Devlog - Hacksilver

[Connors]

I'm impressed you're just now deciding to put together a "quick map generator".

[WarHampster]

Heh, it's already done

Interesting problem that I've run into: I've been playing the game so much that it's become really easy for me. In fact, I thought that the enemy AI had somehow broken and become less smart, and spent a while trying to fix it before realizing that the AI was the same, but I had gotten much better.

Moral: get people other than yourself to play-test your games!!!

[EqwanoX]

Heh, it's already done

Interesting problem that I've run into: I've been playing the game so much that it's become really easy for me. In fact, I thought that the enemy AI had somehow broken and become less smart, and spent a while trying to fix it before realizing that the AI was the same, but I had gotten much better.

Moral: get people other than yourself to play-test your games!!!

YES! it makes stat balanceing so annoying, because that can make or break the game. it took me a long time to figure that out. i think this is why there was so many frustratingly hard games during the 8-bit era

[Silverwind]

YES! it makes stat balanceing so annoying, because that can make or break the game.

You just gotta use the percentile based table system Eq. You'll never go back to making games without it!

[EqwanoX]

percentile stats seem broken to me. if weak armor blocks 10% of damage and early enemies only do 20 damage, it only blocks 2, thats nothing. so, say you bump it up to 20%, then strong enemy that does 200 damage it blocks 40 which is to much for the weakest armor. i used percentile in mystic legend 1.0. it blocked excessive damage on stong enemies and to little on weak enemies, maybe theres a way to balance it but it doesnt work for me

[WarHampster]

I'M DONE

GIVE ME A MINUTE TO UPLOAD

[WarHampster]

GAME: http://lastbossworks.com/Files/HackSilver.zip

[Gan]

Whoa that's nice. I think your title screen beats my game hands down.

[EqwanoX]

this is good, i like the gameplay of targeting in eight directions. and the ai is challenging. but on my g5 it takes a long time for the title screen to come up, the gradient effect goes real slow. music is epic too

[WarHampster]

Thanks guys!

on my g5 it takes a long time for the title screen to come up, the gradient effect goes real slow.

That's interesting, it just uses a for loop to increment a black sprite's fade intensity. I'll redo it using a timer, that might be faster.

[Silverwind]

percentile stats seem broken to me. if weak armor blocks 10% of damage and early enemies only do 20 damage, it only blocks 2, thats nothing. so, say you bump it up to 20%, then strong enemy that does 200 damage it blocks 40 which is to much for the weakest armor. i used percentile in mystic legend 1.0. it blocked excessive damage on stong enemies and to little on weak enemies, maybe theres a way to balance it but it doesnt work for me

You've got it all wrong my fine feathered fiend friend from France. You don't use percentages as stat values, you base your stat values on percentages. In fairness I've never actually given an in-depth explanation on how the engine works, so I'll try to post up a video tutorial soon. Honestly though, it's the best thing since sliced bread!

[WarHampster]

Post your HackSilver highscores!

[Gan]

 

On a serious note, found a bug:

[WarHampster]

Holy crap Gan, that is impressive.

Yeah, I've run into that before... didn't have time to fix it before the contest.

EDIT - on that note: anyone who plays this, please let me know if you find more bugs! I've run into the following:

The map generator will occasionally place enemies in impossible to reach areas.

Enemies will occasionally be able to hit you from a distance.

I've run into a crash bug once, never been able to reproduce it.  

[Charlo]

I got an error where the GETGRIDLOCATION method referenced an array with an index that was out of bounds, but I don't remember the name of the array.  It caused a crash.  The game was flippin' great up until that point though, I'm extremely impressed.  The random maps were cool and the combat mechanics were very nice.