This milestone has been looming on the horizon for a while now (I recall teasing it for Memorial Day last year, even if that was an optimistic projection), so I think I'm a little bit in disbelief that it's actually here. Anyway, there's always time to patch holes and make adjustments going forward (especially for proper balancing, once I start testing combat). The main addition to this new release - the "Safari Edition" of my game - is the implementation of enemy encounters (both of the random and scripted boss varieties). Granted, there's not any combat yet - each battle is aborted as soon as it begins. But you can at least get a look at the enemies (featuring a pool of over 150, including palette swaps). There is a full complement of what usually comes out to 8 "troops" (weighted for common, uncommon, rare, and ultra rare encounters) for each of nearly 64 regions spread throughout the game - overworld and dungeon maps combined.
Naturally, I've also implemented functionality for some things related to encounter behavior. In a similar way as to how the Backtrack and Retrace skills supplement exploration of the maps, I have now also made available the Hunt and Bait skills. The former forces a random encounter (to let the player take control and gain a leg up in battle, or else to facilitate the process of grinding - if the player feels it necessary), and the latter is a gem I coded which reverses the weights of troops so as to coax rare enemies out of hiding. I love the idea of having super rare enemies (often with special drops), but I hate not giving the player a tool (even if they have to earn it) to offset the soul-destroying tedium of relying on the excruciatingly dull mechanic of luck. Take the Pink Puffs (or Flan Princesses, depending on the translation) from Final Fantasy IV. It's bad enough that you have a 1 in 64 chance of encountering them (some versions of the game have a Siren item, which works very much like my Bait skill), but then you also have a 1 in 64 chance of pulling a rare drop. Instead of forcing the player to waste hours on repetition, I put in a fun little side quest where the player will be rewarded this ability to force rare encounters, by exercising their critical thinking skills in tracking down a special enemy that wanders my game world.
Additionally, I've restored an updated version of a feature that has under-pinned the concept for this game for a very long time. It's a sort of "monster radar", or what I call Hunting Instinct, in the form of an unobtrusive graphical indicator in the corner of the screen which gives the player a rough (which is to say, inexact) idea of when the next random encounter is going to occur. I thought it would be a nice way to soften the blow of random encounters - which can be a frustratingly jarring experience - without having to get rid of them (because, for what it's worth, they're an integral element of these kinds of games). I've agonized for years over how best to integrate this feature, or whether I should bother with it at all, but I've ultimately decided to make it an option the player can toggle on or off (in case they don't like it) at any point while playing. Also, while teaching myself how to manipulate the Options menu (by consolidating the disparate volume options into a single slider), I decided to add the X-Ray Scope I described in my last update as a "Show Hidden Paths" option, so the player will have free reign to decide how much they want to cheat in that respect. :-p
Alright! We've come a long way from Solipsism 2.0. The next step in getting the combat working will probably be to fill out the database with regard to items and equipment, as well as skills and states, and to populate the shops. (Numbers and animations will come after that). I'm thinking that I might spend some time fleshing out the ending, though. Because even though it seems appropriate to do that last, I was thinking that I should probably get it roughed out at least, while I still have time to mull it over and make changes. (And anyway, I should get it done before it comes to testing combat, after all). Stay tuned. In the meantime, there's still a lot left to do. But... though there are still some big holes left to fill, this project is beginning to feel like a real game!
Dragonfaith (Safari 9.0)
Download (440 MB): Windows
No comments:
Post a Comment