After almost finishing Soul Silver I'm actually surprised EV training isn't as grindy as I thought (without EV training items and knowing the EV hotspots). Still, I'd like you guys to do better for starmon. How about doubling all the EV gains? So if I defeat a zubat equivalent then I get 2 speed EVs.
EDIT: Or lower the 255 cap for stats. I think it's already enough to make players work for about 100EVs per starmon and they certainly are 'training' the starmon to suit their battle role.
Srry for not answering earlier.
I definitely want to have something that allows you to start preset EV-based battles (i.e. you can pick between a set of trainers that only have specific EVs or combinations of them. And it won't be anything vague or so - It will explicitly tell you that its for EV training). I'm currently trying to think of ways to implement it in a more "fun" way (i.e. having the battles be something special, include special starmon/moves, or... A mechanic we're not gonna reveal until the alpha :p Maybe give a high chance that the enemy starmon is shiny. In addition to making the battles special, I'm also trying to think of how to implement it into the world/story, but that's a bit easier.)
A consumable that increases EV gain for a certain amount of time could work as well (Zelda and I have been talking about ways to make arena progression more "fun", one of the ideas was a special currency gotten only from arena fights - I think using such a currency for the EV booster consumable/held items would be more "balanced" than making them a cash sink, and possibly even promote a sense of competitiveness for arena fights)
We won't change the EV numbers/caps directly, I want to keep as many basic systems the same as possible, so that someone who has played Pokemon, regardless of which level, will know their way around. Only change to EVs I would consider is changing the cap to 252 or 256, seeing as going past 252 is a waste since you can't reach 256 for that last stat point.
What I meant with randomised rival was that we'd have a list of multiple rivals, and you would be assigned one of them permanently. Your rival won't ever change. There's just a good chance you won't have the same rival as another person. As for party, same thing would apply as with everything else: Player two practically doesn't exist, and nothing is changed due to him, so his rival will never show up, while player 1s will (Both players will fight the rival in a 2v2 (the rival will be sending out 2 starmon) if the second player is close enough when the battle is started. Just like with any other battle)
The opening cinematic will include a part/quick version of the backstory (Just like the pokemon professor "cinematic" at the start of the pokemon games), and I'll make sure the full version of it is accessible somewhere, video may be a good idea or just another optional cinematic ingame.
We are definitely adding a map, I'm just waiting for the terrain to be more or less complete before I start working on one. Also, getting out of the forest is a lot easier - You just head either south or west. If you go west, you'll reach the Lake, which has no obstacles and you can just follow it south to where Route 1 ends. And the reason that going south in the forest is easier than going north is ledges, which is kinda why we got lost - We couldn't use every path available. But as you saw, it didn't really take long for us to find our way, and the map should make it easier once its implemented.
Good point about the what-team-is-a-starmon-on-thingy. I think maybe making it "Enemy [Starmon]" in the chat messages may be better. Zelda will have to look at that.
Yea, we will definitely mention the trainer scaling somewhere. It will probably be a while though before we do as it's not really that important yet, as no one but us is gonna play this (And once we do the alpha... Well, you guys should already know, and we can tell everyone else in chat). But yeah, we wnat to make as much info about the map available in it (The Stardex and Mentor being two of the bigger ways of doing that. We'll also have random NPCs that will occasionally have something useful to say)
Alpha
Depends what we want to test. Not sure how far Zelda got with the quests, and he has to fix all the bugs in the videos. My issue is that I need a new comp, some piece of hardware seems to be dying in this laptop (Or at least got a lot slower), seems like either the RAM or the HDD - I have trouble with loading times, stuff just takes forever to load. I can play games and so on since they just load once and everything works fine, but the Editor handles this really badly and has to reload everything every single time I open a field, which means if I open or close a field I literally spend 30+ seconds waiting just for the editor to respond again. Every change I want to make takes me over a minute. Yea, I could do it, but i'd probaly go insane and would need a new window since my laptop flying through it will probably result in it breaking. I should be getting a new comp this month though :)
But yeah, fix everything that was broken in the videos, a bit more terraining from Moz and implement the quests we wanted, and we're pretty much ready.
