If you guys are lacking fun maps to play, maybe try RuneCraft, people really seemed to like it back on the old EU mapnights. Zelda and I haven't really touched it since, though, so no idea whether it still works. (Remember, scramble stops nukes, scanner sweep and detection, feedback only drains 50 energy at once but deals more damage. Use it against towers and spells a lot. Loading screen has lots of tips for beginners, "intermediates" and better players alike)
Well, I got off my lazy ass and finally did something =D
Most of it was just fixing and/or redoing work I did previously >.>
But the game world itself should now be fully playable (What we have of it, at least) - I set up all the wild starmon, level ranges, trainer types and trainer and item counts for all zones! The beach looks great, and there's low and high tide (low during the day, high during the night).
Looks like Mozared hasn't posted a screenshot of the other zone he made. I'd just like to say that it looks amazing. A beautiful mixture of red, green and brown with some white/light yellow. It sounds like a really strange combination, and it is, but that's why it looks so amazing :) And the tall grass for the zone has been recolored to orange/brown as well. For now it's named Cinderwood, although it's not particularly foresty (There's lots of forests, but there's also lots of gigantic rocks and even some crystals). I'll let Mozared make a nice screenshot of it - He probably has a better idea of what to show off from there than me. (Also, I don't have the editor open atm and opening it would take ages.)
I added 5 starmon, 2 of them are octopi (water, adds psychic type upon evolving) and three Murlocs (Water+Dark, high attack stat), which allowed me to have a decent variety of starmon for the beach.
If I can continue not being lazy, I'll try and work on all areas of the map to get it playable, because we've been promising it for so long now and I finally want to deliver. We're so damn close, but Zelda is busy and I'm just being lazy :( (Moz has actually done a good amount of work recently =D )
Well, that sucks. Why the hell did they implemented the better water for WoL, but dind't include the assets for it? We're keeping the map on WoL and there's no splashes, ripples or anything.
Hijacked your post, sorry about that. But I put a timer in!
Timer auto-updates weekly. Don't touch the edit button - Only mods are allowed to post/edit in rawhtml (which is necessary for the timer), so if you edit the post you'll break it :( I can put in edits for you when you need em.
Push/Pull/Shake/whatever - In theory, easy. Issue is that pretty much all of the doodads don't have animations for that, and I don't think I can really improvise them with actor messages (For the grass flattening I just changed the scale of the model)
Water splashes - I don't think that's possible. Blizzards water engine is pretty damn limited :( I had hoped they had implemented the water they have in WoW, but it doesn't seem like it - in WoW you actually have ripples when something touches the water surface (Even the rain!). I could probably ask someone to make a small "splash" particles effect and make it play on units that are walking through water, but once again the water engine gets in the way - As far as I know, there's no way to detect water in actors, there maybe is in triggers but I doubt that.
Footprints - There is a system for this in the editor, I think they fade away after a while. I can try messing around with it at some point.
Terrain changes - Possible, but not sure how detailed. I think its just squares or so, dont think craters could work. Plus, you wouldn't really have the option to make them out of battle :p Also, stomping the ground requires animations which we don't have.
The trees and windmills already have some stand animations, trees move very slightly I think, and the windmill have a few different spinning animations, including some still ones, so they aren't spinning all the time (not sure if that's good or bad...)
I, personally, have done pretty much nothing :( Those doors were added about 2 weeks ago I think >.> I've just been lazy. Luckily, at the moment, I sort of "can" be lazy, as pretty much everything thats necessary for the alpha that I have to work on is done - There's some UI images I'd like to add/rework, but apart from that anything else I do might not even show up in the alpha (Like adding more starmon and trainer types), but still not really an excuse for not doing anything >.>
To touch on the doors, and indirectly other things I've done - There are so many things that will seem really insignificant to people playing this that I've spent a long time on and think is absolutely awesome, just because of the way its done, like the doors and grass. The doors open when a player comes close, and close when no player is around (Doesn't have to be a player - I just need to add a value in the data editor if I want a unit to be able to open doors). I'm fairly certain that most people that would be tasked with this would just make the door a unit and use a trigger to detect when something comes close. Others, who like me avoid the trigger editor so they don't clog its performance with stuff like this, would probably use behaviors and search effects. But the reason why I'm kinda proud of what I did was because the doors aren't even units to begin with, they're doodads. I didn't touch any tab other than actors even. The grass is done the same way - If you walk on it, it gets flattened, then rises back up when you leave. And they're doodads, so again everything is done purely in actors. (If you're interested in how - Region actors and queries, just like the hellion being able to burn plants)
I've done other actor trickery as well, like using dark warp prisms and marines to create the spiralling effects I'm sure I showed off in some of the videos and screenshots. I've also used marines and phoenix missiles for the Slash attacks (one or three diagonal stripes, in a lot of cases coming from both sides). Some simpler things I've done are having "Protect" put an actual shield around the unit, protecting it from knockback (Its only visual, knockback has no real effect in the battle) and playing the Hardened Shields model when an attack is prevented (Honestly, I could even try adding counter-knockback to it against contact moves like Tackle for added awesomeness) - All the tackle-light attacks (Quick Attack, Extreme Speed, Flare Blitz, Spark, etc.) usually knock back, but if hte target is protected it looks as if the enemy just stops in his tracks.
