http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue10/cover.html
A feature-heavy issue this month. We have two features on creating a balanced and interesting battle system, and one on creating an interesting world map. We have reviews of Blasphemous Saga Fantasy and Surlaw Armageddon, as well as a commentary on the later.
The News section will be updated again once the results of the 2007 Halloween Contest are in.
Enjoy!
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There was a minor typo in the headers to these articles that DJ Fenix caught and is now fixed. Firefox and Opera seemed to auto-correct it, while Internet Explorer just didn't understand what to do.Iblis wrote:For some reason I can't access the BSF review or the article on cartography. When I click on them it just brings up a blank white page.
Just to make sure no one misses this:
For the last two years, I have handed out mystery prize boxes for various contests. As 2007 comes to an end, the tradition continues. While previously the prizes were given out for trivial nonsense questions, this year's is a bit different. The prize will be given out for the best article of volume 11. Anything is valid for entry; Artwork, reviews, commentaries, features, etc. Just submit an article, and if it's used for the issue it's elligible for the contest. Readers will vote on the best article on the Super Walrus Land forums or by sending an e-mail. Now's your chance to win the Surlaw Mystery Box 2007!
MSW, your article was much better this time. However, it still reads very much like a textbook, and you really lost me when you started giving the heroes letter-names and the enemies number-names.
Job classes and enemy types are all abstractions. They don't really mean anything except what we tell them to mean. We use them as a convention so that the player understands what's going on without having to learn everything by experimentation. This is why I largely relied on Final Fantasy-style naming convention for Darkmoor Dungeon's attacks -- the game was released shortly before attack descriptions were enabled.
What I'm getting at here is that your example would be much easier to follow if you gave these things more descriptive names. The letter-names are better than the number-names because those at least have something to do with what they represent. It's also useful to follow up your own example with examples of how this technique has been used in games the reader might have played.
Fenix, that is the best water tile tutorial I have ever read.
Job classes and enemy types are all abstractions. They don't really mean anything except what we tell them to mean. We use them as a convention so that the player understands what's going on without having to learn everything by experimentation. This is why I largely relied on Final Fantasy-style naming convention for Darkmoor Dungeon's attacks -- the game was released shortly before attack descriptions were enabled.
What I'm getting at here is that your example would be much easier to follow if you gave these things more descriptive names. The letter-names are better than the number-names because those at least have something to do with what they represent. It's also useful to follow up your own example with examples of how this technique has been used in games the reader might have played.
Fenix, that is the best water tile tutorial I have ever read.
In response to Moogle1:
Well, I tried to point out near the beginning that I wasn't going to give names to anything. That's supposed to be the part that the author should come up with, without suggestions from me, because, as you yourself say, these names are only conventions and have no effect on battles AT ALL. As I said before, it's just me and my preferences. I am trying to write text-book style, you might say (I am sorry to say that I personally enjoyed your battle options article much less than the healing one, because it felt even more conversational and less in-depth), because in my eyes the mathematical/theoretical parts of battle-balancing are at once the most interesting, and the most difficult, parts about it. That is what I am trying to address in the article.
Okay, I hate to sound so argumentative. I guess I am just trying to defend my writing style. I also might be a little less a fan of Moogle's article because it represents a fair portion of what I was planning on writing for my third and final article. I still have some other stuff though, so I really shouldn't be complaining as much as that sounds like I am.
I enjoyed a fair portion of the cartography article, although it spent more time on aesthetics than I had hoped it would. Of course, it's only the first part of a series, so I'm guessing DJ Fenix has plenty more to say about everything. For myself, I would add that using graph paper when drawing the map by hand can be enormously helpful when making the transition to the tiles of the OHR. I'm also going to start up a separate thread where we can all argue about a certain example... see the game discussion forum in about, oh say, two minutes.
EDIT: Grammatical edit "part" => "parts"
Well, I tried to point out near the beginning that I wasn't going to give names to anything. That's supposed to be the part that the author should come up with, without suggestions from me, because, as you yourself say, these names are only conventions and have no effect on battles AT ALL. As I said before, it's just me and my preferences. I am trying to write text-book style, you might say (I am sorry to say that I personally enjoyed your battle options article much less than the healing one, because it felt even more conversational and less in-depth), because in my eyes the mathematical/theoretical parts of battle-balancing are at once the most interesting, and the most difficult, parts about it. That is what I am trying to address in the article.
Okay, I hate to sound so argumentative. I guess I am just trying to defend my writing style. I also might be a little less a fan of Moogle's article because it represents a fair portion of what I was planning on writing for my third and final article. I still have some other stuff though, so I really shouldn't be complaining as much as that sounds like I am.