Copyright issues
We *still* haven't contacted the guy who made it >.> But I'll have to look into it. Not sure whether express permission is even needed though (In some cases just giving credit is enough (When no profit is being made off it)), and even if it is, I highly doubt the guy will mind. You make such music because you enjoy it and its source, I highly doubt you wouldn't allow people with similar motives to use it.
Quests
I guess I'll explain it again in text, much easier:
There will be two (or two and a half, sort of) quest lines. The storyline will be roughly the same, you just have to pick a side.
As for Co-op, I think I said this in the video: What the second player did or did not do is completely ignored. When a party is created, the game only uses the first players progress. Player 2 will never be locked out of quests due to having made different choices in his own quest line. If you're thinking how co-op will work in scenario XYZ, just imagine its only one player with two controllable units. Player two practically doesn't exist, whatever he may or may not have done will never interfere with what player one/The Party is doing. You could call him the sidekick. Both players are playing Player 1s storyline.
After the players split up, the game does memorize all the quests player two has completed while in a party, but doesn't mark them as properly completed. Instead it just marks them as completed-in-coop, and when the player actually reaches that quest he gets the option to instantly mark it as complete and skip it. This will prevent players from skipping quests in chains and so on (Like the Mozared quests, he's gonna have multiple ones. Completing quest #2 won't unlock #3 for player 2, he will first have to complete #1, will then get the option to skip #2 which will then unlock #3). Player two practically gets a "Complete Quest Instantly" token, but you need to have the actual quest to use that token.
Hope that was less confusing :)
Legendaries
well, they will definitely be available before the 8th milestone trainer, but that's mostly because that guy will have an average starmon level of 85. We have no concrete plans yet about when we are introducing them, we'd ideally tie it into the story, once we get there. The final legendary (#150, like MewTwo) will be directly tied to the story ending, so that one becomes available as part of the final quest, and we haven't decided yet when that is going to be (Getting to level 100 will take ages, I think we should end the story before then and use unrelated quests to carry players to around level 80-90 afterwards).
Also, I think we already discussed this earlier, but I'd like to bring it up again: The Legendaries will be some seriously badass motherfuckers. Expect lots of collateral when you see them. Literally. Shit's gonna go down, people are going to be burnt and/or torn apart. These guys you really don't want to mess with. The ones you can capture will be weaker versions / not the originals. (My current ideas are offspring, "phoenix rebirth like thingy", and clone) This means the legendaries will be introduced some time before they can be captured, and you'll have to go through a quest chain revolving around them. The exact details about things will be decided as we go along: We've got general ideas, we know where we want to go with the plot and what should happen, but we're going to plan out the details only once we reach them.
Masterball hasn't be planned as well, but I'd probably involve it in the story as well. Not sure how much we told you about the backstory, but I had a good idea when we chose the name Starmon - It's not supposed to mean "Starcraft Monsters" (Pokemon means Pocket Monsters iirc), it's supposed to mean "Monsters from the Stars". Everything you can capture with a "capture core" is actually an alien. A very, very long time ago (Back when cave paintings were still in style), "fire fell from the skies" (Falling stars / Drop pods). Humans, who had barely begun drawing/writing found many strange creatures around the impact sites, escaped from the crashed drop pods (Or, well, emergency ejected). Over time, people started domesticating them, bla bla bla, I'll not go into detail too much about how society developed, if you want the full backstory tell me and I'll post it, I'll just skip to the relevant part: Capture cores.
Capture cores were found in and around the escape pods. High tech orbs that could dematerialize and store starmon, and would also force some small amount of obedience on them (More due to the creatures having adapted to capture cores and their place in society over centuries/millenia than it being something built into the capture core. Obeying the person that captured them is practically an instinct - They understand that they are bonded to that person practically forever, whether they like it or not.) Humans had no problems whatsoever figuring out how they worked, and they were all "master balls" essentially. Fast forward two thousand years or so: Humans have for a long time been trying (and succeeding) to replicate capture cores, but none were ever as perfect as the original ones from the drop pods. There weren't infinite drop pods, and unlike Starmon, capture cores can't reproduce, so there was a finite amount of them. A fairly large amount at first. Then the drop pods crash landed on a rather hard planet. And then they had to survive some 2k+ years, a lot of them being in use for a lot of that time. Most of them at some point just ejected the starmon and refused to work anymore, and no one knew how to fix them. Wars were fought over capture cores (And using Starmon - They are really fucking resilient, screw fighting with weapons when you can just send practically invulnerable beasts at your enemies), so people tried to create their own. As I already said, they succeeded, but they aren't perfect.
