We've got some pretty exciting news coming your guys's way very soon! Me & TheAlmaity have spent the last two days testing, debugging, and then testing some more in preparation to record our next update video.
The good news is that we finally managed to get a video recorded, and it's going to be posted here as soon as it's finished. The bad news is that we had some audio problems. Maity is re-recording the commentary as we speak, but that means it's not going to be ready today. To make up for it, here's one of the original tests that went...well, less than perfectly.
Edit: I stand corrected! Maity came through and stayed up until 5 in the morning waiting for the video to render & upload. Please give him your applause :P The actual video is in the post right below this one, and as Maity said, we'll post more information about it tomorrow. It's sort of the middle of the night right now O.o
Our first failed test (actual video is in the post below this one):
Anyways, the real video should be ready tomorrow. You'll get to see the surprise feature we've been working on for the past few months!
I was wondering about the level scaling. Won't that affect difficulty too much? I liked pokemon where it was kinda quick and easy to finish trainer battles and keep moving (but against reasonable levelled pokemon so it didn't feel too easy and exp was good).
We don't think it will be a problem. But what's great about the system is that if it ends up being too hard or too easy, we can easily adjust it so it's just right. The way the system works now is that it makes sure enemies are about your level, not exactly your level. We just use the average level of your party as the starting point- from there we adjust it based on a few different things, and then throw in a few random numbers to mix things up. The higher level you are, the more varied we'll allow the enemy's levels to be.
Also, keep in mind that we don't jam-pack zones with trainers. Many zones in the original games were literally just a linear path with like 20 trainers in the way, and you had to fight through each and every painful battle to get through. Our zones are more open, with trainers being placed further apart. They also walk around or turn (usually) instead of staring at the wall waiting to kill you the second you walk by. So you can sneak more of them than in the actual games. We don't want monotonous fights, which is why we're encouraging leveling up through quests.
Levels won't affect difficulty much if type advantages are considered.
Trainer "Classes" are determined by the zone you're in- you won't find bug catchers in the desert, for example. So this ends up meaning types are usually reasonably uniform throughout a zone. If you're in a volcano area, you can expect a lot of fire-type starmon. If you're in the desert, you can expect lots of sand-type starmon. So you can prepare appropriately if you want.
That said, Trainers will attempt to counter you if they have types to do it. Say you're using a fire-type and you kill their current starmon. And say the next starmon we gave them was a grass-type. If they also had a water-type available, they'll send that out instead of the grass-type that we originally decided would be next, assuming their AI level is high enough.
Again, we can tweak these randomization numbers as much as we need, if necessary. If it becomes too hard/easy, we can look at your party and modify the opponent's team before the battle starts.
Lower level starmon opponents are also wanted when you want train that new low level starmon you just caught (assuming exp. share hasn't been obtained).
I can't remember if I mentioned it, but we did add exp share after you asked about it last time, since we felt it was a really good way to train. Lower level starmon opponents are always available via the arena if you want to train that way. Keep in mind that we reward your party with experience when you finish quests, so you'll end up leveling a little faster that way.
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Can we re-battle trainers in zones? That would add so much to the re-use of zones and be really fun. I'd like to rematch trainers that get tougher or maybe get new party members.
EDIT: It's also a good alternative before we unlock the arena or wherever your'e stashing the elite-trainers/EV-trainers, etc.
What Maity said is right- all our trainers are generated randomly every time you load. So you won't find the exact same trainer a second time, but the newly-generated trainers will fight you. Since we've made it super easy to avoid old zones (the teleporter system is very cheap and easy to unlock), this shouldn't become a problem for players.
Thinking about it now, we could put in an option to "unlock" the maximum level cap for zone scaling. In other words, enemies in zones you're over-leveled for will scale up to you with more evolved and higher-level starmon. It could be a reward for something- like completing the campaign, reaching a certain trainer level, etc....
