Castle Paradox

[DemocraticAnarchist]

Greetings, People.
Following a long break, im rejoining the CP community. I was suffering from EXTREME writers block, and I have abandoned my previous project, Rebels of Khunla, probably for a very long time. I was pretty much making it up as I went along, and I was going no-where fast.

So.

I want some opinions etc on a possible new project. It will involve (If i can implement them all ):

Custom 2 Part battle System
An always on Menu Bar
Mini-map
Sliders instead of numbers to Show Hp, etc.
And finally,
Possibly,
Am planning out,
A mock 3d Perspective.

Custom Battle System
-------------------------
Right, the basic idea of battling is to use cards. Not unlike Yu-Gi-Oh, although there will be a considerable difference. Only one monster card can be played at a time (I have decided that it would be unfesale to have more than one as then I'd have to set up some sorta sequence taking into account level and speed, which frankly Im not up to at the minute)
Anyways, 1 Monster and up to 2 add on cards can be played. I have yet to decide on the exact nature of the addons, but they will be implemented eventually.
When both cards are played, an arena will appear, and the monsters will 'fight', order being decided with a coin toss. I want to draw custom animations for each monster, and am looking for Ideas on how to do it- Npcs or animated tiles?

Menu bar.
----------
This will be not unlike a frame in a webpage, or the bar in games such as fallout.
______________________________________
| |
| |
| |
| |
| View |
| Screen |
| |
| |
|_____________________________________ |
| |
| #### |
| #### Menu Bar |
| #### |
|_____________________________________ |


I will use npcs, and possibly write map tiles.


Mini-Map
----------

Marked with #'s. Will also use Npcs to show position and direction. Looks like im gonna be cutting it tight with the NPCs.

Sliders
-------
Self explanatory. Am debating whether to use them or not- Would it get annoying if there was just a bar of colour going from green to red, and no numbers?

3D
---
This is not a priority, and will only appear in future versions. I am working on it, altought it is still in the planning stages, and frankly not essential to the game's feel.


Okie, thats about it. Am not going to divulge plot yes (Mainly because it aint really written yet ^_^ )

Ideas/Opinions/Suggestions?

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What cruel person decided lisp should have an s in it?

[LeRoy_Leo]

This sounds COOL! Ok, I also have some facts to back that up. I can bet you that there are several geek- I mean- people here (myself included) that still like to play their favorite old card games. This could prove to be entertaining as well as unique which only happens about once in a blue moon.

Suggestion: I think you should do what you have planned first and don't make it so complex YET. It looks like you have a pretty good basic structure (from what I could tell with your type model there). I am not one too familiar with changing tiles outside of the tile animation feature built into the OHR program, but I think it might be easier for you to use NPCs. Perhaps scan in some sketches and make back drop animations. What ever you find easiest.
You should also be sure you have some more involving rules, and I can tell you right now that this game is going to be time consuming for you. BEWARE! But it will be worth it.

Sorry if I have stated the obvious or previously known :p
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Planning Project Blood Summons, an MMORPG which will incinerate all of the others with it's sheer brilliance...

---msw188 ---
"Seriously James, you keep rolling out the awesome like gingerbread men on a horror-movie assembly line. "

[TMC]

Well, as for the maptiles/npcs issues it depends on a couple of things. How big will the monsters be? If their quite large, (eg 2 x 3 tiles) you may find problems fitting all the animations on one maptile set, along with everything else.
And if you do use maptiles, don't use animated maptiles, just use maptiles.

That sounds like a pretty interesting game, but I'm interested in how you plan on creating the bar along the bottom of the screen? With npcs? If so, having an extra 40- 50 npcs on screen would make your game run extremely slowly, I've tried it.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[DemocraticAnarchist]

The Monsters will be about 10x10, although only about 3x2 pixels will be animated. Ill use maptiles for the rest.
I had considered using NPCs for the bar, and I'll test it out to see just how bad it is. However, If that isnt workable, i'll have an on keypress script that writes all the background of the bar, with the moving bits (Pointers on sliders,parts of minimap etc) provided by about, oh, 5 or so NPCs in total.
_________________
What cruel person decided lisp should have an s in it?

