AuthorTopic: Fantasy Miniatures  (Read 24675 times)

Offline Zizka

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #60 on: March 15, 2017, 11:45:20 pm
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If the exact path a character takes isn't important, then I think you shouldn't show it, just show the overall movement range, and the currently selected target tile. If you highlight the path, it makes it look like it patters, and players will expect to be able to control the exact path.

That's true. I could just identify the "limit" where the player can move and then leave it to that.



This is a new mockup with more changes in it. I'm getting closer, I find. Part of the map is still missing on the right, you'll notice. There's also a move icon to indicate where to move to. I put three to identify the path taken but I'll likely just stick to a single icon to indicate where to move. The icon would snap in the middle of each tile as the player presses the d-pad to select his destination and then press to "A" to confirm.

I already have the other icons to indicate various actions:


You'll notice I changed the color (and the shape, slightly) of the movement icon in the mockup. I could stick to the colors in the icon set though.

Things I still want to do on this:
*Dirty the wall, tiles
*Vary the cracks some more
*fix the inventory
*probably revamp the turn order a bit to make it more appealing

Gameplaywise I need to decide:
*set turn order or player decides who moves and when
*how much damage can player/foes take each turn
*save limits (I want to make sure every save counts sort like in Resident Evil with the save ribbons). Not save scumming.
*how to use limited resources in a way which is challenging, not frustrating.
*and lots, lots more.

Offline Cherno

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #61 on: March 16, 2017, 12:11:31 am
The turn order thing is seldom seen these days, the last game I remember playing that had this feature was Might & Magic III :D

A few years ago I read a development update for Shadowrun Returns and the developer mentioned how they experimented with implementing the tabletop rules 1:1 to the videogame, so the combatants would all roll for initiative each round and hence the turn order would be fixed. In the end, they decided to just use a "I go - You go" system like most games have, where the player can freely select and move all his characters in any order, and then it's the AI's turn. It makes it easier to understand and follow for the player.

Offline Zizka

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #62 on: March 16, 2017, 12:13:59 am
Yeah, good point, I'll go with that.

Offline Zizka

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #63 on: March 16, 2017, 11:43:16 pm
New version:
-Removed the turn order.
-Finished the rest of the map
-Added a few decorative elements
-Dirtied up the tiles (yes, reflection is still there until I figure out what to replace it with).
-Randomized cracks more so no repetitive pattern can be noticed (or less noticed at least).
-Added arrows to indicate exit
-moved map around
-Started making the walls messier (look at the upper right).

Offline eishiya

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #64 on: March 17, 2017, 02:53:21 am
I think the arrows would look better if they were in the same perspective as the rest of the scene (and animated).

You keep using unusual aspect ratios. Perhaps it might help to pick a common aspect ratio and design the UI around that. Limitations breed creativity and all that.

Offline Zizka

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #65 on: March 18, 2017, 06:17:52 pm
Will do.

Just drew the six faces of the die (from one, the skull, to six, the star):


Not sure if the star fits in though, maybe too kiddie compared to the other faces.

Offline eishiya

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #66 on: March 18, 2017, 06:37:17 pm
The different sides don't read as belonging to the same die to me. Pick a single aesthetic and stick to it. You could vary them between rolls for different things though!

The star face, despite having six stars on it, reads as "one" to me since one star is dominant. The little ones feel like decoration rather than content.

Offline Zizka

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #67 on: March 19, 2017, 12:56:40 pm
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You could vary them between rolls for different things though!

Yes, I'm considering using different set of dice but I need to keep myself in check in order to keep things simple.

I've redone the die entirely:


The hesitation I'm facing is using numbered die or "special" die. The advantage of numbered die is that they're more versatile. The disadvantage is that they're less special and won't stand out as much.

I'm designing combat at the moment. I like the approach they have in Warhammer:


Basically, the more skilled in battle a character is, the easier it is for them to wound opponents. The downfall of this is that people might want to rely on range too much to avoid skilled warriors in hand-to-hand combat. Could be strategy though.

I'm thinking of going that way but I feel like it'd be a bit of a letdown since it'd just copy Warhammer's concept. Strategic battle will be one major element of the game so I'd like to do something which:

A. Simple
B. Fun
C. Involves strategy

One thing I'm attracted to is mutual wounding. I explain:

Instead of having: hit or miss (binary), I'd go for something more nuanced. I want to avoid combat taking too long as people keep missing, that's no fun. Each attack should count. I'm thinking like in a real fight, both sides often get wounded at the same time to different degrees. The problem with that is that players would constantly need to heal themselves...

So you see, it's not an easy decision. How to take a fresh approach to rpg combat without taking too many risks and ending up with something which doesn't work.

I know I'll let the player decide on the turn order.

Energy (the lightning bolts) is to be a major part as well. Management of energy in battle will be vital, I know I want that too.

Energy is to be used for special skills (and spells). I also want to add energy in battle.

See, in Warhammer, you attack (roll), then you have defense who roll. In D&D you just attack and then roll for damage. So you have more rolling sequences in Warhammer than you do in D&D and something like Shadowrun is out of the question (way too complicated). There's also the idea of being able to aim at

So anyways, there's a lot more than meets the eye here.

If you guys would like to brainstorm, you're more than welcome.

