Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

All general stuff game related to Egoboo gameplay (Characters, tactics, etc.).

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Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Zefz »

It’s time for the third part of the development diary series of Egoboo! Last time we focused on converting to SDL 2.0, fixing bugs and converting the codebase to C++. This time we are happy to announce some new gameplay improvements in addition to the usual list of bugfixes.

In-Game GUI
Egoboo finally has a proper user-interface in-game. We have designed the current system so that it is easy to expand or improve upon. This features a new inventory and character screen. Now you can finally examine your character attributes and defences.

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New character and inventory interface

The minimap can now be moved around and resized using the M button. Now the icon of characters or monsters is drawn on the minimap instead of tiny blips.

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New minimap zoom feature

A new simplified and improved Video Options screen is implemented. A similar screen for Audio and Input Binding is in the works.

Attribute Revamp
Some focus has been made into making the character attributes more interesting. Egoboo currently features the following character attributes:

Might:
Formerly known as Strength. Represents the fortitude, power and physical prowess of your character. Your Might attribute directly affects the following:
* This increases damage with melee weapons
* Determines knockback effect
* Jump power
* Block chance for shields and chance to break a Block
* Increases character size

Agility:
Formerly known as Dexterity. Represents how fast, energic and quick your character can react and move. A character's Agility directly affects the following things:
* Increases attack speed
* Movement speed
* Hit chance with ranged weapons
* Damage with ranged weapons
* Chance to disarm traps and unlock chests

Intellect:
Both the Intelligence and Wisdom attributes were merged into a single Intellect attribute. Too little separated these two attributes in terms of game mechanics so it made sense to merge them to make intellect an overall more interesting attribute. Intellect is the measurement how clever, wise and perceptive your character is and affects the following:
* Damage with all spells (both Arcane and Divine)
* Hit chance for spells
* Experience gain
* Chance to find traps and hidden treasure

Mana Regeneration:
How fast your mana regenerates per second. Was formerly called Mana Return.

Life Regeneration:
A completely new attribute that determines how fast your life regenerates per second.
Only special effects and magic usually gives life regeneration.

Spell Power:
Formerly known as Mana Flow, your Spell Power determines which spells you can cast and how powerful they are. For example: a Wizard with 3 Spell Power can summon 3 Magic Missiles while an Adventurer with 1 Spell Power can only summon one Magic Missile.

Perks!
Character development is integral in any rogue-like RPG and Egoboo is no exception to that. We felt that the old level up system did not really feel satisfying so we have expanded this using the new GUI system mentioned above. Each time your character gains an experience level, you clearly see which of your attributes is improved and by how much. Furthermore you get to select a Perk to learn. A Perk is a unique bonus that your character gains permanently. Some of them unlock new abilities or improve your existing ones. Each class has a different set of Perks to select from and some Perks are unique to each class. So far we have added almost 100 unique Perks!
Here are some examples of the Perks an Adventurer can learn:

Athletics: +25% Jump Power and +50% movement in water
Rally: Nearby allies gain +10% movement speed and attack damage
Dodge: +1% chance per Agility to avoid damage.

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Which one to pick?

Bugfixes and Changes
  • Fix collision boxes so that attacks actually hurt their targets and cause knockback
    * Faster texture loading by only loading textures into memory when they are actually needed
    * Fix Gonne particles spawning in the ground
    * Changed how damage resistance works so that it allows for more granularity and prevent resistance to block damage completely. (unless complete immunity was intended)
    * Fix so that particles spawned by Weapons are owned by the holder of the Weapon
    * Fix particles not properly de-spawning (e.g Soldier Starter)
    * Replaced or removed some IDSZ flags in Objects that weren’t doing what was intended
    * Fix some Particles not being properly rendered
    * Healer and Paladin Healing cloud can now properly hit multiple enemies or friends
    * Fix knockback logic
    * Swipe weapons like Claw or Sword can properly hit multiple enemies
    * Make aiming with ranged weapons easier
    * Improve renderer logic
    * Improved memory management to reduce chance of memory leaks
    * Screenshots are not saved in PNG format
    * Prevent some in-game messages from being spammed
    * Game performance improvements
    * Improved cross-platform interoperability
    * Crash fixes
    * Many, many other minor bugs resolved
We need you!
We always welcome help! Pop into the developer chat here: https://gitter.im/egoboo/egoboo if you wish to help us. We need anything from coders, graphic artist, web designer to game testers. We would like to have someone draw a new interface for the main menu among other things. This website sorely needs to be remade and kept up to date with 2015.

We have now fully migrated to Visual Studio 2015 and dropped support for 2013 so that we can fully utilize the new features of C++11. We have also an up-to-date build system for both MinGW and Linux using GCC. OSX has also a working build system.
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Re: Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Shade »

Might:
[...]
* Increases character size
Oh my god, that sounds like the worst thing. I never liked how the characters kept growing with each level because their hitbox didn't grow to match their size, and even if that had been the case, becoming easier to hit the stronger you become doesn't sound very appealing.

That said, it's nice to see that Egoboo seems to receive a little attention again.

However, not to rain on your parade or anything, but one thing I've always liked about Egoboo was its simplicity. With that in mind, is there really a point in making the attributes "more interesting" by making more arbitrary actions dependent on them? After all, unlike in, say, SoulFu, you have little to no control over your stat spread aside from which class you play as, so all the depth the stat system promises effectively just remains "these numbers grow bigger, I become better at random stuff". The perk system seems interesting, and considering you actually have some amount of control over that, I'd honestly rather see that fleshed out more and the main attributes made simpler again (for instance, making jump power depend on Might seems annoying more than anything, shields randomly failing to block attacks seems unnecessary for a simple action-oriented game like Egoboo, etc.).

