only once-evolving starmon, but starters are always supposed to be 3 stage ones, and that's when it becomes an issue, but that issue is pretty much present for all types :p Currently have 10 three-stage evolution chains (One of which splits at the last stage into 2 starmon), plan at least two more (don't think I have the models for more), but one of those 3-stage chains will have to be replace (It's using Sc2 models which really don't fit.)
@Trieva: Go
We've got about 80 atm, I need to add more but I *think* I already have enough models (Might be short 10-20, will see).
I'll try and work on the map some more soon, but I moved yesterday and am still pretty busy >.>
Hi
The project seems to be progressing. Figured I'd ask you guys if anything important happened in the last 17 days. Any newly mapped areas, or screenshot worthy game-art? Maybe there's some update on how "soonish" alpha is coming? I know that spring is stressful and busy for many (as a Senior in school, I am very busy too) but I would welcome news!
Off topic, Anyone notice how many of the new features in X/Y are exactly the same thing this awesome duo+ is working on, just with Game Freak's finances? Outfits, 3d (though, 3ds is a bit cooler than sc2), but you guys also have a more "open" RPG thing going.
Would it be possible if (when Karma is dark enough) a player could become the leader of team evil? I would honestly LOVE to be Giovanni for one game. Everyone wants to be the Fire Emperor!
Zelda's been busy, and apart from moving to a new house I've also been pretty lazy :( So yeah, for about two weeks absolutely nothing happened.
BUT a couple of days ago we finally made some concrete plans regarding the storyline (We had tons of ideas and vague outlines, what I mean is that I wrote up very specifically what should happen, no vagueness, a concrete plan). Its not much, but it's what we want to have in the alpha (We're gonna cut it off at a somewhat interesting point :) )
Hehe... Hehehe... HEHEHE... MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Something similar may or may not happen ;) But there will definitely be a lot of interaction with Cipher (the bad guys) if you want to play it that way.
I was just coming over here to let you guys know we're not dead, but maity beat me to it :P I've been taking exams at my school but I'm just about finished now, so I can resume work on the map. Maity's been writing up the first official plot details (before this it's only been pre-game lore and general ideas). We're not going to be spoiling the story for you, but it's pretty awesome. I'm going to be working hard to do the story justice with the quests. As you could probably tell by Maity's devious laughter, we're planning some pretty cool stuff for the story. ^.^
Speaking of quests, I'm also going to start cranking out more of those- it's one of my next goals. The main storyline quests, at least up to the cutoff point for the alpha, are planned but not yet programmed. We're going to be adding in some sidequest stuff as well to keep people entertained between the story. The "core quests" of the story will probably be about 10(ish) levels apart, so we're going to fill the in-between time with sidequests.
I also know we promised a pair of 2 videos a while back, to show off two new things. The first thing is almost ready to show off, so you should hopefully see a video soon. The second feature ended up taking me longer to program than expected- it's not finished yet, but it's almost ready enough to show off.
So anyways, we're not dead, but we did have to take a break from development. But now we're back on track, and you should start seeing some cool stuff in the future.
Sounds like two Very Impressive videos coming to look forward to can't wait thanks for the Updates.
Yeah? Sounds good. Story is like, the second most important part of world building in an RPG. (Art comes first, including audio, IMO) And you don't have an RPG without a fantastic world. I really hope I get to play with the map soon.
Nice! Gimmie all the goodies!
Just a though, would giving the player a jetpack to access late areas be doable? That's one way to "instance" pathing, give the character's cliff walk/hopping abilities. It might be more work than it's worth (cliffs are not enough to block someone in anymore) but using it as a barrier to the legendary's home would be nice (or allow hopping ledges back to pallet town).