Author Topic: Touhou SRPG - Story of a Lost Sky [Update 1/22/11 - Version 0.6.0] (Thread 3) (Read 122665 times)

mew77 · « **Reply #240 on:** February 03, 2010, 11:34:30 PM »

I have to say i like the concept art...but then again I compliment all art work because I can't draw for the life of me. Anyway...it's nice.

The youmu casting animation looks fine but why swing the sword behind you if the target is in front. The attack animation is good as well.

What can I say...I can't draw.

So fawkes...do you need me to test CH2ST5 sometime or what?

Psieye · « **Reply #241 on:** February 04, 2010, 12:01:12 AM »

Well regarding Youmu's magic animation, bear in mind whenever Youmu uses her sword to cast, she swings FAAAAAAAR (200 Yojana in 1 slash). Since we can't move Youmu's battle sprite in position though, a big wide swing on the spot is good.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #242 on:** February 04, 2010, 12:17:09 AM »

@Mew77 - Testing CH2ST5 would be good. I mostly threw it together so it is nowhere near finished. Considering starting over when I get my laptop back in working order. (Speaking of which, it gets sent out tomorrow, so I'll be less available.)

Elcura · « **Reply #243 on:** February 04, 2010, 09:09:55 AM »

Quote from: Psieye on February 04, 2010, 12:01:12 AM

Well regarding Youmu's magic animation, bear in mind whenever Youmu uses her sword to cast, she swings FAAAAAAAR (200 Yojana in 1 slash). Since we can't move Youmu's battle sprite in position though, a big wide swing on the spot is good.

Yes. Totally my intention, lol. I wish I could say that was the case, but now you mention it seems like a good idea. Anyway, I'll go with these animations first before making evade, damaged and defeated.

Quote from: mew77 on February 03, 2010, 11:34:30 PM

I have to say i like the concept art...but then again I compliment all art work because I can't draw for the life of me. Anyway...it's nice.

I get that, it's hard to criticize what you can't do yourself, but that never really helps anyone. I don't really care if you can draw, but it's nice hearing other people's thoughts, especially if it makes the design better. And it sounds like you have some, but are holding back. Don't bother, I've taken enough shit when posting art to know better than to get offended even at offensive comments, lol.

mew77 · « **Reply #244 on:** February 05, 2010, 04:10:33 AM »

SO I 'll get to testing the newest build when my laptop gets back from the shop. Yes it broke down last afternoon. I even wrote it a little epitaph. Good thing I backed up most of it. The two attacks I tend to see when watching kendo are downward slashes and stabs...strangely enough no horizontal slashes.

As I recall that was the purpose of a katana or at least some variaton of katana. It was meant to smash the enemy wit hthe force of the blade rather than cut little holes. Also the dashing attack for youmu in SWR is a knockback stab. Perhaps we could do the same, but for now the horizontal slash seems to work. I actually like the current attack animation right now.

For magic I see that it's supposed to be charging energy, but from the example

I don't really see any charging. She seems to spin the katana in front of her and then slash so the idea is still good. I'd look into the spellcard animations in SWR for inspiration.

Look forward to see more.

Elcura · « **Reply #245 on:** February 05, 2010, 09:07:59 AM »

Oh, that's simply because the frames I'm going to use to extend the animation and portray the 'charging' weren't in the block out animation (since I simple duplicate those frames and paste them back to back over and over again). Basically, frame 2 (her sword lowers) could be a charge frame, I intended to have her sword radiate ghostly energy, and frame uhh, 5-7(?) are charge frames (where she crouches down and her hair and dress moves) are the key charging frames, they would probably extend the animation a lot. I'll post what it would look like charging if it helps you visualize it better, but it won't have any other effects to it.

Elcura · « **Reply #246 on:** February 06, 2010, 01:25:44 AM »

Lineart finished. Imagine like, glowing effects or a magic circle underneath when she lowers her body to charge. It would be extended so that animation would finish, ideally.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #247 on:** February 07, 2010, 06:56:27 PM »

Good job! I really like the current version of the animation. However, I think the charging time might be too long. It seems like she's sitting there. I'll probably have to wait to see it with the glow effect to get a better idea of how it will work.

Elcura · « **Reply #248 on:** February 07, 2010, 07:47:50 PM »

It's just to illustrate better for other people where the charging could happen. I dunno how the effects will work, I might have to do it IaMP/SWR style. I noticed they draw the spell symbols flat, straight up, then use some programming guru jumbo shit to make it go under the character and have some perspective thing. I dunno if this makes sense, but look at the spell circles when you declare a spell in IaMP, I wanna do that, but they draw it flat, not at an angle.

mew77 · « **Reply #249 on:** February 08, 2010, 02:00:40 AM »

OH so the graphic was front view that makes so much more sense now..I've been thinking these were in profile view like in fire emblem...That makes so much more sense now. thank you

RuneDevros · « **Reply #250 on:** February 11, 2010, 08:14:12 PM »

I'm 99% sure that IaMP uses those spell circles as textures to 3D objects and renders it via 3D graphics voodoo. Stuff that our engine doesn't have access to. This site has some nice 2D spell animations (currently using on eof their fire animations).

