Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kamani]

Oh good. That should make status effects way more easy.

That will be cool.

Edit: How should I forecast firebreath? Right now, it can deal brutal damage, since you can't see it coming and then it can hit like 10 times for 3 each.

[IndigoFenix]

Explosion or flash effect?

I'm actually making a new flash effect (also quake effect) system that will look nicer and be less buggy than the current one.  Shouldn't make a major impact on current functions, except possibly for the Shadow Mage's turning the player black.  There will be a better way to do it though.

[Kamani]

I’ll do a flash effect.

Neat! Good thing I was planning to redo Shadow Mage anyway.

[IndigoFenix]

Updated!  Flash effects are now in.

The way colors work throughout the whole program have been pretty much completely overhauled, color selectors now use RGBA numeric selectors instead of a text field, which is more consistent overall.  You've still got that HTML button to select a specific color as well.

Took a bit of testing to get a good balance between making it simple to do basic stuff and also being capable of more complicated effects, but I think it's come out pretty good.  You can add a simple color flash event, a looping color flash, a 2-color blink, add color flashes to hitboxes (you'll notice that all hitboxes now create a small white flash by default), link flashes to sprites (which causes the flash to go away when the sprite is destroyed, allowing you to apply a continuous graphic flash along with a regular status effect), adjust the timing of the flash "wave", and even add a cubic-bezier curve to customize the flash effect however you like, if you're into that kind of thing.  Flash effects can be applied to sprites or over the entire _room.  (Some of the continuous flash timing might still be a little off, but its intended functionality is pretty self-explanatory in the tooltips.  I'll debug it later.)

Flash effects are cumulative.  A single sprite can have multiple flash effects at once.

You can also adjust the basic color mask of a sprite by using the sprite._color variable.  Colors are objects, they can have their _r, _g, _b, and _a (_a is alpha/opacity) values set through a function.  So you can make a sprite's color more or less opaque by changing sprite._color._a; this serves the same role that _flashlevel did before.  (_flashlevel should still work but it may be depreciated in the future since it's redundant.)  _flashcolor no longer works.

I think most existing colorization effects should be retained, except in the case where a color was set inside a function, but that's okay because the new flash events are just better overall.

[Kamani]

Cool! Hope that didn’t mess anything up, but considering several instances seemed to be broken pre changes in my project, and the new system is better, that will just make future stuff work better.

Additionally, sorry about not having touched my project in over a week. Oddly enough, I suddenly had a bunch of exams and tests to study for. They’re finally over (for now), so I should be able to get back to it tomorrow.

[IndigoFenix]

The flash effects make for some nice elemental spells.  I added a fireball, freeze, and lightning bolt for starters.  They are items, you can buy them in the Protea market.

[Kamani]

Uhh, are flash effects (in the function editing menu) still in testing? I clicked edit on a flash effect, remembering that I had forgotten to edit the time, and now I am unable to leave. There is no button to click out.

Edit: Didn't happen this time. Odd.

Edit: Cause determined. If I click the checkbox to the left of the zero on the start line, then, if I reenter to edit, I am unable to leave.

Edit: How can I prevent an enemy from turning?

Edit: Flash effects in the function update menu don't seem to be working on my firebreath attack. I don't know what could be wrong, although I likely messed SOMETHING up, so do you have any clue what it could be?

Edit: Is there any way I can get some random movement in combat? With the second phase of the boss, I don't want it to mostly be immobile, but avoidance distance/stalking range and making it move to use attacks doesn't seem quite enough.
Also, it seems that something is wrong with avoidance distance. I had avoidance distance set to 48, but if it gets within the radius after using the charge attack, then it runs away and continues to do so until its rush attack triggers again. It should be stopping running away once it reaches that point, so... I don't know what is wrong.

[IndigoFenix]

So flash effects are apparently revealing a whole bunch of issues that need to be organized.  I need to come up with a good system for how exactly events are supposed to interact.

The reason the flashes aren't working is because the "host" needs to be set.  It's supposed to attach to the user automatically if no host is set but I made a mistake.  That will be fixed for the next update.  (You can use _this in the meantime).

To prevent an enemy from turning, set _turn to 0.

For random movement, use the "idle movement" options.  Sprites in between their minimum and maximum stalking radius will move as if they are idle.

The issue with avoidance distance is that you have friction set to 0.  It tries to move away and then keeps sliding.

[Kamani]

Oh, okay. Thanks.

Okay. Thanks. That should make the charge look less silly.

Oh, good to know. Thought idle movement was out of combat only. Thanks.

Oops. Thought I had changed that. Thanks.

[IndigoFenix]

The issues with the flash have been fixed.  Except for setting a non-automatic start color, but I don't think you'll need that just yet.  I'll fix that up.

I've made some significant internal changes to the way functions operate (mostly so that the "Continue Immediately" option for events like Walk, Jump, Flash and Dash should work properly), but I don't think it'll cause any major changes to any existing functions.  I went through your world and didn't noticed any issues.  Let me know if something doesn't work right.

