The "don't look at me!" update, aggro system and capture on TNR project.

Hey guys, I'm back with some TNR news.

I've been reworking a few things on the project, alongside implementing new things, like the fact that depending on the map you are at, monsters will now have aggro on you, depending on how near to them you are, so if you stay close to a monster for too long, you'll be in troubles.

Currently the game gives you a signal for when the monster is about to try attacking you, It will first start staring at you, even will change the direction look depending on where you are compared to the monster, after a few time has passed, it will begin to chase you. The same may also be valid for npcs, so if npcs are in the view range of a monster, it will try to attack. Now I guess you get why I called it the "don't look at me!" update.

A way of avoiding being chased by the monster, is by getting away from it's view range, It will eventually forget about you and return to it's wandering state.

The video also shows a few monsters that were added in the game, as time has passed.

Currently, it's also even more dangerous if more than one monster aggros you, because they will not mind if you are in battle or not, they will join the battle and try to attack you too, even if you are out numbered. I will need to think what I will add to make so the monsters either respect or not if you will be outnumbered in battle, that may also include a system to make so sometimes monsters may come to aid you in combat, too. Maybe that will be related to the monster personal behavior and map setting?

I've also implemented a Capture system to the game (Beside by the way it works, looks more like a Persuasion or something system), the percentage of success on the capture is related to the level and the size of the monsters in the team, so if for example you have a team of 3 medium sized monsters at level 1, you will have difficulty trying to convince an extra large level 1 monster, but It's possible, even if you level up your team for a better rate.

The capture system is planned to pass through changes, since currently, It doesn't care about the turn, so It's instantaneous the attempt of capture. I will attempt to change that so It's controlled by a monster skill, so there could be different capture methods you could acquire, or even monsters that are more into the socialization part of battle.

The status system is also passing through another rework, I'm trying to make it use less big numbers as level increases, following the original idea, so a level 100 character compared to a level 1 character wont have, for example, thousands of health, that could be game breaking.

Well, that's all for today's news, I kind of wonder what you guys think of the new monsters in the game, that were leaked in the videos, If you leave a comment telling your thoughts about them, I'd be happy.

Also, I've had to retry recording the videos quite a number of times, because I kept forgetting to turn off the media player when recording, so yeah, I've had to restart the video recording several times, but at least I were able to do and release them! Yay!!

Until next news.

The progression on Beat 'em up adventure games, are the developers doing it wrong?

I've been wondering some times about how the progression in terms of leveling works in beat 'em up adventure games, like the ones seen in Dungeon and Fighters Online and Elsword, and I believe the fact that the player progresses in level as the stages unlocks and quests are completed is a mistake.

You may think I'm being quite radical on saying that, but the sense of personal progression isn't just about being by the level of the stage, but instead related on how you play with your character in any situation, even if you are underleveled. On the time I played Lunia Online, after it first launched it's brazillian server, the game didn't had quests for leveling, so if you kept following the stages one by one, you would end up underleveled for it, that's the part where you'll think "that is the problem", and I say no. I'll tell you why: Because that incentivated me either to improve my skills playing with that character, or party up with other people, being that the last one, several people were doing the same, too.

Partying up with other people that were also underleveled, made the stages more challenging and harder, on the stage 3-10, was such a joy for the entire party when we defeated the, at that time, final boss of the game. Even though everyone was underleveled, were able to do it.

That sense of joy has died when Lunia Z came, and the game added a lot of things to ease the gameplay, like adding quests on each stage to give the extra exp to level up, or allowing you to skip stages because one for your level unlocked. Those changes made the game way more soloable, not even the before used for grinding stages were being played by people, only a few final episode bosses were actually having some people looking for group, but... The necessity of partying up to play the stages has went downhill, and so went Lunia.

That lead me into thinking if making the player progress at the same pace as the stages unlocks isn't good for those kinds of games, due to the fact that a beat 'em up game, isn't just about the level, your progression, but also how you play with your character, if you play well, even underleveled, you can defeat a tough challenge.

