zonhin wrote:
I think he means how a stat behaves. Like attack and defense.
Oh, sorry.
As I said, I've decided to change some things since I posted my design notes. As a result of some of the changes there won't be a need for hard-coded stats any more. I guess it's time for another update.
First, let me get some bad news out of the way. I had ideas about how I would do the editor, and had tried to set things up in advance so that switching over from hand-crafted content would be easy. However, when I got to the point of writing the editor I found that I had been naive; not far in I realized some things I was doing were impractical. I had to change how I was doing some things, which meant that the work I had done previously to make switching over to the editor was actually going to work against me. I essentially had to start over.
Again. And I've been wrestling with bugs - including a very bizarre one that keeps tinting my level maps blue - ever since.
Earlier today I decided that I'm tired of doing this the hard way, and I don't care to write the game a
fourth bloody time when I switch to Torque Game Builder. So I'm scrapping the Game Maker version and getting some help in the money department so that I can switch over to Torque Game Builder later this week.
This means I'll have to start the code from scratch - again - and there'll be a further delay as I teach myself TGB. But on the plus side, I won't be under the constraints involved in trying to write the game in GM in such a way that converting it to TGB later is possible. I can just take advantage of whatever TGB offers from the start. Plus, it'll save time later since I won't have to port. And the game gets better each time as I incorporate refinements that occur to me as I go.
I regret saying a couple of weeks ago that I should have something playable right about now. Even though I have the excuse of the learning curve involved here, it still feels like I yanked everybody's chain for nothing. This went much better the first time around when I actually had something playable as soon as I showed up. So from now on my policy will be to just keep my mouth shut until I have an alpha. I'll answer other questions, but I won't even speculate on dates. It's done when it's done.
And with that unpleasantness out of the way, here's some of the changes to the design that relate to golfrman's question:
1) You can now see the whole dungeon as soon as you start the game. Now when I say that no gameplay-related information is hidden from the player, I literally mean
none.
2) An encounter can just check to see if a stat is at or above a certain level
instead of reducing it. I mentioned this before, but it's relevant to golfrman's question so I'm reminding you of it now.
3) The "
combat"
system is being expanded into a general "
conflict"
system. The same basic mechanism is used: each side in a conflict will have an offense, defense and reserve stat, and each round you will subtract your offense minus the other's defense from your opponent's reserve until he runs out.
What's new is that the system will no longer be hard-coded to use specific stats. Instead, each encounter can specify which of the player's stats will be used. So the same mechanism used for combat can now be applied to other things (like haggling, to give just one example).
To accomodate this, only one stat can be altered per conflict now (no draining both life and mana) and both sides act simultaneously each round (no more first strike).
4) Instead of having a specific interaction for fighting and another for trading, interactions will be more generalized. Each interaction can both involve a conflict
and make fixed changes to stats and items.
And now for golfrman's question. To recap: there were going to be 14 hard-coded stats - Life, Mana, Offense, Defense, Resistance and Visions were the numerical ones, and I was going to have 8 boolean stats as well (four faction stats and four impervious stats).
Visions is no longer needed because you can automatically see everything. Life, Mana, Offense, Defense and Resistance can all go because each encounter can specify which stats to use for offense, defense and reserve.
As for the faction and imperviousness traits, they will simply use stats now. You can devote a stat to tracking your reputation with a given faction, for example, and have it checked when you try to trade with them or lower it when you kill one of them. This has three advantages: you can now have as many faction/imperviousness traits as you care to assign stats for instead of being limited to four each, you no longer have to keep track of boolean values as well as numerical values, and you can have
degrees of trust instead of simple on/off relationships.
As you can see these changes aren't really adding any new mechanisms to the game, but rather are generalizing the existing ones as much as possible.
____________________________
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http://dungeon-games.com/blog/
[Last edited by DGM at 04-30-2007 06:31 AM]
