Cheesedragon
I like to eat cake while excruciating.
Don't worry, even if it's not the default design it's practically guaranteed to be an unlockable something something Dragon's Crown weapon system something. Or not. Who knows.
No?
Ajna is an exception right?
Aren't you the person that's trying to be a game developer?I mean, you could TECHNICALLY make the weapons 3D models and using that to be able to swap them out, but I'm guessing that would require way to much work and limit you guys severely on Ajna's poses so that a weapon swap would be possible, which sounds like a bad trade for your amazing animation we know and love you for.
Nope. She's already getting redrawn 4 times.
Palette effects are easy, and will be used (green bow with gold arrows, red bow with black arrows, etc).
I thought it was something akin to this. I can see how others would be able to run with this and do something, but a lot of extra effort here for minimal changes with the ideas you guys have set forth. Cool. The more you know.It doesn't matter if the weapon is 3D or 2D. To swap it would be like Beo's chair - every single frame would need to have attach points and (optionally frame numbers) for each of the weapons. In 3D that information is just part of the model, since the transforms for all the bones are figured out per frame. In 2D that information isn't ANYWHERE, and needs to be generated by hand.
Speaking of that, I realized from last night's stream that there's currently no slot available on the Prototype's equip menu for the kusarigama. I guess that menu was going to be given an intense overhaul anyway, huh? I hope you guys can manage to keep the weapon-swapping nice and quick in the finished version.
Since different weapon designs (Not just palette swaps) can't easily be added the animators can use transparent parts of the weapon to make different weapons. So think of it like this. Animate the mega weapon. The mega weapon could have extra spikes or tassels and the level one weapon can just be the mega weapon with transparent spikes and tassels. Start us off with the level one weapon then as we upgrade just make those parts not transparent. That will make it so the animators only have to animate one weapon but you can get multiple weapons out of that one. Plus you can do color swaps with transparency and get a really big number of weapons with no extra animation.
That should be very easy mode.
I was just mentioning the palettes in regards to other people's thoughts. I don't think anybody here is goofy enough to try to telling Mike what to do.
Palette effects are easy, and will be used (green bow with gold arrows, red bow with black arrows, etc).
But...I'm not sure how many weapons you think we're doing? This is not going to be a Knife-Dagger-Thief Knife-Assassin Dagger-Chicken Knife-Excalipoor-Gigas Blade, same-animation-new-name-more-damage kind of game. This is a "You got Spinning Blade" / "[Item:] Plasma Beam" kind of game. Damage increases don't come from finding better weapons, which is part of where I think the assumption you have might come from...
Some upgrades may result in different-looking weapons for some things, like how Peacock has a cannon or a shotgun in some animations, but in general you have THE bow and THE spear and THE axe and THE kusarigama. Rather than getting the Better Bow and then the Betterer Bow and then the Betterest Bow, you learn to do new things with The Bow. We are not going to redraw hundreds of frames many times to put tassels on the bow later and then a supercharger after that, nor are we going to do Beowulf's chair multiple times for multiple weapons.
Currently the 5th weapon is Weapon Switch + the All-Block button, which works fine. Switching is still R1 + another button, and will remain as simple as that. We don't have to show the slot for the 5th weapon until you get it, which means by then you'll be used to switching weapons. We tried press-Weapon-Switch-and-release-without-choosing-something to go back to Bare Hands but that sucked.Speaking of that, I realized from last night's stream that there's currently no slot available on the Prototype's equip menu for the kusarigama. I guess that menu was going to be given an intense overhaul anyway, huh? I hope you guys can manage to keep the weapon-swapping nice and quick in the finished version.
Oh, sounds so easy, why didn't we think of that? </sarc>
We ran with it already, for Beowulf's chair. We ran with it already, for Robo-Fortune's headlight. We have done it already for over 3,000 frames. We KNOW how much work it is, and we KNOW whether the tradeoff is worth it. If we were doing puppet-style animation like Vanillaware it would be easy, and we wouldn't think twice about it, but we're not.
Still not sure about this, since we are actually trying to hella avoid shops; but "better weapons" can be "upgrade the blue spear to the green spear".
He means puppet-style animation, also known as paper-doll style animation. It's what Vanillaware does. They save the different pieces of their characters as separate images and animate them by moving, rotating and stretching those pieces separately like old Treasure bosses instead of hand animating each frame. This isn't an insult; old Treasure bosses are cool.
Everything he said and that's what you took away from it? And all he said was that's how Vanillaware does things and it's not what they're doing.
As basically one of those people, I just look up spoilers and videos of really good playthroughs. More often than not, I'll play as well as I can play, and I'll look up the stuff I don't want to tackle anymore. That way I can experience gameplay within my abilities and appreciate skill beyond them. No need for a special mode.
That's an interesting idea that nobody's brought up to me yet! Even Wild ARMs 1 had auto-battle, though that was more to remove tedium than to beat bosses.For a separate topic, I wanted to bring up the topic of difficulty levels again, but here's a slightly different question: would there be any considerations for a "theater mode", or "story mode", something that either trivializes or completely removes the challenge of combat gameplay or the combat gameplay altogether for the sake of the players who aren't good at video games but want to see the story/world?
Don't be puttin' words in my mouth. What's with you?!
Firstly, vector graphics just means graphics drawn with vectors - you can do traditional hand animation in Flash without reusing pieces and it is still "vector art". (This is ALSO not an insult.)
I'd actually be very interested to see how you guys might integrate Casual-friendly features for this game later on. Since the game always requires the player to make important choices during exploration and combat, I imagine it'd be a tricky task to simplify them both.
That's actually an interesting point. I was thinking about easying/skipping battles (which is I guess a fairly simple problem to solve), but skipping platforming would break the pace and I'm not sure how you can easify it either.I'd actually be very interested to see how you guys might integrate Casual-friendly features for this game later on. Since the game always requires the player to make important choices during exploration and combat, I imagine it'd be a tricky task to simplify them both.
Like obviously we know in the Prototype, even if Ajna could one-hit kill everything, it wouldn't really help players that are just struggling to find the axe, or understanding where/how to axe-climb. I figure most Casual players wouldn't mind having to do at least that degree of problem-solving, but you'd probably still have a group of them wanting to argue against the necessity of platforming in general.
I guess a lot of this feedback will really just depend on what type of players the game attracts once its closer to release. Will many people discovering the game for the first time be platforming fans, traditional JRPG fans, or just people that want to watch an interactive cartoon? It'll be an interesting mix for sure.