[Roach Lir]

I think I know what you mean there with the layout, DA. Kinda like Baldurs gate and Icewind dale. It sounds excellent, and also very ambitious. I would very much like to see this, it sounds like it going to be very good. I agree with Leroy when he says it is going to be very time consuming, but hey, all good games are!
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Dark Legacy - 0.3%

[planethunter]

there is a simple way to make a slider without using 40-50 npcs, all you need is about 10, and some overhead tiles. Anyway here's what I mean:

+ = overhead tile, spare some tiles on the edge of the map so that they aren't noticeable.

* = hp npcs, each one joins together to form a bar, a nice solid colour or gradient will do nicely

[ ] = actual bar, a bunch of maptiles, on which the 'health' npcs 'sit' on.

# = overhead tile with an npc underneath it.

+++++[*****] ~ hero's hp 100%

++++#[****_] ~ hero's hp 80%

#####[_____] ~ hero is dead...

notice how when 20% damage is caused all the npcs walk one space to the right, simulating the hp being reduced ( a slow walking speed would be recommended but not nessisary ).

for "uneven" amounts of damage caused, (i.e. numbers that aren't in whole tiles, like 17 instead of 20 pixels, where each pixel is a percentage.)
you could probably use commands like "put npc" which could move all the npcs in pixels, and probably would be more accurate than using the "walk npc" command.

anyway, I think this idea should work, and it saves the the hassle of creating npcs for every single unit of hp, that would be somewhat tedious.
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~PH

[DemocraticAnarchist]

^_^

Ph: I think you slightly misinterpreted what i meant. I plan on using (hopefully a lot less than) 40-50 Npcs for the actual physical bar:


############
############
############
############

Or the like. For the slider, I will use either 1 Npc and map tiles, or 6 Npcs:


[]
[]
[] *
[]
[]


Where * Is the pointer (Definately an NPC) and [] is the coloured gradient bar (Possibly Npcs). I'll have a script that calculates your damage suffered to your total HP (You can lose a battle without losing all your Hp. Depends on the monster. The bigger they are, the harder they fall) Then, I'll round it up to the nearest 1% and since the bar is 100 pixels high, 1 pixel=1%. I'll move the NPC up/down in one pixel steps.
Apart form certain limited areas, there are no random battles, so if nessecary I can have a unique script per battle, with my goal being to have a cutsene after major battles. But that shall all come in time.

Roach Lir: Yeah, Baldur's gate sounds pretty close.
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What cruel person decided lisp should have an s in it?

[TMC]

Wait, monsters are only 10x10 pixels in size? And theres only ever two of them on screen?!

A bar 5 tiles high... thats a whole half the screen!
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[Uncommon]

That's an insane size for a bar, which is why I'm going to all but forego them...

[DemocraticAnarchist]

Uncommon: Actually, i think 4 tiles up will be enough for the bar. Prehaps three if I get desperate.

Cacti: Did i say ten by ten pixels? I meant ten by ten tiles. But i actually meant ten by five tiles. So 100*200 pixels.
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What cruel person decided lisp should have an s in it?

[TMC]

But then the monsters wouldn't fit, unless the bar doesn't appear at all during battles (But isn't that its main purpose?). Even a one tile high bar would be too big. BTW, thats an insane size for monsters- you can barely fit 2 on screen, so I wonder where the cards will be.

Also, at that kind of size, I say you should use tiles, unless you find you can't fit them on the tileset, or you want them independent of the background.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[planethunter]

Did anybody play moogle1's scary game 2? It had a large vertical bar that took up the whole screen, (in terms of length) but it still looked good. Then again, there were only ever two sprites on the battle screen at a time (the npc fists don't really count considering they're attack animations rather than stationary sprites)

Cati, how would a tile 20x20 pixels high be too big for a health bar? I don't seem to follow you on that...

if it's a hero/enemy sprite shown perhaps a size of 2x2 tiles would be ideal for the card picture, or if the picture took up most of the card a size of 2x3 tiles would be more 'card-like'. Just some suggestions.
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~PH

[DemocraticAnarchist]

Ah, I seem to have been misinterpred or something again. I sain previously that the battle system was in two parts. The part with the cards is the strategic bit. That part will have a bar for player and enemy, and the cards will be displayed there. Those cards will be about 3x2.
Then, following a coin toss, the cards are sent to an arena where they are incarnsted. They will be around 9x5. They will do each of their selected attacks, and then back to the card screen if they neither is dead, or if time hasnt run out.
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What cruel person decided lisp should have an s in it?