Can you explain what happens when the chronomancer's spells fail? He was a bit of a late addition in the game and wasn't very heavily tested. What sort of issues are you running into with him?
Ah, I got it- not an expansion then it wouldn't make any sense. Thanks for the explanation. I guess my request goes back to investment in characters in a more longer term way. Well, the dynamic in Warhammer Quest or other games from Rodeo Games are good examples of this approach. Whereby you can incrementally rebuild a team; add and subtract characters; grind in a far more productive/faster way and in the process try out a lot of character classes without the need to rebuild the team completely. I'd like to try out many of the other character classes, but I'm weary of starting the whole team from scratch if you see the argument. That and addressing game difficulty scaling (for higher end characters) could significantly extend the playability of the game.
Oh okay ... I understand. Basically, the ability to grow your roster with new characters during gameplay and then using your more experienced characters to protect them until they level up to be able to hold their own. I'll make a solid attempt at it. I'd need to think through what implications it would have on the existing code. One thing though is that I'm planning to make this game have several choices / paths to the same end goal. Once you decide on one path, there will be no way back to also see what would happen in the other path. Therefore, it really will be designed for multiple play throughs but each play through will have totally different main quests. For example, the current story involves you trying to kill a human baron who is trying to reconquer a forest region from beast men. You will be presented the choice of trying to either infiltrate the human army as a mercenary in hopes of getting close to the baron or trying to dominate the beast men tribes and unite them against the baron's army in open conflict. You will also be presented with a third strategy as well. Each strategy will set the path for your party's story and progression and once you choose one, there'll be no way to go back and explore the other choices without selecting a new party.
There is some suspension of disbelief, but instead of thinking of it as a new party, think of it as a giant party where you're rotating the active characters in and out. I agree it worked well in WH Quest for pulling Ina new class to try. I just started this game, and I'd like to try the other classes without having to start over.
Shouldn't be too hard to do. I'll try to put that into the next update for Demon's Rise (1.7). I think the only challenge will be that I'll have to modify the save system as it's currently hard coded with he assumption that there are always 6 characters in the party. Alternatively, I could easily make the change if I had the character stat boosts and equipment move from the old character to the new character. So if you had a level 10 archer and you wanted to switch out the archer for a mage hunter, you would end up with a level 10 mage hunter with the same equipment. That kind of change could be done very quickly but it would be a bit odd. However, it would also allow you to jump right in with the new character and not have to bodyguard him for several battles while they gain experience. What do you guys think? Should I carry over experience and equipment to the new characters or have the new character come in as level 1 with no equipment (similar to Warhammer Quest).
Personally, I'd save it for the next game. Sounds like a lot of stuff can go wrong when you try this in current DR. For DR2: a) Make the cast smaller. 10 chars should be enough, 15-20 is luxury. You are already reaching Suikoden territory with the insane number of available chars in DR1 b) Get the new save system in place, so you can swap out chars easily. c) New chars start on level 1: a bit conflicted on this one. On the one hand, training them up is a fun experience, usually. But if it gets too much and/or takes too long it gets annoying. Personally, I'd prefer a "party level" to individual levels for each character. So any new chars you bring in jump right up to the current party level, instead of starting at level 1. d) Equipment carry over: Do it differently. Have an equipment pool for the whole party. You can take and put back items anytime in camp. So the player can decide if he wants the Witch he just swapped out to keep all her gear on; or drop it (all or only some items) into the pool.
The way I'm building out DR-PTD is that I'm using the same Unity project file as the original DR (COTD). So when I make a change, it is an almost trivial task to roll it back into the original DR. It's a different approach and a bit of an experiment but I think it should work out really well. I've already incorporated the new shadow for cover and totems into the next version of DR-COTD and it's working great. a - Agreed on the character choices. Focussing on fewer characters but better quality of each character. Then new characters will be added with each new episode expansion. b - Save system is in there. Will be in DR-COTD v1.6. I need to modify to allows switching out characters. c - Perhaps I could have them come in at a certain level so you don't have a level 1 wimp in a team of level 20+ characters. If you're in the late game, any level 1 character will be one-shot killed by any enemy so it might be really hard to keep them alive long enough to gain XP. d - Yep, I"ll have to think about equipment. Each character has a backpack so perhaps I could have them move all items to a common backpack when the character is taken out of the "active" roster? Will have to give it some thought.
