Thanking you all kindly for the feedback! Varking I have some sad news. Generally in a multibattle, the second wild ZENFORM will flee is you capture his buddy lol. I just added it this week. It felt right. Weekly Update: July 14th 2012 I don't post updates to tease you. I'm being transparent with the development process, so that I can get feedback from you fans! Your feedback is helping me to shape the game into the game you want to play. So don't by shy with comments or questions. Remember to tell me what I am doing right (what you like) so I can design more of it, and what I'm doing wrong (so I can edit/revamp/remove it). ;-) This is a GIF. So remember the quality is only at 256 colors and it's not regenerative of the game's speed. GIF is a looping animation of just the player attacking, enemy attack was cut. Following on from last week's update, this week's update is still focused on the battle system for ZENFORMS: Protectors. The battle system is a very important part of the game. It needs to be easy to pick up and start attack and it also needs to be deep right from Version 1.0. I believe I am getting close to this balance. Attacking and doing damage I spent much of my time perfecting the attacks and updating the battle damage formula. I want the battle damage to be worked out logically, but also have a sense of randomness to it. You don't want to know the exact value of an attack's damage but you want to have an idea right? You want to know if you use the attack, it will do around XX amount of damage and play into your strategy for the battle right? The battle damage formula is 100 solid lines of code. Over 250 if you include comments and line breaks The battle damage is worked out based on lots of variables. Attack Power, Attacker's Attack stat, the defenders defense stat, and all the variables you'd expect from an RPG. But there is also extra damage added for your evolution stage, your star rank, and a randomness factor. Damage is subtracted for the dame reasons but for the defenders evolution stage, star rank, and randomness factor. Your speed also plays a key role in attacking. Not only does it help work out if you can attack first, but it also will increase the chances of you hitting a critical hit which can do some serious extra damage. And of course, let's not forget that you can gamble skill points to play a short mini game and do a Gamble Attack - which can add 50% damage ro your attack.... Oh and did I mention type advantages and disadvantages? Yeah, as you might guess, in this one thing that most users will just not notice, players who enjoy going deep with their RPGs with their stats can do that with this game ;-) Capturing ZENFORMS After mentioning it before, I posted a short video of early animation work for capturing a ZENFORM. Originally I had a mini game in place for capturing. But it was really annoying during testing and clearly a time-wasting gimmick feature. So I removed it. Now in it's place is just a quick animation. You either capture the ZENFORM and end the battle, or fail and keep playing. Be sure to read the video description of the youtube video. I captured the video from the simulator so that is why it lags. I also spelt successful wrong - my bad Fixed. I focused on fixing the calculation of capturing a ZENFORM up. I fixed up the animation. I changed the timing, gave it a bit more impact, and fixed a few graphic glitches (you'll notice the shadow doesn't animate when the ZENFORM is being sucked up in the video, it just disappears, I fixed that too). But I'd love to get your feedback. Be sure to leave some comments here, on the Facebook or wherever you can get in touch with me. Early capture animation test video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P00IcE48Eek
He don't need testers, he only let's close friends and family play/test the game. Hope you understand.
