Saturday, October 27, 2018

Critical and Miss on TNR

Hey guys, It's been a short time since I released the video showing the battle system on the project, right?

Well, I'm bringing some news, I've been able to make the system where multiple monsters can attack in the same turn works, beside It's really exquisite the fact that I had to do a slightly more different code checking to make it work, unless the pointer system I've made to find out whose monster is who is bugged, now if the monster is not using a multi target skill, and both the user and targetted monsters aren't being affected by another monster skill, the monster will attack regardless of the fact that there is another monster attacking, or not. That will speed up the battle a bit, but I feel like I'm going to rework the interface to make it more accessible and informational to the player when is requested to take an action.

The battle interface is also going to get a rework, I'll have to fit Health, Special Power and Stamina on the same hud chunk, aswell as the ATB progress, challenging, isn't?

Critical and Miss rates are also under development, I'm trying to make them not be so frequent, but still make so the base status influence greatly on their rates, so if the monster has a high AGI and DEX status, the monster will have a higher evasion rate than a monster with lower of each status.
And due to the fact that the Critical on lower levels is somewhat Overkill, I tested to lower the skills effect damage, and the game turned a bit boring due to that, I'll increase that later back to normal, or try to find a point where it is actually fair for the gameplay and still fun.

Another thing that will be coming in the future is the Lucky dodge, compared to the Miss rate, It's chance isn't affected by any other status, only by the affected one's solid Luck points, It may end up triggering when being attacked by an enemy, nullifying any effect of the ability.

Also, since I added a system of miss rate to the game, I didn't forget to add special scripts to the skill effects for the case of the skill missing, so the monster will jump away from the attack distance if the attack will miss, or dodge a bolt of skill before it's effect reaches the monster. This will make the combat equaly interesting and frustrating, depending on who called the attack.

Remember the trees that appeared in the video, well, I changed that and they look... A lot less... Weird?
I guess I'll have to take care of their "bipolarities"...

Well, that's all for today's news, until next time.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

New Tamers Network Reborn Battle System Video

Finally, after so long delongings, aswell as several retries due to
some issues surging during the gameplay (at least was good for bug
bashing), I could get a video of the game in action, up and running.


Here it shows some basic battle system of the game, aswell as part of how
the party play works (even though in the future it may be possible to
npcs and other players), aswell as... Well, just watch the video.


There may be things I didn't talked about on the video, or it's description, just ask in the comments, either on Youtube or in this blog, and I'll clarify the question.


Also, if you have ideas to improve the game, or critics on something, tell me.


Friday, October 19, 2018

New player hair design and combat script changes on TNR Project.

Hey guys, another news about the TNR Project.

This week I've been working quite slowly on the project, due to the fact that I had some "side things" to do, and no, they weren't related to my other projects (beside I've been neglecting them a bit latelly, even more since I'll have to redo a number of them T.T), that resulted in me not having much time to spend on the project.

Even though I didn't had much time to spend on the project, that doesn't means I didn't do anything, one thing I did was to rework the player hair, and work a bit on the script of their drawing, so things like this can happen.
Those are the hair style for both male and female players, or at least for the first hairstyle of both, I will have to rework the male first hair because, I need to make it less a thing of the 80~90's age, maybe If I remove a bit of hair it will be ok.

Also, due to the teaser photo, I noticed a problem with the shirt logo (the one the woman is using), It seems like the pants ate part of it, anyway, I'll get to fix that.

Another thing I've worked on, is that now the portraits of monsters will show correctly on the... Portraits. For the Kangaroo Mob there is no actual change, but for bigger monsters like the Big Foot and others, their faces were kind of cutdown, and placed in a weird way on the portraits.

I've also fixed a bug related to the buffs, I've accidentally placed the script of updating buffs inside the script of checking of monsters skill were active, so if a monster had more skills than another, that monster would recieve the effects of the buff faster than the other monsters, now that bug has entered to history, since it's no longer happening, that also lead me into fixing a bug where the buff animations wouldn't work correctly if the battle ended, since their animation would freeze, due to the fact that the counter was at the battle updating script. Now the counter for the buff animation will update with the drawing system, avoiding "statue" effect.

I've also been working on making the combat less "turn by turn", so instead of one monster attacking at a time, I'm trying to make so if the next attacking monsters are attacking different monsters, and not being attacked, they will attack at the same time, that will make the combat faster, but It's still bugged, and I still have some fixing to do on it, even more since It isn't following my plan correctly and making everyone attack when they wanted.

Those are today's news, I'll have to do some bug bashing possibly before continuing the development, but right now, things are going ok on the project.

Until next time.

Edit:. I forgot to tell, but the hair sprite no longer has the 32x32 size limit, like it had on the first game, now I can make longer hairs, like the one the female character in the image is using.

Friday, October 12, 2018

New Monsters and Status on TNR Project, but no video yet...

Happy Children Day. Well, at least on Brazil, but whatever.

Halloween is coming soon, and look's like I made a few weeks ago a monster for the season without even thinking about it, beside when the game comes out, halloween will have passed...

Anyway, meet the Bat Creature.


This guy is a bat, so you may wonder what kind of attacks it will be able to do, beside more attacks will be sprited for him in the future, anyway, I'll have to rework it's walking animation, aswell as do some work on it's animations for when looking on the oposite direction (to the direction against the player), because It's wings aren't connected to the body right now.

A flight animations is also planned, I'll get to work on it sometime soon too.

I've sprited also two new monsters, but I just did their basic sprites only (stopped front and back sprites), one is a Fox Slinger, which is a fox... That uses a slinger, of course,  and the Maus Bomber (Or Bombermaus, I guess look's better this way), which is a fat mouse that attacks other monsters by tossing bombs.

