I have a slight weakness when it comes to planning, in that I tend to lose track of where in the month things are relative to each other. Like, when I decided to spend this weekend getting Bacchanal into shape for outside players, I neglected to consider that it's the weekend before Christmas and I had plans. Likewise the next two weekends. I'm not prepared to give up my limited development time on RetroQuest, so I'm not sure when Bacchanal will go up. There will probably come a time sometime in the next few weeks when I find myself stuck on something else and needing to spend a few hours distracting myself. Failing that it will be sometime in mid to late January.
My efforts in RetroQuest lately have been in two major areas. One is making sure that combat styles other than the straight-on warrior type are viable. The other is tweaking the combat AI so that enemies are more responsive and less likely to just fall into a line following a target around the battlefield. They now hesitate, flinch away, circle around, and change behavior based on how the fight's going.
Next week I'm going to be putting in an actual interface for party stuff and work on filling out the types of monsters and encounters so it's not just slimes and bandits. Some of the party stuff is going to be easier for the fact that I'm now aware of the possibility of making additional map controls as display elements... last time I was really active on BYOND, I don't believe that was an option and I didn't realize it had changed. Some of the interface stuff I already have will probably change as a result of this discovery, but my priority leading up to the first tests is going to be to add stuff that's missing, not revise stuff that's present and working.
I have plans for an in-game tutorial system involving a Training Guild, but I don't believe it will be present in a more than rudimentary fashion for the initial tests, so I'll be writing a preliminary guide to things like stealth and magic for playtesters. Magic in particular is based around expendable resources that cost money, so figuring it out by trial and error would involve re-making your character until you get it right. Stealth has a gentler learning curve, but could still probably bear some explanation.
ID:121990
 Dec 17 2011, 2:55 pm
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Dec 18 2011, 11:33 am
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ACWraith
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Having done a lot of work with skins myself, I'm wondering if you'd be better off focusing on the tools you were used to when it comes time to use the control-lacking Flash client. *shrug*
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I'm not sure what you're suggesting, exactly... the tools I'm used to are the default map, default text box, default input box, and stat/verb panels, since all of my game projects were pre-BYOND 4.0. I've been struggling to work out how to best get all the necessary player info onto the screen using the "new" skin features like labels, bars, and grids. screen_loc did exist, even if multiple maps didn't, so it's more familiar... and just seems easier than anything involving grids.
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What I'm suggesting is that I'm not sure you'll be able to count on things like extra map controls when the Flash client rolls out. There won't be support for many of the interface elements. It's likely fine if you're going to focus on Dream Seeker. It just might make it harder to port if you want the audience accessibility Flash offers. =)
That said, you probably shouldn't worry about it until it's actually out. Don't mind me. ;) | |
I was pretty gung ho about the flash client when I first heard about it, but I'm actually focusing on developing this as something that people can play on their own or on small private servers and if I'm understanding the nature of the flash client it seems like DS is the better solution here.
After the flash client is out and stable (and an actual concrete thing that we can see what works and what doesn't, and how well they work) I might make an alternate interface scheme that works with it, but that's not a priority. | |