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Hidden items that can be found by the item finder
Have special NPCs appear in different zones at different times
Randomised zones (like redistributing trees or obstacles or particular terrain)
While the terrain itself of each zone won't change dramatically (we can't do that properly within sc2) we do a decent amount of randomization. The numer and position of trainers within every zone (and those trainer's classes, levels, and starmon teams) are all randomized every time you play. We also fill each zone with a few hidden goodies. We have a bunch of "potential spawn points" for treasure that we've hidden around, and the game picks a few every time and hides stuff there. The quantity and type of items inside is randomized, with more powerful/expensive items being more rare.
We also have plans to implement random events. These are sort of mini-quests that show up in a zone at random when you load the game. For example, you might come across a wounded starmon you can save to take as part of your team. Or you may stroll into a shop to find that it's the owners birthday and prices are half-off.
We're going to make sure that each zone has at least one pretty rare wild starmon. I don't remember how the original pokedex works, but the stardex provides you with starmon habitats once you've spotted one. Once you've seen a starmon, you'll see it's generalized location- something like "Nocturnal Forest Starmon" or "Enjoys very hot areas". Once you've captured the starmon you can see exactly which zones it spawns in. This should help you track down any particular starmon you have your heart set on. Spawns currently rotate with Day & Night, and we may cause them to rotate with the weather as well (which is randomized on a per-zone basis and cycles every day/night).
Have something seen for the first time but isn't accessible (like requiring a HM)
We're going to try and pack as much content as we can into every zone. I'm not sure exactly how things will turn out, but we'll try and put some stuff into the game like this. We have one side-quest chain where this one guy travels around the whole map, and you'll find him in various precarious situations he's gotten himself into. Quests like that will hopefully allow us to reuse old zones.
I prefer smaller but more areas (doesn't have to be wild starmon zones) to check out.
We do too! The sc2 map size limit is really small for RPG's. Keep in mind that we have to have space for a battle arena for each player, and that's with some serious effort on our part to keep things compact. We actually re-build your personal arena to fit the theme of the zone you're in instead of having a separate one for each zone. We haven't set a hard player cap yet (although all of my systems can support up to 15 people, we'll have to see how lag ends up) but with just 10 people that's a ton of space we have to reserve. So whether we like it or not, we're not going to have any gigantic zones.
We're also providing the player with teleporters to use (and those are available almost immediately after completing a low-level quest), so traveling to any previous zone should be quick, regardless of the actual distance. We plan on opening up the world more than the pokemon games. Once you complete our "introductory stuff", which consists of a few tutorial quests, we're going to open up 3 or so zones immediately. The story will follow a particular path but you're free to go wherever you want and do the sidequests there.
I actually think caves would be a GREAT idea. Let's be honest no one thoroughly goes through the caves the first time through, running into pokemon every 10 seconds, you can't see everything, trainers, not to mention the puzzling atmosphere. Plus caves would be easy to make, just limit the trainers vision and pow your good.
Caves are cool! But again, we're super tight on space. If we have extra space available, we might add a cave. There's lots of things we'd like to add (Safari, caves, gigantic evil lairs, large cities, huge ocean zones) but we just can't fit them.
@JacktheArcher: Go Endless Zubats appearing at every step... Damn I hated that.
We could add repel if it's needed. Technically speaking it'd be easy enough to add, although it would need to be based on time or distance moved rather than steps taken (because our movement isn't on a grid). Although because of the teleporters, you won't need to travel through tons of grass to get places.
Another thing: Zelda seems to be making some great progress on the big thing we want to show off in the video. Once he gets all the systems to work, we set up the quests we need for what we want to show off and I make all the remaining 2D art we need, we should be able to finally deliver the video =D
Yes, it's looking good. I know we've been teasing announcements of bigger announcements for a while, but we've had to keep pushing things back. This system took way longer for me to get in than I had planned, then Maity's computer wasn't working, then I had technical problems giving me terrible FPS, etc.... But barring any more unforeseen obstacles or gigantic bugs we're back on track and just about ready to record.
Have you guys considered the difficulty of the game from battles?
We're aiming for a reasonably gentle difficulty curve in the world's various zones. I never really liked when MMO's would say "This is a level 15 to 25 zone" but if you went in at level 15, you'd be torn apart. So we scale the level of difficulty for battles to suit the player. We take a bunch of things into account, but we try to make sure the enemies are about the same level as you are, as long as you're in the an appropriate zone for your level. In other words if you're using level 10 starmon in a 15-25 zone, the trainers will scale down to 15, but you'll still be killed pretty easily. But if you're within that level range, the trainers will usually be about your level.
