Print

Child of Reason

Hi.

I'm working on a new project and I figured it was weird enough on it's own to start talking about it. The title is still up in the air, as I haven't decided whether to name it after the character's handle, to call it "Children of Schopenhauer", "Jung's Daemon", or 'Children of Reason". Essentially it's the product of a lot of western philosophy, myth, and my favorite of pseudosciences, psychic powers (I was a pretty big fan of Stephen King, Akira, and Scanners).

Mechanics in Place

I've decided there's enough weird components to start talking about the project as more than a theoretical work, and basically describe what I've got going on right now. I've tied together modified parts of Mr Mo's ABS, Ccoas UMS, Night runner's Event clone, and my own attribute hack combined with Robot Unicorn/MA's pdef/mdef modifier.

What's new in addition to ABS and UMS:

• sprite appears to fire a rifle on map when using rifles and stabs with knife when in melee
• attributes on a roughly 5-15 range, damage/dodge/critical equations radically different
• Characters can inflict damage even if unarmed
• melee weapons represent a damage modifier, while missile weapons deal 'flat' damage
• missile weapon damage modified by dexterity (aim) melee weapons modified by agility (accuracy)
• characters can resist some damage even without armor
• armor represents a resistance modifier
• Willpower Stat and Mental Resistance in Development
• 'on the fly' customizable skill system in the works, customize:
  • range
  • damage,
  • SP cost
  • and a whole lot more
• Music Skill tied to a library (midi) allowing character to play classics
• Painting Skill allows crafting of expensive objects with value depending on your talent
• Black market and bartering system with variable item prices.

 

It's not much I know, but I'm really enjoying the story line and trying to figure these things out. The storyline is a saga, beginning with a wealthy young artist and ending with something more at home in a Lovecraft novel. It's got a pretty dark edge to it and I hope people will enjoy playing it when it's done.

Characters
Anthon Rensselaer: The Protagonist. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, his story is the struggle and desperation of the human spirit. Faced with loss and despair, he must sacrifice reason and sanity to shatter the boundaries of human potential.

Hanzou Tomoe: The Master's Daughter. A member of an elusive ninja clan in the deepest mountains of Japan, she is a few years older and several times wiser than our anti-hero. She is torn between the two worlds of tradition and modernity.

Master Hanzou: A descendant of the infamous Iga clan, no one knows how old the man is, and many question if he is even human. Said to be the keeper of the ten-thousand mysteries, and the greatest disciple of Lama Rinpoche's teachings. 


My first Screenshot (new!)

Sounds like a pretty heft project here, but rather interesting. Don't suppose you have any screenshots yet to show off?

Sounds like a pretty heft project here, but rather interesting. Don't suppose you have any screenshots yet to show off?

Thanks for asking. It gave me an opportunity to clean up the look of my window frame, and while I was working on it,  noticed a missing effect in my skill damage output. I've since changed it. Apparently when I was running the corrections in ABS, I forgot some parts of damage resolution were calculated twice, and while the melee/missile weapon attacks worked, the skill changes hadn't taken effect. That's fixed now. I'm going to be revising the appearance of the Status menu slightly, and i'll post a screen shot of that.

Code: [Select]

# If hit occurs
    if hit_result == true
      # Calculate rate
      rate = 0
      rate += (user.str * skill.str_f / 100)
      rate += (user.dex * skill.dex_f / 100)
      rate += (user.agi * skill.agi_f / 100)
      rate += (user.int * skill.int_f / 100)
      # Calculate power - all heavily modified by shintashi
      power = skill.power + rate + (user.atk * skill.atk_f / 100)
      if power > 0
        power -= self.pdef * (skill.pdef_f / 100)
        power -= self.mdef * (skill.mdef_f / 100)
        power = [power, 0].max
      end
      # Calculate basic damage
      self.damage = power * (power + 2)
      # Element correction

This does look like a cool, if bloated project. It would be nice to have more info, but I guess that's why it's in New Projects. Anways, best of luck.

This does look like a cool, if bloated project. It would be nice to have more info, but I guess that's why it's in New Projects. Anways, best of luck.

I could always use help. Here's an example of my current "to do list" including failures

[fail]a. invert skill icons when selected
[fail]b. super impose 'number' ontop of icons when selected.
c. revise "skill" damage equation to match melee
d. rewrite experience system to provide low values
e. rewrite SP to become either skill or sanity points
f. write skill point currency exchange
g. rewrite level display to text "novice/veteran/god" etc.
h. finish rewriting skill/stat journal mechanism (in the works 12/14/10)
i. write custom skill modifier (changes attributes of skills) (in the works 01/16/11)
j. write custom skill builder with name input option (makes new skills)
k. rewrite skill FX to include 'die roll' and use MIND

I figured out g. was pointless when I realized it's a skill point system and "levels" don't do anything. (you distribute your points to buy or improve skills, stats, and specializations). I'm not sure what to do with SP. It's either going to be Sanity Points or Skill Points. It's a lot of work, but it's something to do between my existentialism homework.