The second thing that lead me into this thought, was when Grand Chase was about to close it's brazillian server, too. As a thank you gift, the host made the cash shop cheaper, and rewarded everyone with some cash points. Due to the fact that the server were going to close soon, a lot of people has quit the game, so I've had to solo it, but with the help of a few cash items like revive items and stuff. With around level 58, I've beaten the final boss, counting also the fact that I've had to burn some revive items during that but... It's doable, If I were playing with other people of course would be easier, but just by the fact that is possible for a lower level character to beat something like the final boss, already proves that there is something wrong with the progression of the game, and not related to the level comparission.

I guess that to make a game like that incentivate more the coop, would be better if the developers not give the players some hand holdings, making them progress as stages goes, not only that but also the creatures in the stage the players face against, shouldn't really follow the map level range, if the monster is though, It could gain 5 more levels compared to the normal map monsters, that not only would be an extra challenge to the players, but also more rewarding too, since the rewards for defeating that creature would be higher than the normal creatures in the stage.

So, that's my thought on this matter, maybe those kinds of games should award exp to the players through doing stages, than through quests acquired outside stages. At least would incentivate more the coop play, and certainly meeting new people, since I met more people during Lunia time, than during Lunia Z time.

Time to fix what is broken

Well, the only problem of getting yourself better at something, is that when you look back, you actually may notice that you have been doing some things wrong, and that is valid for TNR project.

A number of things on TNR project are built in a way that is actually more troublesome to implement or modify than actually worth of the result, and that kind of thing is valid for the attributes of Skills and Status Effects (buffs and debuffs).

Differently from almost any other system in the project, the attributes of skills and status makes use of three types that determines what the effect will do and how the status is calculated, the problem with that is that debugging and implementing new status effects are actually really annoying currently, generally leading me to getting lost on the code files, and that isn't nice.

I will have to create a new system to handle the attributes of the skills and status, whose will also handle the effect calculation and do the changes.

The above changes actually will actually influence in more than just making my life easier to add new effects, they also will allow me to add more complex scripted skills and buffs, like buffs that trigger effects when the afflicted attacks/is attacked, for example.


Well, that's all for today's talking about the project. I should release a teaser in the future, once I get some solid progress on it. Latelly I've been messing with some monsters animations, since a number of them had missing animations.

Well, until next news.

Critical Hits. The consequence of the defense formula.

So, after giving some thoughts, came to my attention that the Critical Hits in some games are also kind of affected by the Defense formula, I've talked about in a post I've made some time ago, but the diference between the defense formula for normal damage and critical damage is very perceptible, and sometimes fatal, on the gameplay.

The formula of critical hits generally uses:

Damage * CriticalRate - Defense

Ps:. Do notice that I didn't made use of parenthesis between Damage * CriticalRate, because since It's a multiplication before the subtraction of Defense, the multiplication should be done first, so would be redundant to add it.

The problem with such formula is that the Defense status may be useless depending on how high the Damage value is, meaning that if a game uses high numbers for Damage value, the Critical hit can be very deadly.

Let's say for an example: My character have 1000 of Damage, the creature it is attacking have 250 Defense, the damage dealt to health will be:

1000 - 250 = 750

Everything normal here, now let's try with the critical rate of 2 times.

1000 * 2 - 250 = 1750

Do you see the problem? You actually is dealing more damage than the defense can handle, and that could be fatal during gameplay, even more if the player is actually the one who receives the critical hit, It could lead to an instant defeat.

The way of solving that, would be if did kind of the same thing from Defense calculation on the Attack VS Dps thread:

(Damage - Defense) * CriticalRate

Ps:. In this case, the Parenthesis was necessary, because I want the subtractions to happen first, and then the multiplication happen. If you're actually bad at math, take note of this fact when building a formula or solving problems.

That way, the Critical rate is actually the resulting damage after the defense has been calculated, but wait!
The critical rate actually makes the user deal higher damage value, right? So that means the first formula is actually correct? Well, Yes. But actually, you decide which one you're going to use, either use the ideal, Damage * CriticalRate - Defense, or the forgiving one, (Damage - Defense) * CriticalRate.