P.S.: and a new goblin too:


« Last Edit: March 19, 2017, 01:31:08 pm by Zizka »

Offline eishiya

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #68 on: March 19, 2017, 02:02:20 pm
I think you should move the small skulls away from the edge a bit where possible, they're uncomfortably close to it. The distance between the skulls and edges is also inconsistent, it's 2 in some places, 3 in others. Make it 3 everywhere. In general, you want there to be more space between the pips and the edge than there is between the pips on the 6 face.
The skull-edge distance is more obvious than the skull-skull distances because there's more contrast, so I'd sacrifice consistency in the latter for the sake of the former. You could keep the distances between the bottom-most skulls and the edge 2 so that the 6 face looks good and the rest stay consistent with that. Since the teeth aren't solid red, it still looks alright.

Here's an edit with the spacing I suggested:

I also edited the skulls on the 3-6 faces to be more consistent and tweaked the eyes. The 6 face has some alternate eye ideas for you. In all cases the eyes are a pixel higher, because I think that reads as more skull-like than having the eyes almost in line with the nose-hole.

For what it's worth, most tabletop gaming dice have digits rather than arrangements of pips, since players often need to match them up to damage tables and perform math on them. For that, digits take out the extra conversion step. Pips are appropriate for games with less post-roll math, such as games where you're just looking at the total number of pips on 1-2 dice or looking for matches, which are easier to spot with arrangements of pips than with digits.
That doesn't necessarily mean you should change to digits, just that you should think about what purpose the dice serve. Since the computer does all the lookups and math for the player, the on-screen dice are probably purely decorative, in which case go for what looks better - which is probably your skull-pips.


Gameplay feedback, feel free to disregard as I am not a Warhammer player:
I like the idea of mutual damage and of grazing damage, but I feel like that would work better with higher health amounts. When even your "tanky" characters have only 5 health (that's as much as your UI will fit!), it does mean constant healing, and it means that any attack that does more than 2 damage (i.e. a not-grazing attack) is very powerful. Plus, it means there's not a lot of difference between your tanks and non-tanks, health-wise. If health can go higher, then damage amounts can be more nuanced and varied. If you do damage in half-hearts, you can fit 10 health points in the same space, and therefore have more variety in health between classes. If you do segmented bars, you can have even more.
If each point of health is less critical, then players can risk taking a bit more damage to focus on dealing damage, instead of having half their party be healers. You don't want too much health though - every point should matter! I think 1~10 is a good amount (5 hearts with half-heart as the minimum damage). The base damage for attacks could be in terms of full hearts, possibly reduced to some number of half-hearts by defensive gear and spells.

For energy management being important, card games like Magic and Hearthstone are a good reference. In those, you don't get all your energy to start with, it builds up, and you can choose whether to spend it on one big boom or several smaller things. If your game only allows one combat action per turn, you can still get this sort of management by having energy carry over between turns and regenerate slowly (e.g. one bolt or one half-bolt per turn). Having (slow) energy regeneration turns time into a resource that players can manage, and it means that if you have energy-replenishing items, they can be very rare and valuable, useful only for emergencies.
As with health, I think energy would be more fun if it can have a little more variance than just 1-5.

Edit: Consider attacks, including ranged ones, with knockback. If movement ranges are small and positioning matters, forcing a change in position can be very useful.
Also, facing direction should probably matter. Gear should add different protection from different directions. For example, shields would probably offer no protection from the back or the sides while having good front protection and a chance to completely block an attack, while armour would offer some from all directions, but with no block chance.
I feel that many games with facing mechanics don't take them far enough - there is usually very little opportunity to end up facing away from an enemy, since your party and the enemy party usually start in different locations. Consider passive and active abilities that work with "suboptimal" facing - for example, an ability that grants a once-per-battle defence bonus against backstabbing, or a magic ability that does more damage to enemies the caster is facing away from.
Another way to get around facing being a bit useless is to make it harder to change direction. FFT let you set your facing at the end of each character's turn, no matter what you did during the turn, so of course you'd always face the enemy, and that step was tedious. But what if you were stuck facing whatever direction you turned to face while performing an attack or ability? Suddenly, healing and melee AoE spinning attacks turn risky!
« Last Edit: March 19, 2017, 02:24:52 pm by eishiya »

Offline Zizka

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Re: Fantasy Miniatures

Reply #69 on: March 19, 2017, 02:49:51 pm
The edit looks good, thanks.

I'm going for half-units, yes. I want to keep all the units small to make things less of a headache and more practical, sort of like in Super Mario RPG. XP going from 1 to 10 etc... I'd like to keep everything under 10 or 20 at the very most. Which is why I'm using D6 instead of D20 or D100. I want to weave creatively around that premise.

I kind of like the idea of facing directions but don't think it fits really well with the current miniature-style I'm going for. I could use an arrow to indicate which way the miniature is facing but considering how important it is, I feel like it could be easily missed. I mean, it's a pretty important mechanic but would seem trivial design wise.

There's also the issue of having facing directions when it's "up" so to speak as the arrow would technically appear behind the miniature. Here's an example where I put all 3 arrows:



I do think that having strategy battle without direction is a bit of a letdown since it's something I also appreciated say, in FF Tactics. If I were to have this in I would need to have a graphical way to implement it in a omnipresent way without having to redraw each miniature facing four different directions which would increase production too much. I think I can get away with the way the miniature look right now is the gameplay is good enough.

I'm also more or less set on the movement I'm going to go for. It's cleaner the way it is right now and I feel it's more pleasant to look at than previous versions:


(I added a green semi-transparent layer in photoshop to the walkable tiles). The boot is the destination.