Vaccinated (almost)
Dream Land Dance Party by Argle
Hi all. Not a lot to speak of IRL this month. I got my first COVID-19 vaccination shot, and I'm scheduled for the second this Friday. It'll be nice not needing to wear a mask in public (after the period for the vaccine to work, of course). Going back to regularly commuting to the office, as they're gearing up to require in my company, not so nice. X) But I'll still be able to spend 3 out 5 workdays at home, so I've got it better than most folk.
Not a huge amount of progress in Forgotten Gates this month, but not none either. I decided to change the skills of the deku scrub enemy to no longer have the money-stealing "Hard Sell" and instead have the ability to hide underground and pop back up. That involved adding a "hiding" version of the monster to transform to and from, and an "underground" attribute for battlers which affects whether skills can affect them (in most cases not, but there are exceptions). I already had a similar "flying" attribute, so it was fairly straightforward.
I've also started in on reimplementing the enemy AI in my DynRPG battle plugin instead of RM2K3 script. As part of that, I've established a bit of the narrator system as well, since the narrator can influence what the enemies will do -- one narrator may favor magic attacks, another may have a special fondness for particular status effects, etc. I'm actually a bit worried that this is a complication which feels better to me as the person implementing the systems than it'll be for the player. e.e; But, I also worry that it'll be significantly more difficult to work into the system later on than now, and I feel like it will distract me until it's in, so I'm powering through it. Worst-case scenario, I'll just make all narrators have default values for enemy AI.
Our Ninja Burger session this month was an off-the-cuff experiment on a night when only a few of us were present: we really did have to make the delivery within 30 real-time minutes. My brother was the GM and did a scenario wherein we had to deliver to an apartment building just down the street. It turned out the call was a trap laid by Pirate's Pizza, but of course a delivery is a delivery. Our newest member dropped off the food by the appointed door and used her super-speed (her ninja magic ability) to zip away before a bomb was detonated within the apartment. We also ran into some Pirate's Pizza employees during our retreat and meted out sweet ninja retribution.
On Zelda RPG, not a whole lot has happened in the Death Mountain scene. Dorjan retreated under the sea, so John surmised he's gone to raise an army of undead, as is his typical M.O. when dealing with anything that would be dangerous for him to blast on his own (John actually did get him within one good sword strike of defeat, by luck of the dice). So now the refugee camp is preparing for and awaiting an assault that will come who-knows-when. c.c
Meanwhile, Mituni (crazy ex-pirate Gerudo chef) and company have returned from a mission to the world of the Minish (tiny mouse-like folk) as part of a quest to craft a new sacred sword the likes of the Four Sword. I haven't really mentioned this plotline much because I haven't been part of it before, but I decided to port my little-used character Jo in as one of the Minish who accompanied Mituni back to the big-folk world and into Gerudo Fortress. Then Mituni asked about finding a ship so they could get to Death Mountain and continue their quest, so I decided to provide one as Adrian. He, we established, became captain of a fishing schooner crewed by complete neophytes to sailing -- hey, when the environment changes catastrophically, you do your best to find work that fits it. :P Adrian gave Mituni and her party a discounted rate for passage to Death Mountain in return for her assistance in whipping the crew into shape.
Dandara:
'Nother Epic Games freebie. Dandara is an action exploration game whose primary distinguishing feature is its mode of movement. Push the control stick in a direction and press the jump button, and the titular protagonist will leap almost instantly to a viable surface, sticking there. Usable surfaces are indicated by their white color, and there's a ghostly line showing you exactly which direction you're pushing the stick and how far at maximum you can jump, plus an arrow indicator showing where you'll land. If you point somewhere you can't jump to, the indicator will take the nearest possible spot within a fairly large slop factor. It's like being a zero-gravity ninja.
