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[Max White]

Yes, very much so.
We need more games where you can sword fight knights like that. It is required. Also the guys with the boomerangs, I am defiantly going to need something like them, they were so good.

[Vattic]

Good to hear.

First time I read your post my mind made you sound sarcastic and in some ways I relate; Those enemies were so frustrating at first.

[Max White]

Yea, they were hard, but I came to love them. Having to block from all possible angles, it made for a really fun challenge. It is a shame they didn't appear in the second half of the game.

I am also going to include abilities like the downstab and upstab, as well as some other mobility moves like double jumps, but they will all come at higher levels. I've also got a few spells lined up, although I'm not sure how much people will use all of them without mana recharge. I imagine spells will only be used for specialist situations, so that you can save your magic for healing spells.

[Vattic]

I like the idea of mana being scarce enough to force interesting decisions on the player.

Do you plan on locking players out of certain areas until certain items are found or will things be more free?

I think you might find these two articles interesting:
http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=54
http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=4

There are a few other articles in his procedural section that are more directly related and plenty of generally interesting articles on there besides.

[Max White]

Sort of, yea, although not as strictly as Zelda II did. Instead of one palace to one area, their might be several significant areas scattered around, each with their own potential loot and rewards to get to different locations. You will not be able to free roam the world from the very start though.
I have been thinking about a tier system for magic and items that will grant access to more and more locations, so for example, getting the fairly spell before the jump spell would have made Jump insignificant for reaching a new area, so in my game a similar spell would need to be a higher tier than the jump spell or double jump ability, and double jump, being free, would need to be higher than high jump.

As you progress to new locations, the monsters get harder, rewards are greater, and you get more powerful items, although when it comes to monsters there will be a lot of variation. I want low level monsters to be present in pretty much all areas, and when you are still very low level to encounter some monsters that will clearly just over power you that you will have to run from. Makes exploring interesting, and organic feeling.

I'm also going to have the standard 'Exit quick travel to enter encounter' instead of being chased by baddies.


I'm also looking into an item crafting system, and for this, I am thinking of doing something kind of similar to Final Fantasy X. I think it would fit very well, giving people a reason to explore all areas for unique drops to make cool weapons. Maybe, still undecided on the exact workings...

[Caz]

Been getting a bit of work done here and there. Content and art wise, as well as some more programming. Decided to make levels in three layers, that was pretty easy.

As for accepting help, in what way? These sort of projects come down to four components: Content, art, sound and programming. The only one that is going to issue any trouble here is sound...

I dunno - content, graphics of a sort, general grunt work. If you want to keep everything to your standard I get it.

For music, try incompetech.com, it has an amazing collection of royalty-free music.

[Biag]

I can tentatively offer musical services. Judging from the pictures, you're going for a retro feel. Is that accurate?

In terms of sound effects, there's a fair amount of 8-bit sound generators online. This one is free and also in-browser.

[Max White]

Well I would love some help with the music, and yea, a some retro tunes would be sweet. Although not like Mario or Megaman upbeat happy tunes the entire time, think more Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Anyway, as for art, if anybody wants to contribute then go ahead! Right now I am focusing on the tileset, in parallel to level gen, so some more tiles might be nice, I have the following already that you might want to improve on.

As you can see, all tiles are in grey scale, and transparency is #FF00FF.
I need to do a bit of work on the water/magma (Two tiles below the column), but not hinting or anything.

I will also need the following, if you are really looking to add something.
-Dirt
-Grass
-Tree trunk
-Leaves
-Horizontal wooden panels for a house
-Roof tiles for a house


EDIT:
Also, if anybody has any col ideas for abilities they would like to see on weapons/armour/shields, I'm all ears. Positive or negative traits, what ever is good.
Right now I'm thinking about having 'Cursed' as a weapon trait. Like many roguelikes, it would mean you can not unequip it, although in this game the only way to remove it would be through dying (So you would drop it on death and loose it forever) and it would be shown to be cursed when you picked it up. So for example, you raid a dungeon and find a chest with a sword with awesome traits like 'Razor edge (+15% melee damage)' and 'Ethereal (Half mana cost)' but it also has 'Cursed' thus making you think twice about using it.

