Author Topic: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG  (Read 23779 times)

ShadowNCS

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #30 on: February 15, 2014, 02:38:21 PM »
If your best characters' levels are high enough, enemies' levels will scale up, but they won't increase beyond the creature's maximum possible level.
Oh, the enemies scale in levels. That might make things more interesting. It worked well enough in Final Fantasy 8, at least. ^^
Not that that will affect me all too much, though, since I'm usually underleveled most of the time. xD;

On the positive side, if you really like grinding, it should be possible to reach level 99 on Lunatic, since the level difference penalty won't stop you anymore.
Speaking of FF8, is there a damage cap in your game (like 9999)? Because if so, then leveling up to level 99 might actually be a bad thing (on lunatic). xD

Solmyr2000

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #31 on: February 15, 2014, 03:00:34 PM »
Oh, the enemies scale in levels. That might make things more interesting. It worked well enough in Final Fantasy 8, at least. ^^
Not that that will affect me all too much, though, since I'm usually underleveled most of the time. xD;
The level scaling is mostly there to let you visit similar-level areas in any order without enemies being too easy or too hard. Unless it's Lunatic of course, there it's just another way to screw you up.

Speaking of FF8, is there a damage cap in your game (like 9999)? Because if so, then leveling up to level 99 might actually be a bad thing (on lunatic). xD
No, there is no damage cap, it's pretty pointless.

Solmyr2000

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #32 on: March 06, 2014, 10:19:31 AM »
Well, some news and random things.
1) For more variety, enemies now have randomized equipment (they have a chance to drop it, too) and 1-2 random personality traits. Personality traits affect the way AI behaves.
For example, someone with a "Vengeful" personality will attack those who are attacking them, or someone with a "Selfless" personality will try to help (heal/buff/dispel) others, but not self. If you have Satori in your party, you will be able to see your enemies' personalities. Right now there are 46 different personality traits, but I'll add more.
Also, encounters, random equipment and loot are now un-hardcoded so it's possible to mod them too.

2) After a lot of testing, I decided that power should also affect actual stats - every point of power will now raise all stats (except HP/MP/speed/initiative) by 5%. If you have a spellcard active, your power is considered to be at full. Even if you had less than full before you charged it.
That actually was a special feature of a particular character before, but now it applies to everyone.

3) Day/night effects in battle
Screenshot link
Screenshot link
Screenshot link
That "copy-paste all the trees" background is ugly, I know, but it's still better than empty space before I guess :V

4) Random screenshot of Sakuya's ultimate skill
It was done long ago, in fact it was the first field effect in the game, but anyway: Screenshot link

5) Random screenshot of Patchy's huge skill tree and her ultimate skill as well
Screenshot link
The description is cryptic, so I'll explain what it does - "Elemental Amplifier" increases all damage dealt by 4 primal elements (fire/water/air/earth). 100 power means +100% damage. This, as a field effect, applies to everyone, both enemies and allies.
Simultaneously, this skill puts an elemental barrier with base HP of 1000 (actual HP depends on concentration and will be much higher) on Patchouli, which absorbs all damage dealt by these elements.
So, basically, it doubles elemental damage output while making her almost invulnerable to it. Quick action just means that activating this skill doesn't end her turn (Sakuya's World is also a quick action), so you can use that double damage immediately.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2014, 10:26:22 AM by Solmyr2000 »

Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #33 on: March 24, 2014, 08:41:07 AM »
Nice stuff. I will be looking out for this.

Solmyr2000

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #34 on: March 29, 2014, 10:42:58 PM »
So, what I've been doing this month.
AI can now use almost every attack and is far smarter. I can't say it's done because AI is something I could improve forever, but for now it's more than enough.
That was one of the two last major programming challenges left to do, the other one being
Spoiler:
multiplayer
, and I won't touch that for quite some time.
AI improvement also helped me a lot with balance. It's easy to detect overpowered/underpowered attacks when AI uses them like crazy/never uses them at all. Somehow Youmu (who was nerfed two times before) was still overpowered, so I nerfed her yet again.
I also finished two boss battles, some sprites, fixed a lot of bugs, and completed some things that I've been avoiding since long ago for some reason.

There is a new feature - weather. Like in SWR, each weather has its own effect, and some characters now have abilities which give them bonuses during specific weather.
It changes randomly during exploration, but several characters (I'm sure you know who is one of them) can change weather in battle, although it will revert back after the battle ends.