Dandara has a bit of a Metroidvania flavor, since you're plunked down in interconnected rooms and left to explore until you find some key item that unlocks new pathways and eventually leads you to the area boss. However, a lot of the keys don't give you new abilities per se, just unlock parts of the environment. It's not quite as basic as "you can now pass through doors of this color", but you will, for example, pick up a skull-shaped rock which causes architecture elements (moving platforms, passageways, etc.) with skull iconography to spring to life when you approach. There are some actual ability-increasing items too, including the ubiquitous missiles-which-blast-certain-obstacles, but for the most part, your upgrades really do function as keys and not general improvements to your arsenal.
Paradoxically, I found that the easy and lightning-quick movement of the game made backtracking feel like more of a chore in this game than in most Metroidvanias. There wasn't much to stop me from blitzing through places I'd already explored, so I sort of resented their existing at all. I didn't even have to worry about hazards aside from mobile enemies because the game's control scheme won't let you jump to anywhere that's not a safe spot.
That said, as the game moves toward the end, it starts throwing some bullet-hell situations at you, especially as boss/miniboss challenges. The unconventional movement style, while very easy when just doing slapdash navigation, becomes quite finicky when you're trying to weave between multiple hazards with split-seconds to adjust the jump line. This is especially true for the final boss, which requires you to shoot randomly-spawning enemies and then jump through targets dropped by them to make progress. I'm not sure what else could've been tried to provide an engaging yet fair challenge with this unique playstyle, but I don't feel the enemy spam quite cut it.
Bottom line? It looks and for a while feels cool, and I wanted to like this game, but in the long run it faltered. Only get it if you really like experimental action games.
Portal Knights:
This one came from a Humble Bundle. I was thinking it might make a good cooperative quest for my game group, so I decided to give it a run through. My conclusion was, eh, maybe if we don't have anything better to do. e.ea
Portal Knights is basically a cross between a typical MMORPG and Minecraft. The world is procedurally-generated from 3D blocks, a bit more fancy-looking than in Minecraft, but the same basic concept. The big difference is that where Minecraft has one continuous world that generates new space as you explore, Portal Knights has a bunch of independent floating islands connected by portals. In order to activate a portal, you have to collect portal block shards of different colors (the colors being simply native to different difficulty tiers, so that you can't use the excess shards you collected in one tier to blitz through the next). Most of the shards you'll collect are dropped by defeated monsters, although you also get some through fulfilling quests from NPCs and even just mining resources. Each island typically has one or more dungeon-like underground areas made from prefabricated rooms and passages randomly stuck together. Sometimes that's where a portal or other necessary thing is hidden, but mostly they're just loaded up with treasure chests containing cash, potions, armor that's a bit less useful than the best stuff you can make by crafting, etc.
Combat in Portal Knights is just slightly more action-oriented than in most MMORPGs, and arguably less challenging regardless. Traditional MMORPGs have you lock onto a target and attack back and forth automatically, with damage and dodges and such determined both ways by invisible dice rolls; Portal Knights allows and expects you to dodge around enemy blows yourself -- there's even a dodge-roll move. Both MMORPGs and Portal Knights have skills with cooldowns and mana usage, but Portal Knights has very little emphasis on such. This probably in part because I decided on the Warrior class as the best option for a solo run, but basically the only skill I had to think about was a "shout" that gave a temporary buff and stunned flying enemies.
For challenge, things actually did get a little difficult for me about halfway through, with a miniboss that started in the midst of a bunch of smaller monsters, summoned in occasional mooks, and could knock off nearly half my health meter at a go if I wasn't careful...but then I discovered that if I switched from a sword to a hammer, I would get stupid-fast health regeneration, to the point where I could take on most enemy groups without even bothering to dodge and expect to barely be in danger. =.= I was sort of glad to find that since it was getting a bit untenable to solo without it, but the rest of the game was pretty push-over. It's a game-breaking playstyle that renders all others moot.
Bottom line? It's okay for mindless exploration and monster-bashing, and it'd probably be more fun with friends (especially if you found feasible but not game-breaking ways to restore health), but I wouldn't particularly recommend it for soloing.
