Warscale 77 - Yo... like my bling bling?
by Guimo · 09/24/2010 (5:32 am) · 3 comments
Hi everybody!
Last week I told you I was sending my submission. Everything was ready when, as usual, you brain starts detecting holes in your game rules. In time those holes become black holes and then ruptures in the space time and of course your want to fix them. Of course the voice in my head came to my rescue...
Voices: Leave it...
Me: But... this is critical!
Vocies: Leave it...
Me: You dont understand, this is bad bad, the game becomes much more interesting if I fix this and add that...
Voices: Pack everything now!
Me: No no... look... I have already started to fix it and add that and is almost finished. I have already fixed the manuals... some more testing and its done... give me one day...
Voices: No, pack...
Me: (Whining) but... but...
Voices: Here... have some chocolate... thats it... atta boy...
And the chocolate was good. But, as you see, the voices in my head forced me to pack everything and send my submission as it was. If I lose blame them...
But the bug is still there. Fortunately the bug is more noticeable when you are a new player with no spells and not a player with a working collection.
The bug
So, what is the bug? The worst type, its a balance bug.
Let me explain. In Warscale, avatars start with 100HP. It sounds fine in theory because in magic the gathering players start with 20hp so 20x5 sounds fine.
But in the practice, Warscale plays differently. 100HP for a new avatar is just too much for a beginner game. Say two new players with daggers close into battle and starts hitting each other. Hit Hit Hit Hit Hit... yawnnnnn... hit hit hit... buzzzzz... the time is over and the avatars are still standing...
Now, say you have little gold and spend your money in buying a couple of wolves for your army. A wolf deals 8 points of damage so they may bite a couple of times before being cut into pieces. And if wolves are dead then the game comes again down to... hit hit hit hit... buzzzz... game over...
To be honest I have been thinking on this for a long time. In the end I decided to greatly reduce the player hit points. Now a player starts with 20HP for the wizard and 30 or up to 40 for the fighter avatars. That is a considerable reduction but it is really good. Now, holding a sword makes you more intimidating, and a wolf with the same 8 damage can kill you in 3 turns. Suddenly it becomes important to bring some backup and armor to the fight.
But then, how are you going to fight a large thing like a dragon or a dire bear??? I mean, a dire bear deals like 50 damage in a single attack! And I still haven't implemented dragons but I have heard ancient dragons can shave your common dire bear as a poodle, take it for a walk in the park and uses it as an excuse to meet draconesses (is that even a word?).
The answer is some new equipment in the form of jewellery which allows for more HP. Like this:
Unfortunately I still don't have a model which handles rings and neckslaces, I will try to adapt something later but this should work for now.
I still need to test this out. Hopefully the game testers will be able to say if the change is worth it or not.
Bug fixes
Of course all comes with additional bug fixes.
- Bug in the transmission of the current game list during the game startup.
- Bugs in the mounting code.
- Removed old code related to mounted equipment.
- Improved equipment mounting procedures.
- Considerable reduction of avatar life. The avatars should have 0 hit points at most when they are created. Allows for small battles. Makes armor important.
- Arawn - 20 life
- Sulana - 30 life
- Ilawta - 40 life
- Amarian - 40 life.
- Include 3 broochs of life in increasing sizes
- Brooch of the Ape +20 life - Level 4
- Brooch of the Bear +40 life - Level 6
- Brooch of the troll +20 life, regenerate 5 life each round. - Level 7
- Include 4 rings to allow casting spells in other spheres
- Ring of the Deep - Allows casting Water spells
- Ring of the Wild - Allows casting Life spells
- Ring of the Fiery - Allows casting fire spells.
- Ring of the Dark - Allows casting Death spells
- Included 1 rings to alter attributes
- Ring of the Turtle - +4 armor, -2 movement
In the equipment editor, when an item was donned, the previous item in the same slot was not being removed in a correct way.
The GOLD text in the top bar in the Equipment Editor, Model Store and Library were not resizing properly when using a widescreen resolution.
The plan for this week
I will upload the latest changes tonight. I need to start packing everything for the Independent Game Developer Conference contest. Fortunately this contest says nothing about automatic updates and such so I hope they accept the full game installer as my submission.
This week I will create more equipment and spells. A friend suggested me to start working in small stuff just for beginners and I will focus on that.
Luck with your games!
Guimo
#2
Really helpful comment!
After each battle with another player, the game rewards you with some gold. The idea is to have options for the player to spend his resources.
So, players will be able to slowly customize their avatars and spellbooks to their own strategies.
This also means that after a while, an old character will be just in another league than the beginners which is ok. After all, the idea of the equipment is to allow players some control over a complete random experience which is the random card drawing.
Each object and spell in Warscale has a level, so I guess it will be simple to just report a total power level for a character by adding up the power level of all his items. That way players can just self balance and I will be able to add some server join conditions (i.e you cant join or startup a game if your avatar or spellbook over (or under) a power level.
Of course, players will be able to buy gold using real $$$ so they can quickly buy a faster way to their strategy. I have no objection with that as that means money in my pocket (Warscale is not free after all). But, even the best spells doesn't mean a victory and a player will still be able to lose against someone else with a lower powered avatar.
About the photos, of course it was a dev shortcut!!! :) If the game starts making money I can spend and upgrade all the object art. But for now this must do.
Luck!
Guimo
09/24/2010 (7:56 am)
@BrianReally helpful comment!
After each battle with another player, the game rewards you with some gold. The idea is to have options for the player to spend his resources.
So, players will be able to slowly customize their avatars and spellbooks to their own strategies.
This also means that after a while, an old character will be just in another league than the beginners which is ok. After all, the idea of the equipment is to allow players some control over a complete random experience which is the random card drawing.
Each object and spell in Warscale has a level, so I guess it will be simple to just report a total power level for a character by adding up the power level of all his items. That way players can just self balance and I will be able to add some server join conditions (i.e you cant join or startup a game if your avatar or spellbook over (or under) a power level.
Of course, players will be able to buy gold using real $$$ so they can quickly buy a faster way to their strategy. I have no objection with that as that means money in my pocket (Warscale is not free after all). But, even the best spells doesn't mean a victory and a player will still be able to lose against someone else with a lower powered avatar.
About the photos, of course it was a dev shortcut!!! :) If the game starts making money I can spend and upgrade all the object art. But for now this must do.
Luck!
Guimo
Torque Owner Brian Wilson
I like the idea of having a faster path to victory. Think about how Starcraft (1 || 2) are balanced(?). You can spend all of your resources to gamble on a quick victory and be in a bad position as it fails, or you can spend all of your resources building up for a long game and not be prepared for a rush.
In a way you are replicating this by adding the jewelry and reducing the starting stats. Just make sure there's reasonable chance for failure or victory regardless of whether the player choses to go with jewelry or not. Otherwise if it's required for game progression, you may be adding an unneccessary required element to progression through the game. Also, if your gameplay is really close to card games like MTG, then it may be adding too much randomness in the "Luck of the Draw" element of the game; tipping the scales too far in the direction of chance rather than skill to determine victory.
If you have any artist resources left, I'd replace those photos with models. One, for consistance, and two, photos always look like the dev took a shortcut.
Good luck.