Then I've got Baton Pass which spawns for "bubbles" around the starmon which are spinning around, changing colors and slowly growing, and as soon as the next starmon is sent out they explode into little cubes (Not sure whether the cubes keep the colors of the bubbles - I think I gave them different colors individually so it looks more rainbowy)
Don't know exactly why I mentioned this, but I felt like it :)
I'll try and be less lazy sometime soon and get something done.
Well yeah, they don't mind destructive weapons, but making one is time and resource consuming (for them), so you can't really do that while following another big plan.
Cipher is going after an OP as fuck starmon... I think it is a bit similar to MewTwo's story, yet at the same time quite different.
More ideas:
A bank. A place for us to store money which accumulates over time (with a reasonable interest rate). That way it's interesting to leave starmon every once in a while :P.
We have no way to get server time/date, so we have no way of doing that :(
A cult. A group of people (not team cipher) worship the legendaries and believe they're gods. This quest involves doing things for or against them. If you support them, you'll learn more about the legendaries because they active scout for them. If you oppose, maybe make them an obstacle before we can catch legendaries or something :P.
That's a good idea as well, will probably use that for one of the legendaries :)
If you're not allowing us to view types/EVs in battle that's a bit unfortunate. I don't like to beat players by simply knowing more than them and have memorised everything. Too much work :P.
EDIT: Oops, I misread XD. Yup, having at least types is good :)
And base stats are probably more important than IVs/EVs. You should definitely be able to get a good idea of what your opponent is capable off. If you have that same starmon marked as captured, you can even see what moves it learns naturally (TMs aren't in that list)
I meant it would be cool if during battles we can use our stardex to look at the opponent's types and EVs to help us make better decisions.
We do want to be able to let you open the stardex in-battle, but you probably won't get the "unique" stats (IVs, EVs, Nature, Moves), just the regular stardex page, showing you base stats, type, location and if you already have it marked as captured it shows you moves as well. (There's other info but I can't remember whats on "seen" and whats on "captured")
Here's some more:
Hidden goodies. Whichever house is considered our home, there should be a treasure chest if we investigate under the bed or something :P. Maybe those are some backup supplies from when our parents used to actively journey. How about it has 10 potions?
Not sure whether the player gets a personal house yet :/ We'll see once we have the city properly built, there's barely anything there at the moment.
The fight against team cipher. As a quest from the police (out of the many they offer) in an attempt to defeat them. This one requires you to put on disguises or infiltrate some team cipher area and retrieve some documents/take-photos/find-out-plans and return to the police. Alternatively you could fill them in on police operations and secretly reverse spy on them :P.
That's a really good idea. Will probably make this one of the story quests.
Attempted legendary capture. It turns out that some of their awesomeness rubs off on their babies :P. We cannot capture them immediately but have to consult with a scientist to obtain a ball that makes them catchable. I guess this is another errand running quest.
Mutual gains. There's an explorer who has knowledge about locations of many useful things, like zones, hidden items, highest rate of encounter for starmon, etc. However he/she will only share some of this information every time you help them. This may involve defeating trainers, doing personal help like rescuing family members, and stuff :P. You can do this quest multiple times to get more info.
We've got Mozared as an explorer already. We can probably put in stuff like that for his quests :)
Zelda, I feel like a loss should affect my AP somehow, in some cases. Either, I lose one for any arena loss, my rank lowers or something. Wins shouldn't be the only thing to affect that money. Also, names of currency is important. Credits sound more plausible than points.. so can I earn AC? Finally, it's good to know I have an easy button!
I *think* regular money might be called credits at the moment.
Almaity, Grats on the anniversary, and thanks for letting me re-order my team! It's probably impossible to make it a drag'n'drop thing, eh? Maybe let the things take up more screen? I have no real idea how the map works, so I'm just throwing things out there.
Don't think drag and drop is possible in SC2 :( Even if we do some massive workaround, don't think it'll be worth the time - This works well already. (Select a starmon, press "Move Starmon", click on the slot you want it in)
I don't think making them larger is necessary - They already include a large amount of info, and the entire right half of the screen is dedicated to giving you all the info you need on your (currently highlighted) starmon.
None my my change suggestions are going to happen before beta at the earliest, unless they are super easy. Or, they may just be too creepy for your time. At any rate, good luck and great speed!
