Almost got a new demo
Me and My Game Boy by DDRKirby
Remix of A White Cloud in the Sky from Brave Fencer Musashi
Hi all. 'Nother fairly ordinary month IRL. The big family gathering this time was of course around Father's Day, with my eldest niece's birthday thrown in.
This month in Forgotten Gates I implemented yet another puzzle type: single-step tiles. The idea is that the player must step JUST ONCE on each of a group of tiles, so they have to find a path that worms through all of them without stepping on any twice. The technical details of this were a lot simpler than the other two puzzle types, although I did run into a performance issue that caused me to rework how I check for the puzzle being solved.
Once I had established the mechanics of the third puzzle type, I designed two more of each puzzle type for a total of nine. I wanted to be able to announce the release of a new demo this month, but as so often happens, once I started doing playthroughs to verify everything is working, I discovered a bunch of bugs. X) I managed to squash quite a few of them today, but there's still some bizarre stuff going on that could take who-knows-how-long to figure out.
My game group finally got around to our next Ninja Burger RPG session. We went back to the Spelunky world for the third time, exploring the ice caves. It was made particularly interesting by the fact that Heiress Von Heirington had the matter of honor "I will never take a left turn", so anytime we wanted to go left, somebody had to carry her. X) One of our players streamed the session, so the video is immortalized online, something I've been thinking would be cool for a while now. n.n If you want to waste a couple hours (or just one at double speed or whatever), you can observe our shenanigans. The link below starts the video at around the time the mission actually gets going.
Ninja Burger RPG night with friends - snacklefox_vt on Twitch
Fable:
Next up in the Humble Bundle train, a brawler-RPG from the days of the original X-Box. It would of course be unfair to stack it up against modern games, at least in the aspects for which it was limited by the hardware of its time, like graphics and world size. Still, having played it, I think it was a bit overhyped even in its time.
Fable's main claim to uniqueness (at the time) was its good/evil system. Different actions feed into your avatar's morality meter, eventually changing their appearance and unlocking abilities. For example, healing magic is available only to a good character, while turning an enemy into an enthralled minion can only be done by an evil character. It's actually tricky to completely avoid the type of actions feeding into the opposite of your chosen end; for example, early on I took an optional quest to kill pests around the hero academy, only to notice with the first kill that I got evil points from it. e.ea Also, following the typical video game behavior of taking anything that isn't nailed down will give you evil points, and get you in trouble with the town guards if you're seen. Even entering a private residence can be seen as evil, which makes it tricky to find the shops and taverns. X) I haven't tried going for an evil character, but I have to imagine it actually takes a bit of work to offset the good points you get from the bulk of your quests.
The game's combat starts out decently promising. There's a Zelda-like target-locking ability, and you can block or dodge to defend and then counter. Unfortunately, a successful defense does not guarantee that your next hit will land, and by the end of the game enemies will block what felt like around 75% of your melee attacks. :P They also don't behave politely in groups -- if you're up against more than one enemy, they'll all try to get at you at once. I eventually figured out (during a timed challenge that forced efficiency) that it's much easier to use bow and arrows to chip away while evading, because almost nothing (basically just a couple of boss enemies) can block them...and that's kinda boring. You have to spend a couple seconds per shot to bring the bow to full draw, otherwise you won't get full damage (hard to say exactly how long is optimal for DPS, but firing as fast as you can does almost nothing). There's also the option of emphasizing magic, but it would get very expensive in mana potions if you used that exclusively.
Oh, and story? For a game whose name is almost a synonym of story, Fable is pretty blah on plot. X) Partly this is because it has to be loose enough to accommodate the alignment you choose to play. The main villain doesn't even make an appearance until at least halfway through the game, and even then it's not clear that's who he is (although his appearance and actions make it clear he's SOME sort of baddie, despite him having hero status to the populace).
One more thing to mention is that the missions in the game have a "boast" system. They're sort of like achievements, but instead of tracking for all time whether you managed to do something, you basically just bet a small amount of money for an increased reward that you'll be able to do it. They're also pretty samey across most missions, things like doing it with just your fists, or no armor, or taking no damage at all. Occasionally there are some with more mission-specific goals, like making sure your escort target doesn't get damaged. Getting all of them would be pretty much impossible really, and they usually don't make things much more interesting.
