Captain M. Development: As if I'd let Evil stain this world!

Oh boy, so I did it again, huh?
Drew some silly sprites and boasted about some new game?

All right, let's try to work with this now...

Let's see. The last time I worked on a Captain Magnifawesome was...Whaaa, 2007?!

Ok, that battle system seemed to rely heavily on the first edition of Dwarvinity...right?
In Dwarvinity, we set up mad buffs that boosted stats to stupidly high levels.
Heals that would heal past the HP limit, leaving the entire party's health at 100's of times larger than their normal health.
And bosses that would destroy your entire party at once if you didn't buff your party enough in time.

Wat

Reliance on party supports and synergy, I want.
But let's tone the rest of it down.

"Superheroes", did I say that? Why superheroes.
I don't now a thing about superheroes.
Ok, ok. Let's try to do something with this then...
Hey, you saw quite a bit of the Power Rangers back in the day, right?
And you totally saw the Incredibles.
Hey, you might know something about these guys after all!

Now, what are these things you drew even supposed to be?
Are they all super-heroes? Super-villains?

That little big headed one doesn't even have arms!

Part I, concluded.
To be continued

I sprite'd up my three heroes and they are looking good.

Threw together a little dungeon (it's one of the few map-types I know) to start the story off with some charming NPC's (screen-shots pending).

Engine got a big update and I've been meaning to make another game that plays around with the built-in battle system for a while now.

Gonna establish some battle basics and balance the stats out.
I usually base my preliminary stats in D&D scale (8-18) and it usually works fairly well at lower levels.

Will probably try to think up more plot along the way.

Part II, concluded.
To be continued

On the battle system,

Borrows from that of Surlaw: Armageddon, in that standard attacks are the fuel for skills.
Differs in that it's much messier and each attack fuels another.

So far, the HERO's STANDARD ATTACK drives SKILL 1, which then fuels SKILL 2 in combination with STANDARD ATTACK.

Once I toss in the other HEROES, I'm planning for an even bigger mess of combining the attacks of different users together.

The biggest challenge here is probably making the system more intuitive for the player.

New Chain functions: Awesome.
Critical Attacks are not easily accomplished and other neat attack chains.

Tried to make the Critical Hit effect luck-based and sort of succeeded.

For a standard attack, there is a 50% chance of activating the check to see if the user has sufficient luck.
Luck usually starts at a low base; however, each standard attack has a chance of either lowering or increasing Luck.
Using skills increases Luck (might make some goofy attacks that drain Luck or something).

The first part of the game is solo, so I won't have too much to worry about yet. I'll just get back to work on that dungeon.

Part III, concluded.
To be continued.

On the goons of map 1



Every villain's got goons and this games' got the Saphoo.

Birthed from the ground, these little critters are weak to pretty much everything.

The idea behind them is that they're like Tolkein's Orcs, only these are made of Pikmin and Halflings.

Haven't really figured out what they're good for yet.
Totally gave them neat quirks and stuff, mostly involving wicked sweet transformations.

Also, F12 doesn't seem to take screenshots anymore

Part IV, concluded.
To be continued.

Finally started up some scripts for this thing.
Got the introduction and the basis for skill learning established.

Sound effects! Usually find these a hassle to do because I end up clicking at the SFXR sound types at random, waiting for a good one to appear.
I usually don't get what I need, but plenty that I like.

Made a map in the WRONG PERSPECTIVE.


This is supposed to be where the player is introduced to the second hero of the game.
I'll probably let the party form in the map after this, which is another dungeon-type.

Part V, concluded.
To be continued.

Set up some menus.
Hm, inventories really.
Looks ok I guess.

What should have taken me five minutes turned into two hours of headache.
Just needed to activate the "Allow gameplay/scripts" AND "Suspend player even if gameplay is allowed". DURRRRR.

Separating inventories into separate menus allows the actual Inventory to be devoted to a tool for helping the player keep track of skill-counters (And I was this close to just trying to hide the thing).
The simplicity of the menu-based inventory is also pretty nifty.

Although I wish different menus in the menu-editor could have different styles.

Oh right, I also wrote in the level-up system.
Borrowed some ideas from the Earthbound style and threw in a chance for lucky stat bumps (10% chance of x2 to a stat's gain).

Still need to implement some sort of balancing for the more powerful stats: Threat and Speed.
May end up using a Super Mario RPG/Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories option every few levels where you can choose to boost one of the two cool stats or choose from some other goodies (+10 to a random stat? A new skill? Who knows!)

Since Counters are the only costs for skills, MP has become totally redundant. So, I figured I may as well turn it into the 'Threat' value.

Pros:
* Been meaning to have a nice threat-targeting system since forever.
* Much easier to add threat with each attack.

Cons:
* Skills are kind of confusing now, as they display things like "-3 Threat, 0/30", implying that you lose 3 Threat when you're actually gaining some.
(Maybe I should add a negative sign in front of Threat, to signify a double negative?)

Start and end, Haiku
Continued with loads of text
Maybe pictures soon

Part VI, concluded.
To be continued.

REPLY: Awesome Game!

You shouldn't really take the lack of replies to heart. This is a development journal. What would other people have to add, besides "Neat" or "Lame"

At first, I specifically wrote in "Please don't reply yet" into the thread's title, so that I could get a few posts together.

Then I oh so subtly removed that bit.

And now I'm blatantly asking for attention.

But thanks!



If anyone's thinking "It might be better to put [x] here" or "Why would you possibly add [x] at all??", this would probably be the place to do it.

Oh, I had added a little Pokemon-trainer enemy-engaging system a while back.
You know, walk within range of a Pokemon-trainer and they suddenly want to humiliate you or something.

Well, every enemy on the first stage is pretty much a joke in terms of difficulty and I wrote up twice as many textboxes as I needed for the NPC's, so I wanted the player to bump into EVERY ENEMY (there are 4).

This system doesn't really make much sense, and I'd rather prefer a more random system of encountering enemies, so I'll probably stop doing this past the first stage.

Starting to figure out sound effects with sfxr.
Still getting better results from just randomizing sounds.

Part VII, concluded.
To be continued.

So this is going to be taking place in GORILLUS JUNGLE (name pending).
It's pretty much the same as any other dungeon. But covered in a forest-wallpaper. I might have the second part of the dungeon be covered in snow or something (Walruses(?) love that stuff, right?)

This will be the game's first full dungeon and will include the assistance of HERO2, a support unit.

I'll probably work on some more abilities and counter-combos before working on the actual dungeon.

Oh, and I guess I'm going to give these guys some walking directions other than 'down'. Eventually???

Part VIII, concluded.
To be continued.

Warilla Jungle.
Troop of Ugly Jungle.
Trugly of Gorillus Jungle.
Trougly of Warilla Jungle.

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Remeber: God made you special and he loves you very much. Bye!

Needs to be either "Walrilla" or "Gorillrus." NO EXCEPTIONS.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

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Blip.

Just posting to say Transmogrifications are the best thing.

Part IX, concluded.
To be continued.

Indeed! I'm a big fan of that feature.

No love for Monkalrus, then?