Here's a preview of one of the new characters. This is the barbarian shaman. He's a combination of berserk melee fighter with dual weapons and a wizard. His spells will focus on boosting melee prowess. Screen Shot 2015-12-01 at 1.28.26 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
I've given it some thought and I figured out how I can do it with minimal disruption / re-writing of existing code. I'm going to work on having a tavern in the campsite screen that will allow you to: 1 - Switch out characters for other characters for a fixed price. All experience points and stat boosts from levelling will be carried over to the new character so you don't have a weak character in your party that you have to protect and slowly level up. 2 - Partake in gambling. A simple gambling game that can result in you winning, losing or breaking even. However, there will be small chance of you finding out some useful info or some tit bits on a new quest. 3 - Partake in a drinking session. This will cost you a fixed a mount of money and will have random effects. Sometimes your party will be hung over so will suffer slightly in their next battle or they might feel refreshed and fight with greater morale. However, it may also give other random benefits or open up some special quest levels depending on who your party meets / talks to in the drinking session. Should be a fair bit of fun and not too hard to drop into the existing code. Expect that in the 1.7 update to DR.
I like the Tavern idea, very nice. But please, no pricetag for character switching. Unless it's so low as to be meaningless (and then you can drop it anyways), another gold gobbler isn't a good idea. It's scarce enough already. "And I'll have those with fries and sauce please" - "There you go, sir. Fresh ... umh, chicken breasts, yes? It tastes like chicken, I heard." ("tit bits a la quest" need to be on the menu there ) The other 2 thingies are cool, especially the drinking session. "Major quest: try to drink the Dwarves under the table. Difficulty: very hard."
Started work on the tavern. Here's the screenshot of the tavern and the GUI so far. I'm going to make the tavern somewhat dynamic so that each time you visit, it'll haver different people in different positions so it's not always the same scene. Screen Shot 2015-12-02 at 4.40.51 PM by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr I can drop the cost of the character switch if you guys think that's better. I figured some cost was appropriate but perhaps I'm wrong. For the drinking options and gambling options, it will usually result in not a lot happening but it will be the only way to unlock some special quests and will add some fun side benefits such as having to fight your next battle hung over. Also, I'm thinking it would be cool to be able to hire a couple of mercenaries that fight for you for a fixed number of battles. That would be trickier to code but probably not too hard. Thoughts?
The Tavern looks really good, well done! Mercenaries? Hhmm... on the fence about that one. Nice addition, for sure. But a) I think it'll make balancing stages even harder, because you have to take even more characters into account. But I guess you can just balance normally, and treat mercs as an added bonus to make a stage easier. b) Another money sink, even if it's optional. Might require revisiting the gold distribution/rewards, depending on the pricetag. I'd put them on the backburner for now, and revisit for DR2 if mercs fit in there.
Cool ... glad you like it. Going to tweak it a bit more and add some randomness so it feels like a real place. Might even have the occasional random dude walk past the camera or have a drunk dwarf sleeping under a table or something. The elf archer girl will, for example, act as if she's resisting advances from the burly dwarf infront of her. Just a random bit of fun. Mercenaries could be a really fun way to add some spice to the level. It's something I'm going to try pretty hard to add because it allows for: A - More variety to your player roster. If you're tired of using the same strategies within your party, adding a hired mage or warrior will allow you to try some new tactics. B - Gives more variety in how you spend your gold. Right now, gold is just used for items. With 1.6 update, the new temple will allow you to use gold for divine favour. If I had mercenaries, gold can be used to add hired swords to your party. It's another way to use gold to get through the game. C - Allows me to create a few new characters that don't have to be as deep as existing player characters. Mercenaries would probably only have 2 or 3 skills and not the full 6, for example. Also allows me to add some more flavour and background story / fluff to the setting.
