Battlejewels Build 054 - Bull, Horns, Grab.

[skeezix]

(Wow, fruit machine sim looks awesome. But let me know .. if I post another update after only a few days, should it be News or update the older story? I don't want to news spam!)

(Edit: Note.. if you're having crashes, then the origiunal GBAX entry and a build from a few days back is on my website, as well as the latest less tested build. So you cna play on the leading edge, or hold back a few builds, as you see fit

o Swapped blue and white; this is mostly conceptual business, but when
playing Gladiator you now want BLUE, and Friar wants WHITE more.

o Toughness skill reduces 'clear' damage, not spell damage; not as insanely
overpowered anymore

o When dealing any kind of damage, at least 1pt always hits the target; ie:
regardless of toughness or damage reduction or whatever, 1 lands.
- note that a _dodge_ voids the entire attack, so no damage is dealt. We may
need to balance that still .. but dodge is harder to go off anyway.

o Free moves only occur after a clear, as they were intended. Ooops! Also,
they should only occur when oyu actually get a move, not when you're missing
a move. Oops! All that 3am coding..

o Enemy level is now a little more in line with player; wont' really
outclass you so much until level 5+

o Skill points, spell points and gold are shown in the training area and
stores, so you know how much you've got left

o On match begin, for level 0-2, show a warning if you've not spent all your
skill and spell pts when firing up a match; you cna save them up, but these
early levels.. its wise to spend

o A damage bonus (for clears only) is added based on level; not until level
3 mind you, but helps to avoid long attles against giant hp, evne if you've
not geared up .. or a mage without a +dmg weapon in hand, say

o Weapon bonuses honoured now; ie: Pigsticker now has a +2 dmg bonus when
equipped, so that means a clear-3-skulls does 3+2 dmg now, not just 3.
Likewise, a 4-skulls does 6 dmg.
- when enemies have giant hitpoints due to level you need big gear, or big
spells, to keep the match short; if you have crappy gear or crappy spells, a
high level opponent will take forever to beat

Thats all for now, but much more to come

http://www.codejedi.com/battlejewels/binar...2x-054-beta.zip

Substantially untested; time was tight!

jeff

 

[Tempus]

Ok, right off the bat, a bug report: playing with a level 2 druid against a level 3 druid, the game halted completely when the opponent tried to cast a spell.
I did not get to see the name of the spell, the spellcasting animation played to the end and it froze with the end of the last frame. The spells the druid had were: gaia's heal, earthwarden and brambles.

This has the potential to be a great game and with the damaging items now working, it is a bit better balanced, I did not get to play it long enough to say more, leveling up takes a lot of time currently though, so I cannot comment on higher level stuff... I would say that posting a new post for a new build is probably a good thing since sites like planet gp2x monitor the feeds of this board and others and gather all the news together. An update does not register on the feeds though, so those following through RSS feeds would not get to know about it.

Also, an indication of how much XP one needs to level up would be very useful.

Ok, now that I actually have 6 items in my backpack, the backpack item list covers the "L to return" display - some sort extra space for that display will probably be necessary since the provisioned full equipment of a player has more than 6 components and 6 is already too much for this style of display.

PS: I'm assuming this would be where bug reports on this would be most appreciated since I could not find a suitable corner on codejedi.com.
PPS: The skelly spell undead will seems to be repeatable - considering the low mana cost, it could be repeated indefinitely with a bit of luck - some balancing may be in order here...

UPDATE: I played against another druid, the CPU managed to cast earthwarden succesfully twice and I believe the culprit is actually gaia's heal - I can cast it without a problem. It may have been brambles, I was trying to keep count of the cpu's mana, but I must have slipped. In any case, the game froze again, I hope this isolates the issue sufficiently for now.

 

[imhotep]

if I post another update after only a few days, should it be News or update the older story? I don't want to news spam!

I vote for you to post it as news. I want to be informed what's going on and I'll miss the new builds otherwise.

Thanks for being so polite though!

 

[Guyfawkes]

Congrats on the new release, I was right in thinking this entry would get better and better which is one of the contributing factors why I chose this as a winner in the compo.

 

[yodaofborg]

Hmm, still getting the freeze when either receiving or dealing damage, but battlejewels does NOT freeze the GP2X, just itself it seems, cos I can still access the gp2x via telnet. Anyone compiled top or similar for the GP2X?

 

[skeezix]

I have a alpha mailing list (unannounced anywhere hardly) if folks are interested in serious playtesting; its only a half dozen peopel now, and a lot of Palm oriented stuff since thats my next platform.. but its a pretty good place for focusing mechanics and balancing discussion.

