Author Topic: Touhou SRPG - Story of a Lost Sky [Update 1/22/11 - Version 0.6.0] (Thread 3)  (Read 215006 times)

RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #150 on: December 19, 2009, 01:38:59 PM »
http://wiki.featheredmelody.com/Story_of_a_Lost_Sky/Python_Setup_Instructions

I followed the instructions as per the video but i still get the error at the command line...

What should I do?


Can you post a screenshot of the error you are getting? You might have to reboot if you are using Vista.

It does look a little odd, but what actually bothered me was see Spell SC cost, since SC stands for Spellcard, it's a little redundant to have spell before SC.

I was thinking, cause there isn't a lot I can do sprite wise, perhaps I could take a stab at redesiging the interface and menus?

SC is used for spirit charge. Everywhere else in the dialog, I just write out spell card.

I would prefer that you work on the sprites as a higher priority, but redesigning the UI would be okay if you wanted.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2009, 01:40:55 PM by FawkesGarde »

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #151 on: December 19, 2009, 11:16:35 PM »
Possible success!  Err, I mean my friend found a pen for an old tablet that I have, so all I need is the drivers and I should be able to work on sprites again.  Happy days!

Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #152 on: December 19, 2009, 11:19:54 PM »
tis happy... ;D

Oh and fawkes, you're right...it worked just fine once I rebooted.

I got myself a bitbucket account

username: mew77

I'd like to know what mercurial is before I get it.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2009, 11:26:20 PM by mew77 »

RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #153 on: December 22, 2009, 10:32:11 PM »
That's good news to hear, Elcura.

Mercurial is a Version Control Software. It allows you to track changes over the course of time in your code. Very useful. It also allows you to "pull" the code from the bitbucket repository that contains the latest updated code from the programmers' side. I'll add you to the list of people with access to our repositories now.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2009, 10:34:31 PM by FawkesGarde »

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #154 on: December 23, 2009, 12:27:09 AM »
Okay, I have the latest version now...

However my save file on version 0.41 doesn't work...

It lets me continue from where I left off, but the game crashes the moment I try to move a unit.

When I tried to make a new file...the game crashed when Chen's regen lv 1 ability activated.


Again, this is the most recent version downloaded off of bitbucket.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 12:33:44 AM by mew77 »

RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #155 on: December 23, 2009, 01:33:20 AM »
I caught the Chen regen bug in today's testing. Good to see that you were able to get it working. 0.4.2 has broken backwards compatibility with 0.4.1's save file system. Be sure to check the changelog with every pull since that'll tell you what major changes have been made.

I'll make the commit tonight to fix the bug. In Bitbucket, you can be set to get email notifications whenever new stuff is committed by becoming a follower of the repository. That's helpful since I tend to commit whenever I finish with a night's work.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #156 on: December 23, 2009, 01:41:31 AM »
I'll wait for a stable version to continue testing then...

Oh and if i manually edit player_dat.txt

Can i give myself like 10 extra levels?

Just wondering because I haven't seen the implementation yet.

RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #157 on: December 23, 2009, 02:01:55 AM »
Player_dat.txt is just a dump of the data when saving. It doesn't do anything in game.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #158 on: December 23, 2009, 02:08:42 AM »
Darn...but that's to be expected...

And i was hoping the test versions would have debug mode.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #159 on: December 23, 2009, 02:21:15 AM »
You might end up breaking stuff, but open up the data/XML/playerunits.xml and you can change the levels there. Make sure you have a backup copy in case you accidentally break anything doing it.

Okay I just committed stuff to the repository that fixes the regen crash as well as adding death quotes which are lines that are said as a unit dies. You can specify in the unit's setup XML whether to have multiple death quotes (it'll select one at random if there are multiple ones of them).


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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #160 on: December 25, 2009, 05:39:02 PM »
Merry Christmas everyone!

Here's what's been updated as of last night:

Some new treasure icons have been added to give the interface some more flavor and help you to identify your items. These icons come from YuFe who hangs out in the #anotherdream IRC channel.


Additionally, AI turns are now prioritized in the following order:
1. Retreating units fall back to towards healers
2. Healers take their turns
3. All attacking units move.

It's demonstrated in Sandbox only since we don't have an enemy healing unit in story missions yet.

Elcura, could you give us a quick pallet swap of the Fairy sprite? Maybe add on a nurse hat with a + on top to indicate that it's a healing unit.

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RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #161 on: December 28, 2009, 03:16:34 AM »
So you know that Sort option that has been grayed out since v0.2.X?

Finally implemented it:

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #162 on: December 28, 2009, 03:38:56 AM »
You know...marisa is a bit too fragile for the early game.

I've used at least 5 rice cakes in mission three just to keep her out of kill zone.