And random stuff, here are some of the more interesting passive abilities:
Reisen's "Depths of Madness" - if Reisen inflicts confusion on someone who is already affected by confusion, she will also inflict a random status effect
Meiling's "Spirit of the Chinese Dragon" - when Meiling is attacked and attacker's combat/danmaku/concentration (based on attack type) is higher than corresponding Meiling's stat, Meiling's evasion is increased against this attack (the larger the difference, the larger the bonus). This ability puts Meiling's weakness - very low Danmaku stat - to very good use.
Ran's "Kitsune's Trick" - if target's Accuracy is lower than its Evasion, Ran uses target's Accuracy stat instead of Evasion when determining chance to hit
Mokou's "Spontaneous Rebirth" - if Mokou is dead, she has a chance to resurrect every turn. She can do that an infinite amount of times, but she can't resurrect if someone is standing on her "corpse".
Tewi's "Great Luck" - if Tewi fails any random check, she can try again, but only once per check

Solmyr2000

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #35 on: April 26, 2014, 09:33:26 AM »
More progress:
  • I did several playtests to test game mechanics, AI and difficulties. The results:
    - I was (finally) satisfied with the gameplay. That boosted my enthusiasm quite a bit :V. Game mechanics are "done" until the beta when, well, your feedback kicks in.
    - On Normal, the first boss took only one attempt, on Hard - 10 attempts, on Lunatic - lol it's impossible without grinding. For regular fights it isn't as drastic, although playing on Hard resulted in me adding autosaves :derp:. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with difficulty balance, so I can say that is "done" as well.
    - Also, losing in a fight is now not an instant game over - if you still have some alive characters and you can retreat (i.e. if you're not in a boss fight and not in a dead end), if you lose, you will retreat. You can pick a new party afterwards.
    - AI is acceptable, although there are some issues which aren't fixed yet since they're rare and hard to catch.
    - Well and as always, plenty of bugs were found (one of them was gamebreaking and ended my first playtest) and fixed. Some convenience features were added too.
  • New animation system, which allows for an easier addition of new animations and more "personalized" animations, some new animations too (different idle animations for different weapons), they are still very crude though.
  • Hair/eye colors can now be randomized for enemies. With this, all those generic fairies will have different stat distribution, personalities, equipment (that also means different attacks), hair/eye colors, hairstyles and (potentially) clothes (that also means different elemental affinites).
  • Instead of putting potions everywhere, I added herbs which regrow over time. You can create potions out of them using the crafting recipes.
  • I optimized almost everything that could be optimized without redoing half of game's code (and things that need changing that much are only slightly slow, so it's not a big issue).
  • GUI improvements. You can see some of the changes here (along with some other stuff):
    Screenshot link
    (by they way, windows weren't movable before, now they can be moved if you hold alt)

Also, answering the earlier question about playtime, if you extrapolate my results from playtests, you would need around 60 hours to complete the entire game. That is only a guess though and a long way from now (only 3 hours :V 2,5 years work, 3 hours gameplay, hurray. That was 40 minutes in march though, so it's finally moving somewhere!).

What still needs to be done before I'm able to release a beta version:
  • Main story for the first half of Chapter 1 and all associated quests and dialogues.
  • Human Village, which is a huge task by itself
  • 4 characters; while completed on paper and perfectly implementable, they are still not actually added
  • 21-34 maps (depends on whether I'll include one more area in "the first half" or not)
  • 18-24 enemies (same)
  • 1-2 boss battles (same)
  • 8-10 character sprites (same)
  • Indefinite amount of items
  • Still some GUI stuff left to do, and quest log needs a major rework, it's just plain text now
  • Side quests and all associated dialogues
  • More battle obstacles, and different obstacles for different terrain; some non-hardcoded way to control them
  • Battle backgrounds for all included terrain, also redo current ones
  • All generic character animations need to be added or fleshed out
  • Tileset needs to be reworked and smooth tile connections need to be done for all included terrain
  • As many monster sprites/attack animations as possible in the mean time

That's a lot (and I may have forgotten something), but I hope I can manage that by August.
Oh, and I could always use some more ideas for side quests (or maybe even a chain of side quests). They can be just about anything and involve just about anyone, I'll try to fit them into the game.  :)

ShadowNCS

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #36 on: April 26, 2014, 01:52:40 PM »
- On Normal, the first boss took only one attempt, on Hard - 10 attempts
10 attempts sure sounds like a lot. ^^;
What was the reason you needed that many? Because you didn't know the correct strategy (even though you implemented the boss), because you were underleveled or because you had some terrible luck with the RNG?
I want to be prepared for when I eventually try out your game. :D

- Also, losing in a fight is now not an instant game over - if you still have some alive characters and you can retreat (i.e. if you're not in a boss fight and not in a dead end), if you lose, you will retreat. You can pick a new party afterwards.
That sounds like a nice addition. I sure could have made use of that in GoS. xD;
That reminds me, I still need to beat the final dungeon of that game.

- AI is acceptable, although there are some issues which aren't fixed yet since they're rare and hard to catch.
Good luck finding them!
Just a (semi random) question: do you have automated unit tests or are you testing everything by hand?