I've tried to keep it all here though; the gp32/gp2x is a good bunch so I didnt' want to 'close anything up'. PM me if you want into the alpha mailing list.

jeff

Oh and GF -- I totally underestiamted the amount of effort needed when you drop in RPG elements; at least the engine is getting matured now .. items that modify skills, add bonuses to effects, add buffs/debuffs to players and opponents.. designing all the gear and spells and balancing levelling.. holy jeezus!

Druid tips -- thanks; I'll do some focused testing tonight to see if healing is breaking somewhere or if Brambles is hosing. Any other data points? Any other crashes.. with non-druids? (ie: Friar also does healing, but differently.)

As to exp .. I can postr a chart, but I'm trying to keep the 'gutts' hidden since they're being tweaked continuously, and I want ito 'feel right' and not be about min/maxxing to charts (yet anyway.. I may post all the charts and formulae later on the website.)

For now .. exp for levelling up is linear growth (not exponential like in a lot of games); its approximately 3-4 matches at the beginning (after level 0->1 which is a freebie pretty much.)

I also have a Windows build if anyone wants to play hooky at work

 

[yodaofborg]

It crashed for me in a Gladiator v Gladiator fight when I tried to cast *lunge*.

 

[skeezix]

Cool, I'll try it out; could be some bug in the damage dealing now. (Theres been a _lot_ of changes the last 2 builds, to handle more buff/debuffs and so forth.)

Is a crash infrequent ot common?

(Wonder if its a divide-by-zero somewhere..)

jeff

 

[fusion_power]

I also have a Windows build if anyone wants to play hooky at work

With Gamepad Support? Link please. ^^
I have a buddy without GP2X but I know he likes RPG's. And because he is superb in Math, maybe he have suggestions for the whole Exp. Skill, Dmg -system if you include a table with all the formulas etc.

I just had quick tested version 0.53 and there I still missed some info-features here and there. The game needs more self-explainings. Shop for example doesn't show the total money I have and more detailed infos of items would be nice. "Reduce some damage" isn't very detailed for example. HOW MUCH Damage reduces the item exactly?

I think I will test the whole thing in detail soon, but first I want to finish Indy 4 - Fate of Atlantis on my GP2X. (Hm, could take a longer while :lol: )

 

[skeezix]

054 includes the gold amount, spell points and skill points in the variosu store/training screens, so thats covered.

The item raw details and such will be in the descriptions soon as well.

Like I said.. RPGs == hell

jeff

Oh, the win32 build I posted to the website:
http://www.codejedi.com/battlejewels/binar...in-054-beta.zip

 

[yodaofborg]

Well, I can reproduce the freeze in just about any match if i am a gladiator, just save up lots of blue mana, and repeatedly cast lunge, and you are 99.9% guaranteed to freeze before you run out of mana

 

[skeezix]

I blame you for the likely posting another build tomorrow night

jeff

 

[rx_shorty]

Lovely game and nice you are keep updating it!

Thanks again, no probs so far.

 

[MajorShake]

is it just me or do other find this game hard, because yea, the first enemy was nothing, but i cant kill the second one, too much health, too much healing, f'ing me up and getting to many jewels =/

 

[skeezix]

It'll take some time to balance it all out, as there is a lot going on; and many of my testers have been playing it for a month or two or more, so they think its 'okay', but really it coudl be brutal on newbies.

And sometimes you get bad draws and the AI whips your arse in a big mega-chain combo.. bad luck

The first few levels you definately need to spend some points in upgrades to skills, and buy your spell(s), and use them. The AI gets nothign on lvl 0, just like the player, but it also assumes you've spent your points and it does too.

I think maybe I will throttle the lvl 1 AIs to use less points, so they're default weaker if you do spend yours..

jeff

 

[semyaza]

I could be kind enough to let the missus test this out. But seeing as I havn't had the gp2x for two weeks nobody has bothered to charge any batteries....bloody wimin'

 

[skeezix]

Just an FYI for anyone still watching this old thread..

I did locate the crash issue; it got introduced in 053.

I'll post another gp2x build in a few days when I've added some more goodies; my current build has lots of goodies already, but I want it to be all around goodies, not half-the-classes-are-better..

But we'll see. If it takes too long (I'm sick as crap right now ), then I'll just post it as is, so you get the crash fix.

jeff

 

[semyaza]

Yup. Still keeping an eye on it. Although I have comandeered my gp2x now so am busy playing all these fantastic releases including W&W and sleuth slots.