Just as I was getting ready to move onto a different game my stubborn streak came out and I was determined to finish Dark Cloud. I was annoyed at my stubborn streak but I guess that's all that's keeping me still working on DD2 (yes, I AM still working on it!) so I guess it's alright.
Once I got Ruby, the genie, on my team things got a lot better. She's a ranged fighter that does decent damage. Ranged is important in Dark Cloud because those weapons don't wear out so fast. I basically only used her whenever I had a choice. This cleared up a lot of the stress in the game and I started having fun figuring out how to level up and modify the weapons. I stopped working on the main character because his melee hits would still take a lot of damage while fighting. Plus he still looks stupid.
Still, if you have a team of characters to play with you shouldn't be forced to use the other characters. Especially when there is no story, rhyme or reason as to why they should be used. A "mysterious force" making me play a certain way just makes me annoyed, as well as having arbitrary gaps in the floor that make me switch players to the cat girl to jump over it and immediately switch back to the player that I like playing as.
The bottom line is, after I got Ruby the game became fun. I am actually interested in getting the next game after I finish the other games I got. Also, it was good to know that the real Dark Genie (spoiler?) actually looked pretty cool.
But onto Darkened Dreams! I got abilities working in and out of battle so that's cool. Trying to decide what to work on next. Peter and I are getting together next week to try to make a game in a day. Should be interesting!
-Califer
Friday, December 4, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Dark Cloud
I've finished Sly Cooper. It was fun and not too long, plenty of moves to learn and good action. I'll probably get the sequel after I finish going through the rest of the games I bought.
The current game I'm playing is Dark Cloud. Most of the games that I got are games that I found on top 20 sites. Dark Cloud was one of them, but I just can't imagine how anyone thought it was that good. You play as a skinny kid with plastic hair that wears a green turban. A dark genie was released that destroyed half the world in a single day. The fairy king, realizing that he and his people were outmatched, decided to lay the fate of the world in your inexperienced hands.
Your job in the game is to collect all the parts of the villages and put them back together. This might have been interesting, but after seeing the people at a festival in the introduction I just couldn't care about them enough to want to put their village back. One of the villagers is named Macho. He's about three or four of your character and he wants his house next to the dungeon so he can fight (though it's just to work out, he never helps you) and he wants his weights placed at his house etc etc. Then there's the fat guy who sleeps all day and wants me to risk my neck to bring him his candy box. Then he gives me a piece of cheese. I'll go off about my (in-game) mom later.
This might have been remedied by making the dungeons fun. They're not. I was concerned at first about my 'thirst meter'. If I run out of water, I start losing health and can't fight well. This turned out to not be a problem (at least not so far, I'm still in the first dungeon) since there is usually a pool on each floor that I can just walk into and I'll be full of water and life. No, what REALLY got me is the hit points on the weapons. I would go through a bit of the dungeon floor then I'd have to leave so I could run back to the mayor's house where he would give me one package of 'repair powder' which magically fixes weapons. So I'd talk to him, use the powder, talk to him again then head back to the dungeon. Later on I had four weapons, but I still had to leave the dungeon after only one floor because all my weapons were about to break. Then I had to go through the boring process of talking to the mayor, getting one pouch, healing one weapon, on and on until I finally healed all my weapons then went to play through only one more floor before having to run back. When I finally got the shop guy and his house and all the items that made him happy enough to start selling me things (c'mon man, you need to be bribed to sell things to me after I saved your life and your home?) I ended up selling a good chunk of what I'd found (most monsters don't drop cash) in order to heavily invest in repair powder so I could actually go through more than one floor without having to run back and forth all day long.
Which leads me to another reason that I can't care less about the villagers. They can't care less about me after I rescue their 'atla' (soul? essence?) from the dungeon, dredge up their homes and possessions and kill tons of monsters and undead that live right next door. For getting all their possessions back to them they'll give me something basic (thanks for the single piece of cheese). Does anyone offer to help me? Don't they realize what happened? If I died in the dungeon (which I did) would anyone ever do anything useful again?
Duels. Some monsters are 'too strong' to actually fight, so I need to duel then instead. This is basically a poor man's rhythm game with no music. These are easier than regular fights, especially against those lousy cave bats that fly just above where my sword swings half the time. The second duel was against a mysterious guy who wanted the bracelet I got from the fairy king. He told me that I had no hope of beating the dark genie, which is pretty much what the fairy king said.