Hopefully getting back to my house this weekend so I can use my old laptop with the half-working screen. I'd like to put the revisions I planned out for CH2ST5 this weekend and that'll make 0.5.0 feature complete (officially upgrading our version since we added a lot of content to it).

I'd like to target 0.5.1 for when Another Dream does their spring release, so the next will be mostly under the hood fixes and upgrades.

Something I came up with last night: Has anyone here played Kirby Super Star? One of the sub-games had you going around collecting a number of treasures and there was a screen that showed what treasures had been discovered. I'd like to add something similar with the treasures that we can find in our game to give players a collect-them-all incentive to find treasures. It looks something like this:

Elcura · « **Reply #251 on:** February 11, 2010, 08:56:06 PM »

If we had access to 3D, environments would be wicked easy to do. Disgaea type shit with 3D backgrounds with 2D sprites *drools*, but alas, no matter. I'll just have to think of some shit, or just draw it with perspective and keep it simple. Anyway, it's a good idea, always nice to know how much you have and how much you're missing. Perhaps, some sort of hint system could be/is in place so that players have some idea where to find the next item (think Lost Odyssey). Hot and cold type thing, basically.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #252 on:** February 12, 2010, 04:57:38 PM »

We'll save 3D environments for Story of a Lost Sky 2. If you can't integrate it into the animation, what we could do is simultaneoudly draw the animation for those 2D magic circles from that website whenever a magic spell needs to be cast.

I've never played Lost Odyssey, so can you explain how their system works?

Elcura · « **Reply #253 on:** February 12, 2010, 07:58:27 PM »

That actually gives me some ideas. But I suppose that stuff I'll explore with you later on. As for the drawing animation, I got some ideas for that too.

Anyway, LO had a system where you had a treasure list, and basically when you unlock new hints it will tell you where to go. There's a list in the menu (under treasure) and it will describe a person, or a place that you need to go to. When you get there and are close to the location, the controller vibrates more and more until you find it.

Basically, it's just like hot and cold but for treasure. I imagine, the menu (or NPC like Akyu/Aya in the newspaper) would give you a list of interesting topics and people (maybe you could interview them with Aya, so you need to find interesting things to put in the newspaper for Aya) and your reward for doing so is an item or spell. It's just a rough concept, but I imagine that's a touhou way or doing things. Could be as quirky and weird or serious as we want, and adds some nice story elements to gameplay (or...vice versa).

Anyway, my crazy idea for tiles and 3D graphics would simply to use them as 2D images. Basically how IaMP draws the 3D texture except I can resize it in photoshop and/or animate it as normal. The effect should ultimately be just another gif/set of images that you can use without having to handle 3D files. For the environments, usually in 3D you make tileable textures, which is essentially what we're doing, but I wonder if we can do a fake 3D as in... Well... Like the 3D elements again in 2D space. So it's all side on (or top down) and there's no camera rotation (kill my sprites or make them Disgaea style - actually, a random thought is why I didn't do it like Disgaea in the first place... much easier for one guy), but everything looks nicer since it's in 3D. The downside is there the missions need to be layed out, unless I create tiles from 3D graphics that can replace the pixel ones.

If this is making no sense to you, then ignore it until I can test it out with the magic circle and perhaps get a few sample tiles done.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #254 on:** February 12, 2010, 09:14:31 PM »

Kind of reminds me of how FFTA did their integration of rumors with missions. Translated into Gensokyo's terms, rumors appear in Aya's newspaper, and if the player has read it, it triggers a mission to appear. We need more stuff for Aya's newspaper. I've been lax on keeping it up to date with latest info over the course of the story we've built.

Is what you are talking about something like this: FFTA2's map system. I would rather not change the way we handle our map drawing this late into the development of the game. It is so deeply embedded in our game engine that we would probably be better off saving it for if we do another project.

Elcura · « **Reply #255 on:** February 12, 2010, 09:23:46 PM »

I think it's worth exploring and will be a nice way of handling it.

As for the layout, it's...not like FFT in the sense that you can't pan the camera, it's mostly replacing sprite images with (maybe) higher resolution images generated from 3D assets. Generally, the view will be the same, but I'm curious to experiment with it. The BG isn't that important, I'm more thinking about the applications for character animation (in terms of effects).

RuneDevros · « **Reply #256 on:** February 15, 2010, 04:25:19 AM »

I'd be interested with seeing what you can make with it, but I have reservations about how to implement it into our current engine.

Anyway, mostly back up and running on my old laptop. CH2ST5 is in the repository as a revised form. Mew77, can you go ahead and test it as it is and let me know what you think about the flow of the level? There's going to be a treasure item down at the shrine at the bottom left.

mew77 · « **Reply #257 on:** February 16, 2010, 11:57:53 AM »

By tommorow...be happy I'm on break right now

Anything else to test while you're at it?