That said, most of our quest-related battles are "Pre-Built" by us, meaning the starmon team of the enemy was hand-picked by us (including levels, move sets, AI level, etc..). So quest-related fights don't "scale" to your level in the same way ordinary trainers do (although any random trainers you run across during that quest will scale as usual), but because we don't open up quests until you're reasonably close in level, you shouldn't run into a difficulty wall. I've also worked on trainer AI in the past, although it's far from complete. We can increase the difficulty of fights by just turning up the AI level on trainers. We feel this is a good tool to make "Boss Fights" harder, rather than just jacking up the enemy's level so it's harder to win. Yes, the champions of the arena will have strong starmon, but so do a lot of other trainers. What will (hopefully) make them particularly challenging is their ability to choose the most effective combinations of moves at any given time.
With side quests I don't know if we talked about this but ideally players should have too much than they can handle :P. When we want a break from the story there should always be something useful and maybe more fun to do.
Like TheAlmaity said, space is limited and there's only so much we can add. But my goal is definitely to have enough quests so that you always have at least a few in your quest log throughout the whole game.
If you do want to grind, the Arena fights are all repeatable, so it's available if you'd prefer to level that way. The story missions will likely be spaced at least a couple levels apart, so if you only did story missions, you would likely be under leveled. We'll probably tie the story progression to your Arena rank in some way, so that will help people level themselves up.
Speaking of quests, I made a bunch of improvements to the quest system. One thing that we wanted to ensure was that the player always had something they could be doing, and never felt lost. Given the fact that we also wanted to make this more open-world than real pokemon games, we had a little bit of a problem. So now there's always a "Main Story" section in the quest log, which will point you in the right direction if you want to advance the plot.
If you want to do sidequests, we created what we're calling "The Mentor". We talked about him a little bit before, but I'll repeat it here. Basically, the mentor serves a dual purpose. First, he serves as a walking tutorial if you need it (you can ask him questions about various game systems and he'll give you more information). But second, he's able to recommend quests for you. He picks a side quest appropriate for your level and tells you where it's located.
These systems together should (hopefully) ensure that you never feel lost. If you want to do a story mission, the quest log will say where to go, and if you can't seem to find a side quest, the mentor can point you to one.
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It would be cool getting rewards for building up our starmon collection and completing it. Maybe this could be a side quest through the professor.
I think more starmon related goals 'like catching them all' would help increase the fun.
Yeah, we like the idea of having a reward for stardex completion. We haven't nailed down the details, but we want to give everybody a "Trainer Level" that's based on a few different factors, one of the major factors being your stardex completion. In other words, the more starmon you discover or catch, the higher your trainer level. It'd take a few more things into account, like how far you've progressed through the story and how high your starmon's levels are. We don't have a purpose for the trainer level yet (other than it being a nice bragging tool on your trainer card), but we'll implement something.
I also like the suggestions you made for achievements . I don't know if we'll actually put achievements in the game (we haven't really talked about it yet), but they could be used for some kind of "Trainer Club" sidequest type thing.
I know we haven't posted much content recently (Again, I apologize for the lack of videos. I can't record with my setup and maity's computer is dying), so I'll try to make up for it with a screenshot of the second online test ever :D It was just me on two computers, though, so I wouldn't really call it multiplayer- more like multi-computer, but still. You get the point.
Anyways, I was checking out a few things to ensure they worked in multiplayer (most importantly the phasing system that we use heavily to instance quests). I swung by the star center that we had put so much work into to get a quick heal for my starmon. But when I arrived, I see this....
Now that's what I call beautiful terrain. Unfortunately I made an oopsie with our mod files, and Soul Filcher's super awesome teleporter and healing machine models didn't make it to battle net. It's fixed now, but I had to take a screen shot when I had the chance ^.^
Anyways, it was mostly good news from the test. It looks like things are working as expected, in-game cinematics seemed to work properly in multiplier, battles still work, conversations still work, etc.... I also made some progress on our first storyline quest. We won't be posting any spoiler screenshots of that, though ^.^
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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.
