Battlejewels Build 058 Released :)


skeezix

Internal Development
Joined
Mar 11, 2003
Messages
8,063
Website
www.codejedi.com
playfield.jpg


Edit Sep 5: Updated; see below for details, but the new link is: http://www.codejedi.com/battlejewels/binar...2x-059-beta.zip

Ahright, I'm into it knee deep now :)

All four classes have spells up through level 10 which ought to take awhile to get to; theres a pile of gear (some 100 items give or take) defined, across those levels as well and crafted for differing purposes so you can customize your avatar. The opponent scaler tries to match your gear a little so you don't overpower the AI purely on that basis. And heck, if your'e a gold farmer you can buy more skills and spells at the store to reward oyur time investment. Lots of tweaks to combat and so forth, and nabbed that crash bug I introduced back in 053..

So overall I think this should be pretty interesting to fiddle with, and hopefully stable. But I'm betting after a fw levels it could get unbalanced.. as with all these new spells and gear, we need playtesting to sort out what is over or underpowered. Please help.. play till your knuckles bleed and you've got carpal ;)

I hope you're enjoying it; its been fun to write!

http://www.codejedi.com/battlejewels/binar...2x-058-beta.zip

jeff
 
Well I would have commented on the last version but my friends took it from me and played for about 4-5 hours and I didn't have much of a chance. I plated the contest release and it was a rockin good time. Ill have to find time to give this one some good effort, god damned wind and water puzzle battles :D
 
plenty of updates for this game already and i did not check it yet, shame on me :) anyway... nice to see massive progress each release! keep up the nice work!
 
I played this the first time today, and it´s excellent.

I found two bugs though: Saves seemingly only work if you enter a battle after you´ve saved and it´s not possible to pause or change the volume during the enemy´s turn.

Besides from that, it´s great, apart from a few additional graphics and sound effects missing. Oh, and maybe an editor for a storymode could be made?
 
Some other thoughts: I find it very annoying that it´s seemingly impossible to see what am item actually does. Only in the description of the item in the "buy" menu at Adventuremart is it possible to see the stats of an item.
Also i´d like less skill points, but more spell points. or, even better, why not can the level system completely and give the Player 1 general point for each 100 exp? spells could cost 5, 10 or 15 points instead of 1,2 or 3 spell points.
 
Fishbong said:
I played this the first time today, and it´s excellent.

I found two bugs though: Saves seemingly only work if you enter a battle after you´ve saved and it´s not possible to pause or change the volume during the enemy´s turn.

Besides from that, it´s great, apart from a few additional graphics and sound effects missing. Oh, and maybe an editor for a storymode could be made?
S'okay, 90% of the items only appeared in this version .. the whole levelling up system, gear outs, etc is very new. (And is actually very difficult to do halfway well in a RPG setting .. ie: scaling up the opponents without making them too easy or too hard, and how fast a player levels up, and so on and so forth.)

(And as to why levels .. i) because in RPG style games, its what people are used to and thus it is somewhat intuitive; and ii) levels in all games is really jusyt a way of gauging and managing the power level of a player, so you can deal with it. ie: Going back all 30 years levelling has existed.. its not really for the player, its for the opponent scaling. ie: A 'level 50' player in any game you can basicl yassume is using certain gear ranges, certain spells, has certain hitpoint range, and so forth. So the level is a tool for scaling enemies to, really.)

The item detail description is in the Equip menu too; I will be adding it to the inventory listing as well.

Once my graphics friend get some free cycles I'll be adding multi-tab character sheet, so you can see spells on one tab, gear on anther active effects, overall status and so on. On this screen I expect to let you get details on gear and spells as well.

Story mode and so on.. down the road, maybe. For now its like street fighter ... no illusion of sotry; its already probably one of the largest projects I've done (and I've done _a lot_), but you'd never know it. The more smooth it is, the more work it is :)

Volume during enemy.. yeah, I don't check key inputs except during player turn (eep :); save shoudl always work .. but I will check to make sure I flush to the card and sync each time.

Less skill points? Just that you hate assigning them all? ie: you want half as many, but I coudl double the effect so you just have less effort; right now you get fine tuned control.

The skill points and spell points are also very new so need to balance out; I need to know which skills are too strong or too weak, and spells as well.

(ie: Until recently, each class had a well defined set of spells, and it never changed.)

The skill points are there so pepole can try different playstyles -- all magic, all physical, all sneaky; the spell sare there to let you have various options and to cusotmise your character (everyone has same skills, just varying strengths; but everyone has different spells.)