The "Master Ball" you will get will be an original capture core. I think we'll make the player actually visit a drop pod to retrieve a core (Or for some other reason and give the capture core some other way, but I definitely want a drop pod visit)
Also, a while ago you guys were throwing out random ideas and some concered pokeballs/Capture cores. I can't remember whose idea it was, and what it was originally, but I think we're going to add a second pseudo-master-ball. It will be a capture core that will not be consumed until it actually succeeds in capturing something, and each failure (in the same battle) will increase its capture rate multiplier, so at a certain point it will plain simply be guaranteed to capture, just like a masterball, but unlike the master ball you can't just instant capture something, and weakening the starmon first will still help as it will make it easier to capture something as you work your way to 100% capture chance.
Rival
The original plan was to tie it into the Karma system. Your rival will be who you chose not to be. So if you go dark side, the rival will be the good guy and vice versa. We haven't implemented him/her yet, and haven't had too many discussions about him/her. What I'd personally like to do, but may be a bit too hard/time consuming, is have multiple preset rivals, so that the rival isn't the same for each player. My rival might end up being Kenny while Zelda's rival will be Kyle. They will have different lines and different lineups, but they would still appear at the same places and so on (So in essence I'd just like to have multiple possible characters and lineups for the rival, which one ends up being the actual rival would be randomised, but those are just changes in-battle and in conversation. Your quests and when/where/how you meet the rival will always be the same regardless of who your rival is)
Just to add to what Zelda said in reply to lower level opponents: Trainers are scaled with your current party, not with all starmon including those in storage. Dump your high levels into the box and you'll fight lower level trainers (Assuming you're not in a zone where the minimum level is above your average level)
The arena is unlocked almost instantly (After the very short tutorial quest)
As trainers are completely randomized, we can't really save which ones you defeated in the first place as the next time you'll load up the map there'll be completely different trainers. So to get a "rematch" you'll simply have to start the map over again (Although we can probably reset trainers ever 2-3 ingame days or add some other rematch mechanic for playing a single session)
Map size constraints more or less force smaller zones, so they shouldn't take too long to cross. We're trying to make them feel larger/longer by using things like ledges to block direct paths. How much of the map there will be left to "Explore" is something I'm not sure about - We'll most likely have to use every nook and cranny Moz leaves us for (side-)quests. Still, if the forest he made is anything to go by, there'll be plenty of space to explore, the zones will not feel any smaller than in the pokemon games, and they won't take too long to get through (Plus there's the teleporter system)
Another thing: Zelda seems to be making some great progress on the big thing we want to show off in the video. I think we'll just make it a single video (We'll just use Zolden's model during it to show it off ;) )
Not sure whether he mentioned it in the thread, but he's found a way he can record on good settings with stable high FPS. 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
I've watched one of my favourite youtubers play a variant of that mode ;) I'm sure we can add something like that at some point, shouldn't be too hard. Maybe even with customiseable options (So that you can pick only "permadeath" if you don't like force nickname and only capture first per zone and so on).
One issue is banks and bank size. Blizzard allegedly increased the max size to 1 MB, in which case it isn't an issue, but I have yet to see someone test that limit and confirm it. How we save stuff might have to be altered, not sure whether that would be a big issue though since I think we're using only one section for everything atm (Which means we can pretty much just make the section a variable and use different ones for different profiles, easy)
If we can't make multi-profile work, we'll have to overwrite the players usual save file with this if they decide to play it.
Yea, those are great achievements ideas :) Can't do the "Walk X steps" though since we aren't counting steps and movement isn't grid based.
We were thinking about allowing the use of the stardex mid-battle, we just have to see how exactly we're going to implement it.
