Bonus update: Skill screen.

So, it looks like I got more done today than I expected.

The skill learning screen is way better now.  Here's a before and after shot:

Before

After

First, I removed the skill costs from the section where you select the skills, because the costs took up a lot of horizontal space and didn't provide much value. The numbers and colored circles and stuff were just visually noisy and contributed to a feeling of overwhelmedness. (Just so you know, in the first screenshot, the 1/1 indicates the skill is usable once per day, and the 10MP means it costs 10 MP to use. The colored circles are icons signalling uses per battle and MP cost, respectively. This is not always important for the player to know, and if it were, it could be communicated through the help text above, which, as you can see, it is.)

Second, I nuked the gold part of the window and replaced it with something showing you how much skill powder and other skill items you have. (In Yanfly's original script, this was a place to purchase skills using gold, but in this game, you don't use gold to buy skills, you use skill powder and similar items.)

Third, I received some feedback that the way the needed number of items in the first screen was presented was confusing. Green text notwithstanding, when somebody saw they needed 24/10 skill powder to learn a skill, they thought that they needed 24 and only had 10. In fact, if the players saw two numbers separated by a slash, and one was higher than the other, they just sort of assumed, regardless of the placement, that they didn't have enough of the needed item. So, I made the first number "cap out" at the number needed. In the second screenshot, you'll see that the player has 10/10 of the skill powder needed to learn the skill. The player actually has 24 skill powder, as seen in the little box below the cost screen, but 10/10 makes it very obvious that you can learn the skill.

Gonna send this entry into my thesis advisor for some feedback.

Large parties, belts, item pricing.

Work has been slow, this time because family on my wife's side was over for vacation.

But I have done some stuff since last Friday.

First off, the quest system now supports of to five party members:

This poor slime does not stand a chance.

Also, I added belts to the stock of the store and made a new store:

Now displaying belts.

Also, I did a lot of tweaking to the item prices. I wanted the item cost to scale linearly as you went up through the game, so I figured out what level I wanted the player to get each item at (let's call that number "L" ) and then make the cost of an item = C * L, where L is a constant. Looks like a lienar scaling, right?

On the contrary, you gain levels more slowly as you advance through the game, making your level over the course of time look kind of like a square-root curve. The cost of items is linear with respect to level, but *not* with respect to game time! To solve this issue, I had to change the item formula to something that looked like cost = C + (B * L^2), and that straightened it right out. Now, items scale quadratically with respect to level, but linearly with respect to game time. This has the end effect of making items cheaper near the beginning and more expensive later on.


In the end, this should remove player frustration, make it so I need to give less gold in chests near the beginning, and make the item formula scale better into late game.

Stoneacre Fields: Now with 81% less player death!

The past two days were spent playing the first dungeon (Stoneacre fields) over and over again, and trying to balance it.

My goal is to make it so that a party of two people can complete Stoneacre fields four days from the time they start playing. The problem is, Stoneacre fields was horribly balanced when the thesis was first approved.

My wife and I have a lot of patience. We figured that if this game was hard, that was okay, because it would just extend the playtime, right? That, plus a lassez-faire attitude towards balance (it was only for my wife and I, after all) combined to make the first dungeon a huge difficulty spike compared to the tutorial. It took a week of diligent chores for us to beat the giant bat, the weakest monster in the dungeon. It took three weeks of diligent chores to beat the boss.

That's not going to work for something released to other people. I'm already working at a disadvantage because gamers are used to instant gratification. It would be ideal if they could do a new dungeon (or two) every day, but that would require a plethora of dungeons I just don't have time to create. Four days per new dungeon is about the most I can ask for; Three weeks is completely out of the question.

And so I had to nerf the monsters. And nerf them more. And nerf them more.

For reference, the easiest monster in the dungeon was roughly equal to a level 3 character, and the strongest was equal to a level 7 character. After the nerfs, the easiest monster was about level 1.5 and the hardest was level 4.

And it still wasn't enough.

I had to invent new low-level skills to give the players more strategic options. (For example, a spell that affects all enemies; useful against groups but cost-inefficient against single targets) I had to provide them some level of sustain (healing spells usable once per combat, etc.) I had to give them extra equipment. I had to provide chests with gold in them. Finally I got to the point where two characters that had only been playing four days each could beat the dungeon. Barely. If they were smart about it.

My mind reeled as I tried to figure out why on earth it was so hard to make that dungeon function. My math suggested that there was no way the characters should be having that much of a problem.

Then, I found out there was a bug. Turns out that any guests you recruit to your party revert to being level one at the end of the first battle they participate in. I wasn't running around with two characters that had played four days each, I was playing with one four day character and one complete noob in fancy gear.

Argh argh.

The fabled Stoneacre Fields

Anyway, things are good. I'm to the point where I have four days of playable content. The party system works (in fact, it works better than last time I claimed it worked.) I've got items, monsters, a half-dozen skills, a skill learning system, shops, tutorials, character training, a training regime editor, and all sorts of stuff. I had my thesis adviser play it all the way through once; he seemed pretty impressed. I think we're getting to the point where it's time to roll out an alpha soon.

So what's left to do before the first alpha test?

• Larger parties. Right now, only two people can party up. I need to increase that to five.
• Fix a memory leak when people leave the party that causes bloated saved games.
• Make it so you can only enter dungeons once per day. Add an "explore" mode that lets you enter dungeons after that, but in a way that prevents them from getting items and stuff. This is important because we want the players to be able to play, but we don't want them to be able to grind.
• Fix up the "learn skills" screen. It's the most confusing interface problem right now.
• More positive feedback when gaining levels. Right now, it's really easy to miss the "You leveled up!" notification.

My goal is to have this done by this coming Wednesday, in time for my research meeting. I'm super excited. If this works, then I'm on the right track, and perhaps a month from now, I can have a beta with several weeks worth of content.

...right now, I just need to avoid the temptation to work on the next dungeon, the Poacher's Forest.