Not sure what changes specifically you mean, mind reminding me? Couldn't find anything skimming over the last few pages of this thread :(
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One thing I forgot to mention in the last post is that Zelda changed how the model previews worked so that they will now work properly during multiplayer, and I finally went through making sure all the models are scaled right (In previous videos and/or screenshots you might have noticed certain models being way too large or small, they should all be the right size now)
Haven't talked to Zelda on skype in a couple days, so I don't know how much work he has left exactly - The to-do list might make certain things seem easier than they actually are, and I can't really judge that. Mozared needs to do some more terrain, and I think he said something about Sunday. I think a couple hours is all we're missing from him. JademusSreg offered to do some retextures for trainer models which I hope to have for the Alpha, and I need to do some photoshop work as well, not satisfied with how the conversation buttons look and will probably switch to something a lot simpler looking and I need to create some images for the storage box. We're getting close, but we aren't close enough for an ETA yet :(
Just letting you guys know that this project seems awesome so far! Also do you think the upcoming Pokemon games will influence your future game updates?
Not really. We're staying away from the pokemon universe itself, so nothing that changes in the pokemon lore will have any effect here. We've already decided not to add the Fairy type (We *might* change our mind on this). If some mechanics change, and we like the changes, we'll probably consider implementing those changes.
Not sure what exactly you mean. Zelda was talking directly about the DNA/Genetics Lab/whatever we're gonna call it. Stardex progression works the same as in the pokemon games, so yea, trainer/PvP fights will count towards your "seen" progress. But since you don't own the enemy starmon, you can't take it to the lab to check its IVs and EVs.
The lab is meant to replace online IV calculators, give you an easy way to check your EVs, replace EV reduction berries and replace "breeding for different IVs and Natures"
Those are some good suggestions for quests :) We'll see where we can add those. We already have something very similar to your "Person starting adventure" one.
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I'm sure some of you remember this image: http://i.imgur.com/PnW6jh.jpg
Or more specifically, the typo in the bottom left button..
Well, almost exactly an entire year after it was posted, a bit less than a year after the typo was pointed out somewhere in this thread (I tried to find the post but failed), we fixed it! And the button now actually does something! (other than mocking our typing skills)
PROGRESS!
...yes, this thread is 1 year and 1 day old...
I think we should hurry up with this alpha test. We already made a "small" to-do list on top of our to-do list which only lists things specifically needed for the alpha, and it's not that much.
The list is actually pretty short and easy. Most of it is just small things (Like making the player move closer to the professor at the start), a bit more terrain from Mozared, add text to the intro cutscene and add the extra battle arenas and cameras for them. We're getting there!
Btw Maity, I'm not trying to shove as much sci-fi into your map as possible but the more quest stories that are, the more interesting for ppl like me. Maybe you'd like to share (clearly) what constraints you have and I'll try and come up with ideas that work for you?
Any suggestions are great. Sorry if I sounded rude or annoyed :( Just explaining why certain suggestions can't come in.
The limitations are, well... Kind of vague/simple? There's so many things that can be suggested that it's hard to make non-vague "rules" :p I'll list a few:
Little to no terrain changes. We can add a small hut and a campfire and such really small things, stuff that you can just shove into a corner of a zone and be done with. We can't do large buildings or entire zones. The less space we use with one quest the more we have for the next one.
needs to "Fit in". For example, why would we make the player time travel? It's a pretty weird thing to happen. But, for example, the lore of Mortessus (Lich/Ghost thingy) states that some of them are said to be old enough to remember times before they dropped onto this planet, so we could have one of those telepathically give you a sort of "flashback" and show you the past.
Time and effort. Is the idea too complicated? Is it worth spending so much time on it instead of more but simpler things?
So yeah, a basic time travel suggestion kinda broke all three :p But lets say you suggested an NPC who said he couldn't travel much, but would like to see the world and asks you to take photographs of certain places for him: No terrain work, isn't out of place, and very easy to implement.
Based on the responses from you guys I think I'm going to stop posting in this thread for a while (after this post). I have no problem critiqueing something and providing feedback but I don't want to make you guys angry or hateful. I remembered watching a very insightful video from extra credits (youtube) that said devs need to resist telling off their testers.
You're not making us angry or hateful (Or me at least). I like discussing things, I really like posting here, and trust me you're not taking up much of my time (These may take a while to write, but if I'm writing em chances are I wasn't planning on working on the map that day or at least during that time, or I'm writing the post after I'm done for the day)
I also think playing the "devils advocate" and pointing out why we can't implement some suggestions is something I need to learn to do more on my own, and doing it in this thread helps :p
Sorry if I sound rude, harsh, angry or whatever :(
I wanna get into game design some day, and I really think this thread is a great learning experience for me.
If you don't mind me suggesting, maybe the current project is too ambitious? You guys are still in alpha so I'm hoping it's still ok to make massive changes or reworking of the map. If not then maybe things will have to be cut out. I don't want to sound like a jerk telling you guys what to do but I'm just trying to help.
It may be a bit too ambitious, and chances are it will end up more grindy than we want it to be simply because we'll not make as many side quests as we want to and won't be able to cover the entire path from level 5 to 100 with them.
