The Daily Click ::. Projects ::. Twisted Tower - Chapter 1
 

Project: Twisted Tower - Chapter 1
Project Started: 19th December, 2010 Last Update: 5th March, 2017
Project Owner: HitmanN Project Members:
Project Type: Dungeon Crawler Platformer Project Progress:

HUD stuff and ... stuff.
Posted 23rd Jan 11, by HitmanN  
Because I like posting updates so often, here's a few new screenshots, as well as some musings about armor plans.

SCREENSHOTS

All screenshots
Slimmed down and rearranged HUD.

There's a new 'Stamina' meter there too, but I'm yet to add any function to it. It'll somehow limit melee attacks, similar to how it works in Oblivion, or running in Diablo 2, except that an exhausted stamina meter doesn't prevent attacking, just makes it less effective or slower. The point is to add a small tactical factor to melee combat. You can go all out hack'n slashing, then retreat to restore stamina, or you can do a few tactical strikes, step back for a second or two, then another bunch of strikes, etc. You just simply can't effectively battle with continuous attacks against many enemies.

#1 Hammers
Shows a basic attack with a two-handed hammer. Currently hammers are a bit too cumbersome, and not powerful enough, so I need to work on the stats. Hammers have alignments towards ATK and DEF development, being the best tool if you want to develop a character that uses only, or almost only melee weapons. Hammers also have a knockback effect as default feature. Other weapons can also have knockback power as a special feature, but hammers always have it. What knockback basically means is that enemies damaged by the hammer are pushed in away from the player. This can be a good or bad feature, depending on what you use it on, but generally it helps keep enemies at a distance while you prepare for the next swing.

One thing I'm considering for hammers is adding a small area-of-effect impact where the hammer lands a strike (it kinda already exists, but only as a visual effect), for additional damage. That way hammers wouldn't need to be particularly powerful by default ATK strength and modifier.

#2 Spell Effects
I figured the spells could use more effects, so I decided to add these circle/crest things representing the spell type (currently Mystic or Elemental) to appear behind the player upon unleashing a spell. It looks a bit odd in the screenshot, but it's quite brief and fades away quickly, so it's there just to add a momentary 'oomph' to the spells. The effect could be more grand for higher level spells down the line.

#3 Paused Map/Inventory screen
Here's the new screen you can access with the old map/weapon switch button. It now pauses the game, so you can look at weapon stats and the map in peace. Characters stats, money, etc are also shown here now. I'm not completely sure about the look of the 'combat stats' and 'resources' windows yet, so expect those to still change.


ARMOR MUSINGS
For quite a while now I've been pondering about how and what to do with armor. I think I've finally come up with a decision that satisfies the following criteria I laid out originally:
1. Should not require additional inventory slots.
2. Should not be something you constantly fiddle with in dungeons. Weapons and spells fill that role.
3. Should not be something you constantly find in dungeons (mainly to help with previous criteria.)
4. Must exist in some form, to allow developing a permanently tougher character.
5. Must have at least some options.


In addition, I've had a simple goal set for towns from the beginning:
1. There MUST be some incentive to visit towns besides selling items and doing quests.


So, I've come to the conclusion that
1. Armor must be primarily obtained in towns
2. Armor shouldn't be obtained with money only, because that's just too boring and linear.
3. Dungeon crawling must contribute to armor development somehow.


Thus, I think it would be best that armor is created by some sort of crafting system, in towns. Instead of finding new armor in dungeons, there would be a bunch of different kinds of materials you can find in the dungeons, then use them in town to craft armor (or weapons, if you prefer to). There's infinite, or at least a ton of space for the materials, so there's never a need to fiddle with that stuff in dungeons. You just collect what you find, and then check in town what kind of armor pieces you can make to replace the old parts, or save the materials for ever better stuff. Certain materials are found more often in certain places, so you can also go farming/mining for such materials if you prefer to. The different armor parts would contribute to different stats, so it would be yet another way to define your preferred character role.

Thoughts?
Preview

Preview

Preview


Posted by Shiru 23rd January, 2011

Nice improvements ! Yes, I think that your armor concept is great, that way it will be fun.
 