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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But there will be a new video soon. Two if Zelda's thing is presentable.
I suppose I should comment on that one. My "Thing" is a very awesome feature that we're sure you guys will love, but I want to do a bit of polishing and refinement first before we make a video. I've been putting way too many hours into this, and it's super awesome, I promise ^.^
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@Vjetar: Go I don't have much experience with PvP, but my cousing does, he even plays in small tournaments with the kids from his shool, and he agrees with me, hit hard and fast and nothing will beat you. But then again he says the other kids aren't that really good. I think maybe the other strategies are harder and thus it looks like this is the better strategy, when it is in fact easier to do right.
Maybe pokemon fan sites have more accurate answers for that.
Yeah, that tends to be the popular strategy as far as I can tell. I was never into PvP myself, but it seems like the ideal strategy. That's why we bumped up health to 200% of the regular amount, hopefully to help fix that issue. That may not be enough on it's own, though, but it's nearly impossible to tell right now. Maity has been working hard on keeping the moves interesting, and there's a few that can be used to mix up the flow of battle, especially when used together (Baton Pass is a good example).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Pokemon PvP battles did not allow you to use items, unless they were attached to your pokemon.
And to answer your previous question regarding PvP item use- it used to be that you simply couldn't use items in PvP at all. But I've been told that the new games allow item use in battle, but in a regulated way. You can't just use any item you bought from the story. Basically (at least as far as I can tell), you get a point each turn, and all the available items cost a certain number of points. So after x turns you save up enough for a potion, after y turns a hyper potion, etc... It's not connected to the items you purchased in the story.
We don't have any plans to add that PvP-items feature, but if it ends up being something people really want, I could add it sometime after beta. But we definitely aren't going to let you buy items from the store and use those in PvP.
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I was wondering with the karma system, is it similar to mass effect how we choose at the beginning how quickly we gain it or the starting bonus? Will it be more than just changing the prices of shop items? Excuse me if this has already been discussed but I don't want to skim through 30 pages ;) . It might be interesting if it changes rewards we get from NPCs through side quests. So maybe the renegade gets more money and items while the paragon gets exp and info. It's a bit complicated for me thinking about it but I guess it would be neat if the play through of one karma type is a very different experience to the other.
We're still working out the exact details on the karma system, to be honest :P You will likely be able to many quests in different ways depending on the choices you make, and we may restrict certain choices based on your karma (Mass-Effect Style). We actually a quest in-game right now which does have different rewards depending on how you finish it- one reward gets you a decent chunk of cash, while the other gets you some nice items you likely wouldn't be able to afford that early in the game.
There's also some karma-related stuff we don't want to spoil yet, but if everything works out, it's going to have an impact (Like a really big impact). But it probably be ready for alpha. :P
If you guys don't mind, can you remind me what other non-pokemon things are being added? Do you guys want more? Although I can't think of any RPG thing (like karma) on the top of my head that would be nice to have :P.
Right now, there's not too many things I can think of off the top of my head. Obviously there's karma, as you mentioned. We've got the DNA lab which was not a part of any pokemon game. Our quest system isn't "pokemon-style", either, it's more like a regular RPG. You have the main storyline that you can complete piece by piece as you level up, but then the majority of content is found in optional side quests. So you can go to town, pick up a few quests, complete them, and turn them in for your reward.
We also plan on giving your trainer himself a level, which will increase as you complete quests or level up starmon.
Can we have more transforming starmon? And no not castform where the types of the user and attacks are simply changed and no not ditto where it's a useless 'copy everything and waste a turn'. How about something that turns that starmon into bad-ass mode? It'll be so epic you'll want to nickname that starmon 'Super Saiyan' :P. How about these transforms increase all or certain stats by 2 stages (maybe buff HP too) while transformed BUT these buffs cannot be debuffed (only while transformed) and the transform only lasts for about 1-3 turns (so after reverting to normal those transform buffs disappear).
Honestly, I haven't thought about how challenging this would be to implement. There's a lot of neat features which would be cool, but would require so much time that they're not worth it for now. I'll put transforming starmon in the idea list :)
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I'm not entirely sure what you guys are planning to do as far as music but I did find a site that has tones of music licensed under the Creative Commons, might be worth checking out.
