<-- Archived --> (Battle Engine and Combat)

[DarkTl]

Oops, my bad 

We can live without fog of war if it will be too tricky to add. The picture looks like TRPG, many good TRPGs don't have it as well, like Fire Emblem or FF Tactics.

[Xela]

Oops, my bad 

We can live without fog of war if it will be too tricky to add. The picture looks like TRPG, many good TRPGs don't have it as well, like Fire Emblem or FF Tactics.

Ok, so we can do something like this then:

Alpha - Current BE.
Beta - Current BE with Elements, MDef and prolly raws.
Release - Adding couple of dungeons on pictures (like the one above).
Post-Release - If we're all not fed-up with PyTFall - Proper Tile engine. (Also, maybe by than Eliont has perfected his BE, it is supposed to be a proper tile engine by concept).

PS: As I've already said, we can put couple of maps in Beta or even Alpha as easter eggs. It's just seems impossible to mass-produce them with all the other stuff we have planned.

PS2: Lack of actual tiles obviously also kills any possibility of randomized dungeons. We can only add that with proper tile engine.

[DarkTl]

The developer is probably quitted, nevertheless he had a couple of fun ideas here, if you missed it. Like "flirt" or "rape" battle skills during battles with female characters. Reminds me of some other flash rpg, where you had to beat demonesses on their "field" using similar skills.

[Xela]

The developer is probably quitted, nevertheless he had a couple of fun ideas here, if you missed it. Like "flirt" or "rape" battle skills during battles with female characters. Reminds me of some other flash rpg, where you had to beat demonesses on their "field" using similar skills.

For beta? We don't even have a "rape" tag right now, bdsm will look out of place. For specific monsters we could specify pics, there is a very similar game, also with RPG maker where you go around beating girls to get them to join your party.

I am almost done with my first glance at BE code, there some parts of it that are very complex (that might take weeks/month to fully understand, at least to me but hopefully we'll never need to edit them) and it's all intertwined but MUCH better structured than I've expected. Rows might be a bit more of a pain to add than I've originally though but I'll figure it out.

I am not likely to have any more time for project or studying BE until the weekend except for a few more hours tonight. I'll see if I can finish 4 last files of the BE and download CW's update.

[DarkTl]

I wonder if such sysem could be used to capture monster/random girls during fights.

Btw, he doesn't use rape pics there, only sex ones, sometimes with sad/scared faces, sometimes with happy faces depending on context. Out tag system already can handle it.

[Xela]

I wonder if such sysem could be used to capture monster/random girls during fights.

It should.

Btw, he doesn't use rape pics there, only sex ones, sometimes with sad/scared faces, sometimes with happy faces depending on context. Out tag system already can handle it.

Noted.

[DarkTl]

Can characters and mobs battle sprites move during special attacks? I mean something like that (not so good, of course).

[Xela]

Can characters and mobs battle sprites move during special attacks? I mean something like that (not so good, of course).

With bit of codding, yeah, sure. You could even do something similar to the video with simple sprites if given enough time to write a decent transform code (but it would be easier to put in a video I think...). They already move by the way, kind of a little jump they call "Bob" in the engine.

PS: You can throw """sm/mars""" from CWs DB folder into your chars, you'll get the fire arrow attack with extra sound and animation.

[DarkTl]

Now then, my thoughts about elements concept.

1) I think it will be too complex system if we'll have both absolute and relative resistances for each element, like in d&d, so we probably need elemental affinities. It should not be mandatory though, both characters and mobs could be neutral.  Neutral characters may eventually acquire it after some training or using items, or even change it.

2) Magic defence is not required at all if we'll use several levels of elemental affinity. For example, three levels: -30% incoming and +30% outgoing damage at 1, 60% at 2, 90% (or 99%, or even 100%, depending on game balance) at 3.
This way undead will have 3 lvl dark affinity, but the opposite element, light, will damage it for 90 (99, 100)% more.

3) I cannot decide if we need to separate wind from lighting 

4) If you want more complex system, we might add double or triple affinity, and unique spells for it in the future, like that cool Dust style in Naruto that disintegrates matter is consists of earth, wind and fire elements.

[Xela]

Now then, my thoughts about elements concept.

1) I think it will be too complex system if we'll have both absolute and relative resistances for each element, like in d&d, so we probably need elemental affinities. It should not be mandatory though, both characters and mobs could be neutral.  Neutral characters may eventually acquire it after some training or using items, or even change it.

2) Magic defence is not required at all if we'll use several levels of elemental affinity. For example, three levels: -30% incoming and +30% outgoing damage at 1, 60% at 2, 90% (or 99%, or even 100%, depending on game balance) at 3.
This way undead will have 3 lvl dark affinity, but the opposite element, light, will damage it for 90 (99, 100)% more.

3) I cannot decide if we need to separate wind from lighting 

4) If you want more complex system, we might add double or triple affinity, and unique spells for it in the future, like that cool Dust style in Naruto that disintegrates matter is consists of earth, wind and fire elements.