Posted by alastair john jack 24th January, 2011

New HUD design is a lot better. I'm unsure of your stamina design, it'll perhaps help add variety to combat by not spamming attacks but it may end up just slowing down the game (with constant retreating).
 
Posted by Shiru 24th January, 2011

Actually, the stamina concept reminds me of Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2) ^^
 
Posted by Dogzer 24th January, 2011

I think it's awesome
 
Posted by HitmanN 24th January, 2011

alastair john jack:
True, it needs to be tested in action first. There's supposed to be ways to improve maximum stamina, lower the consumption of certain actions or improve the recuperation speed though, so if you focus on melee attacks exclusively, then you might be able to build a character that is barely hindered by stamina consumption at all.

Shiru:
I don't remember SoM having a stamina bar though. ;o Just an attack charge bar that does stronger attacks the longer you hold down the attack button. That is something I've also been considering, in case the stamina concept doesn't work well.
 
Posted by Del Duio 24th January, 2011

My main heroes in most games use warhammers I'd suggest having a high critical hit rate too.

An idea on the AoE hammer effect: When it hits the ground what if the impact sent little rocks and crap flying from the ground that could hit enemies and slightly damage them?

Armor ideas I've been messing around with myself:

Heavy Armor: Best DEF, dexterity penalties / can't jump as high
Medium Armor: Good DEF, slight DEX penalties / doesn't effect jump height much
Light Armor: Low DEF, but no DEX or jump penalties.

Should you incorporate helmets somehow you could have them slightly impact your hit% in a negative way, as a closed helmet would severly limit your field of vision in "real life" I would assume. Of course the DEF bonus from wearing a helmet might be worth it to some players regardless. So say if your armor type comes equipped with a helmet (like plate armor) you could factor in the hit% penalty right then.

Also you could make the material armor's made from have an impact, like say if you wore some clothes they could catch on fire wheras a suit of steel armor wouldn't.


 
Posted by Del Duio 24th January, 2011

Rudimentary Crafting, depending on what your max # of materials would be could go something like this:

1) Armor Blueprints (light / med / heavy)
2) Leather Strips
3) Chain Links
4) Ore or another metal source (Iron, etc)
5) Water (for cooling)
6) Animal Hides
7) Smithing Hammer
8 ) Padding

Now of course this would be a big pain in the ass but from the sounds of things it looks like what you're looking for anyhow. If you want armor to not be growing on every tree and more rare, you could either purchase some of the ingredients at town (for lots of $$) or diversify your treasure drops throughout the dungeon by adding ingredients to the loot tables.

For example if you wanted to go to a central town forge and make yourself Leather Armor you might have to first collect the following:

*Light Armor Blueprint
*Leather Strips
*Animal Hide

Or for something more complicated like Chain Mail:

*Medium Armor Bllueprint
*Chain Links
*Smithing Hammer
*Water
*Leather Strips
*Padding

And if you want to get funky for some Dragon Plate:

*Heavy Armor Blueprint
*Dragon Scale (hard to get, obviously)
*Smithing Hammer
*Water
*Leather Strips
*Iron Ore
*Padding

You could further customization options a'la The Horadric Cube and gems / rubies too:

Add a diamond to any armor: +50% defense
Add a rabbit foot: +1-4 luck
Add a horn or some spikes: +5% enemy melee damage returned (like D2's "Thorns" aura)
And etc, the potential is huge

Just some ideas, I'm sure this'd be a bitch to incorporate but at least I'd love it haha.
Comment edited by Del Duio on 1/24/2011
 
Posted by HitmanN 25th January, 2011

Del Duio:
Well, thanks for the list of suggestions. I'm not sure if I'll be quite doing it anything like that, but I did get some ideas from those I might consider though.

What I'm basically imagining is more like upgrading the old equipment constantly, instead of creating totally new armor pieces, unless the player wants to start over with a new piece of armor, to have a different set of attributes. The cost of new upgrades goes up after each upgrade, so the latter makes only sense if you have a ton of some upgrade item you want to use, and want to be able to have more upgrades in an item, at the cost of forfeiting the other bonuses.

