New XB Game: Wizard's Doom (In Progress)

[+jedimatt42]

I played a little a week ago. I was impressed. Looking forward to committing some time to the final. The only criticism I can offer is that in battle, there is a lack of feedback. I wasn't sure if I'm supposed to be button mashing, or taking turns. If I attacked but missed, or what?

 

When keyboard input cycles are slow, it is really valuable to provide feedback on every command.

 

I'm sure I could get used to it with enough time if it is as designed.

 

-M@

[+adamantyr]

In combat, you have to press and HOLD the A button if you want to get your attacks in. You know if you hit if the monster flashes and you hear a sound. Otherwise you missed.

[+jedimatt42]

In combat, you have to press and HOLD the A button if you want to get your attacks in. You know if you hit if the monster flashes and you hear a sound. Otherwise you missed.

 

I guess I would like to just see: ATTACK MISSED, or a du-du sound or something when you miss. So you know your keyboard works.

 

-M@

[+adamantyr]

I am doing some feedback stuff in terms of sound effect changes and switches, so I'll take a look at that. I think the idea is the absence of a 'hit' sound is what you listen for.

 

Could be worse... the original Wizard's Lair literally had no hit/miss mechanics, you just did damage, but you wouldn't KNOW it since it never really indicates anything.

 

I have tentatively completed graphics updates, got my monsters looking right! Right now I'm still playing the Magic-User, so far another crashing bug fixed and on level 3. He's kicking ass pretty good, but I suspect as I start relying on higher level spells his mana consumption is going to become an issue. I want to make sure the game doesn't grind to a halt because you run out of mana potions and are literally stuck and doomed.

[+adamantyr]

Did some major re-factoring on the magic-user and spells today...

 

I realized, doing some calculations ahead, that the MU is EXTREMELY powerful. They can do very large burst damage; I realized the way I had it designed, he could take out the Evil Wizard with 4-5 castings of the most powerful damage spell, at a cost of only 3-4 magic points per casting! After killing an ogre on level 3 with a minimal of fuss I decided to stop and redesign a bit.

 

I changed how magic points worked so that while you get some benefit from higher experience and wisdom, the spell costs remain fairly high for the stronger spells. I also made one monster in particular completely immune to spell damage (he's vulnerable to another spell though) and few others take only 25%, so that you can't just win the game with a couple castings. Also, being cursed extends to spell-casting too...

 

It's a careful balance though. I don't want to make the game to completely nerf one class in a given context. I'll have to start over my Magic-User at level 1, since I fundamentally altered spell costs...

[+Ksarul]

Magic User balance is a general pain in almost any game that has them. They have to tread very lightly at low levels, but once they reach a point where their spell repertoire has a few powerful ones in it, it is very easy for all hell to break loose. . .and creating a nearly un-killable monster maiming machine in the process.

[+adamantyr]

A couple new adjustments made...

 

I realized that the MU was never getting hit, when he had a Ward spell active. And looking at the projected math, it was going to get worse not better. So I halved the effectiveness of the ward spell, which is still powerful but not AS powerful.

 

The other change is more significant, and affects all classes. I realized that there was no upper limit on attack or defense values, which means you could literally have a situation where you couldn't miss, or couldn't be hit. So I introduced maximums on the attack and defense rolls, with defense coming in one lower than attack. That way, both you and monsters always have around a 4% chance of hitting.

 

As I now had definite "maximums" that also let me re-tool the monsters a bit on the last level, increasing their attack and defense values. I also remembered that the warrior rather readily handled all of them easily, I wanted to make it a bit harder.

 

I won't be re-playing the Warrior to test it, I'll let you guys do that. I think I'm at the stage as well where I will just release after I make sure I didn't introduce any game crashing bugs...