Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth

[DJ Omnimaga]

Off-topic note: the inability to add attachments inside private messages is a limitation of the Simplemachines forum software. I don't think the old board on Invisionfree had that either, though.

Inside posts, I think it's trial and error, because sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It did that since the failed SMF 2.0 upgrade a few weeks ago

[Zera]

I was wondering why I had difficulty with attachments earlier. I got it to work the second time around, though. I had to attach the images to the board because ImageShack is quirky about uploading images that are smaller than 1 KB.

[Zera]

A little more propaganda couldn't hurt.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah I am really unsure how to fix it

EDIT: someone posted while replying ^^

Holy shit these looks fucking awesome! I love the world map pic especially

[Iambian]

I kinda understood what you meant about the mHP and the Agi modifiers that were sorta left out. I has a solution to it that only slightly changes the data structure that *should* work, but it will limit some options. Since they are so few and far in between, the solution is to add another property that remaps an unused stat (unused modifier or stat change) to the mHP and the AGI. If I were to do that, the item would lose the ability to add to that stat, but then again, it might be worth it. After all, most armors don't have an attack bonus and most weapons don't have have anything to do with defense by themselves.

Though, I've gotta wonder why the "Minerva" is listed twice. One that doesn't modify mHP and one that does.

[Zera]

I kinda understood what you meant about the mHP and the Agi modifiers that were sorta left out. I has a solution to it that only slightly changes the data structure that *should* work, but it will limit some options. Since they are so few and far in between, the solution is to add another property that remaps an unused stat (unused modifier or stat change) to the mHP and the AGI. If I were to do that, the item would lose the ability to add to that stat, but then again, it might be worth it. After all, most armors don't have an attack bonus and most weapons don't have have anything to do with defense by themselves.

I realize these bonuses are few and far. The idea is that certain categories of equipment will influence them, but there are so few items within each specific category. These effects are important to the balance of the game. For instance, heavy armor will always penalize agility, but boost mHP. This distinguishes the category of heavy armor from lighter armor. (along with heavy armor having extensive damage reduction)

If you can be more elaborate about how your structure would work, and what sort of edits I would need to make, I can consider it. Are you suggesting swapping out unused attribute slots for each specific item that affects mHP and AGI?

Though, I've gotta wonder why the "Minerva" is listed twice. One that doesn't modify mHP and one that does.

Oops, typo. Minerva should add +12 mHP while worn. Just delete the other one from the notes.

EDIT: I see what I did. Minerva is supposed to add +05 AGI and +12 mHP. I just... organized those notes very badly. Just note the bonuses there.

EDIT 2: Also, let me note something about why AGI bonuses are so scarce...

Basically, AGI's main purpose is to influence hit% and evade%, but items already receive direct bonuses for those attributes without affecting base AGI. Base AGI itself just determines things like a character's initiative in battle, their chance of fleeing combat -- or when you pool the party's total AGI together, chances for pre-emptive and ambush attacks. These latter aspects of AGI -- for the sake of balance -- should be difficult to inlfuence. This is why I've kept AGI bonuses so small, and so infrequent. These bonuses aren't negligible, though.

[Ti-newb]

wow... thats 1 heck of a rpg..

[Iambian]

[...]
If you can be more elaborate about how your structure would work, and what sort of edits I would need to make, I can consider it. Are you suggesting swapping out unused attribute slots for each specific item that affects mHP and AGI?
[...]

I am suggesting that I swap out some unused attributes for the specific items that affect mHP and AGI. This will be done by the addition of a 14th byte to the data structure that determines which byte within the item's data structure is going to be used, instead, for mHP and AGI. I can do both at the same time because I intend on using half a byte, each for mHP and AGI.

In this way, I can, say, change the Minerva's DAM and HIT scores (which appear to not be used) to mHP and AGI by using the last argument to point back to the unused stats. I've noticed one piece of equipment that appears to be using all the stats, so I can also have it point back to the modifiers as well as empty spaces.

On your part, it does not require any editing, but in using this scheme, it would not do well to, for argument's sake, come back to me and decide that the Minerva *should* influence HIT after all.

