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(+1)

Wew lad this is a long one, lets see if I can get through this. 

I kept all the folders and stuff because I was exporting without using any of the unused items and stuff from my cluttered regular folder, but the game kept crashing for some reason on this build. There is some file in there that is getting referenced that is important and it's gonna take time to figure it out, so to get it up in time I had to keep everything in there just to make sure it actually loaded.

All the intro stuff is just a mismash of open source pictures and stuff I found and edited together in premiere. So that's why it looks like that. Just a placeholder until I have funds for an artist to animate something nice. Considering how much that's going to cost, It's gonna be a while so I needed to have something in the meantime.

Actually showing things on screen takes different sprites for every animation, so rather than do that, I opted for a narrator. I know it's not for everyone, but it will be very dialogue heavy, and more like a fantasy novel than a game in that one regard.

Bloodied man isn't bloody yet because I'm still commissioning artwork, so it'll be a while before I can afford everything. 

All the sprites for the characters are just close approximations I could make with the generator until I can get those commissioned as well. 

I didn't do the voice lines, had people volunteer for that. They are placeholders until I rework the entire voice lines system and hire actual voice actors.

CM = class mastery points. They are used to buy abilities.

As for the battle system, it's basically a direct ripoff of octopath traveler. so although it feels overloaded, it's basically just the mechanics from that game, with just all different spells and abilities and such.

Yeah, the menus are pixelated atm, going to work on upscaling the sprites instead of using nearest neighbor.

As for the equip skill option. In the future you will only be able to equip 4 skills to start with, so the skills you unlock on other classes can be placed there. However, in the demo atm, all skills made are open, and you have basically infinite equip slots. Everything in that regard is a work in progress.

The collisions messing up in a few of the starting map is due to being in the middle of switching from grind based collision to collision maps. All but the very few beginning maps have that, and are being changed right now. I've gotten around to everything except those beginning forests and cave parts.

Dang I liked the sword cursor

Yes, a few of the sprites when you enter meriwynne were upscaled using the wrong algorythm so they are blurry, I've gotten around to upscaling around 75% of all the sprites correctly now, and am working on it atm.

The guard and man in merriwynne have no collision, neither do the children. This is intentional.

Yeah, still writing dialogue for npcs, but also holding off on a lot of them because I want to do quest things with them, so going to finish the first part before giving them dialogue.

As for being overloaded with systems, it's really jsut a shield break system with a boost for combat. And unlocking skills with class mastery points gained from combat. It may seem overwhelming at first, but it's really not. Maybe the way it's presented atm seems crazy because everything is unlocked for testing, but the next build for DD I'll have all the locks in place. The programming of how the skills being unlocked is REALLY fucky so I have to have every single skill done in the game and its id exactly to play on every other skill to get an exponentially increasing iteration of CM cost, so I needed to make every skill (which other than ranger is basically done) before I could add all that stuff.

Maybe I can figure out a way to introduce the system in a more lore friendly way rather than just dump it all in a tutorial. Maybe tutorial as you go or something. 

I never played octopath, so no Idea that it had a similar battle system. 

The sword cursor itself is nice, it just doesn't fit with the rest of the graphics I think.

Moving NPCs should definetly have collision, it looks super weird floating over them.

For the Dialogue, I understand wanting to save time/energy on doing a bunch of dialogue sprites, but it really disrupts the flow and feel of it, when theres just some bracketed text describing what is happening while theres actually nothing happening. It doesn't even have to be a unique animation per action, if you include a handful of generic ones, like reaching into a pocket, pointing somewhere/handing something out, holding hands over the face etc, especially on those low resolution sprites, it can already look convincing enough.

For the overloaded systems, it seems to be a lot more then just a shield break and a boost. You still have your weakness exploits combined with weapon swapping on top, aswell as generic spells like buffs/taunts/status effects etc. 

If you're limiting the number of skills you can equip at once, the unlock/equip skill section makes a lot more Sense, but the whole relic/boost section just feels useless. I mean, of course its usefull to boost your attack to increase damage and such, but I don't think thats needed at all. You might just aswell have a proper setup for the weapon swapping to exploit weaknesses and break shields with it, instead of tacking a boost system on top. But then the same thing is with the shield break itself, of course it helps that every few attacks the enemy gets stunned/weakened, but you might aswell just have them be weak to certain elements/types directly.