Progress may seem slow at the moment, but Zelda was gone for a good two weeks, Mozared doesn't have that much time to terrain, and most of my work always needs Zelda to finish it (I make the UI art but have a hard time implementing it as I'm not familiar with most triggers in the map, etc.) and we're currently killing bugs and finishing up some systems. Zelda is able to make quests pretty quickly, and I will sooner or later be helping out with those as well, so once we have the game fully playable it's just a matter of us adding as much content as we can before we decide that we're done. We can always add more after release/beta - Personally I just want the storyline to be done with some side stuff that can help make it less grindy (Like some of the suggestions from way earlier in this thread about challenge battles and "endless mode")
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My personal opinion is that if you're claiming to have a pokemon like map (and want it to be really good), you should prob include most of what made it successful which was kinda, everything (because the formula didn't change much since first gen). The different places to explore, variety of battle strategies, mini-quests, and just about anything that made it feel like an open world RPG (which I think is why I like it). It's a bit hard to explain but everything in pokemon seems to fit nicely together making a very enjoyable play experience.
One of the main reasons we decided on pokemon as our project was because we had such a good foundation we could easily copy :p We tried being unique and innovative with RuneCraft, and I think we did pretty well there, and it was popular for a week or two, and everyone on map night loved it, but I guess it was too complicated for most people on the arcade.
You guys have focused alot on combat and catching starmon and while you've put good effort in (and prob beats how pokemon did them), it seems pretty dry on its own. I prefer more of an adventure game than a hardcore battle game (if I'm expecting pokemon). I really support the idea to progress or solve problems without conflict which Zelda said will be done. Cooping is also cool because pokemon didn't have it so you get thumbs up from me.
We definitely want nice and exploreable zones. Map size limit will obviously not allow as much as the actual pokemon games though :( Being able to make different choices will at least partially make up for that I think.
It's perfectly fine to not have the same things as pokemon had like a larger map area or more room for pokemon and that's why you guys are making a mini starcraft version. Also, you don't have to listen to me :P. I'm sure there's plenty of other people that would give better feedback than me so I'm sorry if I'm stressing you guys out. I guess I'm saying we wouldn't have a pokemon like game (or the same enjoyment) without caves, ruins, houses, and everything else we'd like to explore (including safari zones) plus all those little distractions from battles. This is just my opinion as someone who's loved pokemon so you don't have to follow it.
As I said above, you're not stressing us out :p
I've never really found the safari zones appealing personally :( I guess we can try adding one if we end up with enough space though.
About the desert: As Zelda said, we're gonna have sort of preset "chunks" that will be spawned in random locations. We can probably scale things down a bit here as well to make it larger. I'll try something very hard and time consuming - Creating sets of doodads attached to a single unit - which, if I can do it without wasting ages on it, would allow us to very easily re-randomize the desert without restarting the map.
We're gonna make it a very harsh environment and limit the time a player can spend in it. We haven't nailed down any specifics yet for this as we haven't begun working on it, but we've talked about it back when we first made the map layout. There's probably gonna be some sort of "dehydration" mechanic that's gonna prevent you from staying in the desert for too long. You'll probably be allowed to bring some consumables (like water bottles) with you to remove the penalties for a certain time. We'll probably make your starmon lose energy and health while you're dehydrated, maybe reduce your movement speed or even in-battle stats.
The reason for these penalties is to prevent players from just easily exploring the zone and getting all the rewards - It'll be over too quickly. But if we wear the player down while exploring we'll be forcing him back before he's done with everything, making it harder to get all the loot hidden in the desert. I think we may want to hide XP boosts there as well.
The wild starmon will also be seen wandering about and the longer you are in the desert the higher level they will get, and I think disabling the run mechanic after a certain point may be good as well. (You also won't be able to avoid all of them - We're using the Lurker model for one of the desert starmon, and that guy can burrow :p and we can simply have certain starmon just charge at you out of nowhere if you go too long without a fight.)
I don't know how well we'll manage this, but hopefully it'll allow people that like exploring and treasure hunting to keep replaying the desert without getting bored out of their minds.
On the flipside, I'm more positive about the room we have than Maity. There may not be space to add in all possible ideas, but we currently have... what is it Maity, 12? zones planned total and they should all fit in easily. Each of these zones will be relatively the same size as one in the original Pokémon games.
I'm not saying we don't have room for those :p I'm saying we don't really have much room for more than those (Like an alternative time-travel version of a zone)
We could make everything smaller I guess. Cliffs are a bit of an issue, but we don't use them much. The thing is, as Moz has said, we have enough space to do what we planned, but that's about the limit. Going back and changing everything for a smaller scale would be an enormous amount of work now, and Moz would have to re-do everything he already did, and his time is pretty limited with his job so I'd rather not have him start all over again. With the current plans, everythings fine. I'm just saying that in case of suggestions, we're very limited if something requires terrain changes - They can't be done dynamically without being too much trouble, and we likely won't have the extra space for it, and if we do there's better things to add than a one-time "zone" for a single quest, like maybe another battle arena so that we can support more players.