If I get to be one of the Alpha Testers I look forward to testing it first, if not I take it the Public Release will be sometime soonish after that Test? Or will it be further down the road for Public Release do you think? Thanks.
The Alpha is pretty functional right now, and most of the "big" features and systems we need for release are present and working. But there's not too much content to play through. The purpose of the alpha is to make sure nothing explodes when we start testing games with multiple people. We've done a few multiplayer tests ourselves, and things seemed to be working, but it's hard to tell how well things will preform with a full lobby. We've added so much stuff since those tests that we need to verify things still work. Quests, for example, "phase" many NPC's and zones so that only the right people can see them- that's something we'd have a hard time testing for every quest just ourselves.
So the public beta won't be showing up until we feel there's enough content to actually play the game, which may be a while.
About the alpha test, will it be on map night or some other specific time?
We definitely plan on doing tests during map night, but we may do some closed testing prior to that. It's probably a bad idea to do the very first test with a ton of random people :P
I dislike the kind of harsh cuts into battle mode, maybe smooth the zooming in part a little. Same for the camera circling around the battlefield.
The "static" camera is the traditional setting, unless I'm misunderstanding you. Obviously the games were 2D and don't use cameras, but the picture above is pretty similar to what they would likely look like in 2D. That said, the camera is a bit choopy and I'm going to try and improve it. I just need to find a way to make it "feel better". Anyways, the static camera option is in the game already, we just don't have the options dialog done yet (but it's usable via a debug command).
@TheAlmaity: Go
Ok after watching it again it seems to go straight.
On a side note, the nova model is just a placeholder and does not have a throw animation, but the regular trainers we're using will actually "throw" the ball out with their hand.
I should probably also point out that the dialog on the left side, as well as all that red text, is only shown for us. So you won't have any of it cluttering your screen. It's just for debugging purposes.
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We've got some pretty exciting news coming your guys's way very soon! Me & TheAlmaity have spent the last two days testing, debugging, and then testing some more in preparation to record our next update video.
The good news is that we finally managed to get a video recorded, and it's going to be posted here as soon as it's finished. The bad news is that we had some audio problems. Maity is re-recording the commentary as we speak, but that means it's not going to be ready today. To make up for it, here's one of the original tests that went...well, less than perfectly.
Edit: I stand corrected! Maity came through and stayed up until 5 in the morning waiting for the video to render & upload. Please give him your applause :P The actual video is in the post right below this one, and as Maity said, we'll post more information about it tomorrow. It's sort of the middle of the night right now O.o
Our first failed test (actual video is in the post below this one):
Anyways, the real video should be ready tomorrow. You'll get to see the surprise feature we've been working on for the past few months!
We don't think it will be a problem. But what's great about the system is that if it ends up being too hard or too easy, we can easily adjust it so it's just right. The way the system works now is that it makes sure enemies are about your level, not exactly your level. We just use the average level of your party as the starting point- from there we adjust it based on a few different things, and then throw in a few random numbers to mix things up. The higher level you are, the more varied we'll allow the enemy's levels to be.
Also, keep in mind that we don't jam-pack zones with trainers. Many zones in the original games were literally just a linear path with like 20 trainers in the way, and you had to fight through each and every painful battle to get through. Our zones are more open, with trainers being placed further apart. They also walk around or turn (usually) instead of staring at the wall waiting to kill you the second you walk by. So you can sneak more of them than in the actual games. We don't want monotonous fights, which is why we're encouraging leveling up through quests.
Trainer "Classes" are determined by the zone you're in- you won't find bug catchers in the desert, for example. So this ends up meaning types are usually reasonably uniform throughout a zone. If you're in a volcano area, you can expect a lot of fire-type starmon. If you're in the desert, you can expect lots of sand-type starmon. So you can prepare appropriately if you want.
That said, Trainers will attempt to counter you if they have types to do it. Say you're using a fire-type and you kill their current starmon. And say the next starmon we gave them was a grass-type. If they also had a water-type available, they'll send that out instead of the grass-type that we originally decided would be next, assuming their AI level is high enough.