I'm trying to keep the starmon types related to their looks, but almost all of them are dual type and the second may be harder to guess (It's easy to guess that Krabby is water, guessing the rock part is harder. We've actually got a krabby like starmon). In addition to that, starmon names are colored in the narration box/combat log/whatever its called with the color of their first type (Which again doesn't help with dual types) (Move names are colored as well btw)
We want to add a good amount of random events/repeatable quests, but map size limitations are going to limit the amount of things we can implement. We really want there to be a lot to do, but we're not sure yet just how much we can fit in.
And sorry, no safari zone for exactly that reason :( We can shove quests and stuff into regular terrain, but safari zones just require map space reserved only for them :/
How many starmon are you guys planning on having? I'd like to suggest about 100 as a good number. Maity has 80, it means less models to get to 150+, less starmon to learn, and......I wanna catch em all!
150 + The Special Mew-like ("Event") Starmon is the plan. I think I already have enough models, or am missing at most 10-15 and Im sure I'll find some (If I'm not grossly overestimating our numbers and will indeed be that close, there'll be nothing that can stop me from going for that number)
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. I think I mentioned some of this before so hopefully I'll have new ideas now :P.
Well, achievements mean more bank space used, but I guess we can try and fit a good amount of them in. Still, I'd stick to achievements that are actual achievements, and not just stuff that happens within 30 mins of playing (Will comment on all your suggestions in the quote below)
Starmon related achievements:
Win 5 battles in a row using the same starmon at least once in each battle - You're going to get this five battles after the start of the game :/
Hatch an egg - Sorry, no breeding planned
Get any starmon to level 50 - Eh... Acceptable I guess. Not that easy.
Defeat a milestone trainer - There'll likely be rewards linked to that already, don't think we need an actual achievement (You'll be getting a badge in your trainer card, actual money and item rewards and so on already)
Catch 20 different starmon types A bit too little, very easy. Evolutions count towards such things so this achievement is practically "catch and train 8 starmon"
Catch 40 different starmon types Better, but if we go with 150 total I think 50 is a nicer number
Heal a total of 1000 HP at starcenters (not in one go but can accumulate) That's actually fairly little health (Assume 40 health per starmon early on, all of them lose about half health, that's 120 per heal, so you have to go heal about 8 times... But I don't mind having such "trivial" achievements for high numbers (So let's start at 10k or 50k)
Defeat a starmon after using a stat modifier move - Very likely going to get this in your first battle or one of the first... Something harder perhaps, "Defeat a Starmon which had its stats reduced by 9 stages in total"?
Trade starmon with at least 1 NPC - This one's fine :)
Teach a starmon an entire moveset (so all 4 moves through TMs) - Not sure how I feel about this. Sort of a "noob trap" - People will ruin a starmon for the sake of the achievement. Rather have something like teach X moves via TMs
Rename at least 2 starmon I never really liked nicknaming my pokemon - Not sure whether we should force players into doing so through achievements...
Carry at least 3 different starmon types in the party Way too easy, hardly an achievement. How about 9-12 types (Make use of dual types, have no overlaps)
Build up a certain amount of money As I said above for healing, I don't mind such "trivial" progressive achievements. 100k->500k->1M, etc. Would like to have something like this.
Play the game for a certain amount of hours If we do achievements, this'll be in
It would be nice if the above goals (and possibly more) came with some reward(s) like exp or money. I like a better adventure game than just 'battle to the death with everything that moves' :P. Can easily be done. Maybe a secondary currency instead? Unlock outfits or some special slightly OP PvE-only items?
So yeah, in essence, I don't want achievements that will be "accidentally" gotten within 10 minutes of starting the map, but I don't mind achievements you'll get sort of naturally at some point in the game (amount of money earned, healed, damage dealt, etc.) as long as it doesn't happen insanely early.
Achievements will probably be pretty far down on our priority list though. There's just so much stuff we want to add simply for this thing to work properly and look polished... Achievements will likely be added in the final phases of development if we decide to go with them.
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.