Instead of having most of the map as zones maybe trade some out for reusable caves/ruins/warehouses?
Not sure what you mean by "reusable". We can reuse the zones - The wild starmon are all under level 30 in most zones, but obviously the zones will be used later on for quests of all levels. You'll revisit the places when necessary.
@fishy77: Go
Not sure what method you're talking about, but all the methods I can think of that have such an effect don't work in multiplayer. We need all players to be able to do everything at the same time
Honestly I'm not sure where this conversation is going. We don't have map space issues as long as we stick to our current plan - The map isn't too small for what we want to make, the map is too small if we want to take all of your suggestions that require more terrain work. There are probably workarounds that can help with all that, but they're time consuming and might not even be worth the effort. If we have space left over once we're done we can find ways to use it, like additional battle arenas or a small zone used for a small quest or two.
Trieve suggested two things that would require a lot of terrain work (Time travel and an alternate universe) and I just reminded everyone that we don't have space for such stuff. We've got space for the planned zones, we can put a lot of quests into those zones, but we don't have space to add zones that exist for the sake of a single quest.
I guess I might come over somewhat pessimistic when talking about our terrain limitations, but I think we've got enough space, we just shouldn't plan on adding more things. Once the terrain is done, then I'll be able to say with certainty whether or not we can do any more, but until then I'll probably answer with a "probably not" if asked to do something that requires a large chunk of terrain just for itself.
It also doesn't make sense for a magma filled area next to an ocean next to something else wacky :P. That seems like a very unnatural environment.
Aren't most volcanoes in/near oceans anyway? That particular example doesn't really strike me as odd.
But here's how the zones look: Middle of the map is grassy/foresty mostly. In the north we've got the cave and mountains taking up most of it, and since the mountains are relatively high they're pretty cold and snowy. The top right corner of the map is currently empty and will probably be used for battle arenas. Otherwise it'll probably be something grassy/foresty as well.
The bottom third of the map is more dry/sandy: Beach, rocky-pre-desert-area, actual really hot and dry desert, volcano in the bottom right corner.
I've been distracted way too much while writing this post, I have no idea what I covered and what I didn't >.> I guess I'll just leave it like this.
EDIT: So about two hours ago I hit post and then left the room. Turns out someone else posted before I was done. Well, here's my post 2 hours late...
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If you guys are lacking fun maps to play, maybe try RuneCraft, people really seemed to like it back on the old EU mapnights. Zelda and I haven't really touched it since, though, so no idea whether it still works. (Remember, scramble stops nukes, scanner sweep and detection, feedback only drains 50 energy at once but deals more damage. Use it against towers and spells a lot. Loading screen has lots of tips for beginners, "intermediates" and better players alike)
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Nope, sorry :( Only one can be loaded per page
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Well, I got off my lazy ass and finally did something =D
Most of it was just fixing and/or redoing work I did previously >.>
But the game world itself should now be fully playable (What we have of it, at least) - I set up all the wild starmon, level ranges, trainer types and trainer and item counts for all zones! The beach looks great, and there's low and high tide (low during the day, high during the night).
Looks like Mozared hasn't posted a screenshot of the other zone he made. I'd just like to say that it looks amazing. A beautiful mixture of red, green and brown with some white/light yellow. It sounds like a really strange combination, and it is, but that's why it looks so amazing :) And the tall grass for the zone has been recolored to orange/brown as well. For now it's named Cinderwood, although it's not particularly foresty (There's lots of forests, but there's also lots of gigantic rocks and even some crystals). I'll let Mozared make a nice screenshot of it - He probably has a better idea of what to show off from there than me. (Also, I don't have the editor open atm and opening it would take ages.)
I added 5 starmon, 2 of them are octopi (water, adds psychic type upon evolving) and three Murlocs (Water+Dark, high attack stat), which allowed me to have a decent variety of starmon for the beach.
If I can continue not being lazy, I'll try and work on all areas of the map to get it playable, because we've been promising it for so long now and I finally want to deliver. We're so damn close, but Zelda is busy and I'm just being lazy :( (Moz has actually done a good amount of work recently =D )
@JacktheArcher: Go
Well, that sucks. Why the hell did they implemented the better water for WoL, but dind't include the assets for it? We're keeping the map on WoL and there's no splashes, ripples or anything.
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@Trieva: Go
I guess Zelda, just like me, didn't read the days and assumed it was both Friday. Fixed it :)
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@Hookah604: Go
Hijacked your post, sorry about that. But I put a timer in!
Timer auto-updates weekly. Don't touch the edit button - Only mods are allowed to post/edit in rawhtml (which is necessary for the timer), so if you edit the post you'll break it :( I can put in edits for you when you need em.