Instead of putting potions everywhere, I added herbs which regrow over time. You can create potions out of them using the crafting recipes.
Sounds interesting. I just hope it won't become a tedious task. xD;

I optimized almost everything that could be optimized without redoing half of game's code (and things that need changing that much are only slightly slow, so it's not a big issue).
Ah, optimization. I don't know, I've never run into the problem that I needed to optimize anything in my projects.
Unless you count rewriting half of the code periodically because you implement a new programming pattern (like the component pattern or the builder pattern). In that case, I do it a lot. xD
Anything specific you needed to optimize? For performance? Or just for better re-usability  and readability of the code? (I'm just curious ^^)


I could always use some more ideas for side quests (or maybe even a chain of side quests). They can be just about anything and involve just about anyone, I'll try to fit them into the game.  :)
If you need a chain of side quests, just use the Moriya Shrine. After all, they've set off the chain of events causing the Touhou games from 10 - 13. It should be easy for them. xD
If I can think of any interesting side quest, I'll make sure to tell you. ^^
What exactly are you looking for in the side quests, though? Quests to recruit Touhou characters, like "Spirits are coming out of the underground! Go and do something!", leading you to recruit the Satori etc., just a random villager side quest like "bring me item X from dungeon Y" or something completely different?

Solmyr2000

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #37 on: April 26, 2014, 03:28:10 PM »
10 attempts sure sounds like a lot. ^^;
What was the reason you needed that many? Because you didn't know the correct strategy (even though you implemented the boss), because you were underleveled or because you had some terrible luck with the RNG?
I want to be prepared for when I eventually try out your game. :D
Well, I needed like, 10% more exp to level up, but I decided to try and beat it below the "intended" level.
First attempt failed because AI decided to heal itself until I run out of MP (Bosses have infinite MP) :V. I stopped it from doing that.
The problem was correct attack usage to fit just right in MP reserves while doing enough damage, and one attempt was failed because of a miss with 95%! chance to hit (the boss had, uh, 4 hp)  :ohdear:
Also, I was playing as the worst possible starting character for this fight (MarisaA). Disregard that, ReimuC is probably the worst one, I need to test her by the way.
Still, there's a huge gap between Normal and Hard because Normal consists only of one non-spell phase, while Hard has a spellcard. And you need to break it ASAP or you're dead.

Just a (semi random) question: do you have automated unit tests or are you testing everything by hand?
By hand :derp: Yeah, can't do anything about this anymore. 60000 lines of code is too late.

Ah, optimization. I don't know, I've never run into the problem that I needed to optimize anything in my projects.
Unless you count rewriting half of the code periodically because you implement a new programming pattern (like the component pattern or the builder pattern). In that case, I do it a lot. xD
Anything specific you needed to optimize? For performance? Or just for better re-usability  and readability of the code? (I'm just curious ^^)
Minimap is a very very very performance-critical thing when you have a world consisting of 200k tiles (at 1920x1080, expanded minimap fits almost entire world into one screen at minimum zoom, heh). Now it caches pretty much everything at every zoom level so it's only slow when you first load the game or zoom it.
Wall-rendering was also a bit too slow (all these trees are automatically connected, I just put where the walls are. Four walls around a tile form an impassable "forest"), now it caches pre-generated tiles too.
Other optimized things are fairly minor, mostly rearranging rendering order and grouping stuff to make it as fast as possible.

What exactly are you looking for in the side quests, though? Quests to recruit Touhou characters, like "Spirits are coming out of the underground! Go and do something!", leading you to recruit the Satori etc., just a random villager side quest like "bring me item X from dungeon Y" or something completely different?
Oh, right. Quests to recruit characters are already written and I don't need these.
I basically need some side stories, maybe involving a character or several characters that are already recruited (or maybe I can place it before that character is recruitable).
« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 03:51:20 PM by Solmyr2000 »

ShadowNCS

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #38 on: April 26, 2014, 04:14:46 PM »
one attempt was failed because of a miss with 95%! chance to hit (the boss had, uh, 4 hp)  :ohdear:
I know that feeling. ^^;  [link]

By hand :derp: Yeah, can't do anything about this anymore. 60000 lines of code is too late.
I'm using that excuse with 25,000 lines already. xD
Let's just hope nothing breaks. ^^

Minimap is a very very very performance-critical thing when you have a world consisting of 200k tiles (at 1920x1080, expanded minimap fits almost entire world into one screen at minimum zoom, heh).
Oh. I hadn't thought that a minimap could cause this much problems. But I does make sense, I guess. ^^

I basically need some side stories, maybe involving a character or several characters that are already recruited.
Alright. If I can come up with something, I'll tell you. ^^

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #39 on: June 27, 2014, 10:50:38 AM »
Quote
(and things that need changing that much are only slightly slow, so it's not a big issue).
That was really wrong.  :V

So I radically cleaned up a lot of bad old code, improved error handling, sped up texture loading roughly by 30% (got rid of SDL_image and did it with libpng directly), reworked the way rendering is handled, nearly halved memory usage and fixed many old little bugs I haven't noticed before.
Rendering is now managed by a global rendering queue which handles most interactions (all of them except texture/shader loading) with OpenGL. I had a lot of GL calls all over the place so it was pretty chaotic and hard to control (and really hard to find what's causing problems). Because it prevents excessive GL state changes, it's also much faster.
I have dropped support for OpenGL1.X (OpenGL 2.0 is required now) because it was too much of a burden and a hell to maintain. Workarounds are either awfully slow, take a lot of time to write or outright impossible. It's not really needed (who still doesn't have GL2.0?) anyway. It may still work with GL1.5 if required extensions are there, but that's not guaranteed.