Also wanted to mention my plan here (Dunno if I discussed it with him, might have but he probably forgot as we never really discussed it in depth):
The genetics lab will not be fully unlocked immediately. It'll be tied to your stardex progression. Your help in the scientists research (by cataloging starmon with the stardex) will have an actual impact. For example, Reveal 30 species and you unlock "EV viewer", Capture 30 species and you unlock "EV Manipulator" (Not final name, not even the placeholder name, I just made that up right now), reveal 50 for IV viewer, capture 50 for IV rerolls, stuff like that. We could even tie certain stardex functions to it (Like being able to view move sets, EV rewards, base XP reward, XP table, etc.)
The way Moz is currently setting up the terrain, there are no actual cliffs being used :/ But allowing players to jump cliffs/obstacles is not an issue. The issue with instanced pathing was where we couldn't predefine where and when the player could pass (i.e. you could only pass a specific area by using cut/rock smash). We've got ledges already in and making something similar isn't hard, as long as the player is able to jump all things of the same type at once (Instead of only being able to pass certain ones, like with Rock Smash/Cut).
We're also capable of phasing doodads and NPCs to each players quest progress, Zelda is improving the system at the moment as he is making the first big quest (Lots of phased NPCs) atm.
Status update on the videos: My laptop seems to be getting worse and worse, and I can't really record anything atm :(
On the other hand though I should be getting a new PC. Sorry for the delay :(
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.
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.)
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*)
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Srry for not answering earlier.
I definitely want to have something that allows you to start preset EV-based battles (i.e. you can pick between a set of trainers that only have specific EVs or combinations of them. And it won't be anything vague or so - It will explicitly tell you that its for EV training). I'm currently trying to think of ways to implement it in a more "fun" way (i.e. having the battles be something special, include special starmon/moves, or... A mechanic we're not gonna reveal until the alpha :p Maybe give a high chance that the enemy starmon is shiny. In addition to making the battles special, I'm also trying to think of how to implement it into the world/story, but that's a bit easier.)
A consumable that increases EV gain for a certain amount of time could work as well (Zelda and I have been talking about ways to make arena progression more "fun", one of the ideas was a special currency gotten only from arena fights - I think using such a currency for the EV booster consumable/held items would be more "balanced" than making them a cash sink, and possibly even promote a sense of competitiveness for arena fights)
We won't change the EV numbers/caps directly, I want to keep as many basic systems the same as possible, so that someone who has played Pokemon, regardless of which level, will know their way around. Only change to EVs I would consider is changing the cap to 252 or 256, seeing as going past 252 is a waste since you can't reach 256 for that last stat point.
What I meant with randomised rival was that we'd have a list of multiple rivals, and you would be assigned one of them permanently. Your rival won't ever change. There's just a good chance you won't have the same rival as another person. As for party, same thing would apply as with everything else: Player two practically doesn't exist, and nothing is changed due to him, so his rival will never show up, while player 1s will (Both players will fight the rival in a 2v2 (the rival will be sending out 2 starmon) if the second player is close enough when the battle is started. Just like with any other battle)
The opening cinematic will include a part/quick version of the backstory (Just like the pokemon professor "cinematic" at the start of the pokemon games), and I'll make sure the full version of it is accessible somewhere, video may be a good idea or just another optional cinematic ingame.
We are definitely adding a map, I'm just waiting for the terrain to be more or less complete before I start working on one. Also, getting out of the forest is a lot easier - You just head either south or west. If you go west, you'll reach the Lake, which has no obstacles and you can just follow it south to where Route 1 ends. And the reason that going south in the forest is easier than going north is ledges, which is kinda why we got lost - We couldn't use every path available. But as you saw, it didn't really take long for us to find our way, and the map should make it easier once its implemented.
Good point about the what-team-is-a-starmon-on-thingy. I think maybe making it "Enemy [Starmon]" in the chat messages may be better. Zelda will have to look at that.