I tend to agree. I'm still slicing away at bats and crap and I can't level up. I can only use the weapons until they have enough xp to level up. Level the weapon up enough and it can change to a stronger, different weapon. Apparently the weapons are made of Pokemon. I did manage to break the weapon I'd put the most work into because my last hit took down more weapon hp than I thought it would. It was like losing a few levels because it was my only decent weapon.
I did get my first ally though. It was a cat I rescued that I used a potion on so she became kinda human. Her slingshot is super weak at the level I'm on. It only does 1 point of damage to the big enemies which have lots more HP. So by the time I've killed ONE of them my only weapon is about to break. Want to know the best part? I'm on a level that will only let me use her. So she can't kill anything, but I need to kill everything to find the key to the next floor. I'm stuck. Even when she died (didn't take long) it gave me the option of switching to the main guy or losing half my money. But it wouldn't let me switch.
That's not the only kind of limit that they put on you. There are floors that make it so that your weapons LOSE exp each time you kill something. Why? Because the makers hate you. You HAVE to kill to progress. Killing hurts your weapons like crazy, but at least you get a little weapon xp for it so you can eventually get stronger, but on these levels it makes playing the game a punishment. (regular levels are just a chore. The difference between cleaning the bathroom and cleaning the bathroom with your tongue.)
On the bright side, it made playing Destroy All Humans all that much more fun.
-Califer
The current game I'm playing is Dark Cloud. Most of the games that I got are games that I found on top 20 sites. Dark Cloud was one of them, but I just can't imagine how anyone thought it was that good. You play as a skinny kid with plastic hair that wears a green turban. A dark genie was released that destroyed half the world in a single day. The fairy king, realizing that he and his people were outmatched, decided to lay the fate of the world in your inexperienced hands.
Your job in the game is to collect all the parts of the villages and put them back together. This might have been interesting, but after seeing the people at a festival in the introduction I just couldn't care about them enough to want to put their village back. One of the villagers is named Macho. He's about three or four of your character and he wants his house next to the dungeon so he can fight (though it's just to work out, he never helps you) and he wants his weights placed at his house etc etc. Then there's the fat guy who sleeps all day and wants me to risk my neck to bring him his candy box. Then he gives me a piece of cheese. I'll go off about my (in-game) mom later.
This might have been remedied by making the dungeons fun. They're not. I was concerned at first about my 'thirst meter'. If I run out of water, I start losing health and can't fight well. This turned out to not be a problem (at least not so far, I'm still in the first dungeon) since there is usually a pool on each floor that I can just walk into and I'll be full of water and life. No, what REALLY got me is the hit points on the weapons. I would go through a bit of the dungeon floor then I'd have to leave so I could run back to the mayor's house where he would give me one package of 'repair powder' which magically fixes weapons. So I'd talk to him, use the powder, talk to him again then head back to the dungeon. Later on I had four weapons, but I still had to leave the dungeon after only one floor because all my weapons were about to break. Then I had to go through the boring process of talking to the mayor, getting one pouch, healing one weapon, on and on until I finally healed all my weapons then went to play through only one more floor before having to run back. When I finally got the shop guy and his house and all the items that made him happy enough to start selling me things (c'mon man, you need to be bribed to sell things to me after I saved your life and your home?) I ended up selling a good chunk of what I'd found (most monsters don't drop cash) in order to heavily invest in repair powder so I could actually go through more than one floor without having to run back and forth all day long.
Which leads me to another reason that I can't care less about the villagers. They can't care less about me after I rescue their 'atla' (soul? essence?) from the dungeon, dredge up their homes and possessions and kill tons of monsters and undead that live right next door. For getting all their possessions back to them they'll give me something basic (thanks for the single piece of cheese). Does anyone offer to help me? Don't they realize what happened? If I died in the dungeon (which I did) would anyone ever do anything useful again?
Duels. Some monsters are 'too strong' to actually fight, so I need to duel then instead. This is basically a poor man's rhythm game with no music. These are easier than regular fights, especially against those lousy cave bats that fly just above where my sword swings half the time. The second duel was against a mysterious guy who wanted the bracelet I got from the fairy king. He told me that I had no hope of beating the dark genie, which is pretty much what the fairy king said.