RuneDevros · « **Reply #258 on:** February 17, 2010, 03:48:36 AM »

Thanks. Enjoy your break!

This is the last mission going into the next release so I don't think there will be new features added to test in the short term.

mew77 · « **Reply #259 on:** February 17, 2010, 09:14:25 AM »

A play by play test report

I've got three units stunned by turn 2

and fuzz balls approaching from two sides

Not complaining but that's just what's happening.

Not a big problem stun seems to last a single turn...

crap youmu's stunned again, but still a very useful tank.

What's the stun chance on these things?

I really think you should implement automatic trait learning or maybe that's because I'm testing the mission launcher version and not my main team.

Lost chen on turn four due to forgetting to heal

Steady flow, although still on north end of map at turn 5

correction: moving out of north end on turn five towards center

eliminated quite a few enemies so far.

No bugs so far but I'm not focusing on that right now.

encounter with lord fuzzy on enemy turn 6

struck back in player turn 7

Please remove the river or make it smaller...

turn 8
most of the group is on the treasure side leaving only youmu and keine to face the king

it's a mistake on my part but fuzzballs take at least three people to gang up on them

three fuzzballs closing in on treasure group who've failed to locate anything under cherry trees

marisa crossed the river to attack one of them from a calculated safespot

fortunately treasure group is keeping the fuzzballs occupied so the King Fuzz
(I prefer calling it that)

is defenseless while keine and youmu pound on it at map center right

music failed to play during this test but I assume it's a minor flaw at the moment

turn 9

marisa stays in safespot

king fuzz's HP now halved

turn 10

marisa can now master spark so
Blargh

oh wait youmu has enough for ageless obsession

1HKO

mission accomplished

overall the mission seems fine and I really don't think I needed to devote half the group to the left side.

the position of the bridge forces the units on the left to go the long way around but the heavy defenses around the left side prevent me from sending too few

I also believe I shouldn't have lost chen so early...though that could have been remedied by a quick heal

That is all

RuneDevros · « **Reply #260 on:** February 17, 2010, 05:49:07 PM »

Stardust has a Stun effect that is 80% effective. The idea with the stardust spell is that it can be used to stun your temporarily and then you can get back on your feet again. The other thing is that stun is 1-tile ranged, so you can avoid it by attacking from 2 tiles away.

Regarding the flow in the later half of the mission, I am thinking of moving the SW bridge somewhere closer to the middle so the group going for the treasure can quickly join up with everyone to fight Lord Fuzzy. In general though it does seem like the majority of my goals for this mission are working.

mew77 · « **Reply #261 on:** February 18, 2010, 01:12:17 PM »

What are these goals?

80%?

And how do you expect a player to figure out that they have to attack form two panels away?

RuneDevros · « **Reply #262 on:** February 18, 2010, 02:46:57 PM »

I wanted to create a mission where the objective was to fight up through a set of enemy fuzzballs and then battle with the boss. Previous versions had too big of a distance between the fights or had everything in one big and confused battle. I also wanted to introduce a sense that the party was moving towards their goal.

80% was what I set it to since the attack did very small amounts of damage. Would it be a better idea to go with something like 60% + heavier damage?

Press C over the unit to see their attack range. I guess it is not that obvious but we can add it to the speech before the battle. One of the Fuzzballs will demonstrate it.

mew77 · « **Reply #263 on:** February 18, 2010, 03:06:10 PM »

Oh I already knew of that...

how do you think I found a safespot for marisa

the stun chance can stay where it's at. Unless a player is very unlucky they won't have more than half their team stunned at a given time. I think I got lucky.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #264 on:** February 21, 2010, 05:12:46 AM »

Pretty much finished up CH2ST5 and we're semi-officially at 0.5.0 alpha stage. I want to build an exe when I get my new laptop back tomorrow.

Rearranged the map and added Keine giving some advice on dealing with Stardust.

The epilogue is pretty much word for word from the wiki script.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #265 on:** February 23, 2010, 01:28:00 AM »

0.5.0 Alpha version is here

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149048/lostsky_0.5.0alpha_source.zip
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/149048/lostsky_0.5.0alpha_win.zip

No major changes from internal version.

warpshadow · « **Reply #266 on:** February 24, 2010, 06:52:37 AM »

I am playing the update and I have come across an annoying bug. If you try to play the optional missions the game shuts down when the enemy has it's first turn.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #267 on:** February 24, 2010, 12:16:19 PM »

Ack.

Which optional mission has the bug?

At some point I'm going to remove those anyway, but I will see if I can fix that tonight.

warpshadow · « **Reply #268 on:** February 24, 2010, 03:44:44 PM »

Both the fuzzy one and the alice one.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #269 on:** February 24, 2010, 05:54:45 PM »

After the crash there should be a text file in the same directory as srpg.exe (srpg.txt I think). There should be some cryptic messages inside with the word TRACEBACK somewhere in there. Can you copy/paste the stuff in that file here?