Yea, we will definitely mention the trainer scaling somewhere. It will probably be a while though before we do as it's not really that important yet, as no one but us is gonna play this (And once we do the alpha... Well, you guys should already know, and we can tell everyone else in chat). But yeah, we wnat to make as much info about the map available in it (The Stardex and Mentor being two of the bigger ways of doing that. We'll also have random NPCs that will occasionally have something useful to say)
Depends what we want to test. Not sure how far Zelda got with the quests, and he has to fix all the bugs in the videos. My issue is that I need a new comp, some piece of hardware seems to be dying in this laptop (Or at least got a lot slower), seems like either the RAM or the HDD - I have trouble with loading times, stuff just takes forever to load. I can play games and so on since they just load once and everything works fine, but the Editor handles this really badly and has to reload everything every single time I open a field, which means if I open or close a field I literally spend 30+ seconds waiting just for the editor to respond again. Every change I want to make takes me over a minute. Yea, I could do it, but i'd probaly go insane and would need a new window since my laptop flying through it will probably result in it breaking. I should be getting a new comp this month though :)
But yeah, fix everything that was broken in the videos, a bit more terraining from Moz and implement the quests we wanted, and we're pretty much ready.
We *still* haven't contacted the guy who made it >.> But I'll have to look into it. Not sure whether express permission is even needed though (In some cases just giving credit is enough (When no profit is being made off it)), and even if it is, I highly doubt the guy will mind. You make such music because you enjoy it and its source, I highly doubt you wouldn't allow people with similar motives to use it.
I guess I'll explain it again in text, much easier:
There will be two (or two and a half, sort of) quest lines. The storyline will be roughly the same, you just have to pick a side.
As for Co-op, I think I said this in the video: What the second player did or did not do is completely ignored. When a party is created, the game only uses the first players progress. Player 2 will never be locked out of quests due to having made different choices in his own quest line. If you're thinking how co-op will work in scenario XYZ, just imagine its only one player with two controllable units. Player two practically doesn't exist, whatever he may or may not have done will never interfere with what player one/The Party is doing. You could call him the sidekick. Both players are playing Player 1s storyline.
After the players split up, the game does memorize all the quests player two has completed while in a party, but doesn't mark them as properly completed. Instead it just marks them as completed-in-coop, and when the player actually reaches that quest he gets the option to instantly mark it as complete and skip it. This will prevent players from skipping quests in chains and so on (Like the Mozared quests, he's gonna have multiple ones. Completing quest #2 won't unlock #3 for player 2, he will first have to complete #1, will then get the option to skip #2 which will then unlock #3). Player two practically gets a "Complete Quest Instantly" token, but you need to have the actual quest to use that token.
Hope that was less confusing :)
well, they will definitely be available before the 8th milestone trainer, but that's mostly because that guy will have an average starmon level of 85. We have no concrete plans yet about when we are introducing them, we'd ideally tie it into the story, once we get there. The final legendary (#150, like MewTwo) will be directly tied to the story ending, so that one becomes available as part of the final quest, and we haven't decided yet when that is going to be (Getting to level 100 will take ages, I think we should end the story before then and use unrelated quests to carry players to around level 80-90 afterwards).
Also, I think we already discussed this earlier, but I'd like to bring it up again: The Legendaries will be some seriously badass motherfuckers. Expect lots of collateral when you see them. Literally. Shit's gonna go down, people are going to be burnt and/or torn apart. These guys you really don't want to mess with. The ones you can capture will be weaker versions / not the originals. (My current ideas are offspring, "phoenix rebirth like thingy", and clone) This means the legendaries will be introduced some time before they can be captured, and you'll have to go through a quest chain revolving around them. The exact details about things will be decided as we go along: We've got general ideas, we know where we want to go with the plot and what should happen, but we're going to plan out the details only once we reach them.
Masterball hasn't be planned as well, but I'd probably involve it in the story as well. Not sure how much we told you about the backstory, but I had a good idea when we chose the name Starmon - It's not supposed to mean "Starcraft Monsters" (Pokemon means Pocket Monsters iirc), it's supposed to mean "Monsters from the Stars". Everything you can capture with a "capture core" is actually an alien. A very, very long time ago (Back when cave paintings were still in style), "fire fell from the skies" (Falling stars / Drop pods). Humans, who had barely begun drawing/writing found many strange creatures around the impact sites, escaped from the crashed drop pods (Or, well, emergency ejected). Over time, people started domesticating them, bla bla bla, I'll not go into detail too much about how society developed, if you want the full backstory tell me and I'll post it, I'll just skip to the relevant part: Capture cores.