I enjoyed a fair portion of the cartography article, although it spent more time on aesthetics than I had hoped it would. Of course, it's only the first part of a series, so I'm guessing DJ Fenix has plenty more to say about everything. For myself, I would add that using graph paper when drawing the map by hand can be enormously helpful when making the transition to the tiles of the OHR. I'm also going to start up a separate thread where we can all argue about a certain example... see the game discussion forum in about, oh say, two minutes.
EDIT: Grammatical edit "part" => "parts"
Last edited by msw188 on Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
I am Srime
Well, the graphics was a little much. Initially, the whole article for world map was only going to be one, with the graphics and design in one. But the tutorial for the water tile alone accounted for a third of the entire article, so i decided to cut it short.
For the design aspect in the first part, the gist of it is pretty much to draw out an entire map instead of making it up in the editor, and there isn't much to elaborate on there. If you draw it out first, you're more likely to have something that looks a lot nicer.
The next article will sorta be the meat of the world map: landscaping. People tend to just throw on mountains, trees, or whatever as a means to block the players from progressing. I'll (hopefully) explain how to be more creative with such.
For the design aspect in the first part, the gist of it is pretty much to draw out an entire map instead of making it up in the editor, and there isn't much to elaborate on there. If you draw it out first, you're more likely to have something that looks a lot nicer.
The next article will sorta be the meat of the world map: landscaping. People tend to just throw on mountains, trees, or whatever as a means to block the players from progressing. I'll (hopefully) explain how to be more creative with such.
That's fine, but it's not the reader's job to decipher what you're saying. You're not giving the pure mathematical formulas, either. You're in a low level of abstraction, not the rock bottom but not high enough to be easily understood. Putting names on things doesn't relieve the author of his creativity, it just makes things more understandable. Even if the names have little to do with anything you're explaining, calling them Sabin, Edward, slime, and vampire is easier to follow than A, B, En1, and En2.msw188 wrote:In response to Moogle1:
Well, I tried to point out near the beginning that I wasn't going to give names to anything. That's supposed to be the part that the author should come up with, without suggestions from me, because, as you yourself say, these names are only conventions and have no effect on battles AT ALL.
I just reread that part, and I see what you mean. I feel okay with the letter designations for the heroes, but you're absolutely right that calling the enemies by numbers doesn't work very well. I remember while writing it that I tried to come up with something similar to the hero-naming scheme, but nothing clicked at the time, and I never went back to try again. Well, it will just be another thing to keep in mind when I begin the third article. And I wanted to thank you for the critique, even though I sounded kind of defensive in that last post.
I am Srime
That last BSF screenshot is perfectly timed. Even I couldn't orchestrate one like that.
I'm addressing the concern about tiles. There's not a lot of room to work with in OHR tilesets, but I think that actually utilizing layers will help. Next update: actual doorways. Thanks for the review, Fenix. It feels neat to have a game of mine reviewed after all these years.
EDIT: Also, I had no idea that MMORPGs nerfed experience as you leveled up. I added that (eventually you get ZERO from areas you've been to before) because I generally hate grinding but love exploring.
I'm addressing the concern about tiles. There's not a lot of room to work with in OHR tilesets, but I think that actually utilizing layers will help. Next update: actual doorways. Thanks for the review, Fenix. It feels neat to have a game of mine reviewed after all these years.
EDIT: Also, I had no idea that MMORPGs nerfed experience as you leveled up. I added that (eventually you get ZERO from areas you've been to before) because I generally hate grinding but love exploring.
Please read Blasphemous Saga Fantasy okay thanks
Flipping through the old issues, saw a mention of It Came From Beyond The Moon in one of the articles, an old 48 hour contest game Retro and I had made. I think we won the contest? I dunno. Anyway, the little article talks about how the game had so much potential and whatnot for a full game, but was discontinued. The truth is Retro got drunk on the first night of the contest and drew a bunch of unrelated graphics. The next night we were chatting and he admitted to me that he had drawn up a bunch of graphics but couldn't remember what he planned to do with them. So I joined up, and together we frantically finished ICFBTM. I'm not sure if the plot and dialog I wrote ever made much sense, but I remember we definitely had a plan that slowly went to hell as the contest deadline approached.
Good times.
Good times.
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Past issues lacking comics are usually followed up with MASSIVE EXTRAVAGAZAS. Like what happened in the old CP comics when Fyre finished SoJ and turned OHR Land into FF6's World of Ruin (with Rinku and Harlock flying around in Airship 2600 for some reason). Or most recently when Hitler took over OHR land by stealing a tank with the funds from OHRHouse. No major spoilers on what I've got planned but it'll be violent and as sanity shattering as I can possibly make it. Maybe in color too.Shadowiii wrote:Where's my comic.
[s]Cthulhristmas?[/s]