Also, concerning the new inventory system - can you still switch out items directly, without accessing the inventory menu? If not, please consider adding that back in. While having an actual inventory screen is nice for when you want to do some organizing when you're not busy trying not to die, not being able to access items in your inventory without accessing the menu would completely break the flow of combat.

Concerning Attack Speed, how does this currently work? Does it affect the speed of the animation, or does it add a delay between attacks while leaving the animation speed unaltered? I remember the latter being the case at some point in development, but the former solution seems a lot more elegant if it's feasible.
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Re: Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Zefz »

Does it affect the speed of the animation, or does it add a delay between attacks while leaving the animation speed unaltered?
Both.
I never liked how the characters kept growing with each level because their hitbox didn't grow to match their size
This affects size only very slightly, mostly it affects other physical properties like mass (i.e how effective you can push monsters out of the way for example). It also reduces knockback caused by enemies with less Might. It is most noticable if you select the Gigantism Perk which actually increases your character size a little. Note that the whole collision system and hitboxes has been fixed and improved upon so that gameplay generally feels better and more consistent.
you have little to no control over your stat spread aside from which class you play as
This is no longer the case though, through the new Perk system you can affect which of the 3 major attributes you want focus on. We can also add some further customization if it makes the gameplay better.

I would wait until you have tried it yourself before declaring it "arbitrary" or "complex". A lot of this was always in the game, but I've just streamlined it and made it more exposed to the player. You really don't need to know the benefits of each attribute unless you are one of those types who like min/maxing character builds.

Code: Select all

can you still switch out items directly, without accessing the inventory menu
We can do a lot of things to make this easier. Perhaps hotkeying items or putting them in a slot bar?
shields randomly failing to block
Well, if you could see the % chance your shield has to block an attack (based on the shield type and your might) then it would not feel so random would it? There are also both audible and visual effects to notify that attacks are either blocked or when it fails to block.
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Re: Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Shade »

I see.
Zefz wrote:This is no longer the case though, through the new Perk system you can affect which of the 3 major attributes you want focus on. We can also add some further customization if it makes the gameplay better.
Well, admittedly, I'd need to see the perk system in action to really be able to judge it, but that's just the impression I got.
Maybe allow the player to freely distribute one additional stat point per level up among their main attributes (in addition to the perks)? That way you could work towards making an adventurer less sluggish, for example, or you could focus on making a soldier hit even harder than he already does. Just something to make you feel more in control.
Zefz wrote:A lot of this was always in the game, but I've just streamlined it and made it more exposed to the player.
I know, but most of them were seperate (hidden) stats, most of which remained constant throughout the game.
Maybe I'm just biased against change, so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt. I'd be happy to test out the next stable build to see for myself how these changes affect the game, though.
Zefz wrote:We can do a lot of things to make this easier. Perhaps hotkeying items or putting them in a slot bar?
The issue with hotkeys is that even modern gamepads rarely have more than 8 or maybe 10 buttons to bind input to. Not everyone likes using the keyboard to play.
What do you mean by a slot bar?
Zefz wrote:Well, if you could see the % chance your shield has to block an attack (based on the shield type and your might) then it would not feel so random would it? There are also both audible and visual effects to notify that attacks are either blocked or when it fails to block.
My point is more that I feel that in a game like this, blocking should be absolute (like it used to be in earlier versions of the game, in fact) - meaning that trying to block an attack will either always work or always fail, rather than having a, say 80% chance to work. Having to actually face the attack is already enough of a restriction as far as I'm concerned - even without a chance to fail, blocking attacks requires some amount of skill, especially since you can neither move nor attack while blocking, so I think it should at the very least be reliable regardless of your stats.
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Re: Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Zefz »

especially since you can neither move nor attack while blocking
There is actually a Perk that allows you to do this :)

There is also a Perk with no requirements that gives you a perfect 100% block chance.

A tradeoff we have to do with implementing new benefits for the player in form of Perks, is adding a few new restrictions or drawbacks which the player can remove by Perks. Of couse we can easily change/rebalance game mechanics at any point to whatever we feel is better gameplay. But this is difficult to make a decision without user feedback from many users.

This is what I mean when I say "slot bar" (the bar on the bottom of the image):
Image
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Re: Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Shade »

I sure hope there's a perk that removes the permanent stat loss from potions, then. I always hated that. :teach:
I understand that, but... Oh well, I'll see how it works out.

As for the inventory:
Wouldn't that basically work the same way as hotkeys?
Besides, in a Hotseat session, showing one of these bars for each player would probably just clutter up the screen unless they were really small.
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Re: Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Zefz »

Does anyone actually use hotseat?

Yes we could definitely add a Perk for removing that stat loss from potions :) I already though about adding an Alchemy perk that allows you to identify all potions and even create new ones.
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Re: Egoboo Development Diary Part 3

Post by Shade »

Zefz wrote:Does anyone actually use hotseat?
I used to play Egoboo a lot with a friend of mine back when Hotseat actually worked. It was quite fun.
Nowadays, Netplay is probably more important, but Hotseat Multiplayer is nonetheless nice to have (especially when the code is already there!).
Zefz wrote:Yes we could definitely add a Perk for removing that stat loss from potions :) I already though about adding an Alchemy perk that allows you to identify all potions and even create new ones.
Great, maybe I'll actually start using something other than life elixirs to heal, then. 2000 Zenny per heal adds up quickly. :teach:
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