Just beware of the fact that as stated above, depending on how high the numbers are in your project, the Critical Hit may mean insta defeat to the one inflicted with it, so beware when implementing the system on your project, and try not to do like a certain mmo I've met which relied on Critical Hits to actually inflict damage to creatures, that was very deplorable.

Well, that's all, folks!
Today's post wasn't related to the project, but I hope this help in case someone of you guys decides to build a game someday.

The nothing happened week, not

Hey guys, I came here to say that nothing happened. That's all, nothing at all.
I'm slacking... So bad....

Well, before you guys starts saying "Bad Raccoon, Bad" or something, the development of
TNR project is in the middle of a little... How could I call that... Complication, maybe?

 


I'm having currently a little problem related to skills, well, not exactly having, but it will be an issue in the future, at least if there are multiple fights happening on the same world.

Currently, what handles the skill effect duration is the skill effect script, so what tells if a skill is under effect or not, is the skill update script, which also handles effect drawing, characters positioning on the scene and other things. The problem is, If there are npcs fighting somewhere in the world, or in the multiplayer have multiple players participating of a battle, unnecessary informations like effect positioning, movement and even drawing will be handled when It will not be used, because:

1. The server will not handle drawing the battle, so having it calculate and handle where will be drawn effect and stuff wont help on anything for the clients participating of the battle.
2. If the npc isn't in a battle with the player participating of it, there is no need for the game to setup drawing effect for skills.

Leaving such information being handled by the game when not necessary could lead to severe problems to the game itself, like for example: Your game could slow down, because with all the battles being handled and skills having their position and effect scripts calculated, will cause the game/server to have less fps. And of course, that isn't nice.

I'm having to think how I'll make the server handle those kinds of things when the player isn't currently present in battle, or if the battle is being handled by the server.

On other news, my mouse seems to be behaving a bit latelly, for some reason. It's double click and miss click rate has lowered drastically, I have no idea of what happened, but It's good that the problem is solved, that means I can sprite again, I guess, aswell as play some games again.

And this last week I've been thinking about the fact of ditching Adf.ly and instead placing a donate button on my mod thread and this blog, for those who want to support my projects. Adf.ly isn't the most trustworthy ad redirector in the world, beside it allowed me to earn some money from what I did, beside most of it went to my games library on Steam.
Beside I really enjoy more the support I receive from the people who played my project, and I'm not talking in the financial side, but on the fan base side, because at least with people saying that they love what I do or even giving suggestions/critics to my project, doesn't have the eyes of a third person wanting profit of it, and recieving feedback from people makes me feel like I'm going at the right direction, because It's really good to see that there are people who cares about my project.
Now you may be wondering, why I didn't placed the Donation buttons on the blog or the forum threads, and I'll tell you why:

Since Patreon surged, I felt like the content creators are more like "Donate until a certain goal to see a new content" than "Donate to support my projects", and I don't want to give the impression that either or both are true in my case, with or without donation, I'll still keep trying to work on my projects, because I love it, and I love to see people being happy playing my projects. The donation is like an extra for what I do, If you want another way of expressing your thanks, you have.
So, why there isn't still a Donate button here? Well.. The only real project I've had released was N Terraria mod, and as you guys know, I discontinued the project, placing a Donate button on the forum thread would sound like as if I were butchering the project for money, and that kind of actitude I've had enough from several developers around the world.
As for my TNR project, It's still in development, and I feel like placing the button here would indirectly be used by people to donate for the project, whose I still don't know if will eventually be released or not, so if it ends up not being released, people will feel cheated, and if I manage to release it, I don't know if it will be a free game or not, if isn't, people might feel cheated too, because donated for something that isn't free, so that's why I don't feel right about placing the button here.

Well, that's actually my thoughts, and took longer than I thought. Sorry for talking so much about donation and monetary stuff, but I really doesn't feel well about thinking of the donations, for example, let's say: PC Gamer featured my mod last week, I talk about that to a parent of mine, the person didn't cared at all about the fact that my mod was featured as one of the best mods of Terraria, instead wanted to know if I could get lucre out of it. So yeah, that is the problem, all my effort down the drain due to a capitalist vision. At least that person can't blame me for spending the entire night doing what I want.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I really needed to take that out of my chest.
Until next news.