Because the mission apparently requires her at least for the scripted event in the house I'd assume.

Oh well beat it anyway.

Strange though..there's 5 faeries to the far left of the map that don't do anything. I'm assuming their there for exp farming. Come to think of it the map is pretty spaced out. The faeries and the walking trees to the far left do nothing but sit there for exp farming. Was this your intention?

the spell synthesis menu is simple enough...but i don't know what your planning for the alchemy portion. And I'm thinking attacks should do more than damage...consider status effects differing attack ranges. Something like what's been done in FFTA. Just a thought.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2009, 03:42:56 AM by mew77 »

RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #163 on: December 28, 2009, 04:30:26 AM »
# 12/27/09 - Minor Balance Tweak
- Marisa starts at level 4
- Fried Tofu recovers 40% HP instead of 25% to improve usefulness at start of game.

Marisa's fragileness is a problem that we've heard a lot about. The original idea for her character was to have her be highly mobile but also fragile. I tried changing her defense stats (DEF: 3/ MDEF: 5) to (DEF: 4 / MDEF: 4) but that didn't seem to have much of an effect. Is it just Marisa that's giving you problems? I bumped up her starting level to 4 instead of 3 in CH1ST2 in the latest commit to the internal repository. See if that helps any since you don't have to overcome the hurdle of having her at a lower level. If that doesn't help, let's look into tweaking the offensive stats of enemy units. I'll have to take a look at redesigning the placement of units in CH1ST3. I agree that the map is way bigger than it needs to be, so maybe the entire map is going to get redone.

I think increasing spell damage might be problematic. Enemies use the same spells as allies, so that would result in your team dying much faster. I don't want a lot of one-hit-kill spells. I think near the midgame of FFTA/A2 I had units that could 1hit kill flunkies on the map which made the game a lot easier.

Spell Synth - Alchemy Portion will involve the ability to combine synth crystals into rare crystals and take any treasures you find and break them down into crystal items.


Status effect spells: Doable in the short term. All the support is in game. We can create them in spell synthesis. We need to plan them out first.

FFTA-type Multi-tile spells I don't see being included in the engine any time soon. Main problem is that the battle system is strictly designed only for one-on-one battle events.

« Last Edit: December 28, 2009, 04:33:45 AM by FawkesGarde »

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #164 on: December 28, 2009, 11:51:08 AM »
The multi tile should be done differently. Insteado of just having a radius of two to choose from you have a altered multi-tile area to choose your targets from.

marasa wasn't an issue in mission 2. In that one you didn't need to keep her alive.

As for CH1ST3, I'd suggest simply cutting the entire far left area and focusing enemy unit placement on the remainder of the map.

I do like the glass cannon archetype you are trying for with marisa. I'll see what combinations I can do with marisa's traits.

Do you need me to test CH1ST2 again?


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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #165 on: December 28, 2009, 09:15:02 PM »
Can you elaborate on your multi-hit target? I don't really get what you are trying to say. Could you give an example?

You don't need to keep Marisa alive. I find "keep X unit alive until the end of the mission" objectives to be extremely tedious especially for early game. Just have anybody visit the house will complete the mission objectives.

I pushed a revised CH1ST3 to the repository. Major features include the following:
- Resized from 40x40 to 25x25 tiles
- Moved units around so there aren't many units just sitting far out of the way
- Two Cherry Blossom trees with treasures on them. I think that it is important to get the player into the habit of visiting out of place locations in search of treasures so I made them rather obvious locations.
Screenshots


Another feature that I added is that outlined text has been added for no-battle animation mode. It was hard to see against the background so I added a 1px outline around all battle map number displays.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #166 on: December 29, 2009, 01:10:42 AM »
What I was trying to get at was how currently most attacks have an attack radius of 2 panels. I was considering different tile patterns for attack ranges. For example
x is the unit's position
= is part of it's range
---------------------------------
currently we have
   =
 ===                                =
==x==           and            =x=
  ===                               =
   =

The player targets a valid location and enters the battle screen
The only attack with a true variable range I see is master spark, and I don't care to illustrate that at the present time.

But what if the attack ranges were varied?
                 ===                                   ===                                   =
Like          x                    or this           x===               or this         x==
                 ===                                   ===                                   =

Each time the player is given a slightly varied attack range. Or to make things simply just have attacks with target radius of 3 or 4.

Remember I'm just suggesting stuff here.

I'd like to as the scripted event on the house is supposed to replenish master spark and max out marisa's spirit charge...rather useful for the boss.



RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #167 on: December 29, 2009, 03:59:59 AM »
I get what you're saying now but I don't think we can implement it without drastic changes to our battle system. Our battle system has no concept of "direction facing" like FFTA, so our spell actions are programmed in a way that takes only a min and a max range which is what Fire Emblem does with its battle system. It is a good suggestion, but doesn't really fit in with the rest of the gameplay. Later on in the game we will see some varied range spells. Youmu already has one that has a max of 1. Marisa's MS is a long range sniping attack.