Bottom line? Can't say I recommend it.
Remix of A White Cloud in the Sky from Brave Fencer Musashi
Click to viewHi all. 'Nother fairly ordinary month IRL. The big family gathering this time was of course around Father's Day, with my eldest niece's birthday thrown in.
This month in Forgotten Gates I implemented yet another puzzle type: single-step tiles. The idea is that the player must step JUST ONCE on each of a group of tiles, so they have to find a path that worms through all of them without stepping on any twice. The technical details of this were a lot simpler than the other two puzzle types, although I did run into a performance issue that caused me to rework how I check for the puzzle being solved.
Once I had established the mechanics of the third puzzle type, I designed two more of each puzzle type for a total of nine. I wanted to be able to announce the release of a new demo this month, but as so often happens, once I started doing playthroughs to verify everything is working, I discovered a bunch of bugs. X) I managed to squash quite a few of them today, but there's still some bizarre stuff going on that could take who-knows-how-long to figure out.
My game group finally got around to our next Ninja Burger RPG session. We went back to the Spelunky world for the third time, exploring the ice caves. It was made particularly interesting by the fact that Heiress Von Heirington had the matter of honor "I will never take a left turn", so anytime we wanted to go left, somebody had to carry her. X) One of our players streamed the session, so the video is immortalized online, something I've been thinking would be cool for a while now. n.n If you want to waste a couple hours (or just one at double speed or whatever), you can observe our shenanigans. The link below starts the video at around the time the mission actually gets going.
Ninja Burger RPG night with friends - snacklefox_vt on Twitch
Fable:
Next up in the Humble Bundle train, a brawler-RPG from the days of the original X-Box. It would of course be unfair to stack it up against modern games, at least in the aspects for which it was limited by the hardware of its time, like graphics and world size. Still, having played it, I think it was a bit overhyped even in its time.
Fable's main claim to uniqueness (at the time) was its good/evil system. Different actions feed into your avatar's morality meter, eventually changing their appearance and unlocking abilities. For example, healing magic is available only to a good character, while turning an enemy into an enthralled minion can only be done by an evil character. It's actually tricky to completely avoid the type of actions feeding into the opposite of your chosen end; for example, early on I took an optional quest to kill pests around the hero academy, only to notice with the first kill that I got evil points from it. e.ea Also, following the typical video game behavior of taking anything that isn't nailed down will give you evil points, and get you in trouble with the town guards if you're seen. Even entering a private residence can be seen as evil, which makes it tricky to find the shops and taverns. X) I haven't tried going for an evil character, but I have to imagine it actually takes a bit of work to offset the good points you get from the bulk of your quests.
The game's combat starts out decently promising. There's a Zelda-like target-locking ability, and you can block or dodge to defend and then counter. Unfortunately, a successful defense does not guarantee that your next hit will land, and by the end of the game enemies will block what felt like around 75% of your melee attacks. :P They also don't behave politely in groups -- if you're up against more than one enemy, they'll all try to get at you at once. I eventually figured out (during a timed challenge that forced efficiency) that it's much easier to use bow and arrows to chip away while evading, because almost nothing (basically just a couple of boss enemies) can block them...and that's kinda boring. You have to spend a couple seconds per shot to bring the bow to full draw, otherwise you won't get full damage (hard to say exactly how long is optimal for DPS, but firing as fast as you can does almost nothing). There's also the option of emphasizing magic, but it would get very expensive in mana potions if you used that exclusively.
Oh, and story? For a game whose name is almost a synonym of story, Fable is pretty blah on plot. X) Partly this is because it has to be loose enough to accommodate the alignment you choose to play. The main villain doesn't even make an appearance until at least halfway through the game, and even then it's not clear that's who he is (although his appearance and actions make it clear he's SOME sort of baddie, despite him having hero status to the populace).
One more thing to mention is that the missions in the game have a "boast" system. They're sort of like achievements, but instead of tracking for all time whether you managed to do something, you basically just bet a small amount of money for an increased reward that you'll be able to do it. They're also pretty samey across most missions, things like doing it with just your fists, or no armor, or taking no damage at all. Occasionally there are some with more mission-specific goals, like making sure your escort target doesn't get damaged. Getting all of them would be pretty much impossible really, and they usually don't make things much more interesting.
Bottom line? Can't say I recommend it.