Capture cores were found in and around the escape pods. High tech orbs that could dematerialize and store starmon, and would also force some small amount of obedience on them (More due to the creatures having adapted to capture cores and their place in society over centuries/millenia than it being something built into the capture core. Obeying the person that captured them is practically an instinct - They understand that they are bonded to that person practically forever, whether they like it or not.) Humans had no problems whatsoever figuring out how they worked, and they were all "master balls" essentially. Fast forward two thousand years or so: Humans have for a long time been trying (and succeeding) to replicate capture cores, but none were ever as perfect as the original ones from the drop pods. There weren't infinite drop pods, and unlike Starmon, capture cores can't reproduce, so there was a finite amount of them. A fairly large amount at first. Then the drop pods crash landed on a rather hard planet. And then they had to survive some 2k+ years, a lot of them being in use for a lot of that time. Most of them at some point just ejected the starmon and refused to work anymore, and no one knew how to fix them. Wars were fought over capture cores (And using Starmon - They are really fucking resilient, screw fighting with weapons when you can just send practically invulnerable beasts at your enemies), so people tried to create their own. As I already said, they succeeded, but they aren't perfect.
The "Master Ball" you will get will be an original capture core. I think we'll make the player actually visit a drop pod to retrieve a core (Or for some other reason and give the capture core some other way, but I definitely want a drop pod visit)
Also, a while ago you guys were throwing out random ideas and some concered pokeballs/Capture cores. I can't remember whose idea it was, and what it was originally, but I think we're going to add a second pseudo-master-ball. It will be a capture core that will not be consumed until it actually succeeds in capturing something, and each failure (in the same battle) will increase its capture rate multiplier, so at a certain point it will plain simply be guaranteed to capture, just like a masterball, but unlike the master ball you can't just instant capture something, and weakening the starmon first will still help as it will make it easier to capture something as you work your way to 100% capture chance.
The original plan was to tie it into the Karma system. Your rival will be who you chose not to be. So if you go dark side, the rival will be the good guy and vice versa. We haven't implemented him/her yet, and haven't had too many discussions about him/her. What I'd personally like to do, but may be a bit too hard/time consuming, is have multiple preset rivals, so that the rival isn't the same for each player. My rival might end up being Kenny while Zelda's rival will be Kyle. They will have different lines and different lineups, but they would still appear at the same places and so on (So in essence I'd just like to have multiple possible characters and lineups for the rival, which one ends up being the actual rival would be randomised, but those are just changes in-battle and in conversation. Your quests and when/where/how you meet the rival will always be the same regardless of who your rival is)
Ok, I hope I answered everything :)
There's a good reason we didn't answer this question ;)
He's lying.
4:15 AM. Time to sleep. Will answer questions tomorrow! (And again: I seriously don't mind walls of text. I like them. Seriously.)
Just to add to what Zelda said in reply to lower level opponents: Trainers are scaled with your current party, not with all starmon including those in storage. Dump your high levels into the box and you'll fight lower level trainers (Assuming you're not in a zone where the minimum level is above your average level)
@Trieva: Go
The arena is unlocked almost instantly (After the very short tutorial quest)
As trainers are completely randomized, we can't really save which ones you defeated in the first place as the next time you'll load up the map there'll be completely different trainers. So to get a "rematch" you'll simply have to start the map over again (Although we can probably reset trainers ever 2-3 ingame days or add some other rematch mechanic for playing a single session)
@Trieva: Go
Map size constraints more or less force smaller zones, so they shouldn't take too long to cross. We're trying to make them feel larger/longer by using things like ledges to block direct paths. How much of the map there will be left to "Explore" is something I'm not sure about - We'll most likely have to use every nook and cranny Moz leaves us for (side-)quests. Still, if the forest he made is anything to go by, there'll be plenty of space to explore, the zones will not feel any smaller than in the pokemon games, and they won't take too long to get through (Plus there's the teleporter system)
Another thing: Zelda seems to be making some great progress on the big thing we want to show off in the video. I think we'll just make it a single video (We'll just use Zolden's model during it to show it off ;) )
Not sure whether he mentioned it in the thread, but he's found a way he can record on good settings with stable high FPS. 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
I've watched one of my favourite youtubers play a variant of that mode ;) I'm sure we can add something like that at some point, shouldn't be too hard. Maybe even with customiseable options (So that you can pick only "permadeath" if you don't like force nickname and only capture first per zone and so on).