I tend to agree. I'm still slicing away at bats and crap and I can't level up. I can only use the weapons until they have enough xp to level up. Level the weapon up enough and it can change to a stronger, different weapon. Apparently the weapons are made of Pokemon. I did manage to break the weapon I'd put the most work into because my last hit took down more weapon hp than I thought it would. It was like losing a few levels because it was my only decent weapon.
I did get my first ally though. It was a cat I rescued that I used a potion on so she became kinda human. Her slingshot is super weak at the level I'm on. It only does 1 point of damage to the big enemies which have lots more HP. So by the time I've killed ONE of them my only weapon is about to break. Want to know the best part? I'm on a level that will only let me use her. So she can't kill anything, but I need to kill everything to find the key to the next floor. I'm stuck. Even when she died (didn't take long) it gave me the option of switching to the main guy or losing half my money. But it wouldn't let me switch.
That's not the only kind of limit that they put on you. There are floors that make it so that your weapons LOSE exp each time you kill something. Why? Because the makers hate you. You HAVE to kill to progress. Killing hurts your weapons like crazy, but at least you get a little weapon xp for it so you can eventually get stronger, but on these levels it makes playing the game a punishment. (regular levels are just a chore. The difference between cleaning the bathroom and cleaning the bathroom with your tongue.)
On the bright side, it made playing Destroy All Humans all that much more fun.
-Califer
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Old Code and Glass Cannons
There's a well-known saying among programmers. "If you haven't seen your code for 6 months it might as well belong to someone else." Meaning that your own code will make a lot less sense if you haven't dealt with it in a while. It's been a while since I went through the chain of events that happen for combat. I tried to catch up while watching a TV show, but it just wasn't going to happen. I'll give it another go tonight without a TV show in the way.
Instead of complaining more about my code, I'll give my first impressions on an older game; Sly Cooper and the Theivius Racoonius. My first time playing it was pretty short, since I'd got a number of used games and wanted to make sure they all worked.
In the first stage I got a little confused because it apparently only wanted me to die when I was sure of safety. After my first heist I was attacked by a cop with a big gun. I was about to make a run past a bunch of cop cars to get into my van, but decided to hold back. The cop proceeded to shoot the same cop car over and over. I felt pretty darn safe since she wasn't aiming anywhere near me so I went into first person view to look around to see if there were any pickups or anything. I didn't see anything so I went to regular play, but before I could go anywhere I got shot and it was game over. She spent about 1 minute just blasting her own cop cars before finally aiming at me!
I was annoyed at having to start over so I tried to jump off the building. I couldn't. Then I got somewhat serious and started going through the level again. As I was going I jumped at the edge of the building again just for laughs and I flew off the edge and died again.
Whoops.
I played it again later since it turned out my copy of ratchet and clank had a scratch that wouldn't let me go further than I was. I rushed through the first stage this time and got to the main story. This is when I found out that Sly Cooper is a glass cannon. Very powerful, but can't take a hit. There was a huge enemy swinging a hammer that looked twice my skinny raccoon size that I took out with one hit. Then I saw some vines with thorns and I decided to hit them to see if they'd break and give me coins like a lot of other things were. Apparently the swing brought me a little too close and I was instantly killed.
Despite all my deaths I actually am beginning to enjoy the game. It's cutesy, but still fun.
Not that anyone ever comments on this blog anymore, but what do you think? Is it good to get an update of what's happening and a short game review, or am I getting too off-topic by mentioning anything but Darkened Dreams 2?
P.S. There hasn't been any art on this blog for a while. Peter, would you be so kind as to post some art?
Instead of complaining more about my code, I'll give my first impressions on an older game; Sly Cooper and the Theivius Racoonius. My first time playing it was pretty short, since I'd got a number of used games and wanted to make sure they all worked.
In the first stage I got a little confused because it apparently only wanted me to die when I was sure of safety. After my first heist I was attacked by a cop with a big gun. I was about to make a run past a bunch of cop cars to get into my van, but decided to hold back. The cop proceeded to shoot the same cop car over and over. I felt pretty darn safe since she wasn't aiming anywhere near me so I went into first person view to look around to see if there were any pickups or anything. I didn't see anything so I went to regular play, but before I could go anywhere I got shot and it was game over. She spent about 1 minute just blasting her own cop cars before finally aiming at me!
I was annoyed at having to start over so I tried to jump off the building. I couldn't. Then I got somewhat serious and started going through the level again. As I was going I jumped at the edge of the building again just for laughs and I flew off the edge and died again.
Whoops.