1) Agreed.

2) Sounds good.

3) Less work if we do not, can always be done later.

4) Would be cool, but once again, lets do 2 first and keep adding to it like we always do.

[DarkTl]

Onwards, we probably shouldn't consider magic stat and affinities during brawls in brothels. You won't use Chain Lightning against ordinary citizens at your own establishment.
So you always need some muscle, not mages only, no matter how strong they might be.

I've found a decent picture for general elements system. Characters and mobs will have air, water, fire, earth, light or darkness affinity, subaffinities (like heat and magma) sound more like schools of magic, same for time and space. I guess we'll use them too eventually to sort spells in the book if nothing else.

We might need a separate, hidden element, or maybe a resistance of some kind for poison.

[Xela]

(fire>wind>lightning>earth>water>fire).

Without lighting, is this still sound?

Dark/Light are separate and neutral doesn't have strength/weakness?

I want to set weaknesses and strength at random between 0.4 - 0.6 and 1.4 - 1.6. Luck not factored in here, that can be used for critical hits with normal weaponry if I figure out how to do that (think that might already have).

Edit: Bit messier to code, but should fire have a modifier vs earth? Or just the neighboring pairs? I'll try to do the neighboring pairs for starters tomorrow...

Edit 2:
@ Dark

No wait... Fire for example should be strong against everything, weak vs water and do 0 damage vs fire and hit @ normal damage vs neutral??? You were supposed to sketch us a concept...

Edit 3:

Maybe it would make sense to have darkness and light do 10% more damage vs neutral? Since those are not really nature elements?

Edit 4:

So I just sorta "went with the flow" as usual and got something like this setup:

--fire>air>earth>water>fire--

Within this chain, they all cancel themselves out, they all do reduced damage according to chain and they all do increased damage according to chain (bit counter-intuitive) since it's usually water-fire, earth-air and light-darkness pairs instead of the Naruto style chain... they do increased damage to rest of elements and normal damage to neutral.

--darkness>light>darkness--

Second chain, same rules only they actually do reduced damage vs neutral and powerful damage vs one another. Same damage vs all other elements.

Tell me what you think...

[DarkTl]

--fire>air>earth>water>fire--

Yup, that's how it should work, since ice=water and air=lighting. While we could use classic setup (water<->fire, air<->earth), it would be too straightforward. Imagine a fight between fire and water elemental characters, it would be a massacre, since they are strong AND weak against each other at the same time.
We could add a tooltip here and there, so people would know about our elemental chain.

--darkness>light>darkness--

Second chain, same rules only they actually do reduced damage vs neutral and powerful damage vs one another. Same damage vs all other elements.

Sounds good. We may expand this chain post release if we'll decide to add more elements, like space/time.
Also majority of buffs should relate to light, and debuffs to darkness, so damage is not so important.

I'm still not sure what to do about poison though.

[Xela]

We could add a tooltips here and there, so people would know about our elemental chain.
Sounds good. We may expand this chain post release if we'll decide to add more elements, like space/time.
Also majority of buffs should relate to light, and debuffs to darkness, so damage is not so important.

Tooltips may get faster soon and there are new suggestions on RenPy forums on how to improve the performance even now (I am not gonna go there yet cause it involves recoding and I am going to do that post Alpha anyway.) For explanation of elements, I would prefer an NPC instead of a tooltip. Fight vs Dark vs Light creatures/fighters will be like a slaughter Whoever get the first blow (highest agility), would have a considerable advantage.

I'm still not sure what to do about poison though.

Forget complex skills for now, poison is fairly useless because most fights end fairly quickly. Also we've done more than enough for the BE for the Alpha release. I want to try and add Critical Hit, make sure Elements run smoothly, add attack skillz and rig items to enable correct skills in the BE and be done with it. The only thing past that and before the Alpha = Adding new spells.

Post Alpha:
- Complex skills (Revive, Charm, Heal, Slow, Haste, Stop, Confuse etc.)
- Rows
- Range
- Dungeon style
- Better AI
- More alignments
- More animation capabilities
- Items in combat
- Complex battle scenarios (Multi stage, conditioned etc)
- More I guess.

If we go to deep into it now, we'll never get anything released, not mentioning that complex systems are very hard to design for and maintain. Unless development team increases in size, we might have to give some of that up in favor of systems like slave-training, events, storyline, quests and gameplay.

All and all, you can call the BE boring all you want, it's still better than SM, OW and WM... and more than acceptable for events/quests where combat is applicable.

[DarkTl]

Fight vs Dark vs Light creatures/fighters will be like a slaughter Whoever get the first blow (highest agility), would have a considerable advantage.

Indeed. We could balance it by adding a bit of resistance to fire/air for light and earth/water for darkness affinities, for example. Maybe even some res to physical attacks for lvl3 light and darkness (undead, angels and demons are usually cannot be hurt that easily by normal weapons).