One issue is banks and bank size. Blizzard allegedly increased the max size to 1 MB, in which case it isn't an issue, but I have yet to see someone test that limit and confirm it. How we save stuff might have to be altered, not sure whether that would be a big issue though since I think we're using only one section for everything atm (Which means we can pretty much just make the section a variable and use different ones for different profiles, easy)
If we can't make multi-profile work, we'll have to overwrite the players usual save file with this if they decide to play it.
Yea, those are great achievements ideas :) Can't do the "Walk X steps" though since we aren't counting steps and movement isn't grid based.
We were thinking about allowing the use of the stardex mid-battle, we just have to see how exactly we're going to implement it.
I'm trying to keep the starmon types related to their looks, but almost all of them are dual type and the second may be harder to guess (It's easy to guess that Krabby is water, guessing the rock part is harder. We've actually got a krabby like starmon). In addition to that, starmon names are colored in the narration box/combat log/whatever its called with the color of their first type (Which again doesn't help with dual types) (Move names are colored as well btw)
We want to add a good amount of random events/repeatable quests, but map size limitations are going to limit the amount of things we can implement. We really want there to be a lot to do, but we're not sure yet just how much we can fit in.
And sorry, no safari zone for exactly that reason :( We can shove quests and stuff into regular terrain, but safari zones just require map space reserved only for them :/
150 + The Special Mew-like ("Event") Starmon is the plan. I think I already have enough models, or am missing at most 10-15 and Im sure I'll find some (If I'm not grossly overestimating our numbers and will indeed be that close, there'll be nothing that can stop me from going for that number)
Well, achievements mean more bank space used, but I guess we can try and fit a good amount of them in. Still, I'd stick to achievements that are actual achievements, and not just stuff that happens within 30 mins of playing (Will comment on all your suggestions in the quote below)
So yeah, in essence, I don't want achievements that will be "accidentally" gotten within 10 minutes of starting the map, but I don't mind achievements you'll get sort of naturally at some point in the game (amount of money earned, healed, damage dealt, etc.) as long as it doesn't happen insanely early.
Achievements will probably be pretty far down on our priority list though. There's just so much stuff we want to add simply for this thing to work properly and look polished... Achievements will likely be added in the final phases of development if we decide to go with them.
Also wanted to mention my plan here (Dunno if I discussed it with him, might have but he probably forgot as we never really discussed it in depth):
The genetics lab will not be fully unlocked immediately. It'll be tied to your stardex progression. Your help in the scientists research (by cataloging starmon with the stardex) will have an actual impact. For example, Reveal 30 species and you unlock "EV viewer", Capture 30 species and you unlock "EV Manipulator" (Not final name, not even the placeholder name, I just made that up right now), reveal 50 for IV viewer, capture 50 for IV rerolls, stuff like that. We could even tie certain stardex functions to it (Like being able to view move sets, EV rewards, base XP reward, XP table, etc.)
Well, I guess you can say that that Starcenter has got a large pair of balls.
The way Moz is currently setting up the terrain, there are no actual cliffs being used :/ But allowing players to jump cliffs/obstacles is not an issue. The issue with instanced pathing was where we couldn't predefine where and when the player could pass (i.e. you could only pass a specific area by using cut/rock smash). We've got ledges already in and making something similar isn't hard, as long as the player is able to jump all things of the same type at once (Instead of only being able to pass certain ones, like with Rock Smash/Cut).
We're also capable of phasing doodads and NPCs to each players quest progress, Zelda is improving the system at the moment as he is making the first big quest (Lots of phased NPCs) atm.
Status update on the videos: My laptop seems to be getting worse and worse, and I can't really record anything atm :(
On the other hand though I should be getting a new PC. Sorry for the delay :(
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.
@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 >.>
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*)