In the end though, I want to keep the number of different crafting items low enough, so that a full list can be displayed in the Resources window (maybe a slightly bigger window though, but anyways). What I want to completely avoid during dungeon crawling is looking through lists or grids of items. Where games like Diablo and Titan Quest prefer quantity over quality when it comes to loot, I want more quality than quantity. But who knows, maybe I'll decide otherwise anyways down the line. ;P
 
Posted by Del Duio 25th January, 2011

Maybe you could have it so that armor types always have some sort of base mod, and you could get objects / gems / whathaveyou that can be added to it. Kind of like adding runes to a socketed item in D2 only unlimited. Have each armor keep a variable that tells how many times you've upgraded it and use that as a multiplier to determine upgrade cost.

More long texts to follow, sorry!

Ex.

Robes always have a 5% evade bonus
Chain Mail always has resist fire 10%
Plate Armor always has resist blunt weapons 10%

--

Items used in upgrading from above-

Rabbit's Foot (adds 1-4 luck) / Upgrade Cost = 50
Spike (enemy takes 1-3 damage when it hits you) / Upgrade Cost = 75
Diamond (adds +50% defense) / Upgrade Cost = 1000
Bat Wing (adds 2-4 evade %) / Upgrade Cost = 850
Emerald (adds 1-5% poison resistance) / Upgrade Cost = 120

--

You could use the "Upgrade cost" variable in combination with how many times the armor's been previously upgraded like this-

Smithing Cost = Upgrade Cost * (ArmorUpgraded + 1 )

And then if the player does it you add 1 to the ArmorUpgraded variable to make the next time you want to mess around with it more costly. Obviously items used in crafting that are extremely useful (like the evade, or +50% defense above) should be very expensive otherwise you'd have a lot of game breaking armor out there.

So if the player buys / gets a Rpbe and has a Bat Wing and 2 Emeralds he could upgrade it 3 times to the tune of-

Robe, defense (whatever it is), evade 5%, Armor Upgraded variable = 0

Adds: Bat Wing
Smithing Cost: 850 * (0 + 1), or $850
Outcome: +3% evade

Robe, defense (whatever it is), evade 8%, Armor Upgraded variable = 1

Adds: Emerald
Smithing Cost: 120 * (1 + 1), or $240
Outcome: +5% poison resistance

Robe, defense (whatever it is), evade 8%, Poison Resistance 5%, Armor Upgraded variable = 2

Adds: the other Emerald
Smithing Cost: 120 * (2 + 1), or $360
Outcome: +2% poison resistance

Robe, defense (whatever it is), evade 8%, Poison Resistance 7%, Armor Upgraded variable = 3

--

Hahaha, actually if you don't use this stuff I might eventually I kind of like these ideas

 
Posted by HitmanN 25th January, 2011

Del Duio:
Something like that was indeed what I had in mind, though less restricted, and with less focus on costs, and more on the item quantities (eg. 20 crystals and 10 magic essences to upgrade one point of MGC). Finding enough items for an upgrade is enough cost already. Certainly it'll cost something to apply upgrades, but just some pocket change mostly.

I don't want to so much limit the number of upgrades you can apply, other than making them require much more items, mostly because then you'd want to keep the old equipment, and the player is not supposed to own multiple armor pieces that fill the same 'slot' at once. That would just make players want to carry them around so they can switch them when they want, which is not what I want at this time.

Most likely I'll just simply make it possible to choose what kind of armor to use as base, then allow adding as many upgrades to it as possible throughout the game. The type of base armor defines the number of items required for each upgrade type. The process of building a set of armor is thus part of the character progression, so the decisions about armor upgrades are lasting and important.

Also, I'm not yet sure if I want stuff like evasion and criticals to be included. Possibly yes, but only as very specific things, like if you've picked a weapon proficiency for hammers, then hammers have a chance for criticals, etc.

Could you perhaps post stuff like this in the project forum instead? It'd be easier to find and browse them if I later on want to take another look.
 


 



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