My strategy with Marisa at the beginning is to have her fight alongside the group for a while until she gets enough SC to get a spark, send her off into the forest to snipe off an enemy with MS from outside their attack range and fall back to the party to heal.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #168 on: December 29, 2009, 12:36:43 PM »
Best to discuss balance with numbers at hand. Can you give me a dump of Marisa's stats, typical enemy stats and an outline of the current target-choosing AI? I can look up the combat formulae on the wiki.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #169 on: December 29, 2009, 06:08:26 PM »
Stats for enemies in CH1ST3:

Unit NameHPSTRMAGDEFMDEFACCAGL
Marisa (Lv. 4)2841057614
Fairy (Lv. 4)358854613
Firefly (Lv.5)228838615
Walking Tree (Lv. 5)379894610
Wriggle (Lv.7)85101088912

Targetting Determination is described here: AI Targetting outline

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #170 on: December 30, 2009, 08:03:47 AM »
I was just suggesting.

I see why it wouldn't work out.


Quote
ffect = (Attacker's STR * attacker's equipped trait STR bonuses + Attacker's STRmod) * Attacker's Spell's Base Effect
Magical Attack Type:
Effect = (Attacker's MAG * attacker's equipped trait MAG bonuses + Attacker's MAGmod) * Attacker's Spell's Base Effect
Physical Damage Type


Since you're multipying by the trait bonus, and Marisa's equipped flight trait has a trait bonus of 0.0%, and fireball has a magic modifier of 0, wouldn't the section inside parentheses be equal to zero. But ingame the attack does do damage. What am I missing in this formula?


Quote
Physical Damage Type
Shield = (Defender's DEF * defender's equipped trait DEF bonuses + Defender's DEFmod) * TDEF * Defender's Spell's Base Shield
Magical Damage Type
Shield = (Defender's DEF * defender's equipped trait MDEF bonuses + Defender's MDEFmod) * TDEF * Defender's Spell's Base Shield
Again there is a chance for the stuff inside parentheses to be equal to zero. So what is it I'm not seeing? Is there an extra pair of invisible parentheses?

Is there a reason that the enemy AI favors attacking Youmu over attacking marisa, when it seems more effective to attack marisa or even Chen. Why did all 8 monsters attack youmu. The fireflies decided to commit suicide. The AI should know that youmu cuts fireflies in one hit.

At the very least they should seek out the weakest member of the player team rather than the strongest. They also make it hard to build SC on marisa.
Again they target Youmu..are the monsters set on pursuit: Youmu?
« Last Edit: December 30, 2009, 08:25:44 AM by mew77 »

Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #171 on: December 30, 2009, 02:32:01 PM »
Quote
What am I missing in this formula?

From what I can see and remember, the logical way of interpreting that attack formula is:
(Attack Stat * (1+trait bonuses) + extra bonuses from spellcards/terrain/special mission situation) * Weapon Base Damage

where 'trait bonuses' are in percentages, so Attacker Lv 1 = +10%

Quote
Is there a reason that the enemy AI favors attacking Youmu over attacking marisa, when it seems more effective to attack marisa or even Chen. Why did all 8 monsters attack youmu. The fireflies decided to commit suicide. The AI should know that youmu cuts fireflies in one hit.
Check the AI decision making link. They don't think about their own safety (which is about right - we don't want cowardly mooks). Weighted decision means proximity plays a large part. Also note that the current AI is not taught to assess if the target is extremely likely to dodge.

-------------

So, I will assume that all Spells have base power of 2 and base shield of 1. Let's output some numbers for Marisa combat in that mission:

First, the Real-type tank check... she'll only get an 8% dodge chance against most enemies there (on neutral terrain) so no, she cannot rely on dodging. All the enemies have an attack stat of 8 whether it be STR or MGC (except for the tree and the boss). Assuming no bonuses, that's 16 attack power and so Marisa eats 11 or 13 damage from a single attack assuming neutral spell alignment matchups. Clearly, putting her at the front is suicidal. Her job would then be mopping up whatever the tanks failed to kill on their counter attacks the previous enemy phase - she does around half damage when she hits a fairy or tree and if Youmu has done her job then that should be a killing blow.

That's not broken from my perspective. If anything, the only thing she needs is higher agility so she has a reasonable chance (like... 30~50%) at evasion - maybe even give Flying an agility boost. Balance can be sorted later though, so I don't worry about it at this stage.

RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #172 on: December 30, 2009, 07:27:28 PM »
I increased Marisa's AGL growth stat from 7 to 9 pts. I also gave Flight a +30% AGL bonus. That puts her evasion rate somewhere near 15-18% against a walking tree at level 4. I can imagine a second level flight trait down the road that combines Flight with Mirage that gives automatic -15% hit rate.

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RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #173 on: January 03, 2010, 04:07:29 AM »
Work's started on CH2ST3. I'm using a semi-transparent Kodama Lord as a stand-in for Fuyuhana at the moment. I also added support for animations to be displayed on the battle map like here with Mokou setting something on fire:



It'll be added to the repository this week since I don't want to commit until I have a working rough draft of a mission. I hit a big snag today when I spent an hour trying to debug a simple but not so obvious mistake in the mission XML.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #174 on: January 04, 2010, 01:35:26 PM »
Well... I've done most of Yukari's field sprite.  Except my external HD's USB connection is broken so I can't access jack shit.  Argh, I have no fucking luck at all.  I pray it recovers...should be fixed today or tomorrow hopefully.

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #175 on: January 05, 2010, 04:06:31 AM »
Added Yukari to the source repository.

CH2ST3 progress. It's playable now with about half the enemies in the targeted final version. I was able to finish it in about 5 turns because the healers are a little hard to kill. Mission launcher is set to automatically start it with a semi-realistic set of party members. I am not very happy with the dialog in the current build. There seems to be something missing between Fuyuhana appearing and zipping off with Asa. Dump of the current script appears here. Can anyone suggest improvements to the script here? Zer0, we could definitely use your help here.

I gave Mokou a fast charging spellcard (400 SC minimum with 50 SC cost but only 3 uses), for pulling out a short burst of powerful spells that you can't spam constantly.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2010, 04:09:16 AM by FawkesGarde »

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RuneDevros

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #176 on: January 06, 2010, 04:25:31 AM »
Continuing work on CH2ST3.

Major changes in the repository which I think should make things a lot more manageable in the earlier missions. I was finding that the Fairies, the Kodama Lords, and the Fireflies had too big of a movement in that they would get a quarter of the way across the map in one shot. Understandable for Fireflies, but I lowered the move rate for Fairies to 5, for Kodama Lords to 4 (Healthy amount of HP so they can last a while), and increased Fireflies to 6 to make them the fastest moving units in the game.

Also added some more enemies to CH2ST3 and an intro scene showing the Healer Fairy. I'm going to take a page out of Valve's game making playbook by allowing the player to get to know the enemies a little before sending them against the foes. (Kind of unrelated, but I'm playing through HL2:Ep1 and the developer commentary about how they design games is very interesting and englightening.)


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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #177 on: January 07, 2010, 04:21:14 AM »
Gekko put in some bug reports and suggestions to the issue tracker so I started to address them with the update tonight:

# 1/6/10 - Status Effect fixes and displays
- Increased basic spell uses from 30 to 45 (He was reporting that characters were running out of spell uses by the end of CH1ST3 before you got spell synthesis available)
- Added display for when status effect has ended. (It was unclear when a SE ended.)
- Added display when HP/SC changes due to a status effect. (Ditto for what amount of damage you took.)
- Output damage from poison to console
- [Bugfix][Issue #31 ] Crash due to death from status effect

*

* Final version doesn't have the minus sign. I fixed it after taking the screencap. Appears as usual damage on the map.

suggestion he pointed out warrants some discussion. This does seem to be a good addition. Something we also discussed doing was have a trait that allows all members of the party to receive 25% of every SC point that a character gets.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2010, 04:27:00 AM by FawkesGarde »

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Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #178 on: January 07, 2010, 07:45:14 AM »
I tested the mission. It felt like a survival mission was supposed to.
After the first few turns the mission devolved into a war of attrition that I was losing badly.
It didn't help that healing prevented my from counterattacking. I do not doubt the design, and will try the mission again later.
What felt annoying was that SC was charging rather slowly this mission. To tell the truth I think the team was just underleveled for
the mission launcher. On my file I have a handful of level 6 characters mixed in with level 5 characters. And this is just after I finished chapter 1.
I'll wait to test it again with my regular save.

Re: Touhou SRPG - SOALS [Update 11/7/09 - Version 0.4.1] (Thread 3)
« Reply #179 on: January 07, 2010, 09:56:00 AM »
suggestion he pointed out warrants some discussion. This does seem to be a good addition. Something we also discussed doing was have a trait that allows all members of the party to receive 25% of every SC point that a character gets.
There are various possibilities with giving SC to units who can't be as battle active, whether they're done in traits or an inherent part of the mechanics:
- fixed, small gain in SC per turn
- fixed, small gain in SC when ally kills an enemy
- a low ammo, low power, no-counterattack, high shield spell which gives bonus SC when user gets attacked
- consumable items for one-time boosts to SC