Dave here once again to bring you Wednesday’s NCFC update. In the spirit of an NCFC Workshop, I’ll be discussing the basics of the implementation of the battle system. All you game developers lend an ear. You might learn something, or you maybe you’ll think I’m crazy! In either case, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.
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When I clicked on the little “secret” video link , it gave me this warmth in my heart which your rarely get from games these days, especially not from the naming part.
Thank you for that, got some good ol’ nostalgia.
The most common algorithm used for damage is (attack /2) – (defense / 4). I spent quite a bit of time designing the algorithms for my own indie-rpg. I went with a relatively low-scale damage theme, as the only purpose for having higher digit calculations would for be increasing the load times during battles.
Another annoying thing to look out for is timing the appearance of damage numbers relative to the attack animation. I had to go back and fix a lot of stuff when I had damage pop up in the middle of a spell animation.
This was pretty interesting for me to read. I’m currently making my first RPG, and the battle system is a LOT simpler than this and Earthbound’s. It’s basically, Offense minus defense, and SOMETIMES there’s an extra boost from a special magic attack or something.
I’ve been considering making it 2*offense-defense after reading Earthbound’s battle system. XD It actually seems more practical. But I think my enemies were pretty balanced before that… Hmm…
I’m using a program called Stagecast Creator which is… Sort of like writing in Java, I guess, except that it does a lot of the work for you, and is thus a bit limited. I’ve amazed myself by getting around a lot of the tougher problems I’ve come across.
In any case, I guess you could say I was inspired by this post. If I wasn’t just another anonymous fan, I would ask for some tips. XD
I might be writing gibberish. I didn’t sleep at all last night. x_x Sorry ’bout that.
Heh yeah I use C++.
I’ll think up some more topics to cover for more technical bits.
Yeah, its C++. Its under the “about” tab. Lol. I saw it riiiight after I posted. *facepalm*
I think he said he’s using C++. Not 100% sure about that, but…I know there’s a post somewhere on this site where he talked about switching from Game Maker to his own custom engine written in C++, or something like that, so if you just go back far enough you should be able to find it.
Wow. That just got me so excited. And motivated to do my overdue homework… Designing and programming psuedocode/modulespecs for calculating someone’s BMI and average health just isn’t as exciting!! I’m sorry if you’ve posted this somewhere before, but what language do you use? I’m studying C right now.
I demand mooooore technical bits!
This gets me soooo excited not only for Mother 4, but game design too
I love that side of myself. So, love it is~
Stepping in to say; Completionists will either hate or love Mother 4, depending on how much they like that side of themselves.
That is to say, there’s a fair deal of extra content.
And by “a fair deal”, I mean a lot.
Heheh. For whatever reason, I was having trouble typing when I wrote that up. I did spell check though, so the words with missed letters are actual words at least.
I’m usually better than that though, so my apologies. I’m double checking it again.
And yeah, when you go back to the overworld, you could check if the “run away” flag was set, and if it wasn’t then remove the enemies from the map. Moving between the battle system and the overworld is a bit outside the scope of the article though.
What I mean by an “exponential curve” is the graph of the EXP requirements for level ups exhibits qualities of an exponential function. (Alternatively, you could use a power function.) This way, each level costs an increasing amount of EXP to reach. Getting the first few levels is simple since they don’t require much EXP, but leveling up becomes more difficult as the game progresses, which encourages the player to move on and fight more difficult enemies. (Which reward the player with more EXP.)
As for the present box, you’ll see when you play.
Hi there. Kind of been a while since I’ve used this~ But you encouraged me to respond here, so here we go I guess.
I’m sorry this is the first thing I’m going to mention, but the first thing I noticed was there were a few dropped letters here and there
. You might want to reread through the post and correct them. Um, moving on now.
All of this was pretty interesting. One subject I noticed that didn’t seem to be elaborated on very much was the transition from battle screen to overworld screen. Like, if you win a battle (i.e. defeat all the enemies) then the enemy sprites on the overworld disappear, but if you run away, they might stay there. Would there be a “flag” in the battle to indicate what’s supposed to happen in the overworld depending on how the battle was ended?
You mentioned an “exponential curve” in the experience points system. I’m not ENTIRELY certain what that means, but I’m guessing it’s something like how the experience points system works in games like Paper Mario or Pokémon Black & White. If you intend to use this system in the game…will there be some sort of post-game superdungeon with crazy powerful enemies? I ask because I’m a bit of a completionist, and at some point or another I’m going to want to raise all the characters levels to the max…
Finally, regarding the Daily Screenshot of the Day, I noticed that gift box has blue wrappers. Does that mean there’s a map inside ( A map of her own home? O_o ) or are gift boxes going to be more stylistic than they used to be?