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Author Topic: That which sleeps- Kickstarted!  (Read 370626 times)

Tommy2U

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #330 on: September 19, 2014, 02:15:54 pm »

That's a great and informative video, thanks for posting.

Does the combat system shown in the video cover battles betwen armies as well, or do they have a separate combat system from heroes, agents and minions?
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KingDinosaurGames

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #331 on: September 19, 2014, 02:46:41 pm »

Army battles are MUCH simpler, though oddly enough I find them even more thematically enjoyable.

Due to their frequency (military conflicts are much more common than hero battles) we wanted to keep it routed on the map itself, even moreso than combat, and also keep the pace more in line with overall strategy.  To do this we implemented two major elements:

1) Combat takes multiple turns - Armies will stay on a POI and "duke it out" over multiple turns, with you choosing how to handle the battle.  Do you throw all your men at the enemy in a bloodbath? Play it conservative and try to hodl them there?  Send men around for a flanking maneuver?  Simple, easy mechanics that allow the game to play out without requiring excessive concentration.

2) Elite Units and Powerful Agents/Heros that are difficult to impossible to replace punctuate the combat with their deployment.  You may choose to send in your Ogre Deathmarchers this turn, and perhaps the enemy sends in his Northburn Knights - choosing when to utilize your elites lets you push for strategic objectives when it is most beneficial, and rewards careful identification and elimination of enemy threats that counteract your own strengths.

Civ 5 route was also an early method of display, but I think we are going to leave it as is while we go through another round of combat testing.  If it ends up that we get enough "excessive information" complaints we will streamline damage/defense types as we mentioned so that we can easily represent attack types and value.   

The good thing is that these elements are all fairly easy to change mechanically/aesthetically based on our design, though the implications of messing with attack/damage types on balance is unfortunately pretty great.

What do you think?  Is having discrete damage types for each character worth the burden of having to consider defense types for every attack?
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Jalak

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #332 on: September 19, 2014, 02:51:11 pm »

Wait, you actually get up and walk around the world when you're awake? Sweet!

SO MANY NEW QUESTIONS FROM THAT ONE STATEMENT BLARG!

What happens if someone manages to "kill" you conventionally (without using some arcane ritual to seal him up)? Can you be sent back to sleep, voluntarily or not? Can your Old One imbue itself with its own magic and artifacts like agents can and even level up? Do you get special minions as well? TELL ME!

Edit: Personally, I could go either way on the whole combat mechanics thing...
Also, what happens when an army runs into an agent or hero?
« Last Edit: September 19, 2014, 03:17:33 pm by Jalak »
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nenjin

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #333 on: September 19, 2014, 03:00:33 pm »

To note, I don't have a problem with lots of information. Rather, it just needs to be presented a little better.
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i2amroy

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #334 on: September 19, 2014, 03:19:04 pm »

Yeah, my vote definitely goes for having more types of damage, with possibly a small GUI improvement to allow for display. (OF course, this being the Dwarf Fortress forums is going to slant your results towards the "want better simulation despite bad GUI" side. :P)
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nenjin

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #335 on: September 19, 2014, 04:16:24 pm »

Might be worth adding all the damage type info into a tooltip on their main attack stat.
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
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Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
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How will I cheese now assholes?
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KingDinosaurGames

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #336 on: September 19, 2014, 04:37:45 pm »

I do love tooltips - can't believe I missed such an obvious possibility
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Cthulhu

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #337 on: September 19, 2014, 04:59:50 pm »

I was a little disappointed by the info drought there for a while but I figured you were working hardcore on the game.  I wasn't sold on the brownbrownbrown portraits but now that there's more I think they're coming together pretty well.  Animo hero portraits gave me a >:C until I realized they were obviously placeholder shit.

Still hyped as fuck!
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Denim

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #338 on: September 19, 2014, 05:11:25 pm »

I also think that more discreet damage types would be better even if it means putting up with some visual clutter. It will really only be a hassle for characters with attack/defense values above 4 anyway.

Will there be an acid or corrosion damage type that eats away at a character's armor over time?
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nenjin

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #339 on: September 19, 2014, 05:50:37 pm »

Yeah, I like that every point of damage has a trait, and attribute. It's just how to present that. When you consider (again) board game or playing card logic, describing what damage consists of should fall somewhere nearest to the overall combats score. Hence, a tool tip. Loses that instantly visual impact of 'holy shit that's a lot of shields/swords' but nests the information much better. Consider Dominions and how most of the game uses "Right click to get more details about this thing." Initially, if you don't know to look for that information there, you're not getting 30% or more of the mechanics explained. Once you do know it's there, Dominions packs a shit ton of information and stat breakdowns into a relatively compact space.

You've been pretty good in videos of explaining how many tooltips there are (I'm also a lover of tooltips.) I think you should reinforce that point in any sort of tutorial the game ends up with. (As well as tip of the days, ect...) People that know everything is further explained by a tooltip I think quickly get used to it as a basic design concept.
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
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Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

rylen

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #340 on: September 19, 2014, 08:53:40 pm »

I also like having a breakdown on where each pip comes from.

In the illustrated combats, both the the adventuring parties appeared to be led by a fighter, who had the highest level, and was blocking for one mage. How large can a party get? Is someone besides the fighter ever in charge?

How much are you able to know about the opposition before starting the fight?

For what you've said, the game sounds extremely moddable. Where are the outer edges? I suspect I could easily do a tribute to Barrier Peaks and drop in a hidden crash site of spider aliens. Likely I could write some quest chains leading to them interacting with the rest of a map and producing heroes. I think I could also re-skin some agents to be spiders; I suspect new abilities would be difficult though. How about a spider god settling in and building her web?