I played it again later since it turned out my copy of ratchet and clank had a scratch that wouldn't let me go further than I was. I rushed through the first stage this time and got to the main story. This is when I found out that Sly Cooper is a glass cannon. Very powerful, but can't take a hit. There was a huge enemy swinging a hammer that looked twice my skinny raccoon size that I took out with one hit. Then I saw some vines with thorns and I decided to hit them to see if they'd break and give me coins like a lot of other things were. Apparently the swing brought me a little too close and I was instantly killed.
Despite all my deaths I actually am beginning to enjoy the game. It's cutesy, but still fun.
Not that anyone ever comments on this blog anymore, but what do you think? Is it good to get an update of what's happening and a short game review, or am I getting too off-topic by mentioning anything but Darkened Dreams 2?
P.S. There hasn't been any art on this blog for a while. Peter, would you be so kind as to post some art?
Monday, October 5, 2009
Guest Post
Before you get all excited, I should clarify the title. No, I didn't get someone to replace me for a week. Jay at RampantGames unfortunately had to go on vacation in Hawaii (poor guy!) , so I did a guest post for him. It's not great, but it's better than nothing. Here it is!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Display Redone
Okay, the creatures are no longer limited to being in boxes. Instead they spawn in a random location in a pre-defined space. Now we can see the large monsters with no problem!
Part of the reason that I had even set things up in boxed space was to make it easier for me to write the clicking code. The easiest way was to just allow a click on any part of the picture, even parts that were invisible (0 alpha). If pictures overlapped then it would be very easy to click on the wrong picture just because it was a part that you couldn't see and couldn't tell which was in front.
That's the other problem that I fixed last night. Now button presses will be ignored if they happened on something that can't be seen and will proceed to check whatever else may be behind.
Now it's time, finally!, for me to get back to working on the abilities. It's been a long time since I first was about to work on abilities, and I've changed a lot since then. It will be very satisfying to me to finish off the abilities because that means that I'll be getting past where I had stopped to look back so long ago. I'm excited to finish this off, get battles looking even nicer, and then move onto new things!
The big question is, what next? Should I focus on multiple maps (overworld maps and dungeons) or NPCs? What do you think?
-Califer
Part of the reason that I had even set things up in boxed space was to make it easier for me to write the clicking code. The easiest way was to just allow a click on any part of the picture, even parts that were invisible (0 alpha). If pictures overlapped then it would be very easy to click on the wrong picture just because it was a part that you couldn't see and couldn't tell which was in front.
That's the other problem that I fixed last night. Now button presses will be ignored if they happened on something that can't be seen and will proceed to check whatever else may be behind.
Now it's time, finally!, for me to get back to working on the abilities. It's been a long time since I first was about to work on abilities, and I've changed a lot since then. It will be very satisfying to me to finish off the abilities because that means that I'll be getting past where I had stopped to look back so long ago. I'm excited to finish this off, get battles looking even nicer, and then move onto new things!
The big question is, what next? Should I focus on multiple maps (overworld maps and dungeons) or NPCs? What do you think?
-Califer
Thursday, September 24, 2009
New Display
So I ... wait, I last posted a month and a half ago? Crap, sorry about that. I got a new job and my schedule got changed around.
Anyways, both Peter and I are doing triple-time at the moment. We both have full time jobs, we both are working on Darkened Dreams 2, Peter is doing art for another company in his spare time, and I'm working on a tool for editing sprite sheets for use in 2D games. Also, we're married (not to each other >_>) and each of us has a small child. That's why there hasn't been too much progress lately.
Not to say that nothing has happened! Peter's been getting me new art, and I've managed to speed things up. We had a problem with timid creatures grabbing a spot in an opposite direction from the hero and run through the path-finding code to find out how to get there. Unfortunately, because of the test map setup this led to a nasty problem. They would almost always choose something that was outside of the boundaries, use up some time trying to find a non-existent path until hitting the limit of places I allowed them to look, try a different direction which, likely as not, ALSO ended up outside the boundary!
If we had more than one at the same time looking like that it would slow the game down considerably. I started testing to figure out what I could do, then realized that I didn't even need to get them a path. They weren't trying to get to a certain spot, they were just trying to get away from the hero! The next problem is that since they didn't always run away from the hero (maybe they didn't see you or just don't feel like running) it was hard to tell if they were really running away or just happened to travel in a direction opposite you. Peter got me some recolored versions of the creature icons so I could give them a different color depending on what their AI state was. That's when I found out that timid creatures would run right at you! lol. Then run right past you as if you weren't there. I negated the direction and it all worked right and wasn't slow anymore.