That took a whole lot of time of course, and I definitely won't be done by August, but the code is much nicer, faster and cleaner now.  Further cleanup is required in some places, but it's just a matter of time.

Now for the things from todo list:
  • Main story: Significant progress here, but far from done. Aside from just "more events/dialogues", events and dialogues are now completely independent from source code, so it's way easier to add/edit them now.
  • Human village: Untouched (this one is scary)
  • Characters: Done
  • Maps: No new ones, but I redesigned start areas. Before, they were a very chaotic random labyrinth. I felt that it was creating a "heavy" atmosphere, so I made them less like a labyrinth and more "free" and added roads to give the player a clear direction. These areas are supposed to be roads after all, and even Forest of Magic was giving more sense of direction because it has a branching tree structure and not a random one.
  • Enemies: Done with a few exceptions, because I'm not sure about their abilities.
  • Boss Battles: Done, but not tested.
  • Items: Untouched (that'll come together with new maps)
  • GUI: *Almost* done. This took much longer than I expected (about two weeks of just GUI work). It's a long chain of "hey, this could be much better if..." just like the entire game pretty much.
  • Side quests: Still on the idea stage (in-game there is a grand amount of 1 side quest)
  • Battle obstacles: The system is done, but no new obstacles.
  • Battle backgrounds: New grass background, but it's barely better. Aside from that, nothing.
  • Tileset: Water is now (shader-)animated, one new tile type (dirt roads, huh), new tile connections.
  • Character sprites: 1/8
  • Monster sprites: Untouched (that's very sad. Empty spaces Flying names will probably be there for a long time). Oh wait, there IS a new sprite! A recolored slime!  :V
  • Character animations: I got rid of remains of old animation system and removed simple old one-image sprites, combining everything into a unified bodypart-based system.
  • Attack animations:
    I wasn't quite happy with how most special effects looked, sooo I made a particle system. Here are some new attack animations that use particles:
    Screenshot link
    Screenshot link
    Screenshot link

Projectiles and scripts were redone almost completely. Their implementation was very old and bad (and slow, it's now 5 times faster) so it direly needed that.
Previously, an attack needed a projectile type and script as parameters, and scripts used that projectile type.
While I could use the same script for many attacks with this approach, it lead to many copy-pasted projectiles that only differ slightly. And considering that projectiles have a lot of parameters, that turned projectile data files into a huge mess.
Now projectile data file only defines textures and animation frames and everything else is done through a script. Of course, if I copy-paste scripts instead of projectiles, it wouldn't be much better.
So now it's possible to pass variables to scripts in the data files. If SCRIPT_BASIC_SHOT creates a few circle bullets with 10 speed, SCRIPT_BASIC_SHOT projectile_data: projectile='ICICLE' speed='14' creates a few icicles with 14 speed.
Projectiles can have scripts too, but they aren't absolutely required - if there is no script, it will use the default behaviour of that projectile type: bullets will move directly to their target and will create an explosion once they reach it, explosions will play an animation, lasers will just appear and disappear.

Well, I already had attack scripts and projectile scripts before, but there are three new types.
Since I want particles to be available more than just for attacks and projectiles, I have added scripts for units and objects as well. Both of these can create particles too, and not only that - unit scripts may be used later for the random idle animations, but that's very low priority.
Also, weapons can emit particles too. For that there is a third new type - "emitter configuration script". These are used to create an emitter on a weapon, which will work automatically after that. It's less flexible, but it does its job:
Screenshot link
Aside from that, you can also use these scripts anywhere to set up emitter data, but that's not necessary.
By the way, scripts were finally exported out of the source code to external files. I decided against reviving my own failscriptlanguage and used AngelScript instead.

Also, a small nice new feature - units in battle now have hitboxes and if, say, 5 out of 10 bullets in the attack miss, these 5 bullets will also miss visually. Before, it would always look like as if they all hit.
This won't work for all attacks though, since for area attacks hits/misses are calculated individually for every target and I have no idea how to animate that.
It's like I'm making a danmaku game instead of RPG. Well, it's Touhou after all. :V

Oh, and I caught the stealthy AI bugs, but one of them miraculously disappeared when I was trying to fix it. :derp: It probably *didn't* disappear, but I can't reproduce it anymore. Maybe I accidentally fixed it, I don't know.
I also caught a funny new bug where Sakuya could make all AI units stuck "because every hex adjacent to them is unreachable". Mad time-space warping skills :V
« Last Edit: June 27, 2014, 10:57:01 AM by Solmyr2000 »