Just a quick head's up. I sent you a test flight invite for an early version of 1.6 patch. Can you please check if the life bars now display properly on the iPad Pro? Also, don't be alarmed that the saving at the end of every 3rd turn takes around 5 to 10 seconds. I've fixed it in my version so it's instantaneous on my iPad Air.
stubbieoz confirmed via email that the GUI bug for iPad Pro is fixed in the test version of 1.6 that I sent him. Otherwise, I've almost got the character switching functionality working in the tavern. Just some annoying bugs to work out.
Quick update: I got the character switching mid-campaign working! For a measly cost of 2000 gold, you will now be able to fire one of your party members and bring on someone new at the new tavern. The new character will be the same level as the character you fired so you won't need to baby sit a level newb with your level 20+ party. Seems to work really nicely but needs more testing. There is one exploit I've discovered that allows you to duplicate an inventory item using this process so I need to fix that. Shouldn't be too hard.
Does the leveling provide the same attributes? e.g., I have a Knight at level 20, every level a few things go up... is it somewhat random or deterministic? If the latter then the question is moot, if not then how do you trade back and forth and have essentially the same character? ....Not that we need to make this a metaphysical question My first foray into gaming was with [and I severely date myself] Phantasie on the Commodore 64. A Ultima/Wizardry type knockoff for Commodore. I used a similar exploit to actually defeat, I think it was Pluto or Zues. This Boss/fight was not ever supposed to be someone the party was to take on and actually win. I think Strategic Simulations coded it for dev sport only . So...I replicated the "god knife" 6 times, the most powerful artifact in the game, and did the deed. It still wasn't easy. Moral of story: exploits can be loads of fun. p.s., Any luck sorting out the damage ratings vis-a-vis arrows/other artifacts on the Elf Archer? p.s.,2- in terms of cost in the game, it's very easy enough to grind and make *millions*. I'm nearing my 3rd million now and I don't know how I can possibly spend it all.
The exact stat boosts from the old character are carried over to the new character. So if you had an archer that had accumulated +20HP, +30AP, and +20% to Hit, for example, the new character would have those same stat boosts on top of their base profile. Therefore, you could freely switch back to your old character if you didn't like the new one without losing anything. It's not exactly realistic but it is easiest to code and most convenient for the player so kind of a win-win in my view. Sorry to disappoint you but I'm afraid I've already fixed that exploit. I think so ... the arrow effects seem pretty good in my version so I must have adjusted them. Yep, hopefully the new divine favours that you can buy from the new temple and the mercenaries, gambling and drinking sessions from the new tavern will help you burn some of that extra gold. Also, you asked for a higher difficulty tier. I think you're right that I need to make some much harder difficulties so I'm going to add an extreme difficulty level where I'll just go nuts with boosting the stats of enemies. I'm also going to tweak the code so that more enemy patrols appear on higher difficulties and enemies will also perform abilities more often. Also, I'm changing the code so that heroes that are knocked out during battle earn almost no experience points. Lastly, I think I've got the code working now so that enemy characters can use targeting abilities like fireball spells and such. Right now, the AI can only use area effect spells but with this new code, they'll be able to launch skills and abilities that target specific enemies or allies. So for example, I gave the Pyromancer's fireball spell to the Ratkin Shaman as a test and he can now launch them at the enemies. It suddenly makes bunching up really close much more risky. Still have to test it and if it's stable, I'll allocate a whole bunch of new targeting abilities to the enemy warriors. That should make the game quite a bit more challenging. I may even be able to get them to start casting summoning spells, which would be awesome.
Just a quick update on development of the new content. I had to fly to Amsterdam for my job again this week and I had a very productive trip. I managed to get the following stuff coded: 1 - Mercenaries: I wrote the code to allow the party to have 1 mercenary during a battle. Mercenaries fight on a contract basis for a certain number of battles. So if you have an active contract in place, the mercenary will appear in a tile adjacent to one of the player heroes at the start of the battle. 2 - AI can now target the enemy with spells like fireballs that require a target. They can also cast buff spells that require a friendly target too. Also, I got some feedback from a customer that summoned creatures are too weak. I think he's right ... so I may beef up the stats on summoned creatures as well.