The next problem is with the display. I have things set up so that there are a number of boxes that a creature can fill in depending on the size of the art. It's first come, first shown and they can't be kicked out until you get far enough away from them. This means that once you kill something the bones are just going to sit there forever (not doing any decay and respawning yet). Also, anything that's too big won't show up. I found out that the biggest monster that Peter drew doesn't fit at all, so that made me see I need to rework it.
I've come up with what feels like a good solution, and I plan to implement it sometime this week. I'll let you know if it works :)
-Califer
Anyways, both Peter and I are doing triple-time at the moment. We both have full time jobs, we both are working on Darkened Dreams 2, Peter is doing art for another company in his spare time, and I'm working on a tool for editing sprite sheets for use in 2D games. Also, we're married (not to each other >_>) and each of us has a small child. That's why there hasn't been too much progress lately.
Not to say that nothing has happened! Peter's been getting me new art, and I've managed to speed things up. We had a problem with timid creatures grabbing a spot in an opposite direction from the hero and run through the path-finding code to find out how to get there. Unfortunately, because of the test map setup this led to a nasty problem. They would almost always choose something that was outside of the boundaries, use up some time trying to find a non-existent path until hitting the limit of places I allowed them to look, try a different direction which, likely as not, ALSO ended up outside the boundary!
If we had more than one at the same time looking like that it would slow the game down considerably. I started testing to figure out what I could do, then realized that I didn't even need to get them a path. They weren't trying to get to a certain spot, they were just trying to get away from the hero! The next problem is that since they didn't always run away from the hero (maybe they didn't see you or just don't feel like running) it was hard to tell if they were really running away or just happened to travel in a direction opposite you. Peter got me some recolored versions of the creature icons so I could give them a different color depending on what their AI state was. That's when I found out that timid creatures would run right at you! lol. Then run right past you as if you weren't there. I negated the direction and it all worked right and wasn't slow anymore.
The next problem is with the display. I have things set up so that there are a number of boxes that a creature can fill in depending on the size of the art. It's first come, first shown and they can't be kicked out until you get far enough away from them. This means that once you kill something the bones are just going to sit there forever (not doing any decay and respawning yet). Also, anything that's too big won't show up. I found out that the biggest monster that Peter drew doesn't fit at all, so that made me see I need to rework it.
I've come up with what feels like a good solution, and I plan to implement it sometime this week. I'll let you know if it works :)
-Califer
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Invasion in an RPG
So I was playing Super Mario RPG and got to a point (near the beginning, not really a spoiler) where the mushroom kingdom was invaded by shyguys. There was a steady stream of them coming out of the castle, so it should be obvious that in order to stop this invasion we need to go and take out the main force in the castle. Is that what I did? Heck no.
See, this is an RPG. Big bosses and main forces will wait while I take care of small fry first. I avoided the main castle like the plague until I had visited every single house and cleared out the few enemies that were bouncing in place scaring people. Because I stopped in houses and defeated every static enemy I ended up with some items that would permanently boost my MP. I wouldn't have gotten those goods if I had rushed in, beat the boss while taking on as few flunkies as possible, and made all the bad guys run away. The people just wouldn't be GRATEFUL that way.
RPGs are great at this. Show something in the story that shows you probably won't be able to get back to this exact spot and it makes the players nervous about actually continuing for fear of losing out on things that they'll never be able to get otherwise.
I personally just think it's annoying to have to search everything all of the time just in case you won't be able to get things later, but what do you think?
See, this is an RPG. Big bosses and main forces will wait while I take care of small fry first. I avoided the main castle like the plague until I had visited every single house and cleared out the few enemies that were bouncing in place scaring people. Because I stopped in houses and defeated every static enemy I ended up with some items that would permanently boost my MP. I wouldn't have gotten those goods if I had rushed in, beat the boss while taking on as few flunkies as possible, and made all the bad guys run away. The people just wouldn't be GRATEFUL that way.
RPGs are great at this. Show something in the story that shows you probably won't be able to get back to this exact spot and it makes the players nervous about actually continuing for fear of losing out on things that they'll never be able to get otherwise.
I personally just think it's annoying to have to search everything all of the time just in case you won't be able to get things later, but what do you think?
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