Again, we can tweak these randomization numbers as much as we need, if necessary. If it becomes too hard/easy, we can look at your party and modify the opponent's team before the battle starts.
I can't remember if I mentioned it, but we did add exp share after you asked about it last time, since we felt it was a really good way to train. Lower level starmon opponents are always available via the arena if you want to train that way. Keep in mind that we reward your party with experience when you finish quests, so you'll end up leveling a little faster that way.
What Maity said is right- all our trainers are generated randomly every time you load. So you won't find the exact same trainer a second time, but the newly-generated trainers will fight you. Since we've made it super easy to avoid old zones (the teleporter system is very cheap and easy to unlock), this shouldn't become a problem for players.
Thinking about it now, we could put in an option to "unlock" the maximum level cap for zone scaling. In other words, enemies in zones you're over-leveled for will scale up to you with more evolved and higher-level starmon. It could be a reward for something- like completing the campaign, reaching a certain trainer level, etc....
Alert! Wall-o-text incoming! :)
While the terrain itself of each zone won't change dramatically (we can't do that properly within sc2) we do a decent amount of randomization. The numer and position of trainers within every zone (and those trainer's classes, levels, and starmon teams) are all randomized every time you play. We also fill each zone with a few hidden goodies. We have a bunch of "potential spawn points" for treasure that we've hidden around, and the game picks a few every time and hides stuff there. The quantity and type of items inside is randomized, with more powerful/expensive items being more rare.
We also have plans to implement random events. These are sort of mini-quests that show up in a zone at random when you load the game. For example, you might come across a wounded starmon you can save to take as part of your team. Or you may stroll into a shop to find that it's the owners birthday and prices are half-off.
We're going to make sure that each zone has at least one pretty rare wild starmon. I don't remember how the original pokedex works, but the stardex provides you with starmon habitats once you've spotted one. Once you've seen a starmon, you'll see it's generalized location- something like "Nocturnal Forest Starmon" or "Enjoys very hot areas". Once you've captured the starmon you can see exactly which zones it spawns in. This should help you track down any particular starmon you have your heart set on. Spawns currently rotate with Day & Night, and we may cause them to rotate with the weather as well (which is randomized on a per-zone basis and cycles every day/night).
We're going to try and pack as much content as we can into every zone. I'm not sure exactly how things will turn out, but we'll try and put some stuff into the game like this. We have one side-quest chain where this one guy travels around the whole map, and you'll find him in various precarious situations he's gotten himself into. Quests like that will hopefully allow us to reuse old zones.
We do too! The sc2 map size limit is really small for RPG's. Keep in mind that we have to have space for a battle arena for each player, and that's with some serious effort on our part to keep things compact. We actually re-build your personal arena to fit the theme of the zone you're in instead of having a separate one for each zone. We haven't set a hard player cap yet (although all of my systems can support up to 15 people, we'll have to see how lag ends up) but with just 10 people that's a ton of space we have to reserve. So whether we like it or not, we're not going to have any gigantic zones.
We're also providing the player with teleporters to use (and those are available almost immediately after completing a low-level quest), so traveling to any previous zone should be quick, regardless of the actual distance. We plan on opening up the world more than the pokemon games. Once you complete our "introductory stuff", which consists of a few tutorial quests, we're going to open up 3 or so zones immediately. The story will follow a particular path but you're free to go wherever you want and do the sidequests there.
Caves are cool! But again, we're super tight on space. If we have extra space available, we might add a cave. There's lots of things we'd like to add (Safari, caves, gigantic evil lairs, large cities, huge ocean zones) but we just can't fit them.
We could add repel if it's needed. Technically speaking it'd be easy enough to add, although it would need to be based on time or distance moved rather than steps taken (because our movement isn't on a grid). Although because of the teleporters, you won't need to travel through tons of grass to get places.
Yes, it's looking good. I know we've been teasing announcements of bigger announcements for a while, but we've had to keep pushing things back. This system took way longer for me to get in than I had planned, then Maity's computer wasn't working, then I had technical problems giving me terrible FPS, etc.... But barring any more unforeseen obstacles or gigantic bugs we're back on track and just about ready to record.
