The Mugen Fighters Guild

M.U.G.E.N Central => FullGame development => Hogwarts: The Dueling Club, 1942 => Topic started by: Liquid Jake on December 08, 2010, 08:53:58 am

Title: Gameplay
Post by: Liquid Jake on December 08, 2010, 08:53:58 am: (http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/2882/006hb.jpg)

First to three wins, with no more than 2 draws. Something special will be afoot if anyone makes it to Round 7... You get a different colored jewel depending on how you finish the round, flawless victory and the jewel sparkles. It's very pretty.

Some of the spells work like hypers, castable at different levels. The bronze, silver and gold bars fill like any other power bar, and that's what they're used for.

The hourglass timer is animated, it takes about 88 seconds. If you set it to no time limit, it just fills back up and repeats.

(http://img602.imageshack.us/img602/5903/007ph.jpg)

A Wizard's Duel is pretty straight-forward: Wands only, no contact. That means no melee moves, only magic.

The game is four-button; Hex, Jinx, Charm and Curse. If you've read the books, you'll recognize the four different types of spellcasting. Smashing any one button will make your character wave their wand and shoot off pretty sparks; Charms make red sparks, hexes make purple, jinxes make yellow and curses green. But it won't hit anything or hurt anybody. To do that, you've actually got to cast a spell.

The spells are all essentially special moves using standard direction taps, charges and rolls, plus whatever button for the type of spell you're casting. Plus, each character has at least 2 more hyper-type spells unique to them. These are hyper only, so they can't be cast without at least the bronze bar full.

As an example; Expelliarmus, the disarming charm. As a standard special move anyone can cast it, at any time, and it'll travel a short ways in front of your casting character. If your opponent is close enough, and if they haven't cast Protego, which protects them from charms for a short time, then they're disarmed and they have to go and pick up their wand. Unarmed characters can't cast spells, but some of the character-specific spells may be unarmed-only. But cast level-3 Expelliarmus with three full power bars (different moves for each level) and your opponent is knocked backwards and disarmed regardless of where they are, and it can only be blocked by a level-3 Protego spell.

The spells move and hit on a pretty even scale, but each House is just a wee-bit better at a certain type: Slytherin's better at curses, Ravenclaw at Charms, Griffindor at Hexes and Hufflepuff at Jinxes. Each house has its own movelist, plus each student has at least 2 spells unique to them.
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: Liquid Jake on December 03, 2012, 09:02:27 am: (http://i1273.photobucket.com/albums/y408/EkajDiuqil/036.jpg)

I'm not sure if any of you have ever watched a Mugen match where there are no basic attacks and all the moves are special between two computer players with default AI, or between an eight year old and a nine year old, but there's not a whole lot of action. Lots of jumping and running around, but you're essentially waiting for the time to run out. As such, I've added a couple things that will hopefully move things along.

Aubriana Zonko, of eventual joke shop fame, will occasionally run across the background and toss out a package that bobs up and down in the air. This is a helper and, once struck by either player, blows up and causes a random affect. Fill your power bars, fill your health, massive damage, make it snow, or INSTANT FREAKING DEATH! That's my personal favorite. I'll probably add a few more possible affects, and again, it's all totally random.

The package doesn't move around, it just floats in one spot. You can jump over it all day long, if you want to. Matches are only 88 seconds but it is possible to have two or three on the screen. They don't stay between rounds, either. It's probably taking some "skill" out of the game, but I think it'll also make things faster.

Is this stupid?
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: TRUEMicah on December 03, 2012, 09:20:42 am: I don't think it's stupid but I think players should be able to disable the boxes if the player is annoyed by them.
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
The boxes reminds of the Smash ball/Items from SSBB :P
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: Liquid Jake on December 03, 2012, 09:29:28 am: I've never played the Smash Bros games, but back in the World Heroes days I seem to recall things being tossed onto the stage that could blow up and damage your character. With the boxes, there's always the chance that it'll help, too, so they're not totally something to avoid.

I'm not sure how I could make disabling them an option...
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: TRUEMicah on December 03, 2012, 09:31:34 am: You could create a config.def file for it. That's what most other people would do in this situation anyways.
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: Revanto on December 05, 2012, 04:27:55 am: Liquid Jake said, December 03, 2012, 09:29:28 am
I've never played the Smash Bros games, but back in the World Heroes days I seem to recall things being tossed onto the stage that could blow up and damage your character. With the boxes, there's always the chance that it'll help, too, so they're not totally something to avoid.

I'm not sure how I could make disabling them an option...

Yay, World Heroes! I have very fond memories of that game. Gameplay was ridiculously unfair at times but loved the novelty of the heroes from history.

