Equipment

I'm currently in the process of creating the equipment screen, and a question I'd eventually have to ask myself has come up. This is basically another one of those "thinking out-loud" and "explaining it to someone in detail to the point where I come to a decision myself" sort of posts. So..yup.

Progressive vs non-progressive weapons

The question is this, should items all be equally powerful, but behave differently (different speed, power, status effects, weaknesses) Or should the weapons get progressively more powerful as you progress, rendering older weapons useless? (but still having different types, that act differently.

With non-progressive weapons, if you find a particular sword in the beginning of the game then that sword effectively becomes an active part of your arsenal and you will use it in certain situations, or perhaps if you simply prefer how it plays. But the trade-off is that you may just end up getting a bunch of weapons you'll never use because of you're preferences.

On the other hand, if weapons are progressively more powerful, then once you find a better weapon you would never use that old sword ever again, because it's too weak. The advantage is that an aspect of the gameplay will always be changing, and the player will have to adapt to it. However, if the player likes a certain kind of weapon, such as a spear, and hates all the other weapons, then they will have to wait until they find that "next" spear to actually use one. Or, they might stick to the old one, which will make the game a lot more difficult.

The other option, I suppose, would be to make it so weapons can be upgraded, meaning you could upgrade an older weapon so that it meets the new standards. Not really sure how that would play into gameplay. Dark Souls is an interesting example, because it sort of fell in the middle. It was very much incremental, but sort of worked in phases were early weapons could still be useful mid-game when upgraded, but you eventually found something better. Not so sure that upgrading an old weapon is as interesting as finding a new and equally better weapon though.

*shrug*

Personally, I think I lean towards non-progressive weapons. Perhaps it's an excuse for bad design to say that players might only use the weapon they like. Ideally, they should all be useful and interesting in some way.

Armor

This also plays into how armor might work a bit. I could theoretically make it so armor effect's your appearance, but doing so would mean I couldn't have as much armor, since it would be too much work too animate. In this case, non-progressive armor would make more sense, because then the player wouldn't be stuck with an outfit they hate just because it's stronger. (though that might happen anyway if they prefer the buffs of one kind of armor)

In that case, perhaps each set of armor could have alternative buffs. For instance, one could have defence+ and health+ from H attacks, but you can only choose one of the two. This might make it at least more unlikely for a player to find armor that they like the look of, but don't find useful enough to wear.

I'll see how viable multiple costumes mid-development, I suppose. The tradoff of alternate armor is that every H animation would have to be nude, because there's no way I'm animating alternate animations for each outfit.

Gave up again -___-

Well, I should have seen it coming by now.

After working on the martial arts themed game for a while, I eventually gave into what I'd now call "high resolution fatigue". When you work with a high resolution, you can end up working on a single sprite for nearly an entire day. Eventually it becomes somewhat tiring, and you begin to dread at the thought of adding anything because of how long it'll take.

So, a few days ago I ended up starting a new game at a much lower resolution, as I tend to do when I cave into high resolution fatigue.

This time around, the sprites are about twice the size of Eroico's vertically, but use much simpler colors and shading. In this style, what took me hours in a high resolution I can do in about 20 minutes. (All the player sprites are already done, as a result)

The game itself is going to be a lot closer to Symphony of the Night than the previous game was going to be, with simple attacks, but numerous weapons and spells and a more rpg-like inventory. Like with Symphony of the Night, all the weapons have different animations but use different frames of the same basic attacking animation, so new weapons can be created in under half an hour. All in all, I'd say this kind of game is going to be more content and exploration oriented, simply because there's more to find, and content is easier to add.

Other than that, we'll see. But development is going fast.

Oh, and as for the game I abandoned, I may pick it up again in the future if I can find a sprite artist capable of making enemies at that resolution. That may make development a bit more bearable.

edit: Also, about the forum, if I start one it will be after I make the h-game template, since a good amount of it will revolve around it and tutorials.

Creating a forum

Today I got an email that essentially said, "you should start a forum".

So, I guess I will. I had thought of doing it before, but I guess it takes the extreme scenario of someone making a casual suggestion for me to actually go through with something. Makes sense.

Forum Suggestions

Anyhow, here's what I need from you. Suggestions. What would you like to see on the forum? My first thought is that it would revolve primarily around H-Game development. Since I'll be releasing some templates and tutorials for making H games, I imagine I'll be getting a lot of questions about using them, and I like the idea of a forum where individuals can get feedback on their work and start projects with other members.

Edit: Based on your feedback, I don't think I'll include a general H-game subcategory, and I think I'll collapse pixel art, art, and sound/music into one board for posting your work for feedback.