[Trapezohedron]

I don't like having to die just to unequip an item. There needs to be some way to remove it, albeit tedious (your fault you didn't try to identify it first). For one, you could make the user vanquish a number of foes before the weapon can be dropped, and the weapon will become uncursed... or not, depending on item type and enchantment.

[Max White]

and it would be shown to be cursed when you picked it up.

No identification required, although I could do that, I guess, but I like the idea of it being identified from the start, but with horrible penalties.
It enforces the idea that the player is making a choice to accept the terrible consequences of using an otherwise powerful item, rather than making a gamble to get something really good at the risk of getting something bad.

That is why I was leaning towards the death route, it really hammers down the seriousness of your choices.

[Vattic]

Also, if anybody has any col ideas for abilities they would like to see on weapons/armour/shields, I'm all ears. Positive or negative traits, what ever is good.

It might make combat more interesting to have a shield bash attack. It doesn't need to do damage but would knock enemies back a tile or so. It would only work on foes similar or smaller than you and on bigger enemies it could even knock you back from them. You could use it to knock enemies into pits or to just get a little breathing room.

[Trapezohedron]

and it would be shown to be cursed when you picked it up.

No identification required, although I could do that, I guess, but I like the idea of it being identified from the start, but with horrible penalties.
It enforces the idea that the player is making a choice to accept the terrible consequences of using an otherwise powerful item, rather than making a gamble to get something really good at the risk of getting something bad.

That is why I was leaning towards the death route, it really hammers down the seriousness of your choices.

Well, if you put it that way, that might work, especially in persistent worlds in my opinion. Makes hunting your corpse fun, if you're going to implement something like roguelike bones files.

Bonus points if your character also has a chance of becoming undead after death when wielding the weapon, and use it masterfully.

[Max White]

Thanks for the feedback, although I still don't want to get emotionally attached to ideas, so unidentified items is totally on the table. Knock back is also an interesting tactical choice, so I will most likely include that one way or another, be is shield bashing or otherwise. I might make a different weapon sort with increased knock back like hammers. I sort of want a verity of weapon choices , but as far as melee weapons go, I'm a little short of inspiration. So far I'm thinking
Short swords: Pretty much the same as the Zelda II sword, you attack, there is a quick draw back, then a stab at high or low if you are crouching. Average damage and blocked by shields.
Daggers: No draw back like with swords, just an instant attack, but they have a longer cool down after an attack, thus if you want to use one you could be a lot more effective if you are a real ninja and fast enough to get past their shield, otherwise you will be destroyed.
Axes: Unlike swords and daggers, no crouching attack, but they break through shields.


So many choices to make, to much to plan.
Dungeons were giving me some trouble. I was going to have the entire dungeon exist on a single map, but on level gen sometimes rooms would overlap, causing all sorts of issues like cutting off half the dungeon. Decided to scrap that plan, and go with dungeons being made of a series of disconnected rooms, a lot more like this (Warning, large image). This would also solve an issue I didn't think of to start off with, that being that if multiple people are in the same dungeon, I can't just spawn monsters offscreen, ass that might be in the middle of some one elses screen and enemies would just appear out of thin air. While I could go through the effort of checking all screens, it would be a lot easier if after the initial construction of the room, new monsters just came in from the side.

[Max White]

Been a little held up, but got some more work done on the overworld, trying to get it to work as described in this article

http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=54

The gates are going... Interestingly.
Anyway, friend said I should play "Castlevania - Aria of Sorrow", and it has highlighted some interesting design points. Still looking into some weapon choices.

[Trapezohedron]

You should go play Aria of Sorrow. Game has a nice set of weaponry, interesting stage design and progression.

Unfortunately, one of the game's flaws is that there's barely any reason to use the weaker weapons once you have tougher ones. It's not much of a flaw though, only a very minor one.