[Zera]

All right. I made a few changes to the statistics so you could swap the data out:

            | DAM | DEF | WIS | AGI | HIT | EVA | mHP | DMG. Redux
------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------------
Kenpo-gi    | +12 | +10 | *** | +05 | +02 | +04 | n/a |   (n/a)
Dark Shroud | *** | +14 | *** | n/a | +02 | +02 | n/a |   (n/a)
Minerva     | *** | +14 | +12 | +05 | *** | +02 | n/a |     8%
Serpentskin | *** | +16 | *** | n/a | *** | +02 | +08 |   (n/a)
Brigandine  | *** | +14 | *** | n/a | *** | +02 | +12 |    10%
Cuirass     | *** | +20 | *** | -10 | *** | -02 | +20 |    12%
Flame Mail  | *** | +22 | *** | -10 | *** | -02 | +20 |    12%
Mirror Mail | *** | +28 | *** | -10 | *** | -02 | +20 |    16%
Ornate Ring | *** | *** | +08 | +05 | *** | +02 | n/a |   (n/a)
Murasame    | +18 | *** | *** | +05 | +64 | +02 | n/a |   (n/a)
Sylvan Bow  | +14 | -02 | +12 | +05 | +64 | *** | n/a |   (n/a)
Artemis Bow | +22 | *** | +16 | +10 | +64 | -02 | n/a |   (n/a)

I marked empty stat slots with three asterisks to give you an idea of which slots you could swap out. I completely removed the mHP bonus from the Minerva since it had too many statistical features, so now that shouldn't be a problem.

[Iambian]

Got it. This will be yet another thing that I'll have to keep at the back of my mind when it comes time to programming the battle sequences.

At the moment, I'm going to spend some time putting in most of the textual and statistical data for things like place names and enemies.

EDIT: Under the "bestarium" section, would you further explain what each entry is supposed to mean? I mean, some of it's clear-cut and some of it really isn't. A better explanation of "rank" would be good.

[Ti-newb]

oh. so this game is being worked on atm?

[noahbaby94]

Yes it is being worked on atm.

[Zera]

Got it. This will be yet another thing that I'll have to keep at the back of my mind when it comes time to programming the battle sequences.

At the moment, I'm going to spend some time putting in most of the textual and statistical data for things like place names and enemies.

EDIT: Under the "bestarium" section, would you further explain what each entry is supposed to mean? I mean, some of it's clear-cut and some of it really isn't. A better explanation of "rank" would be good.

Rank serves two purposes:

1.) To limit character growth from fighting the same enemy over and over, or fighting too many weaker enemies.

2.) To give characters experience points in their proficiency merits.

A character's attributes can only be raised to a certain point, depending on the rank of the enemies they're fighting. Each rank level indicates what this limit is:

---------------------------------------------
 1 star -  64 mHP / 32 for normal attributes
 2 star - 128 mHP / 64 for normal attributes
 3 star - 255 mHP / 99 for normal attributes
  n/a   - no growth
---------------------------------------------

So, what this means is that a character can only gain up to 64 mHP by fighting rank-1 enemies. That character would need to start fighting rank-2 and rank-3 enemies in order to increase his or her mHP beyond 64. This prevents the character growth system from being exploited, in that the player can't simply fight weaker enemies over and over to achieve endless status growth.

You understand the basic character growth system, right? Characters will randomly have their status increased after battles, depending on how their equipped items influence that growth. You pair this with the enemy ranks to determine how that growth is limited.

Secondly, each rank translates into experience points for each characters' proficiency merits. Whatever a character has equipped during battle, they gain experience in those proficiencies based on the total rank levels of all the defeated enemies. So if character-A fights a battle against two ruhks, that character gains 4 experience points (because each ruhk is rank-2) in every proficiency that applies to his or her equipped items. Remember -- experience for proficiencies counts down. Each proficiency level will have an experience requirement, like 20, 30, 60, etc. This means you need to gain that much experience (accumulated from defeating enemies based on their ranks) to lower the experience requirement until you finally reach the next proficiency level.

[Zera]

Well, Iam, I was going to mention the "undead" attribute, but IRC stopped working for some reason.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well it works fine now. However try to watch how you talk to others. Not everyone got a IQ of 2000 like you do and there's no point in trying to make others who somehow say something that seems to make not sense like retards