Here is the video from last night's update GIF of Freno attacking Rinba. Check this video out. It shows off the speed 1 to 1 (compared to the GIF which was delayed between frames). http://www.calisprojects.com/zenforms/media/video/CheatHeadtBut.mov
No mate, I don't need any testers but thanks for asking. I'm going to be releasing the game with "minecraft" style updates. So each update will come quickly, and big updates such as Version 1.1 and Version 1.2 will add a lot of new features, maps, and continue the storyline (with smaller updates fixing bugs). There is no attack animations while fighting, but it's something I'd like to add in a future update. And I don't give release dates anymore friend. I can never hit them. So I'll be sure to keep you informed Oh and yeah, I wrote an awesome story that branches based on decisions you make..... Then again, I would call it awesome since I wrote it right??? You can judge when you play it lol. Check this video out. I recorded this using my phone which runs a hacked ROM of Android, so this is why I never record from the device.... My video lags behind the audio. But this is a kinda fun - unofficial- video. I failed at my own mini-game lol.... This is me failing at a gamble attack in battle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiaUtn2BvHQ
Hey everyone. There was no weekly update this week so I decided to post a question to the community. The original debate (posted yesterday) can be found here: http://www.calisprojects.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=110 I know some people are not happy with the current overworld sprites (OWs). Although it will cost me a lot, I'm willing to change them and include the new revamped characters in an update post launch. Old Overworld on the left, possible new look on the right Now, I want you to comment and be 100% honest with your answer. If you don't want me to do it- well that's fine. I am very happy with the current characters, but as I've said lots of times, I'm making this game for you all now at this stage. I want to make you happy.... And I put my money where my mouth is. If you all want it, I'm happy invest the time/money to change the look of characters. On the right is our potential new look. You'll notice the artist and I have worked on making sure the male and female have different body shapes. So at first glance you can tell it's a male or female. Here is the same image doubled up in size so you can see it better. Feel free to vote on the CP forum or leave me a comment below. If you already commented on the Facebook/Twitter, please don't double vote as I'm taking this very serious ;-)
I've been keeping an eye on this game for a couple of months now checking out both the thread here and the official forums. The game is at the top of my wishlist and I'm truly looking forward to the 1.0 release. As for the character sprites, if I were to place a vote I'd go for the new artwork as the current female sprite is a bit too tubby for my liking. Both the male sprites look good though and it would be no means a deal breaker to me if the characters did not get a revamp. Edit: On a second look I also find it a bit strange that the male sprite has a black outline around the hair in the original pixel work but not for the female. It almost looks like two different art styles which is something to consider if you really want to rework them. In fact if we could vote where to budget your money I would rather the money was spent on battle animations such as the "bite" attack in pokemon with the closing fangs. I really think simple battle animations would add a great deal of polish to an otherwise great looking game. One last thing and this relates to the debate on the official forums, I myself would prefer to have an option at the least to have the zenform health bars constantly on display rather than the current system.
Edit: New page, so check this post out as it talks about a possible revamp on the OW sprites that YOU can vote on: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=2357678&postcount=614 Ha excellent, I'm delighted you spotted the difference in the hair style outlines. Good eye, and I love when fans notice this because it shows me you looked closely at the image. That was just my error with that mock image. When I upgraded the tiles about a month ago, I also changed the outline of all 50 hairstyles to a black outline. When making this mock image, I used an old sprite of the female hero's default look I had in a folder. So that's just why it looks different. Remember, you are not hurting my feelings if you say no or yes to the vote. Personally, I like the old look, but I'm all for the revamp as well haha. Everything for the characters that is in the game currently will transfair over with the upgrade at first. So this includes the different facial poses (someone pointed out the character was not smiling in the new stuff). Currently in the game, the characters can laugh, talk, smile, cry, and more. All this will carry over with the revamp. I plan on investing in adding more animation to the characters faces - adding more talking animations, more laughing times, more emotions. I also am going to be investing a lot in more outfits and hairstyles. This is why I want to do the revamp (if there will be one) in any early update. I don't want to do all that for the old characters and then have people ask me to revamp it 6 months later. You will have a long time to debate over this, but whatever the decision is, it will be final. Think hard about which look you REALLY want for the rest of the game There is no wrong answer here ;-) P.S: I have a little doc I'm using to keep count of the votes, please, please, please, let me know if you have commented else where. If it was facebook, you don't have to share your real name if you don't want, but just say "I said this somewhere.... I think....." Cheers
Then consider my official vote for the new style then as I believe it has better readability and I have not made a vote on any other site as I'm not currently registered for the official forums and do not have a facebook account. Something I have been wondering for a while and as far as I know I haven't come across this information yet. How many Zenforms are there including the different variations/evolutions as separate Zenforms? If I am right in thinking the Zenforms have all been created already including some rare ones so you must know the answer to this question? Even if you don't want to give an exact figure for this as it may perhaps be subject to change while you finish off the battle system and move pool allocations but could you give a rough estimate perhaps? One last thing can't stress enough how much I'm looking forward to this and glad to hear that the battle system is going to be in depth taking stats, a degree of randomness and even a gamble mini game into account.