Click to viewHi all. Not a lot to speak of IRL this month. I got my first COVID-19 vaccination shot, and I'm scheduled for the second this Friday. It'll be nice not needing to wear a mask in public (after the period for the vaccine to work, of course). Going back to regularly commuting to the office, as they're gearing up to require in my company, not so nice. X) But I'll still be able to spend 3 out 5 workdays at home, so I've got it better than most folk.
Not a huge amount of progress in Forgotten Gates this month, but not none either. I decided to change the skills of the deku scrub enemy to no longer have the money-stealing "Hard Sell" and instead have the ability to hide underground and pop back up. That involved adding a "hiding" version of the monster to transform to and from, and an "underground" attribute for battlers which affects whether skills can affect them (in most cases not, but there are exceptions). I already had a similar "flying" attribute, so it was fairly straightforward.
I've also started in on reimplementing the enemy AI in my DynRPG battle plugin instead of RM2K3 script. As part of that, I've established a bit of the narrator system as well, since the narrator can influence what the enemies will do -- one narrator may favor magic attacks, another may have a special fondness for particular status effects, etc. I'm actually a bit worried that this is a complication which feels better to me as the person implementing the systems than it'll be for the player. e.e; But, I also worry that it'll be significantly more difficult to work into the system later on than now, and I feel like it will distract me until it's in, so I'm powering through it. Worst-case scenario, I'll just make all narrators have default values for enemy AI.
Our Ninja Burger session this month was an off-the-cuff experiment on a night when only a few of us were present: we really did have to make the delivery within 30 real-time minutes. My brother was the GM and did a scenario wherein we had to deliver to an apartment building just down the street. It turned out the call was a trap laid by Pirate's Pizza, but of course a delivery is a delivery. Our newest member dropped off the food by the appointed door and used her super-speed (her ninja magic ability) to zip away before a bomb was detonated within the apartment. We also ran into some Pirate's Pizza employees during our retreat and meted out sweet ninja retribution.
On Zelda RPG, not a whole lot has happened in the Death Mountain scene. Dorjan retreated under the sea, so John surmised he's gone to raise an army of undead, as is his typical M.O. when dealing with anything that would be dangerous for him to blast on his own (John actually did get him within one good sword strike of defeat, by luck of the dice). So now the refugee camp is preparing for and awaiting an assault that will come who-knows-when. c.c
Meanwhile, Mituni (crazy ex-pirate Gerudo chef) and company have returned from a mission to the world of the Minish (tiny mouse-like folk) as part of a quest to craft a new sacred sword the likes of the Four Sword. I haven't really mentioned this plotline much because I haven't been part of it before, but I decided to port my little-used character Jo in as one of the Minish who accompanied Mituni back to the big-folk world and into Gerudo Fortress. Then Mituni asked about finding a ship so they could get to Death Mountain and continue their quest, so I decided to provide one as Adrian. He, we established, became captain of a fishing schooner crewed by complete neophytes to sailing -- hey, when the environment changes catastrophically, you do your best to find work that fits it. :P Adrian gave Mituni and her party a discounted rate for passage to Death Mountain in return for her assistance in whipping the crew into shape.
Dandara:
'Nother Epic Games freebie. Dandara is an action exploration game whose primary distinguishing feature is its mode of movement. Push the control stick in a direction and press the jump button, and the titular protagonist will leap almost instantly to a viable surface, sticking there. Usable surfaces are indicated by their white color, and there's a ghostly line showing you exactly which direction you're pushing the stick and how far at maximum you can jump, plus an arrow indicator showing where you'll land. If you point somewhere you can't jump to, the indicator will take the nearest possible spot within a fairly large slop factor. It's like being a zero-gravity ninja.
