Friday, December 28, 2007
Frayed Knights - Poor Spelling
Of all updates on the comedic fantasy RPG Frayed Knights, as of today this one is by far the latest.
And I can't talk now, must code...
But I'll talk anyway, because talking to the computer is giving me grief.
It's the holidays. Which means time off. Which means I'm spending time coding when I'm not playing games or visiting / helping relatives. The latter took up WAY WAY WAY WAY too much of my time this week, but I gotta be nice to them. Because they are relatives. And they'll be expected to support me when Frayed Knights fails miserably and I find myself bankrupt. Gotta have that backup plan.
Combat remains imbalanced. I'm working on spells. Among other things. Because melee combat seems to be working okay. Negligable Healing is - unfortunately - a little too negligable. 4 points of healing doesn't do much when the cultists are critting for 13 points of damage. And the Hotfoot spell... what a joke. I think Chloe could do better damage - and use up less endurance - with her fist. If she could actually hit monsters with her fist from the back rank.(Note to self: Make sure she can't hit monsters with her fist from the back rank.)
And then there's balancing these with duration-based spells... the debilitating or buffing variety of spells which screws up my carefully balanced and - as I mentioned - currently functional melee combat system.
I've been trying to fix sequencing of chained events. The UI is still garbage... but I'm trying to make it functional before making it pretty. I've added a "status" page to see what kinds of spell effects are currently in effect, and what that effect really is. I'm exercising code that hasn't been looked at in four months, and so I'm finding a few logical gaps. Joy.
And I'm supposed to be done WHEN?
Anybody know where I can find an animated, robed wizard / priest looking low-polygon 3D model? Ideally clocking in under 1500 polygons, and able to be warped and modified by yours truly to become the loathsome cultists they need to be. I'm using Cubix's male NPC character right now as a stand-in model (still trying to remain Kork-the-Torque-Orc free), and while they definitely have the scary "Hi, we're the clone brothers" creepiness about them, they are definitely NOT what I had in mind, nor close enough for easy modification, and my modeler has a lot on his plate right now. I attempted this one on my own - more as practice than anything else - and the result was rather humbling. I guess I need to stick with torches and treasure chests.And as you can probably guess from my discussion on magic items this week, I'm dealing with equipment. Which again, screws up my somewhat-balanced-and-working melee system.
So except for broken code, bad framerates due to lighting, unfinished content, crazy-poor game balance and combats that are clobbering me mercilessly, no music yet, stand-in art, a dungeon that's still not fully textured, and missing features, how am I doing for having the first dungeon 'complete' on Tuesday?
Umm... great? Yeah. Fine. Nothing to see here.
Labels: Frayed Knights
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:45 PM (Permalink)
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I am just curious: how are you handling spells in this game? Is it like D&D where you have a caster level and spell lists with preset values or is it a bit more like Final Fantasy where there is some sort of obscure equation working behind the scenes? Or neither?
It's closer to D&D - you've got spell lists, some of which automatically become available as you level.
Other spells must be discovered.
You don't have spells per day - instead, it comes from endurance, the same as a fighter swinging his sword.
Other spells must be discovered.
You don't have spells per day - instead, it comes from endurance, the same as a fighter swinging his sword.
Instead of just doing damage, maybe her spells ought to have secondary effects, like a one round reduction in dexterity. That way, she wouldn't be able to take on these enemies by herself, but would complement another party member's attack. (It would also provide a good reason for wanting to party up with a low-level mage)
One other thing: maybe I'm just not that up on the genre, but I'm really not familiar enough with the apparently standard Torque models -- I really doubt I'd notice. Unless you have alternate reasons for avoiding Kork (admittedly, in a world this full of adventurers, orcs are probably an endangered species) I'm not sure I'd worry all that much about it.
Besides, it seems to me that you'd have better luck milking the same-ness than trying to remove it: having the characters comment on it, or point out subtle differences that don't actually exist. "No, don't attack that cultist, attack the one with the mole and the scraggly mustache!" Sort of the way it's (not actually) funny to refer to one identical twin as "the cute one".
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Besides, it seems to me that you'd have better luck milking the same-ness than trying to remove it: having the characters comment on it, or point out subtle differences that don't actually exist. "No, don't attack that cultist, attack the one with the mole and the scraggly mustache!" Sort of the way it's (not actually) funny to refer to one identical twin as "the cute one".
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