It seems an interesting system for customization, but it might be over-complex for even a fancy-puzzler. *shrug*

Design is really very difficult :p

jeff

Thanks for the feedback; keep it coming :)
 
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skeezix said:
The item detail description is in the Equip menu too; I will be adding it to the inventory listing as well.
Only for items that are equipped. And since 1/2 of the stuff you get during battles is usually too advanced to equip, it would be nice to view the stats of the items so you can decide wheter to sell them or keep them.

Talking about selling stuff, i find that the prices of the items are too low. They should be double as much.

And finally for the skill points: I would prefer it if the player got "learning points" instead of 10 skillpoints and one spellpoint. You could decide wheter to spend those points on increasing your skills or learning spells (obviously spells would have to be more expensive). That way players can develop characters who are either very tough because they have good skills or they could go for a character with a multitude of spells and mainly use them to defeat the enemy.
 
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I'll be changing it so the treasure chest awards things in your level range (and not super higher like now, since its not intended oyu get one lvl 10 item at lvl 1, sell it, and buy a whole wardrobe .. just didn't have time to put that in yet :)

Selling price is about 1/4 or 1/5th of the purchase price for now. Not sure how well to price them.. you shouldn't be able to sell seomthing for 1/2 its original value.

I thought about making it something like 20 advancements points, and 10 advpts could be exchanged for a spell pick (say) (hence the difference between picks and points), but in the end I'm trying to simplify (it _is_ a puzzle game after all), and also cash in on the D&D kachet (since we've all been using similar systems for decades.)

(ie: There was also the original idea of getting a frew exp pts per battle, and the exp pts were adv pts .. so you'd get 3 or 4 adv pts per battle, and then spend them as above... but as it turns out, people like collecting 'score' and exp pts serves well for that. Its completely artificial, but people psychology is interesting.. many play just to increase a number, so it needs to be there. Interesting stuff.)

We'll see how it goes with the current system.

(Oh, and for your example .. one could play a pure dodgey mage by applying all skill pts to dodge and toughness say, and buying spells as normal. A warrior could apply all his points to endurance, or whatever. I figure its a more Conan-like world where mages could be frail, or could be sword weilding. Up to the player. As long as its fun, I'm not going to restrict it much .. hence why I added spell pts and skill pts as things you can buy (in the tomes at lvl 2+) at the store.. if you want to just farm for gold to buy spells, why not? If its an MMORPG you have tp cap that sort of thing, but in single player.. hell, go for it.. its your experience :p)

jeff
 
Awesomely fun game.

Any chance you could prepend an item name with its level, and perhaps body location/use?
ie: 1w PigPoker

Thanks!

-Ken
 
After i advanced to level 4, the game is frequently crashing on the Adventuremart screen, but only there.

Also what i meant earlier with the prices was that the items in the shop are too cheap. I have ~1000 gold now on lvl 4 and could buy a whole wardrobe with that.
 
Interesting; do you go out of your way to acquire gold, or is that purely 'had to make a move, took gold' type acquisition?

Did you spend much up to lvl 4? ie: Are you saving all your gold, or have you been spending liberally?

jeff
 
Just a short question besides,
The normal font of the game seems a litle bit to tiny and small and not good readable for a Handheld Game. Is it possible to include a bigger font or would this require a complete redesign of the Menus?
 
skeezix said:
Interesting; do you go out of your way to acquire gold, or is that purely 'had to make a move, took gold' type acquisition?

Did you spend much up to lvl 4? ie: Are you saving all your gold, or have you been spending liberally?

jeff
My priorities are: 4/5 gem-line>skulls>treasure chests>mana i need>gold>mana i don't need.
So you see, i usually try to kill the enemy the fastest way and do not worry about gold.

I buy any item i want, though i almost never buy potions.
 
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I think the font is a good balance; is my kerning too tight perhaps? I think its okay though. Right now it would suck to alter the font much I suspect, if I altered width; height owuld suck less, maybe not at all. But I don't want to wortry about it right now.. trying to get the balancing out of the way, and some other bonuses.. then I'll redo the internal menu system to be stretchable and such. (Right now its by absoute coordinate more or less, but it shoudl all be 'relative' like on a desktop. But thats a pile more work :p)

jeff

Okee, maybe items should cost more. I'll post to my alpha list and get some thoughts.

jeff
 
What level were you? used up all you skill and spell points, and bought any gear?

Next build (soon) will be a little bit easier I think.

jeff
 
I thought it was too easy, but that´s probably just due to my Puzzle Quest addiction. Would it be hard to implement different skill levels to choose from? Because i´d like the game a bit harder.
 
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