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@OceanFlex: Go
Push/Pull/Shake/whatever - In theory, easy. Issue is that pretty much all of the doodads don't have animations for that, and I don't think I can really improvise them with actor messages (For the grass flattening I just changed the scale of the model)
Water splashes - I don't think that's possible. Blizzards water engine is pretty damn limited :( I had hoped they had implemented the water they have in WoW, but it doesn't seem like it - in WoW you actually have ripples when something touches the water surface (Even the rain!). I could probably ask someone to make a small "splash" particles effect and make it play on units that are walking through water, but once again the water engine gets in the way - As far as I know, there's no way to detect water in actors, there maybe is in triggers but I doubt that.
Footprints - There is a system for this in the editor, I think they fade away after a while. I can try messing around with it at some point.
Terrain changes - Possible, but not sure how detailed. I think its just squares or so, dont think craters could work. Plus, you wouldn't really have the option to make them out of battle :p Also, stomping the ground requires animations which we don't have.
The trees and windmills already have some stand animations, trees move very slightly I think, and the windmill have a few different spinning animations, including some still ones, so they aren't spinning all the time (not sure if that's good or bad...)
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@JacktheArcher: Go
The doors are never "locked", and therefore don't have any pathing. We've only got one door so far that's locked, and that one is trigger controlled.
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I, personally, have done pretty much nothing :( Those doors were added about 2 weeks ago I think >.> I've just been lazy. Luckily, at the moment, I sort of "can" be lazy, as pretty much everything thats necessary for the alpha that I have to work on is done - There's some UI images I'd like to add/rework, but apart from that anything else I do might not even show up in the alpha (Like adding more starmon and trainer types), but still not really an excuse for not doing anything >.>
To touch on the doors, and indirectly other things I've done - There are so many things that will seem really insignificant to people playing this that I've spent a long time on and think is absolutely awesome, just because of the way its done, like the doors and grass. The doors open when a player comes close, and close when no player is around (Doesn't have to be a player - I just need to add a value in the data editor if I want a unit to be able to open doors). I'm fairly certain that most people that would be tasked with this would just make the door a unit and use a trigger to detect when something comes close. Others, who like me avoid the trigger editor so they don't clog its performance with stuff like this, would probably use behaviors and search effects. But the reason why I'm kinda proud of what I did was because the doors aren't even units to begin with, they're doodads. I didn't touch any tab other than actors even. The grass is done the same way - If you walk on it, it gets flattened, then rises back up when you leave. And they're doodads, so again everything is done purely in actors. (If you're interested in how - Region actors and queries, just like the hellion being able to burn plants)
I've done other actor trickery as well, like using dark warp prisms and marines to create the spiralling effects I'm sure I showed off in some of the videos and screenshots. I've also used marines and phoenix missiles for the Slash attacks (one or three diagonal stripes, in a lot of cases coming from both sides). Some simpler things I've done are having "Protect" put an actual shield around the unit, protecting it from knockback (Its only visual, knockback has no real effect in the battle) and playing the Hardened Shields model when an attack is prevented (Honestly, I could even try adding counter-knockback to it against contact moves like Tackle for added awesomeness) - All the tackle-light attacks (Quick Attack, Extreme Speed, Flare Blitz, Spark, etc.) usually knock back, but if hte target is protected it looks as if the enemy just stops in his tracks.
Then I've got Baton Pass which spawns for "bubbles" around the starmon which are spinning around, changing colors and slowly growing, and as soon as the next starmon is sent out they explode into little cubes (Not sure whether the cubes keep the colors of the bubbles - I think I gave them different colors individually so it looks more rainbowy)
Don't know exactly why I mentioned this, but I felt like it :)
I'll try and be less lazy sometime soon and get something done.
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@Trieva: Go
Well yeah, they don't mind destructive weapons, but making one is time and resource consuming (for them), so you can't really do that while following another big plan.
Cipher is going after an OP as fuck starmon... I think it is a bit similar to MewTwo's story, yet at the same time quite different.
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We have no way to get server time/date, so we have no way of doing that :(
That's a good idea as well, will probably use that for one of the legendaries :)
Eh... I don't think cipher should sidetrack that much from their main plan. Something like that is just too far out of the way for them :p
And base stats are probably more important than IVs/EVs. You should definitely be able to get a good idea of what your opponent is capable off. If you have that same starmon marked as captured, you can even see what moves it learns naturally (TMs aren't in that list)
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We do want to be able to let you open the stardex in-battle, but you probably won't get the "unique" stats (IVs, EVs, Nature, Moves), just the regular stardex page, showing you base stats, type, location and if you already have it marked as captured it shows you moves as well. (There's other info but I can't remember whats on "seen" and whats on "captured")
Not sure whether the player gets a personal house yet :/ We'll see once we have the city properly built, there's barely anything there at the moment.
That's a really good idea. Will probably make this one of the story quests.
Could use this for one of the legendaries :)
Could do that. Its also easy to make the bad-side version of this! (Help intercept the supply truck)
We've got Mozared as an explorer already. We can probably put in stuff like that for his quests :)
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I *think* regular money might be called credits at the moment.