WishMakers

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #40 on: July 10, 2014, 01:23:31 AM »
(I'm new...how to do introductions...)
I think this is going great!  I like the ideas, and everything looks fantastic!
As a budding game dev myself and a fan of RPGs, I can't wait to get my hands on the beta! :D
Return of Eastern Wonderland! Made by a PC-98 fan FOR fans!
1ccs: SoEW (N), LLS (N), MS (N), EoSD (N, H), PCB (N), IN (N, H), PoFV (N, 5 char), MoF (N), SA (N), UFO (N), TD (N), DDC (N), LoLK (N), HSiFS (E, N, L), WBaWC (N)
Extra: EoSD, PCB, IN, PoFV, MoF, HSiFS, WBaWC
Scoring: HSiFS Easy (PB: 1.1b), Barrage Musical Hard (PB: 28.?b)

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #41 on: July 10, 2014, 09:40:17 AM »
Thank you, I can't wait to actually finish the beta. It feels so close, but the small things just keep popping up  :V I've just finished the teleporter system, and now I'm doing levers, traps etc. (somehow I forgot about these two things) Because of teleporter system, I had to make a new window for a world map, I also had to make it possible to switch the world map between worlds and make it load fast, and for this I had to fix up the minimap AGAIN. Aaand I had to add emitters to dungeon tiles because the teleporters (and also fire effects, lava tiles etc.) could definitely benefit from that.
And it looked like a small task in the beginning  :derp:
« Last Edit: July 10, 2014, 09:52:28 AM by Solmyr2000 »

Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #42 on: August 18, 2014, 05:05:13 PM »
Looks really cool! I can't wait to play the beta.

Colticide

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #43 on: August 19, 2014, 05:24:01 AM »
Sorry that it's been a while since the last update but thought I'd just ask anyway. You've talked about improvement to the GUI, but do you plan to give it a aesthetic look? If so how do you have it setup? Like a line of text or through a image file like PNG?
I ask this because your game looks very interesting. (Plus getting low motivation for my own custom project and need some inspiration really) And I'd like to see if I can make a UI for the game. whether you use it or not Is really up to you, I'd just like to see what I can do on a fully custom job. I do have some experience as (not sure if the English patch ish done yet) I helped redo the UI for Nightmare of the Sleeping girl, some parts have to heavily customize.
Also I use to do sprites for items a other things years ago too so not sure if that can help.
Touhou Fugyouseki ~ Nightmare of Sleeping Girl English Patch
I run a crappy YouTube channel, check it out if you wish~

Solmyr2000

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #44 on: August 19, 2014, 09:08:28 PM »
Sorry that it's been a while since the last update but thought I'd just ask anyway. You've talked about improvement to the GUI, but do you plan to give it a aesthetic look? If so how do you have it setup? Like a line of text or through a image file like PNG?
I ask this because your game looks very interesting. (Plus getting low motivation for my own custom project and need some inspiration really) And I'd like to see if I can make a UI for the game. whether you use it or not Is really up to you, I'd just like to see what I can do on a fully custom job. I do have some experience as (not sure if the English patch ish done yet) I helped redo the UI for Nightmare of the Sleeping girl, some parts have to heavily customize.
Also I use to do sprites for items a other things years ago too so not sure if that can help.
(Most of the) text is rendered using freetype outlines, i.e. from font files (you can change the game font in the config file if you want), but the backgrounds, overlays, and non-standard ("fancy") text (it's only used twice though) are in PNG files. As for aesthetics, I tried to make something better than boring gray but it didn't end well. :derp: I would appreciate any help with that of course.

Btw there are no updates because I kinda burned out for now. Well, that always happens when I leave myself zero free time and barely get any sleep - setting deadlines you cannot possibly meet is dangerous lol :V There is still a lot of progress since the last update but I'll leave that for later when I resume working.

Colticide

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Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #45 on: August 19, 2014, 09:19:49 PM »
Would it be possible if you PM me the PNG files? I'd like to use them as a base to work around them. That is if its OK with you if I can work on them if possible.
Touhou Fugyouseki ~ Nightmare of Sleeping Girl English Patch
I run a crappy YouTube channel, check it out if you wish~

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #46 on: September 02, 2014, 11:14:02 AM »
Well, apparently I'm able to work again, so here is the progress since the last update that I didn't already mention (teleporters, traps, tile particles, world map rework). It's less than I wanted to do, but still something.