Dandara has a bit of a Metroidvania flavor, since you're plunked down in interconnected rooms and left to explore until you find some key item that unlocks new pathways and eventually leads you to the area boss. However, a lot of the keys don't give you new abilities per se, just unlock parts of the environment. It's not quite as basic as "you can now pass through doors of this color", but you will, for example, pick up a skull-shaped rock which causes architecture elements (moving platforms, passageways, etc.) with skull iconography to spring to life when you approach. There are some actual ability-increasing items too, including the ubiquitous missiles-which-blast-certain-obstacles, but for the most part, your upgrades really do function as keys and not general improvements to your arsenal.
Paradoxically, I found that the easy and lightning-quick movement of the game made backtracking feel like more of a chore in this game than in most Metroidvanias. There wasn't much to stop me from blitzing through places I'd already explored, so I sort of resented their existing at all. I didn't even have to worry about hazards aside from mobile enemies because the game's control scheme won't let you jump to anywhere that's not a safe spot.
That said, as the game moves toward the end, it starts throwing some bullet-hell situations at you, especially as boss/miniboss challenges. The unconventional movement style, while very easy when just doing slapdash navigation, becomes quite finicky when you're trying to weave between multiple hazards with split-seconds to adjust the jump line. This is especially true for the final boss, which requires you to shoot randomly-spawning enemies and then jump through targets dropped by them to make progress. I'm not sure what else could've been tried to provide an engaging yet fair challenge with this unique playstyle, but I don't feel the enemy spam quite cut it.
Bottom line? It looks and for a while feels cool, and I wanted to like this game, but in the long run it faltered. Only get it if you really like experimental action games.
Portal Knights:
This one came from a Humble Bundle. I was thinking it might make a good cooperative quest for my game group, so I decided to give it a run through. My conclusion was, eh, maybe if we don't have anything better to do. e.ea
Portal Knights is basically a cross between a typical MMORPG and Minecraft. The world is procedurally-generated from 3D blocks, a bit more fancy-looking than in Minecraft, but the same basic concept. The big difference is that where Minecraft has one continuous world that generates new space as you explore, Portal Knights has a bunch of independent floating islands connected by portals. In order to activate a portal, you have to collect portal block shards of different colors (the colors being simply native to different difficulty tiers, so that you can't use the excess shards you collected in one tier to blitz through the next). Most of the shards you'll collect are dropped by defeated monsters, although you also get some through fulfilling quests from NPCs and even just mining resources. Each island typically has one or more dungeon-like underground areas made from prefabricated rooms and passages randomly stuck together. Sometimes that's where a portal or other necessary thing is hidden, but mostly they're just loaded up with treasure chests containing cash, potions, armor that's a bit less useful than the best stuff you can make by crafting, etc.
Combat in Portal Knights is just slightly more action-oriented than in most MMORPGs, and arguably less challenging regardless. Traditional MMORPGs have you lock onto a target and attack back and forth automatically, with damage and dodges and such determined both ways by invisible dice rolls; Portal Knights allows and expects you to dodge around enemy blows yourself -- there's even a dodge-roll move. Both MMORPGs and Portal Knights have skills with cooldowns and mana usage, but Portal Knights has very little emphasis on such. This probably in part because I decided on the Warrior class as the best option for a solo run, but basically the only skill I had to think about was a "shout" that gave a temporary buff and stunned flying enemies.
For challenge, things actually did get a little difficult for me about halfway through, with a miniboss that started in the midst of a bunch of smaller monsters, summoned in occasional mooks, and could knock off nearly half my health meter at a go if I wasn't careful...but then I discovered that if I switched from a sword to a hammer, I would get stupid-fast health regeneration, to the point where I could take on most enemy groups without even bothering to dodge and expect to barely be in danger. =.= I was sort of glad to find that since it was getting a bit untenable to solo without it, but the rest of the game was pretty push-over. It's a game-breaking playstyle that renders all others moot.
Bottom line? It's okay for mindless exploration and monster-bashing, and it'd probably be more fun with friends (especially if you found feasible but not game-breaking ways to restore health), but I wouldn't particularly recommend it for soloing.