Don't think drag and drop is possible in SC2 :( Even if we do some massive workaround, don't think it'll be worth the time - This works well already. (Select a starmon, press "Move Starmon", click on the slot you want it in)
I don't think making them larger is necessary - They already include a large amount of info, and the entire right half of the screen is dedicated to giving you all the info you need on your (currently highlighted) starmon.
Not sure what changes specifically you mean, mind reminding me? Couldn't find anything skimming over the last few pages of this thread :(
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One thing I forgot to mention in the last post is that Zelda changed how the model previews worked so that they will now work properly during multiplayer, and I finally went through making sure all the models are scaled right (In previous videos and/or screenshots you might have noticed certain models being way too large or small, they should all be the right size now)
Haven't talked to Zelda on skype in a couple days, so I don't know how much work he has left exactly - The to-do list might make certain things seem easier than they actually are, and I can't really judge that. Mozared needs to do some more terrain, and I think he said something about Sunday. I think a couple hours is all we're missing from him. JademusSreg offered to do some retextures for trainer models which I hope to have for the Alpha, and I need to do some photoshop work as well, not satisfied with how the conversation buttons look and will probably switch to something a lot simpler looking and I need to create some images for the storage box. We're getting close, but we aren't close enough for an ETA yet :(
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With the camera angle you can just make out its a window in the first place, making them actual windows wouldn't change how the player sees them :(
Not really. We're staying away from the pokemon universe itself, so nothing that changes in the pokemon lore will have any effect here. We've already decided not to add the Fairy type (We *might* change our mind on this). If some mechanics change, and we like the changes, we'll probably consider implementing those changes.
@SoulFilcher: Go
Those models are pretty useful :) Thanks!
@Trieva: Go
Not sure what exactly you mean. Zelda was talking directly about the DNA/Genetics Lab/whatever we're gonna call it. Stardex progression works the same as in the pokemon games, so yea, trainer/PvP fights will count towards your "seen" progress. But since you don't own the enemy starmon, you can't take it to the lab to check its IVs and EVs.
The lab is meant to replace online IV calculators, give you an easy way to check your EVs, replace EV reduction berries and replace "breeding for different IVs and Natures"
Those are some good suggestions for quests :) We'll see where we can add those. We already have something very similar to your "Person starting adventure" one.
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I'm sure some of you remember this image: http://i.imgur.com/PnW6jh.jpg
Or more specifically, the typo in the bottom left button..
Well, almost exactly an entire year after it was posted, a bit less than a year after the typo was pointed out somewhere in this thread (I tried to find the post but failed), we fixed it! And the button now actually does something! (other than mocking our typing skills)
PROGRESS!
...yes, this thread is 1 year and 1 day old...
I think we should hurry up with this alpha test. We already made a "small" to-do list on top of our to-do list which only lists things specifically needed for the alpha, and it's not that much.
The list is actually pretty short and easy. Most of it is just small things (Like making the player move closer to the professor at the start), a bit more terrain from Mozared, add text to the intro cutscene and add the extra battle arenas and cameras for them. We're getting there!
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Any suggestions are great. Sorry if I sounded rude or annoyed :( Just explaining why certain suggestions can't come in.
The limitations are, well... Kind of vague/simple? There's so many things that can be suggested that it's hard to make non-vague "rules" :p I'll list a few:
So yeah, a basic time travel suggestion kinda broke all three :p But lets say you suggested an NPC who said he couldn't travel much, but would like to see the world and asks you to take photographs of certain places for him: No terrain work, isn't out of place, and very easy to implement.
You're not making us angry or hateful (Or me at least). I like discussing things, I really like posting here, and trust me you're not taking up much of my time (These may take a while to write, but if I'm writing em chances are I wasn't planning on working on the map that day or at least during that time, or I'm writing the post after I'm done for the day)
I also think playing the "devils advocate" and pointing out why we can't implement some suggestions is something I need to learn to do more on my own, and doing it in this thread helps :p
Sorry if I sound rude, harsh, angry or whatever :(
I wanna get into game design some day, and I really think this thread is a great learning experience for me.
It may be a bit too ambitious, and chances are it will end up more grindy than we want it to be simply because we'll not make as many side quests as we want to and won't be able to cover the entire path from level 5 to 100 with them.
Progress may seem slow at the moment, but Zelda was gone for a good two weeks, Mozared doesn't have that much time to terrain, and most of my work always needs Zelda to finish it (I make the UI art but have a hard time implementing it as I'm not familiar with most triggers in the map, etc.) and we're currently killing bugs and finishing up some systems. Zelda is able to make quests pretty quickly, and I will sooner or later be helping out with those as well, so once we have the game fully playable it's just a matter of us adding as much content as we can before we decide that we're done. We can always add more after release/beta - Personally I just want the storyline to be done with some side stuff that can help make it less grindy (Like some of the suggestions from way earlier in this thread about challenge battles and "endless mode")
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One of the main reasons we decided on pokemon as our project was because we had such a good foundation we could easily copy :p We tried being unique and innovative with RuneCraft, and I think we did pretty well there, and it was popular for a week or two, and everyone on map night loved it, but I guess it was too complicated for most people on the arcade.