There's a rare but rather major bug that popped up a few updates ago.  If you load a room and it comes up empty, DO NOT save!  This will save it as empty.  I've only seen this twice but I'm not sure what causes it.  Going to work on fixing that.

Combat's looking pretty nice right now (which is especially funny when you realize that BoundWorlds wasn't originally going to have a combat system at all), so I'd like to add in more storytelling-friendly systems.  I think the next major thing I work on will be...flowcharts!  Technically they won't do anything that you couldn't do with functions, but it will make big, complicated dialogue trees possible without clumsy stacks of If/Else statements.

[Kamani]

Oh good. Thanks.

Thanks for the warning. I would hate to lose a room to a glitch.

Thank gosh. When I start making the item that will handle all of my project, that would have the worst set of Else/If statements.

Edit: Spids Boss Tips: Spring Jump will be needed. If you don't use it, firebreath is likely to get you pinned, and if that happens, you lose. It does huge damage. But it does have a 90 frame visual warm up. Looks kind of silly if Spids uses the charge attack at the same time, but it also is a rather interesting attack to dodge, so I think I'll leave that in as a possibility.

Edit: Having a little trouble deciding what kind of attacks to give Spids round 2. Currently, the only thing I think I am going to use is a watered down version of firestorm (since the stronger version is even more mean when dealing with a fairly mobile enemy), and likely a Rush attack variant, since it seemed pretty interesting in my testing.

Edit: Testing attack: A flame spiral from Spids. 90ish frame warm up, still in testing. Seems okay?

[IndigoFenix]

Yeah, it looks nice.

The first phase of the boss is pretty brutal, I think mainly because the flamestorm never really lets up.  There's no "safe" phase to attack the boss, since there's always a ton of stuff going on on-screen.  That could be what you're going for, but I can see more casual players giving up.  (At least you don't have to start over from the beginning.)

Spoiler: Rambling on about boss design (click to show/hide)

In games, you'll often find two main boss design philosophies.

The first is the "attack-defend" model, where there are very clear moments that the boss is vulnerable, and other times where it is invincible and puts the player on the defensive.  This is easier on players overall and is common in games directed at casual players, though the boss can still be challenging if its attacks are especially hard to dodge or if it is hard to hit even when vulnerable.

The other extreme is the "constant offense" model, where the attack never lets up but the boss remains vulnerable, and the player must attack and defend at the same time.  They must carefully balance risk and reward in order to win.  This is common in more "hard-core" games.

The "hybrid" boss design blends these two approaches by making a boss have clear vulnerable phases, but also making it possible to damage them even during the attack phase.  A casual player can win by playing it safe until the boss is vulnerable, while a hardcore player can win faster by attacking even during the boss's offensive phase.  By making the fight winnable for casual players but rewarding skill as well, the game can be made appealing for players of multiple skill levels.

My suggestion would be to shorten the length of Flamestorm, or increase its cooldown so that there are times when the player can attack without having to worry about dodging a constant barrage of flames.

EDIT: Oh, also I fixed up some issues relating to transformation, and also patched up item drops.  If you put items in a creature's inventory (either from the class editor or by modifying their $itemname value), and that item has the "droppable" box checked, it will drop the items it is carrying when it dies.

[Kamani]

Oh, good. Wasn’t entirely sure yet. Still need to retune the flash effect, but after that, that attack should be good.

I’ll do that (flame storm changes). Somehat ironically enough, this dungeon was originally intended to be pretty easy. Pretty sure I blew that. I guess I’ll just move it up a tier or two in my plan and make a different dungeon to be easy.

Thank you for the rambling on about boss design section. It is helpful in understanding boss design, in both this project and in games that I have played.

Edit: Edit about fixes noticed. Thank you.

Edit: ... Thinking about it, I need to come up with 12ish names for the small town. Oh great.
Edit: And a name for the item that will contain all the memory partitions for this project. Bonus with that: People get stuck with whatever memory partitions they take, unless they restart the entire thing, so people will get stuck with whatever choices they make. This won't generally be relevant, but it will be in a few instances. Nothing major, but what you say to certain characters will change their dialogue permanently as long as partitions are set.
Edit: Oh great, I just realized I haven't even thought of a name for the village.

Edit: Sometimes, the create function on the fire spiral seems to fail for no apparent reason. More often when attacked, but not reliably even then. I am a little confused at what could be wrong here. Any clue what could be wrong?
Edit: After making the spiral generator visible, I have concluded that it is the create function that is failing for some reason. I don't know WHY, but I do know what individual part is broken, at least.

[IndigoFenix]

You have Flinch Point (under Physics and Motion) set to 0.  This is semi-implemented in that it allows techs to be interrupted when being hit by an attack with knockback, so it's working as intended (it only looks weird because flashes are not affected by these interrupts).  The default Flinch Point is -1, you probably copied it from a different sprite.

By the way, are you balancing using the stomp attack?  I will probably make it into an equippable item.

[Kamani]

Oops. Thank you.

I didn’t realize there was a stomp attack, so no. Oops.