We're aiming for a reasonably gentle difficulty curve in the world's various zones. I never really liked when MMO's would say "This is a level 15 to 25 zone" but if you went in at level 15, you'd be torn apart. So we scale the level of difficulty for battles to suit the player. We take a bunch of things into account, but we try to make sure the enemies are about the same level as you are, as long as you're in the an appropriate zone for your level. In other words if you're using level 10 starmon in a 15-25 zone, the trainers will scale down to 15, but you'll still be killed pretty easily. But if you're within that level range, the trainers will usually be about your level.
That said, most of our quest-related battles are "Pre-Built" by us, meaning the starmon team of the enemy was hand-picked by us (including levels, move sets, AI level, etc..). So quest-related fights don't "scale" to your level in the same way ordinary trainers do (although any random trainers you run across during that quest will scale as usual), but because we don't open up quests until you're reasonably close in level, you shouldn't run into a difficulty wall. I've also worked on trainer AI in the past, although it's far from complete. We can increase the difficulty of fights by just turning up the AI level on trainers. We feel this is a good tool to make "Boss Fights" harder, rather than just jacking up the enemy's level so it's harder to win. Yes, the champions of the arena will have strong starmon, but so do a lot of other trainers. What will (hopefully) make them particularly challenging is their ability to choose the most effective combinations of moves at any given time.
Like TheAlmaity said, space is limited and there's only so much we can add. But my goal is definitely to have enough quests so that you always have at least a few in your quest log throughout the whole game.
If you do want to grind, the Arena fights are all repeatable, so it's available if you'd prefer to level that way. The story missions will likely be spaced at least a couple levels apart, so if you only did story missions, you would likely be under leveled. We'll probably tie the story progression to your Arena rank in some way, so that will help people level themselves up.
Speaking of quests, I made a bunch of improvements to the quest system. One thing that we wanted to ensure was that the player always had something they could be doing, and never felt lost. Given the fact that we also wanted to make this more open-world than real pokemon games, we had a little bit of a problem. So now there's always a "Main Story" section in the quest log, which will point you in the right direction if you want to advance the plot.
If you want to do sidequests, we created what we're calling "The Mentor". We talked about him a little bit before, but I'll repeat it here. Basically, the mentor serves a dual purpose. First, he serves as a walking tutorial if you need it (you can ask him questions about various game systems and he'll give you more information). But second, he's able to recommend quests for you. He picks a side quest appropriate for your level and tells you where it's located.
These systems together should (hopefully) ensure that you never feel lost. If you want to do a story mission, the quest log will say where to go, and if you can't seem to find a side quest, the mentor can point you to one.
Yeah, we like the idea of having a reward for stardex completion. We haven't nailed down the details, but we want to give everybody a "Trainer Level" that's based on a few different factors, one of the major factors being your stardex completion. In other words, the more starmon you discover or catch, the higher your trainer level. It'd take a few more things into account, like how far you've progressed through the story and how high your starmon's levels are. We don't have a purpose for the trainer level yet (other than it being a nice bragging tool on your trainer card), but we'll implement something.
I also like the suggestions you made for achievements . I don't know if we'll actually put achievements in the game (we haven't really talked about it yet), but they could be used for some kind of "Trainer Club" sidequest type thing.
I know we haven't posted much content recently (Again, I apologize for the lack of videos. I can't record with my setup and maity's computer is dying), so I'll try to make up for it with a screenshot of the second online test ever :D It was just me on two computers, though, so I wouldn't really call it multiplayer- more like multi-computer, but still. You get the point.
Anyways, I was checking out a few things to ensure they worked in multiplayer (most importantly the phasing system that we use heavily to instance quests). I swung by the star center that we had put so much work into to get a quick heal for my starmon. But when I arrived, I see this....
Now that's what I call beautiful terrain. Unfortunately I made an oopsie with our mod files, and Soul Filcher's super awesome teleporter and healing machine models didn't make it to battle net. It's fixed now, but I had to take a screen shot when I had the chance ^.^
Anyways, it was mostly good news from the test. It looks like things are working as expected, in-game cinematics seemed to work properly in multiplier, battles still work, conversations still work, etc.... I also made some progress on our first storyline quest. We won't be posting any spoiler screenshots of that, though ^.^
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.