  • Main story: About halfway there. I slightly regret my decision to make two main characters, because that means double the work for dialogues. Well, it's too late to change that, and since I'm always writing two completely different dialogues anyway, I try to make every main story character far more prominent in one of the routes - for example, Patchouli gets to speak much more in Marisa's route. So, despite the fact that mandatory characters stay the same in both routes, the "main characters" will be completely different - not just two initial characters.
    For others, there are optional branches that you'll only see if that character is recruited. They're usually very short or even one-line because otherwise I'd end up with absolutely ridiculous amount of work to do.
    Dialogue is problematic to write though, I can't just do it whenever, only during those "flashes" of inspiration :V
  • Human village: I made some preparations, but not yet
  • Maps: They're all there, but some are still empty and some need polishing. They won't be completely done even after it though - maps need more decorations (e.g. SDM won't have any furniture yet), but that's a purely cosmetic thing and I'll leave that for a later version.
  • Items: Plenty of new items, and "adventure items" were implemented - these are consumables that are used not in battle, but on the map - doubling hp/mp regen speed, doubling experience gain from battles, making your party invisible, stopping time for a while and the like; Also, there are now reset items in the game, even two of them - first resets only invested statpoints/skillpoints, second resets everything, including experience and used bonus items
  • Side quests: Some "collateral" progress due to main story, but in-game there is still only one side quest.
  • Character sprites: 3/8
  • Attack animations: They are slowly being transitioned to the new system

Other stuff:
Back in January, I said:
Quote
But I have a system to save party presets and switch between them instead of individual characters (it's currently removed because of party change window rework, but it's still in the code and I'll re-implement it sometime later)
Well, that took a while, but it's finally back: Screenshot link. I decided to merge party presets with formation saving, so you can save both the characters and their formation instead of saving (and then setting) them individually.

And there is a little yet significant change in the game mechanics.
In a far, far away galaxy, long time ago its original incarnation, affinity worked not just defensively, but also offensively - boosting/reducing the power of the attacks. E.g. 100 affinity would double the power of attacks of that element while halving the power of the opposite.
It made neutral affinity effectively useless, and that's why it was removed. However, after encountering some balance issues and looking at it once again, I thought that with just a little adjustment, it would work very well. So I brought it back, but scaled the effect down and made it unequal - now it's a 20% bonus/33% penalty at 100 affinity.

Also, I have improved the save file format to prevent saves from breaking whenever I add something new in there and changed how some things are saved to make them more future-proof.
I can't guarantee 100% compatibility, but saves will never completely break in newer versions.

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #47 on: September 28, 2014, 03:00:54 PM »
So, I playtested the game once again while fixing bugs, adding missing content & improving stuff along the way.
The game has grown a lot since the last playtest, it's now full beta length sans story events and quests - about 8-10 hours long. It took me an entire week to get through this jungle of bugs :V
Thankfully, there is now a script console which makes it far easier to fix broken games and "imitate" missing events.

I actually reached the point when spellcards come into play and decided to change them a little bit: spellcard slots are now blocked after being used once. You can restore them by visiting a restoration point or by using a bomb item. I don't think you'd ever run out of spellcards in a single battle - you're far more likely to run out of MP or power, so spellcard preparations lose their meaning as a resource if they're just battle-scope. This change also encourages using more characters which is good.

Experience is badly balanced at the moment, but I can't really do anything with that until quests are there since it's a major source of experience.
I'll probably reduce the amount of exp from battles when side quests are there, so that you won't overlevel too much if you fight everything and won't be too underleveled if you avoid fights often. I'll aim for something like 1/2 exp from regular battles, 1/4 exp from quests & 1/4 exp from bosses.

As for the other progress:
  • Human village: There is now a very basic (but functional) placeholder version of it, it needs a lot of graphical work to be done properly
  • Maps: I wish I could say it's done, but I really feel the need to redesign Scarlet Devil Mansion. Well, other than that, done.
  • Enemies: Done. Most areas now contain at least 1 spawner which spawns higher-leveled creatures that normally appear in later areas - basically, "minibosses" (it's usually 1 high-level creature + several "normal" creatures).
    At first they were just rarely spawned by normal spawners, but that could absolutely screw you up if you happened to be unlucky enough (like me :derp:) to meet them in every single encounter. Some minibosses (especially late game) are unique and won't ever appear as regular enemies.
  • Boss battles: I may add another boss fight (not sure yet, I'll decide when there is more side quest progress), but old ones are done and they were properly tested & balanced this time. (Only on normal difficulty though - I'll test hard next time)
  • Items: Done, but I may add a few more.
  • GUI: Done, at least functionality-wise.
  • Battle backgrounds: Unfinished snow background
  • Tileset: Some new stuff for the Human Village
  • Character sprites: 4/8
  • Monster sprites: 1 new sprite
  • Attack animations: Several new ones, along with continuing to transfer old ones to the new system (& improving them)

Some screenshots:
Sunny's skill tree + Fatal flash
Implosion attack
And a (somewhat spoilery) screenshot of the world map (blue arrows are teleporters)

Well, most of the gameplay stuff is now pretty much done, it just needs some polishing. What's left is story and graphics. I'll try to focus on the former, since graphics are not THAT critical. Hopefully it won't take too long  :)

Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #48 on: September 28, 2014, 10:13:00 PM »
How much coding knowledge did you have prior to starting this game. I don't want to be rude or anything but I'm really curious since this is one of the few western Touhou fangames that's made through pure code.