I'm looking forward to playing.
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Jalak

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #341 on: September 20, 2014, 04:58:20 pm »

A problem I'm seeing with the combat descriptions is that it's kind of hard to tell if the damage that's being done can ignore armor or not and other effects they might have. This is pretty glaring with the "overwhelming force" Greywind has, which says that the first enemy takes basic attack damage while the enemy behind him takes physical damage. Wait, so does the physical damage ignore armor? If it doesn't, what makes it different from basic damage? Doesn't physical and basic mean the same thing?
A little tool-tip explaining the damage types when moused-over would go a long way clearing this up.
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KingDinosaurGames

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #342 on: September 20, 2014, 06:28:42 pm »

I was a little disappointed by the info drought there for a while but I figured you were working hardcore on the game.  I wasn't sold on the brownbrownbrown portraits but now that there's more I think they're coming together pretty well.  Animo hero portraits gave me a >:C until I realized they were obviously placeholder shit.

Still hyped as fuck!

Anime are definitely placeholders, depending on the level of funding we achieve we will be creating 10 (base level of funding) 18 (if we reach Religion tier) or 25 (if we reach rival old ones) high quality portraits to represent hero class and archetype.  Worst case scenario with a failed KS we are going to strip out the entire anime portrait, use the "head" portraits and filter them down to look more in line with what we have.  Sucks I know, but we have enough of those anime portraits to have a unique image PER hero right now for dirt cheap so if we have to stay this course we will.

Sad thing is I'm barely able to work on the game this week - we're handling lots of logistical and marketing issues in the run up to the Kickstarter.  A necessary sacrifice but ideally we'll raise enough to be able to give the game a consistent feel to match its playstyle.

There is not an Acid attack damage type, but there are many abilities that emulate that functionality and are acid themed.  but no +1 to Acid damage or -1 to Acid Damage effects as its not a Damage Type setting (would be trivial to add if someone wanted to in a mod).

I do think the Tooltip/rollout solution sounds best - Combat is locked down right now for the demo build so we'll have to put it in the feature list for afterwards. 

Oh yeah, you generally see "Leader" archetypes in charge but sometimes a Mage or even a Thief may be the leader.   However, the adventuring parties do try to form "logically" so a Mage will rarely go adventuring without some protection (or the proper defensive spells to protect himself).  If you have infiltration you know everything you would see in the battle screen before the fight occurs, if you don't have infiltration you will only know their classes and levels. 

Alright let's use a Spider God as an example (in fact maybe I will do this for the video).

You create a New Old One, you set an integer value for time of sleep, you set if the old one has an avatar, if so you define its statistics (health, attributes, skills, abilities), you set its max/min number of agents, you pick its ability trees, you upload an image to the editor for it, pick passive modifiers, set if global or only for specific scenarios, and then fill in all the flavor text (how agents refer to the old one, how enemies do, how demihumans do, etc etc). 

At this point you could simply play a rather generic new old One with a combination of two ability trees.  However, to CUSTOMIZE the experience there are two very important extra steps.  The first thing is Ability Trees, you can either modify an existing one or create new ones.  Creating a new one "What Webs we Weave" you would then create an ability.  Abilities are where there's a bit of a learning curve, because their are multiple types and each has numerous hooks to plug in to.  For instance, let's say you wanted to make a Map based effect that causes all movement in a POI to cease because you cover it in massive webbing. 

You'd make a new Ability, it is Activated - Immediate- Global - Map - Costs 2 Ancient Power - pick an appropriate icon from the list or upload a new one - describe it - add a clue value to it - pick your flags (can be countered, divine, fire, hidden, etc).  Now comes the hard part, picking how the effect works.  So this ability you add a new Effect, and you can add as many as you want.  This Effect you pick when it happens (after cast), (POIImmobilize = true), Duration (3 turns + 1 per 3 ancient power).  Let's say you wanted to add a Quest ot his spot that could be defeated to remove this effect, you could add a random QUest with Effect - Quest, Difficulty, Type or you could go make a specific quest and spawn that particular one. 

Now you probably noticed I put "POIImmobilize= true," that's because we have that effect already coded in, we have LOTS of status effects that are possible but of course people will have more that we don't plan for.  That's why we expose all the variables that the AI can understand (as opposed to just allowing you to modify anything), so if we hadn't had a POIImmobilize value you could do an "OnTurn - HeroMove = 0" "OnTurn - ArmyMove = 0" etc. 

If what you want to do is even more complex than what is possible on a single level, you can leverage Events, Campaigns, and Quests to create complicated chains of events (we leverage this often) to really give you abilities an immersive feel.  Speaking of which, the other major element of customization is events tied to this Old One.  On the Create Old One screen you will see a list of Events that specifically reference this Old One.  As an example of this, Sisyphus has a long series of branching events regarding his interaction with the prophet - though these are not an ability of his they are events that only trigger as long as he is your old one.

Basic Attack Damage refers to the damage listed on the Agent or Hero's sheet, so in the instance of Baron Greywind it would be 9 Physical Damage, it then specifies an extra attack (another effect) that specifically deals Physical Damage.  If the Prophet somehow had that ability, his first effect would deal 1 Ancient damage, and his secondary would deal 4 physical. 

Physical Damage is blocked 1 to 1 by Physical Defense.  Whenever the phrase "takes damage" is expressed it means Attack values are checked against Defense Values before causing the target to lose the resulting value.  If you see the phrase "loses life" it ignores defense and they simply lose that health value. 

In other words, basic attack refers to the attack values present on your agent or heroes sheet.

TL;DR: More tooltips!
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Sindain

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #343 on: September 20, 2014, 08:59:19 pm »

PTW
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Cthulhu

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Re: That which sleeps- in development
« Reply #344 on: September 20, 2014, 10:06:15 pm »

So how far into the KS do you expect to release a demo?
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