Differently from the other monsters in the project, the Fox Slinger and Bombermaus (I'm starting to like the name) has some extra sprites for some of their, let's call attacking acessories, for example, the Fox Slinger has a Slinger, aswell as a pouch where the stones are placed, and the Bombermaus has a kind of backpack, where behind has the bombs it will toss in the field. Now you may wonder, how the Bombermaus will light the bombs? Easy, It uses the fire that comes from it's tail, It's tail tip is like a never ending bomb fuse, so It will be used to light the bombs, anyway, I'm avoiding thinking about how I'll animate that for now.

Beside there is a little dillema, the Fox Slinger sprite is about nearly 64 pixels tall, compared to the Kangaroo Mob which is 48 pixels tall, It was not intended of me to make the monster that big, but the sprite of it is quite alright, and I don't need to mind about a few facts like the size is not proportional and stuff, because I'm actually spriting monsters, so I'm wondering, should I scale down the Fox Slinger or not? If I do, I'll have to rework on the entire sprite just to remove about 16 pixels, if not, the monster will remain the same in-game.

On other news, the Status System is now working, yay!!
Two debuffs were added to the game, the classic Bleeding and Stun (or Confusion, due to how it works). I don't remember if the old version of the game worked like this, but damage overtime debuffs will not wait for the monster turn to come to inflict damage, instead, it will wait until a few seconds pass in battle to then hurt the monster, the seconds are related to the ATB bar filling, so if your monster ATB bar is filling, that means the debuff effect is also running.

The Debuffs also can have multiple casters, aswell as stacks, each time a different monster inflicts that debuff, the stack increases, the bad is that right now it has no effect, other than increasing the duration of the debuff, I still need to think how that will work.

Basic attacks like Scratch or Bite will still have the chance of inflicting Bleeding debuff.

The Confusion debuff causes the monster ATB bar to occasionally not load, It works quite like the bleeding debuff, each time the debuff is triggered, it will check if the atb bar will or will not be loaded at that moment. Differently from the debuff on the first versions of the game, now the stars effects works, since on the older version they were bugged, and stacked in the same place.

Basic attacks like Punch and Hug can inflict the Confusion debuff.

What's the point of the attacks inflicting debuffs right away? That's to increase the diversity of attacks, if you like to make a team that makes the foes feel helpless, use Confusion inflicting attacks, If you want to make monster lose health overtime, use Bleeding inflicting attacks.

That also means I'll have to rebalance the skills inflicting those status in the future, aswell as adding new effects to inflict on the foes (or allies, since not every debuff should be about causing problems to other monsters ;).

I was going to try posting today a video with the gameplay of the game, but due to bugs popping up during the video recording, I'll have to fix them before actually making the video.

Well, until next news. And sorry for the disappointment.

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Some changes on the project and a look at the Dog Monster

Latelly I've had some solid updates on the project, but first, I'll talk about someone I promissed I should talk about, but been delaying for long.

First, I'll talk about the changes on the project.

I've made the structure of drawing on the game be more diverse for me, I can separate in layers what should be in front or in the back of the monster sprites in combat, and also added some new animations for some monsters, for you to see them, I would need to make a video, something I still need to take the initative into making.

The project now has some sound effects that most likelly will be played during the battle, when a skill needs it.

Added 2 new magic spells, the Frost and Lightning spells.

About the magic spells, I'm trying to make them make sense, so doesn't actually happen that, for example, a frost spell would be actually blocks of ice falling from the sky and crushing the monster, that actually sounds like as the monster got hurt because were crushed, not because were hurt by the low temperature.

Currently, the three magic spells in the game does:
  • Fireball
    • Shots a fireball that hurts the foe, exploding on impact.
  • Frost
    • Launches artic cold wind at the foe.
  • Thunder
    •  A cloud spawns above the monster and strikes the monster with a thunder bolt.
They require quite an amount of mana, but I'll need to tweak them and think how to make them fitting, and worth using in combat, and not be just another attack, or the kind of thing you may forget that exists. Beside their usefulness will come when I get the new Status system working, since they will be somewhat related to buffs and debuffs.

I also tested the new Sub Effects system that some skills may have, the current existing sub effect that a skill can have is Absorb, and as you can wonder, It absorbs part of the health (or stamina/mana) removed from the target monster, and converts into health (read the parenthesis above) to the caster. This can lead to some vampire like skills, or to skills that restores some monster health at the expense of the caster health.

And now, as promissed, let's talk about the monster I forgot to talk about, the Dog Monster.
This guy here, you should not be deceived by It's "cute" look, or innocent face, because It's one dangerous predator in the game, It just needs to open it's mouth and boom! It's victim turns into it's meal.

In case you manage to befriend one, you'll have the best friend ever as your ally, and a dangerous creature to use in combat, or at least saying to the foe.

Both the Dog Monster and the Big Foot monsters contains the same size, so both have the same status boost in combat.



 And for now, that's all, the Dog Monster still needs a number of other attacks, since currently it has 2 (beside some other monsters also needs more attack animations, like the Cait Sith and the Dog Mage monsters), one of the attacks I plan on adding is a Tackle (or Body Slam? Better saying), It will jump and bump on the target monster, hurting by hitting the target monster with it's weight, now for the other attack... No idea yet, I still need to think, maybe shot laser from the eyes? Ok, that is ridiculous.

Anyway, I wonder what monster I'll talk to next time, either the Dog Mage or the Big Foot, beside based on the monster database, the Dog Mage comes before the Big Foot, so probably I'll talk about that guy.

Meanwhile, there is a new monster being sprited, wait some more time and you'll find out what kind of monster I'm creating.

Until next news. And let's hope in the future news I bring a new video of the project. Beside I still need to work on the rpg part of the game...