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #49 on: September 29, 2014, 09:27:52 AM »
How much coding knowledge did you have prior to starting this game. I don't want to be rude or anything but I'm really curious since this is one of the few western Touhou fangames that's made through pure code.
Well, a decent amount (about 4 years of experience).  I had nearly zero knowledge of opengl though (that's why graphical code was such a failure and had to be rewritten).
I made several smaller games before (text-based dungeon crawl RPG, text-based strategy game and very simple shmup), but this is the first big project.

Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #50 on: September 29, 2014, 02:45:11 PM »
Thanks for replying.

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #51 on: October 29, 2014, 03:23:21 AM »
Well, I got distracted by coding something else for a while, but there's still quite a bit of progress.

  • Main story: I decided to divide chapter 1 in two - it's very large and the first half and the second half have a very clean and obvious divide, there is even a "final battle" for the first half. Even the amount of available characters is almost equal. Beta still won't have the entire chapter 1 - it'll be missing the final segment of it.
    I completely overhauled chapter 2 (now chapter 3) because it was pretty short & empty ever since I made most of its areas available earlier, in the "new" chapter 2. Some characters that were unjustifiably left out of the main story now play a role while not changing their optional recruitment status. I also demoted one of the characters to optional while making her subordinate mandatory instead (plus events related to them are more spread out, start earlier and make a lot more sense). It was kinda weird when you got the master much earlier than subordinates :derp:
    Also, while I was strictly adhering to a linear sequence of main quests before, now that's not the case - there will be multiple parallel main quests. Introducing "problems" immediately before solving them wasn't quite helping the story :V. You'll still have to solve all of them to finish the game. Or not. One quest might be main but not mandatory.
    Spoiler:
    It will affect the ending - there'll probably be 3 endings - (Any main character, this quest is completed), (Reimu as main character, this quest is not completed), (Marisa as main character, this quest is not completed).
    Spoiler:
    If I ever get to doing the "extended plan" stuff there might be another (the "true") ending if you complete that quest & also recruit a particular extended plan character. So yeah, what I'm saying is, all of the standard endings are a bunch of lies.
  • Side quests: 5 new quests + some cleanup in the quest system - they're now purely on scripts, the only hardcoded thing about quests left is integers that are used to store quest progress (2 bits per objective + 2 bits for overall quest status, so that limits quest objective amount to 15, which is plenty I think). Well, there is one exception, but for a good reason - it's a grand side quest which spans all five chapters.
    Spoiler:
    And it's another reference to HoMM, just take a look: Screenshot link. Would be cool to have an actual touhou-themed mosaic background instead of that grey, well, I can TRY.
  • Battle obstacles: Uh, giant mushrooms
  • Battle backgrounds: 1 new (animated!) background plus some progress on the forest of magic background.
  • Tileset: Some more tile/wall graphics & not exactly tileset, but - lots of new mini-sprites for NPCs and encounters. Most encounters (except bosses) will look like fairies. I originally wanted to use smaller versions of sprites of leading creatures, but I think animated player-like sprite looks better even if it's always the same. Would be nice if player's sprite changed depending on first character in the party, but that would require quite a bit of work, so maybe later.
    Have a Cirno
  • Character sprites: 8/8 + improvement of some old sprites + more weapon sprites
  • Monster sprites: 5 new sprites
  • Character animations: Bodyparts can now consist of multiple images & be colored on per-image basis. So basically I can now combine/color anything to get new bodyparts - that greatly reduces the amount of stuff I need to animate. Hair/eye coloring were also moved to this new system.

Also, quest markers were added. They're disabled by default, because, well, you're supposed to find stuff by yourself instead of being pointed where to go, but if you're lost or can't be bothered to explore everything you might want to enable them.

Colticide

  • Awoo!~
  • *
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #52 on: October 29, 2014, 04:09:41 AM »
Oh nice Cirno! How did you make her? Any tips on making a custom sprite? (Made one a while back but still feel it's not original enough)
Touhou Fugyouseki ~ Nightmare of Sleeping Girl English Patch
I run a crappy YouTube channel, check it out if you wish~

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #53 on: October 29, 2014, 05:10:45 AM »
Oh nice Cirno! How did you make her? Any tips on making a custom sprite? (Made one a while back but still feel it's not original enough)
Well, it's a small sprite so it's very simple pixelart. You just need to make a decent template & you'll be able to mass produce these sprites by editing the old ones, I can make one with all animation frames (well, it's only 9 frames with only 3 being significantly different) in around an hour.
Here's another sprite, Alice:
The big in-battle sprites however take hours upon hours and still look far from perfect  :V
Well, at least they're definitely improving:

RuneDevros

  • Professor Dr. Momoneko-sama
    • Lost Sky Project
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #54 on: November 12, 2014, 04:25:59 AM »
Still catching up on this thread but what I see is extremely impressive so far. Definitely looking forward to the day we can give this a spin.