W00t. Backlash code 1.1

Code: [Select]

    #Take off SP
    @actor.sp -= skill.sp_cost
#========================================================       
    # V. insert backlash here: by shintashi
#--------------------------------------------------------       
        #p $game_actors[1].name
#bk_range = Integer($ABS.RANGE_SKILLS[skill.id][0] / 2)
bk_range = Integer((Math.log($ABS.RANGE_SKILLS[skill.id][0]) *5))
backlash = skill.power + bk_range + @actor.int - @actor.mnd
      @actor.hp -= backlash * (backlash + 2)
#======================================================== 


It's still got flaws. Like I don't know how to make the character play an animation when suffering backlash, and I don't know how to make the character "dead" when they register as knock out from being at zero hit points from this script. Then again, that's probably the least of my worries.

>skills now have backlash and there are skill levels.
>There's also "skills without levels" which allows me to produce sub skills and special effects. For example, under the school of Psychokinesis you might have Telekinesis, Levitation, and Pyrokinesis (stuff I originally did with Eventing in another game... so I already have animations and sprite set ups for those).

>profiles now display whether you are armed, unarmed, or using a ranged weapon.

>Ranged weapons also display range.

>New Playable character "Tomoe" Added.

>Shuriken animation created for new 'Ninja' class. Shuriken may become first weapon to have both range and an attribute modifier. If that works, bows (but not cross bows) will follow.

>solved the "negative squared" backlash glitch (backlash used to be [n * n +2] but if you had a high enough stat or skill, "n" could be negative, and instead of producing "0" backlash, it would produce a positive integer. The new version sets n to 0 if negative

First side quest in sewers is almost completely set up event wise, ( rats need to be added but that's pretty straight forward)

More spectacularly, the painting system now has easels, so you can paint something, take the easel with you, set up the easel someplace else and paint, or leave it and come back to it later. Right now two paint images are loaded and I've got many more paintings you can generate at higher painting levels. The more advanced your paintings, the more money they can produce at when sold, which can be used to buy rare items, or later, skill training.

Speaking of skill training, I got the "Life Experience" point system and the Skill points to display, and have redone the fonts and the character profile images to white line art.

The basic path is supposed to be artist > ninja > psychic
but right off the bat you can be a scout, student, or musician
future class options will include assassin, detective, soldier, and possibly skeptic or academic. Actually I'm not sure what I want to call the last one, I just know they will have "anti-psi". Cyborg and Engineer are some other options I'm thinking about, but I've got to figure out the "ally" system so the character can work with ninjas, cops, soldiers, psi-corps agents, and so on.

Life points now increase when character gains levels, but hopefully are independent enough to be spendable. I created the scout class and related sprites (melee, rifle, hit, defend, etc.). created the police sprite, and integrated a much more advanced ABS, this one displays money and items when dropped and the AI is more developed. I had to completely rework the combat rounds and damage resolution but now my party members show up on the screen and fight independently.

Also created a modification to the ninjitsu and shuriken skills, tying them together so the higher a person's ninjitsu skill level, the better their range and speed. Made a 'shadow walk' ranged melee attack thing, but i'm not really comfortable with it unless it teleports the attacker to the enemy. It looks like something from Naruto. I'm not certain yet how to modify damage with skills yet, but it's probably similar. I can probably also use the current system to create a matrix effect in which the main character attacks/moves horridly fast while the enemies don't.

Set up a bonfire creation skill that uses flint & firewood to create a fire, if monsters come too close to the fire, they get burned.

Edit 12:33 pm:

Characters can inflict damage even if unarmed

This was a pain in the ass... but I got it worked out. While working on it I realized I could feasibly give characters something like 5 attacks per second if their button mash time went to 0, also found out mash time can be decimals 0.9 through 0.1, and in conjunction with control over the monster's attack rate, Some Matrix like effects are possible.

f. write skill point currency exchange (in the works 12/14/10)

This has been finish as of January 4th 2011. The rest of the skill matrix conversion and interface is still in the works. In the mean time, I've created mini-sprites for my ship scenes and the pacific Ocean Maps, (in crude form) are complete. Characters can switch classes and get different experience tables to load with their new classes, effectively allowing me to create composite classes with monstrous experience table requirements.

It looks like I'm going to have to create a full 'keyboard' interface for my skill editor, since RGSS doesn't really support input textbox features. In the mean time, I got the "i have chosen XYZ skill to edit" working and can edit skills right now, but as I've said, I need a keyboard interface if people are going to be able to write new skills with descriptions longer than 16 characters. Even twitter gives you 140 characters to work with.

Edit: a crude form of the Keyboard is in place, and I realized I can probably do a lot with this feature once I get it ironed out.

It looks like I'm going to have to create a full 'keyboard' interface for my skill editor...

Keyboard finished. Skill Title and Skill Description can both be edited. Skill editor options now work for multiple characters instead of just actor 1. Added Skill Level and Skill Power Displays. As of this writing, the skill editor is probably half done, and just over 1200 lines of code.

Skill editor now edits range, speed, prep time, area effect, and knockback. I have yet to tie in costs or backlash calculation, but will probably do that after Power. It's got some kinks in it but it doesn't crash anymore from "error -infinity". Once the skill editor is complete, I can use that template for a much simpler attribute editor, and a slightly more complex skill creator. I hve yet to decide if I will "backup" the original versions of skills for NPCs, since there is one protagonist and only limited supporting cast.

Edit: Jan 24th
Skill Editor also edits Sanity (SP) cost, scope (ally/enemy), and Power (damage/healing). I'm not sure if I can turn an attack into a healing effect, or why you would want to, but it might come in handy later when the skill editor becomes the skill creator. Made some subtle cosmetic changes to controls and sound.