Stats in games with RPG elements
- Thread starter Jadzia
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At first I read the caption as "Potion of Fornication." Which should be a real item, as far as I'm concerned.
Don't you think it would be too dangerous for dungeoneers to drink, since they're all going to be carrying burning hot torches and sharpened blades?
All that stuff that an RPG does sounds very annoying to me. I understand the appeal of RPG elements, but I doubt I'll ever change my mind on them. We simply have different gaming styles and I don't see us coming to an agreement on this. And it's kinda your game, so your preferences do win out here.
Now to offer some actual advice, I think some of your statistics are too vague. When a player reads a statistic they should know exactly what it does regardless of their experience with the game, but the way you have it now is just too confusing for newcomers.
What does Arcane refer to? Isn't all magic arcane, so does that resistance work on all spells? Does it refer to how the spell is performed? How do I know if an enemy's spell will be affected by my arcane resistance and how do I know when it won't be?
Nature is confusing when you also have the Earth resistance. Does Nature refer to a non-spell resistance? What's the difference between an Earth based spell and a Nature based spell? Vines of Doom -- Earth or Nature? Both?
Magical and Clerical Skill. Does Magical skill improve your clerical skills too? Does Magical just refer to attack spells and clerical healing spells? How is a player supposed to know if a spell uses the Magical skill or Clerical skill without checking the instructions?
What's the difference between a parry and a block? Aren't they both the same thing?
My preferences don't automatically win our discussion. I like to hear what other people think, and I value your advice.
To be honest I'm not a fan of RPG games either. I thought WoW was really dull and repetitive when I did the 10 day trial. The only one I played much of was Dungeon Master with my brother on his Amiga... and that was about 18 years ago.
But I do like RPG elements in other games. I can't imagine super sprint being as enjoyable without wrenches. I can't imagine Slap Fight being as enjoyable without the cool animations of the upgrades snapping onto the ship.
Arcane is a type of damage. A fireball can be conjured by magic, and it does fire damage. An ice lance can be conjured by magic, and it does frost damage.
I was unsure about that too. But Nature damage is meant for poisons, and Earth damage is meant like elemental earth I wanted Elemental earth in the game because it is the element associated with strengthening buffs. I could change Nature to Poison, if you think that would that make more sense. But was also planning to include Lightning based attacks in Nature, and I wouldn't be able to do that if it were changed to Poison
They are separate because the system allows players to multiclass, and these two variables distinguish between clerics and mages. One skill doesn't improve the other. Players will learn what spells they can cast by trying them, as in Dungeon Master, and if it fails it will say "Not enough experience to cast this Clerical spell".
Parry is a partial reflection of damage back to your attacker. Block means the damage you take is greatly reduced, with no reflection.
It's not necessary to have both. I don't personally like Parry, and I wouldn't miss it if it wasn't there. But then I always play mages, not melee classes. People who play melee classes may not like not being able to parry.
That kind of reminds me of Dungeon Master.
It's going to be similar to that, but with some ideas borrowed from MMO games.
Before Notch started making micecraft, he made a game like this too. Every programmer must make an RPG. It's our Rite of Ascension.
If stats exist in any game except an RPG, all they do is serve to make the game ridiculously easy towards the end as you thwack foes with your weapon's base damage of 3,000, multiplied by a perfect 30 strength, and causing 1,000 damage every half-second for two minutes after the hit. Even a lot of actual RPG's, as well as weird aciton-RPG hybrids have this problem. Kefka at the end of FF6 is hardly a challenge. Now the Cloud of Darkness from FF3 on the other hand, oh boy...
^^
Is that done entirely from code, or a 3D game design engine, such as Unity or Blender 2.5x?
Is that done entirely from code, or a 3D game design engine, such as Unity or Blender 2.5x?
I don't use ready-made engines. I always write my own code.
The GUI isn't functional yet. Two dialogs are displayed as the program loads (character sheet and inventory), and those can be dragged about and closed. They've both been closed in this screenshot.
The four character cards at the top of the screen use data from our heros' health, energy & mana. The bars are displaying correctly, but I'm not sure they're very clear.
The Actions and Spells tabs on the right hand side may be revised. I'm not sure how best to do those yet. The controls in these two boxes are being rendered on the fly. They don't respond to clicks yet.
The box along the bottom is nothing more than a picture at the moment. It just sits there looking pretty.
The GUI isn't functional yet. Two dialogs are displayed as the program loads (character sheet and inventory), and those can be dragged about and closed. They've both been closed in this screenshot.
The four character cards at the top of the screen use data from our heros' health, energy & mana. The bars are displaying correctly, but I'm not sure they're very clear.
The Actions and Spells tabs on the right hand side may be revised. I'm not sure how best to do those yet. The controls in these two boxes are being rendered on the fly. They don't respond to clicks yet.
The box along the bottom is nothing more than a picture at the moment. It just sits there looking pretty.
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Maybe each hero could have their own actions and spells tab as part of their character cards. Are battles going to be real time or turn-based? That's a big factor in judging how well your battle system will work.
The battles are going to be real-time, with maybe a minimum of 1 second between actions. In MMO games, this is called global cooldown, and it is done to prevent players from spamming attack actions.
So at your peak you'd want to be clicking one attack action per second, and the GUI has to be designed to make this rate of interaction comfortable.
I'd fear that too many drop down menus would be uncomfortable to operate at speed, as well as clutter the screen.
One thought I had was to merge the spell and action boxes together. In combat you're likely to have both open anyway.
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I think a good source to look at would be the early games in the Elder Scrolls series. It looked and felt like the battles happened like a FPS game, but behind the scenes the dice are being rolled. I.e, you have your weapon out and can swing it, and maybe one or two spells selected to be instantly accessible.
Thanks for your suggestion. I shall look at Elder Scrolls.
I was going to do spells in a similar way to how they were done in dungeon master. Each spell had an incantation of between 2-4 syllables, that have to be spoken (clicked) to cast the spell.
For example Ee-Ful-Kath would cast a level 4 fireball, while Lo-Vi created a level 1 healing potion... These were two of the most used spells
It's often cited as one of the best magic systems in a computer game, because players can feel in touch with it. Once you understand what each of the syllables mean, the incantations are quite logical. Understanding the magic system as a whole can feel like studying some occult theory.
Here are some more pictures using different texture sets:
Some low resolution textures that I found somewhere
I think I can see a creeper in there somewhere.
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