1.0.0 is here (2/13/14) |  My Twitter | My Tumblr

ShadowNCS

  • Prinny Overlord
  • Highly Responsive to Jinxes
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #55 on: November 15, 2014, 09:21:02 PM »
I haven't said anything in a while, huh.

It's nice to see your project is still making progress. ^^

The overworld sprites look really cute. ^^
And wow, that's some great improvement you've made there with the battle sprites! The latest Alice looks pretty good! ^^
Although I personally think her dress is looking a little too bright, but that might just be me.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know I'm still following your project, even if I'm silent. ^^

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #56 on: November 23, 2014, 10:37:06 PM »
So, I was playing Wasteland 2 / EU4's new expansion lately :derp:, so progress isn't really that big (absolutely zero in story), but at least I partially solved the very, very old problem - the problem of mountains (and "tiered" tiles in general).
I was trying to avoid doing them before beta release actually, but I NEED them for the Hakurei Shrine area, so, yeah, can't hide from that issue forever :V Their graphics are not yet finished, but the new height system works correctly.

I have COMPLETELY redone the way trees and the like are drawn. Basically, it's now even more automated - instead of being put together as pieces of "walls" (that's now only used by actual walls), their positions are now procedurally generated using world id & tile coordinates as input. Decorations like mushrooms, flowers are also generated this way. The generated data is cached, so there's almost no impact on performance.
Here's how it looks: Screenshot link. Now there are no repeating patterns - it's all (sort of) random and I can mix different tree sprites (not used on the screenshot).

Aside from that stuff, I did some balancing. I rebalanced stat growth/effect to prevent low-level items from becoming obsolete too fast (average stat sum at level 50 went down from ~2200 to ~800, but all effects of all stats were increased). The stat growth was so fast (1->2 was a 40% increase + 5 statpoints, now it's 20% + 2 statpoints) that item tier "upgrades" just couldn't keep up. Now items will stay relevant for a bit longer & constitute a larger portion of character's stats.
Also, I changed how status resistance modifiers work - they're now resistance thresholds. Instead of multiplying resistance stat, they are now substracted from (or added to) the BASE power of status effects (before stats apply). So a character with status resistance threshold higher than base power of the status effect will be completely immune to it, no matter how high concentration of the status user is.
And having high resistance is now much more beneficial (it wasn't really worth it before) - resistance stat, aside from its normal % status power reduction, now significantly increases all resistance thresholds if it's higher than status user's concentration .

Domination status effect got a rework - it was too similar to charm when AI used it (except dominated characters could use spellcards while charmed couldn't). Now it's a bit different - domination status effect is now always infinite, and it only cancels if:
1) It's dispelled by any dispel effect
2) The one who put the status is killed or "insane", i.e. affected by any mental status effect (confusion, berserk, charm or domination)
And charged spellcards are now broken when domination is applied or cancelled, because otherwise it leads to silly exploits :V

Also, speaking of berserk, it's a positive status effect in this game - that's why there is no resistance against it. What it does:
1) Unit is controlled by AI and only uses its basic melee attack
2) Defence and evasion become 0, half of sum of defence & evasion is added to both combat & resistance
3) All damage dealt is tripled
Spoiler:
Flandre
can voluntarily put herself in an infinite berserk state and fully heal herself at the cost of 5 power (all power unless you have +max power items) and all of her MP. It's also a 0 AP action, so she'll act immediately afterwards.

Although I personally think her dress is looking a little too bright, but that might just be me.
I have reduced the brightness a bit, closer to older sprites' levels:
« Last Edit: November 23, 2014, 10:56:47 PM by Solmyr2000 »

Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #57 on: November 25, 2014, 02:57:46 PM »
This is so cool. Not only is this an American fangame, but it is one made with code. I really wish I could be of assistance, but I'm not very good at... anything besides story so I'll just wish you luck.

Solmyr2000

  • 不思議の国のアリス
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #58 on: November 25, 2014, 06:02:23 PM »
This is so cool. Not only is this an American fangame, but it is one made with code. I really wish I could be of assistance, but I'm not very good at... anything besides story so I'll just wish you luck.
Russian  :derp:
And thank you, of course.  :V

ShadowNCS

  • Prinny Overlord
  • Highly Responsive to Jinxes
Re: 東方天法典 ~ Divine Chaos: A Touhou RPG
« Reply #59 on: November 29, 2014, 11:24:33 PM »
And charged spellcards are now broken when domination is applied or cancelled, because otherwise it leads to silly exploits :V
But we like to use exploits! :V
Just kidding. Good you found that potential exploit and fixed it. ^^

Also, speaking of berserk, it's a positive status effect in this game - that's why there is no resistance against it.
Can enemies use berserk on you? Because if they can, that'd be total trollage. xD
I generally don't like the berserk stat. My characters tend not to attack who I want them to attack. xD;
(I still consider it as a positive status, though. Even if I don't particularly like it. Although the berserk stat in your game does sound powerful enough to be useful. ^^)

The sprite looks better now (to me, anyways) . :D