Viridia: Expedition (Development Thread)

lowered accuracy seems good. perhaps lowering speed 1 point each time it gets used so that if you start spamming it in, say, a boss battle, you will start moving at a sluggish pace.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
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Update 025
(ART) This thing took way too long to do

argh. THERE. I drew a freaking bridge. I hope I never have to draw another one.

wow, looks good, but how well will it work? Is there diagonal movement in the game?

But I gotta say, pretty neat looking bridge.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

I'm just wondering if you did the bridged in the editor, or if you imported it. With something this complex the latter might be simpler.

I drew it in the editor, but in hindsight, you're right, it would have been simpler to import it.

Dear god, why would you make it diagonally in a game where you can only walk in straight lines?

Wow, that looks really cool.

I'm intrigued as well, do you have diagonal movement? Or perhaps a script that kicks in at either side of the bridge to make the player move diagonally? I'm thinking it might be a pain to have to move up-right-up-right-up-right to get across the bridge without diagonal movement.

That said, I must agree that it does indeed look rather spiffy.

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

Using Editor version wip 20170527 gfx_sdl+fb music_sdl

Do you have some dark variations of various tiles (mainly the cliff side ones)? Using a few different light levels will make the bridge read a lot better -- it's supposed to be going between two surfaces which are at about the same height, right? It took me some time to spot that because the typical main cues aren't present.

Quick paintover demo image. Where the arrows indicate, brightness changes have been used to convey distance between objects.
In particular, having the cliff under the bridge appear darker than the bridge gives a strong effect of separating the two.

Ah yes, the cliff sides could stand to be darker than the ground tiles the player can walk on, though I think any sort of shading due to the bridge would be unnecessary.

Yes, the idea is not that the bridge should cast a shadow, but rather that surfaces that are spatially distant should correspondingly have a clear difference in brightness. (due to various things like atmospheric diffusion of light and changing angle of incidence)

If you want any clarification on that concept, Feng Zha talks about it a lot in his YouTube videos, such as this 4-part episode 1, 2, 3, 4 (38min total)

@BMR: You hit the nail on the head. For any and all bridge-crossings, a plotscript will automatically activate to move the player across it diagonally. Later, I will use this script to switch whether the bridge appears below or above the player so that they can walk under the bridge. (Not on this map, though)

@0ion9: I do not have any shadowed or darkened tile variations. But, after seeing your demonstration image, I made a few for the cliffs and tried to set them up in a fashion similar to your example. This is the result.

The grid is blatantly visible, which I'm sure will irk some people, but I really don't want to put a lot of investment into shadows since they currently aren't present anywhere else in the game. If I shift my focus and implement shadows everywhere I can, everything will definitely look better, but I'm almost certain I won't make the HotOHR2 deadline if I spend too much time on that. It may look better if I simply make all of the cliff faces uniformly darker.


OTHER NEWS: I tweaked the first town's design a bit to better direct the player towards certain landmarks that will advance the plot quickly. I cut down on unnecessary details and distractions that might have made the town a bit prettier, but since it's not done and no buildings are enter-able, it's not worth the player's time to linger and sightsee.

I'm also tinkering with a new in-battle mechanic that uses a "charging" MP mechanic. Each hero would have a small max MP that would be filled in increments of 1 every time the hero used a basic attack. When full, a more powerful attack can be used that will completely drain the user's MP. For now, I only have three charged attacks in mind.
Wade can Defend, quadrupling his physical defense and immobilizing him for about 10 seconds before returning to normal. Wade only needs to attack once to use this move.
Jerry can shoot a Fire Arrow, which does a little extra damage, hits the enemy's magical defense, and has a 20% chance to burn the target for more damage over time. Jerry needs to attack three times to use this move.
The third warrior can use the Floraison technique, which strikes five times at reduced damage and has a 20% to critically hit on the final strike. The warrior needs to attack eight times to use this move, but some other special moves can be used in the meantime that can also charge MP.

Ideally, normal attacks would charge MP with a negative MP cost-per-attack, but this doesn't seem to work (a bug, perhaps?), so instead I'm going to chain each basic attack to one that does no damage but restores 1 MP to the user. I hope this will prove to be an effective change in the battle mechanics, but if not, I can always switch to another.

EDIT: Another miscellaneous battle mechanic I want to point out is the victory music. Whenever a scripted boss battle is fought and defeated, an extended, more elaborate version of the victory theme will play.

They both look much improved to me

With limited time, that second option is the smart choice. It still captures the key 'readability' change: popping out the bridge so it's clearly at a different depth than the cliffs. IIRC that strategy is used in a number of GBA and NES games for similar situations.

EDIT:
WTF did you do to my paintover image, Imgur? Converting PNGs to badly-compressed jpgs... UGH.
Oh well, at least the point was successfully conveyed

Update 026
(MAP) Mt. Garra, Area 1 of 3

(This map is still incomplete)
I've had this humongous map drawn up for quite a long time, but only recently did I have enough sprites to begin working on tiling it. It's exhausting, I've burned quite a few hours on it so far. And this is only the base of the mountain! Wait, that's actually a relief. The base is the largest part of the mountain. Hooray, the other two areas - the crevice and the summit - should get finished much quicker. Here's some close-up screenshots.
1. Short, spiky valley
2. Simple forks on the path
3. That freaking bridge again
4. Twisty path
5. Rocky bridge

This really is a huge map, folks, which is hopefully going to be a good thing. You'll have several opportunities to pick alternate paths and use terrain to outmaneuver some enemies you might not want to engage. It will be quite a hike, though - I timed myself moving along the path from one end of the map to the other, no side paths or backtracking or enemies or treasures, and it took me about 1 minute and 40 seconds. Compare to Ironwood Forest from Vikings of Midgard, which I estimate would take less than a minute to run straight through with no distractions, or Troll Mountain from Wandering Hamster, which would take about a full minute to do the same.