We definitely want nice and exploreable zones. Map size limit will obviously not allow as much as the actual pokemon games though :( Being able to make different choices will at least partially make up for that I think.
As I said above, you're not stressing us out :p
I've never really found the safari zones appealing personally :( I guess we can try adding one if we end up with enough space though.
About the desert: As Zelda said, we're gonna have sort of preset "chunks" that will be spawned in random locations. We can probably scale things down a bit here as well to make it larger. I'll try something very hard and time consuming - Creating sets of doodads attached to a single unit - which, if I can do it without wasting ages on it, would allow us to very easily re-randomize the desert without restarting the map.
We're gonna make it a very harsh environment and limit the time a player can spend in it. We haven't nailed down any specifics yet for this as we haven't begun working on it, but we've talked about it back when we first made the map layout. There's probably gonna be some sort of "dehydration" mechanic that's gonna prevent you from staying in the desert for too long. You'll probably be allowed to bring some consumables (like water bottles) with you to remove the penalties for a certain time. We'll probably make your starmon lose energy and health while you're dehydrated, maybe reduce your movement speed or even in-battle stats.
The reason for these penalties is to prevent players from just easily exploring the zone and getting all the rewards - It'll be over too quickly. But if we wear the player down while exploring we'll be forcing him back before he's done with everything, making it harder to get all the loot hidden in the desert. I think we may want to hide XP boosts there as well.
The wild starmon will also be seen wandering about and the longer you are in the desert the higher level they will get, and I think disabling the run mechanic after a certain point may be good as well. (You also won't be able to avoid all of them - We're using the Lurker model for one of the desert starmon, and that guy can burrow :p and we can simply have certain starmon just charge at you out of nowhere if you go too long without a fight.)
I don't know how well we'll manage this, but hopefully it'll allow people that like exploring and treasure hunting to keep replaying the desert without getting bored out of their minds.
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I'm not saying we don't have room for those :p I'm saying we don't really have much room for more than those (Like an alternative time-travel version of a zone)
@SoulFilcher: Go
We could make everything smaller I guess. Cliffs are a bit of an issue, but we don't use them much. The thing is, as Moz has said, we have enough space to do what we planned, but that's about the limit. Going back and changing everything for a smaller scale would be an enormous amount of work now, and Moz would have to re-do everything he already did, and his time is pretty limited with his job so I'd rather not have him start all over again. With the current plans, everythings fine. I'm just saying that in case of suggestions, we're very limited if something requires terrain changes - They can't be done dynamically without being too much trouble, and we likely won't have the extra space for it, and if we do there's better things to add than a one-time "zone" for a single quest, like maybe another battle arena so that we can support more players.
Not sure what you mean by "reusable". We can reuse the zones - The wild starmon are all under level 30 in most zones, but obviously the zones will be used later on for quests of all levels. You'll revisit the places when necessary.
@fishy77: Go Not sure what method you're talking about, but all the methods I can think of that have such an effect don't work in multiplayer. We need all players to be able to do everything at the same time
Honestly I'm not sure where this conversation is going. We don't have map space issues as long as we stick to our current plan - The map isn't too small for what we want to make, the map is too small if we want to take all of your suggestions that require more terrain work. There are probably workarounds that can help with all that, but they're time consuming and might not even be worth the effort. If we have space left over once we're done we can find ways to use it, like additional battle arenas or a small zone used for a small quest or two.
Trieve suggested two things that would require a lot of terrain work (Time travel and an alternate universe) and I just reminded everyone that we don't have space for such stuff. We've got space for the planned zones, we can put a lot of quests into those zones, but we don't have space to add zones that exist for the sake of a single quest.
I guess I might come over somewhat pessimistic when talking about our terrain limitations, but I think we've got enough space, we just shouldn't plan on adding more things. Once the terrain is done, then I'll be able to say with certainty whether or not we can do any more, but until then I'll probably answer with a "probably not" if asked to do something that requires a large chunk of terrain just for itself.
Aren't most volcanoes in/near oceans anyway? That particular example doesn't really strike me as odd.
But here's how the zones look: Middle of the map is grassy/foresty mostly. In the north we've got the cave and mountains taking up most of it, and since the mountains are relatively high they're pretty cold and snowy. The top right corner of the map is currently empty and will probably be used for battle arenas. Otherwise it'll probably be something grassy/foresty as well.
The bottom third of the map is more dry/sandy: Beach, rocky-pre-desert-area, actual really hot and dry desert, volcano in the bottom right corner.
I've been distracted way too much while writing this post, I have no idea what I covered and what I didn't >.> I guess I'll just leave it like this.
EDIT: So about two hours ago I hit post and then left the room. Turns out someone else posted before I was done. Well, here's my post 2 hours late...