Anyway, in regards to dangerous stages, may I suggest having a stage where Peeves randomly pops up and distracts or slows one of the players if they get too close to him. He could also do other things as well but adding that random element to the gameplay might make things more interesting.

Cheers,
Revanto ;P
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: Liquid Jake on February 19, 2013, 07:09:02 am: (http://i1273.photobucket.com/albums/y408/EkajDiuqil/039_zps18d511cc.jpg)

Peeves the Poltergeist; He comes up from the bottom of the screen, floats about and tosses tomatoes. Then he goes away. You can't hit him right now, but I'm thinking of changing that.

Because I hate him.

(http://i1273.photobucket.com/albums/y408/EkajDiuqil/038_zps35a19025.jpg)

The house ghosts; The Grey Lady, Nearly Headless Nick, The Fat Friar and The Bloody Baron. Totally random. I'm not sure if something should happen while they're on the screen, or become possible. Like the Toasty guy, I guess.

I'm open for suggestions.
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: Liquid Jake on September 16, 2013, 02:34:22 am: (http://i1273.photobucket.com/albums/y408/EkajDiuqil/044_zps1d212fa2.jpg)

Peeves is hittable.

Little bastard...
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: abdullahsaurus on December 13, 2013, 08:33:13 pm: Awesome Game btw is this been abandoned or what ?
Title: Re: Gameplay
Post by: Liquid Jake on December 30, 2013, 05:44:42 am: No, it has not been abandoned. I still plug an unreasonable amount of time into this, but this part of the process is horribly boring. Everything I do, every step towards completion, just makes clear a whole bunch of other crap that now has to be dealt with.

(http://i1273.photobucket.com/albums/y408/EkajDiuqil/046_zpsf73b14cf.jpg)

You see that? That's what I did today. Initially, Peeves would show up above Player2. He'd just fade in from the background, in a puff of smoke. Then he'd bob up and down for a second, then he'd laugh, then he'd throw tomatoes at the players. 4 tomatoes, helpers, tossed in 4 random diagonally-down directions. Then he'd vanish. Whoo hoo, right?

A round is 88 seconds by the hourglass, and in it's default form the Random Encounter code may or may not toss someone else on the screen every 25 seconds or so. No more than three in a round. Maybe one of the four house ghosts, maybe Zonko and her joke box, maybe Peeves and his tomatoes. That's well and good, but I've been playing in what's been noted in the .CNS as "Chaos Mode;" The Random Encounter generator trips every fifteen or twenty game ticks. Twice a second. I really like this, and I have a hard time turning it back to "normal." It's ridiculous, really; Way too frenzied for a fighting game and a really long round is still over in thirty seconds, because inevitably Zonko's box will kill someone. Or, once he was coded, Peeves and his goddamn tomatoes would show up and mow everyone down. It was too much, too hard. I didn't like Peeves, and my kids didn't like him, and what was supposed to be a cute little addition, practically nothing, was ruining the game.

So, today, with some time to spend on this silly game, I had to once again go back and recode something that I thought was done: Peeves. Which brings us back to that picture up above. Peeves now comes from behind Player 2, laughing and giggling as he floats across the top of the screen and drops his stupid tomatoes straight down. The coding to get him to do that is way simpler than what it was before, the animations are smaller, the sprites used are much less. So, in the end, it's all been good and I'm glad I re-did Peeves, because...

...wait a minute...

That picture above shows Player 1 on fire. Spells can do that, as can Zonko's box sometimes. An on-fire character has to either get hit with an ice or water spell, or jump to the top of the screen. Y < -300, or something like that. But, at just the right moment, Peeves is strolling across the top of the screen, tossing his damn salad. And he's hittable, because I hate him so much now. Player 1 smashes into Peeves and is rocketed back down towards the floor where he smashes into one of those stupid floating boxes that Zonko leaves behind as she runs across the bottom of the screen.

You see those nonsensical symbols over on the left? Those pinkish-grey letters? Yeah, that's the Elecbyte default Combo Counter sliding out. You can't actually do combos, at least not with spells, and there are no melee moves. So I've never even looked at the Combo Counter. I've never even thought about it. Until today, when I was bouncing my happy ass all over the screen thanks to Random Encounters that I frankly thought I was done with a long time ago. I fixed Peeves, and now I have to fix combos.

Two steps forward, three steps back.

I know now why there are so few fullgames in the Mugen world. I know now why professional developers are not one guy with an idea, but a whole team. And I know now why playtesters actually make money playing video games yet complain about their job. It's because this is brutally, mind-numbingly tedious and small tweaks at one point become huge and unforeseen issues later on. The best we can do is to trudge along, dealing with what comes up.

So that's what I'm doing.

Still.