I'll conclude with the general route that the player will go through, major forks included.
(Prior to arriving at Mt. Garra) - Defeat the Damionberry on Cazador's Trail and open up a path through the brambles.
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(Mt. Garra Base: Day) - Explore the cliffs, explore some caves, fight wild animals, ascend. Talk to some poachers along the way, meet the third warrior, get robbed by the third warrior, switch control to the third warrior, defeat all the poachers in your path.
(Mt. Garra Crevice: Day) - Defeat a large group of poachers, confront Jerry and Wade, unite into one team, proceed to a small cave sanctuary to save and heal.
(Mt. Garra Summit: Day) - Locate a way upward, fight off whole groups of poachers at once, and finally, engage the area boss, Aerie. The ending will be slightly different depending on whether you win or lose this last fight.
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(Mt. Garra Base: Night) - Continue upward without meeting the third warrior, explore a small mine, use teamwork to clear an impassable gap in a Quick-Time Event.
(Mt. Garra Crevice: Night) - Find the third warrior's tent, have a short battle and a long talk with the third warrior, unite into one team, proceed to a small cave sanctuary and defeat some monsters.
(Mt. Garra Summit: Night) - Defeat the monsters between you and the top. Optionally, seek out all of the Flanerro enemies and take their skulls back to the cave sanctuary for a useful item. Reach the peak and engage the area boss, Eerie. Losing against Eerie will result in a Game Over. The ending for defeating Eerie is different from both of the Aerie endings.
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(Post-Game) - Play a second time and pick the time-of-day route you didn't take before. I may include other incentives, like a free item or two, or access to a sound test in the Diamond Star Inn. The latter is highly likely since I plan to put in over 65 different tracks. (Many of them are already complete.) If I find the time for it, I'd like to include a short movie or trailer about Viridia as a whole. This is not so likely, I may save that for another project all together.

Puny map! Hahaha! Before you go bragging (or apologizing, if that's what you're doing), I dare you to compare your map to the massive Botsmire Forest in The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition, which I'm sure you can't do since I have yet to release a public copy of the game.

The area is actually broken down by three maps (the third in which I'm not counting), Botsmire Forest, which has about 9 seconds of travel time before entering Watermike Caverns, about 1 minute 34 seconds before reentering Botsmire Forest, and then a whopping 5 minutes or so to get to the other side where you'll encounter the third map, Restless Glade, which is actually pretty tiny. My test run from the Botsmire Forest entrance to Restless Glade took me 7 minutes 41 seconds, though I did manage to spend about a minute getting tangled by difficult paths that I'd forgotten how to navigate.

By the way, this isn't necessarily a good thing. Botsmire Forest will be able to get away with this ridiculous size since it'll have an optional travel guide leading you through and two warring tribes from either side of the river that pits the Gladiator theme against Conan the Barbarian's theme, and various side paths leading to a few surprises, but without anything to do in the map as of yet, it is an extremely tiring journey. I'd be careful about making Mt. Garra too large unless you have plenty for the player to do there.

And you haven't begun to feel the pain of map-making a large non-world area yet. Most of my travel maps take me 2-3 hours to design and complete. Botsmire Forest took me 10 days! I hope you don't attempt something so crazy as that. I can assure you that that's the last time I ever design a travel map on that scale. I still don't know yet if it was even worth it. I've been putting off populating and storyboarding it for over two years now.

On the positive side, your map has my curiosity now.

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Update 027
(MAP) A cave!

I had a lot more fun making today's maptiles than usual. Maybe it's because I got to recycle and recolor a lot of stuff, and maybe it's because I finally got to break from my all-brown palette maps. Nonetheless, I feel good about this one. I'll implement more of those wooden posts* eventually as support beams in certain areas.
When perusing over my scores of enemies, I realized that the only mobs I had planned for the caves were the two moles and a few monsters. But, the monsters only appear at night, leaving the two caves on Mt. Garra's base a little lonely during the daytime. Should I leave it at that and call it a feature that makes the daytime route easier? Nah, that's lazy. I then dug into some of my old enemy ideas and found one that would fit just right in a cave. It's one of the first monsters I ever designed for an RPG, and those of you who played the absolute earliest incarnations of Viridia many years ago may recognize it. (I have no idea who you are, but thanks so much for sticking around all this time and watching me grow as a game developer!) I don't have a screenshot handy, so I'll just leave its identity a secret for now.

* - Believe it or not, there are some trees on this dry craggy mountain. They're a bit scrawny and completely leafless, but are just wide enough to make those wooden posts you saw in the image above. I may draw up some more flora later, such as thin grass that grows in cracks and tiny pointy shrubs.


I imagine map-makers' standards can vary wildly, but for now, yes, it is. Bear in mind that the base of the mountain is just one segment, though. This map is growing. ;)
I'm not going to make any supermaps on the scale you're talking about. I'm quite aware of how difficult it is to fill up such a map with enough interesting stuff to keep the player from falling asleep while trying to navigate it. (Attention to this kind of detail, by the way, is what made Tightfloss Maiden's free-exploration valley segment tolerable for me. If I remember correctly. It's been years, hasn't it?)