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.
Oh, that thing is soo creepy O.o
I suppose I should comment on that one. My "Thing" is a very awesome feature that we're sure you guys will love, but I want to do a bit of polishing and refinement first before we make a video. I've been putting way too many hours into this, and it's super awesome, I promise ^.^
Yeah, that tends to be the popular strategy as far as I can tell. I was never into PvP myself, but it seems like the ideal strategy. That's why we bumped up health to 200% of the regular amount, hopefully to help fix that issue. That may not be enough on it's own, though, but it's nearly impossible to tell right now. Maity has been working hard on keeping the moves interesting, and there's a few that can be used to mix up the flow of battle, especially when used together (Baton Pass is a good example).
And to answer your previous question regarding PvP item use- it used to be that you simply couldn't use items in PvP at all. But I've been told that the new games allow item use in battle, but in a regulated way. You can't just use any item you bought from the story. Basically (at least as far as I can tell), you get a point each turn, and all the available items cost a certain number of points. So after x turns you save up enough for a potion, after y turns a hyper potion, etc... It's not connected to the items you purchased in the story.
We don't have any plans to add that PvP-items feature, but if it ends up being something people really want, I could add it sometime after beta. But we definitely aren't going to let you buy items from the store and use those in PvP.
We're still working out the exact details on the karma system, to be honest :P You will likely be able to many quests in different ways depending on the choices you make, and we may restrict certain choices based on your karma (Mass-Effect Style). We actually a quest in-game right now which does have different rewards depending on how you finish it- one reward gets you a decent chunk of cash, while the other gets you some nice items you likely wouldn't be able to afford that early in the game.
There's also some karma-related stuff we don't want to spoil yet, but if everything works out, it's going to have an impact (Like a really big impact). But it probably be ready for alpha. :P
Right now, there's not too many things I can think of off the top of my head. Obviously there's karma, as you mentioned. We've got the DNA lab which was not a part of any pokemon game. Our quest system isn't "pokemon-style", either, it's more like a regular RPG. You have the main storyline that you can complete piece by piece as you level up, but then the majority of content is found in optional side quests. So you can go to town, pick up a few quests, complete them, and turn them in for your reward.
We also plan on giving your trainer himself a level, which will increase as you complete quests or level up starmon.
Honestly, I haven't thought about how challenging this would be to implement. There's a lot of neat features which would be cool, but would require so much time that they're not worth it for now. I'll put transforming starmon in the idea list :)
That's a pretty awesome resource, I'll have to take a look :D Thanks for pointing that out!
Oh no, people are getting too high of expectations. Quick Maity, we need to mess something up! ;)
The Alpha is pretty functional right now, and most of the "big" features and systems we need for release are present and working. But there's not too much content to play through. The purpose of the alpha is to make sure nothing explodes when we start testing games with multiple people. We've done a few multiplayer tests ourselves, and things seemed to be working, but it's hard to tell how well things will preform with a full lobby. We've added so much stuff since those tests that we need to verify things still work. Quests, for example, "phase" many NPC's and zones so that only the right people can see them- that's something we'd have a hard time testing for every quest just ourselves.
So the public beta won't be showing up until we feel there's enough content to actually play the game, which may be a while.
We definitely plan on doing tests during map night, but we may do some closed testing prior to that. It's probably a bad idea to do the very first test with a ton of random people :P
The "static" camera is the traditional setting, unless I'm misunderstanding you. Obviously the games were 2D and don't use cameras, but the picture above is pretty similar to what they would likely look like in 2D. That said, the camera is a bit choopy and I'm going to try and improve it. I just need to find a way to make it "feel better". Anyways, the static camera option is in the game already, we just don't have the options dialog done yet (but it's usable via a debug command).
On a side note, the nova model is just a placeholder and does not have a throw animation, but the regular trainers we're using will actually "throw" the ball out with their hand.
I should probably also point out that the dialog on the left side, as well as all that red text, is only shown for us. So you won't have any of it cluttering your screen. It's just for debugging purposes.