 To me personally at least, it feels like I'm always jumping through multiple unneeded hoops when I could just aswell attack a demon with holy i.e. to get boosted damage, instead of having to attack it with holy to break its shield to increase damage, then pump in relics to also increase damage. The core of what I have to do is the same, attack the demon with holy, but instead of getting a direct feedback of increased damage, I have to wittle down the shields with it, and then pump my relic points into it. 

Now, if shield break didn't affect damage/stun the enemy, but do something interesting once it happens, but requiring specific shield breaking skills to do it, or if relics could only be gained by relic gaining skills instead of at the end of a turn, and be used for proper effect alterations, like relic-ing a poison spell to turn from singletarget into multitarget, or otherwise changing spells in a more interesting way then numbers going up, that'd be nice. 

This might have been in the Demo, I didn't play around with too many skills, since every combat quickly boiled down to looking what weakness they have under their healtbar, and spamming the related skill to get their armor off, then just using three relics on the same skill to finish them off. 

If you intend to keep all the systems, a simple way is to introduce weapon swapping once a second weapon drops/gets found early on, before any trader. On first levelup you can explain the leveling system, instead of in the intro directly. Class swapping/spell learning could be moved over to NPCs/Camp, so you can't do that everywhere, and then be explained once you reach the proper storypoint. Be it the first city, first camp or whatever. If not every enemy gets a shield to break, but only stuff like the big beetles i.e., you can have a forced encounter with a shielded enemy to explain shieldbreaks once it becomes important. Same for relics, if I'm assuming those are connected to the stone thing the main character is wearing, you can i.e. explain and unlock that whole thing when the witch joins for the wolf battle. Instead of having it autoloose and then have an overpowered witch come and finish it all, have the witch unlock/explain the relic thing, and have the wolves only be beatable by properly using the relic powers. For more then just damage/number of attack boosts of course. I.e. a normal sword slash does just damage, but a relic'd one breaks shields equal to number of relics into it.

Just throwing some Ideas around here on how to maybe make the system more interesting/interact with each other more. Haven't made a JRPG tho, apart from a bunch of old and terrible prototypes using stock RPGMaker combat, so keep that in mind please.

I'll be sure to give this another go a few months/DDs from now, to see what you come up with, it isn't necessarily a bad Game after all, just kind of early in development I think.

(+1)

Thanks for the input, and when you're breaking it down like that, it does seem like a lot is going on.  And thinking even harder, it does get pretty complicated, especially with the amount of skills there are. Later on, you need to have really well designed classes to take on enemies.
The boost is there for really your big damage after you break the shields of an enemy. But I suppose it's all the same in the end, it just adds some variability. But there are so really cool things I think too, like for example: Sorry for wall of text:

Having a rogue in your group, you can use an ability that when used on an enemy, the overkill damage is stored for the next attack. So in theory, you can use it to kill an enemy and store that damage. Then the next turn you have an ability that grants your next attack an automatic crit. So on that turn you timed it to break the big enemies shield before you rogue's turn, then your rogue uses their relic power to triple their damage, which now consists of the overkill damage as well as being an automatic crit, then you have the bard cast their ultimate spell on the rogue which replicates their next attack. So this huge combo does a metric fuckton of damage.

But thinking about doing stuff that complicated, maybe it would get hard to balance, because then I'd have to balance for those really big attacks? 

As for downsizing, which would you think would be a better way to go about it? Losing the relic damage boost system, or losing the shield break system? (The weapon swap needs to stay because of stats for hybrid characters, and some abilities require certain weapons. When you can choose any classes' abilities, being able to equip 2 weapons gives you more of a wide variety of abilities you could use at least.)

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I definetly think the weapon swap should stay aswell, I haven't used it in the Demo a lot, but its a very uncomplicated system that can easily change combat up a bit and it feels fairly unique for a JRPG.

I think your best bet would probably be to see which you can make more interesting. using relics to properly alter/improve your skills instead of just numbers going up, or more uniqueness in the shieldbreak system? Not every enemy having it, skills giving/taking shield points, only particular weapons affecting it (this ones already in if I recall correctly). If you get both to synergize well with each other, instead of feeling so much like 2 different systems you could potentially keep both aswell. 

Personally I'd probably go with the shield break. If you expand that as mentioned above, it can work quite well also with the weapon swapping, since you can only break shields with certain weapons/weaponskills, maybe forcing you into your secondary weapon if you want to break that specific shield to be able to use a spell which would otherwise just be ignored or something. 

*Edit: Be sure to play and test around with your current setup first tho. It'd be a shame if my stupid Ideas ruined your Combat.