Developed for the Indiepub dev contest. This is a fully functional demonstration of ‘Spellinx’. Spellinx is a co-op Action-RPG with a unique gameplay feature. The gameplay is based purely around spells and does not get bogged down in hundreds of statistics, weapon/armour types like most RPG’s. To perform spells rather than just selecting the spell and pressing fire you have to link button presses to form a chain and then activate the spell. More powerful spells require a longer more complex chain. The skill is being able to remember the right spells to use, the combo of buttons you need, and the ability to perform them quick enough.
This release shows all the features of the game but It can and will be expanded to include many more quests, enemies, characters, locations and spells.
The ideal way to play this game is cooperatively with 2 or 3 players. For this version, players 2 or 3 require the use of a joypad.
Developed by Tom Randall and Philip Dyer. Music by David Randall.
The file for this game will be updated to newer versions over time.
INSTRUCTIONS
Unzip and launch Spellinx.exe
Use the keyboard or a joypad to play. For multiple players joypads are required.
Controls customisable in-game.
DirectX 9 required for HWA effects, some old graphics cards may have trouble with some of the effects in this game.
Today I've spent all day adding the card and spell menu into the game. I've also re-hauled the music playing bit of the code, so there should be fewer bugs. I've also touched up some of the HUD graphics.
None of this changes the gameplay in the slightest, but it's good to get it out of the way. I've been ironing out the last few bugs from the code. None of them were too major. The game should soon be ready to see more content, since we've got the main engine pretty much completed now. Let me just explain what the cards and spells do.
CARDS are collected by defeating enemies. The card shows the enemy's stats. Think of it as a pokemon card. It's a bit useless at the moment, unless you want to know you've killed 134 floating heads. But it opens up a lot of doors in the way of achievements, and will help you to identify the weak point of enemies once you've killed them.
SPELLS are pretty much the same as cards, only they show you the stats of the spells you cast. You can't get these SPELL cards by casting the spells. That would be too easy for veterans of the game. However, by completing quests you'll be able to collect these cards.
Of course, this means that anybody who has played the game so far will have obsolete save files and will have to start again. Unless you don't want the spells you learn from the tutorial on your character's profile.
Some of you may be asking what the point is in adding these, since they don't alter the gameplay at all. The main point of this game was not to punish veteran players if they started again. You can still cast all of the spells you can remember in your head, but if you're the completionist sort of player, you'll want to do all of the quests and the like, just to be able to look at your cards screen and say that you've collected them all. And, of course, it opens a couple of doors if we ever decide to expand the gameplay further based on the cards you've collected.
One gameplay altering addition in the new update is the jump to two spell types; NORMAL and SPECIAL. You see that fourth, grey spell box you couldn't use? Well, now that's reserved for SPECIAL spells. These are powerful, slow charging spells. You can only use one at a time, and they will consist of the ultimate healing, attack or defence spells that you'll see in this game. There's one slight catch- you need to have 3 spells on the go at once before you can cast one of these special ones. This stops players from entering a super combo before going into a fight. Instead, these SPECIAL attacks will only be available when you're knee-deep in floating heads or what ever you happen to be fighting. I don't know how this will play out, so far I haven't found it frustrating in the slightest and I've been playing it all day. It's also fairly easy to exploit, but before I change it further I'd like to see what Mr Tom thinks of it, since he hasn't been online today.
So yeah, that's it for now, and stay tuned for a major update soon!
This game uses 4 fire buttons. I like to think of them as 'DOWN', 'RIGHT', 'UP' and 'LEFT', since that's where they are located on my controller. Simple! I thought. So we labelled them that.
However, Mr Tom then used his joypad... which happens to have the 'DOWN' and 'UP' button the opposite way around. Oh dear. We managed to implement a custom control screen, where you press the button that is represented by a glowing light on the screen. This lets us configure every controller to use the same controls, regardless of which button was originally fire button 1.
This throws up another problem- what if people don't customise their controls before playing the game? I mean, surely most people just pick up a game and play it, skipping the README file and the 'CUSTOMISE CONTROLS' screen in the process? I can't think a way around this one. Hopefully, people will play the game, realise that something isn't right, and will go back and change their controls, instead of quitting the game and never playing it again.
BUT... what about keyboard controls? Even though this game is optimised for a joypad layout, pretty much everybody will be using it on the keyboard. Let's just ignore the face that most keyboards can only register 2-3 buttons at once, since there's absolutely no way around that. Everybody uses different controls on a keyboard. For example, from past experience on this site, I know that most people don't like using WASD (even though it's CLEARLY the best one to use, since it's surrounded by other keys that can be used for different functions )
Okay, the above paragraph wasn't really a problem, just a load of potential problems. The real problem we've got now is deciding on a method of naming the fire buttons. What do we use? Do we use '1, 2, 3, 4'? Do we use the Playstation symbols? How about ABXY, like Xbox controllers use? Do we use UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT? Do we use colours?
No matter which one we choose, there will be problems. Console people will be confused if we use the wrong controller buttons (ie, Xbox controls for a Playstation controller player), while keyboard players will get confused no matter how we do it, since how ever we label our buttons is likely to have absolutely no resemblance to how they've configured their controls.
Well, I'm stuck. I want people to be able to easily switch from keyboard to controller, and to retain the combinations they've learned so far without feeling that they're starting again. I guess I could let the player choose what the buttons look like when they're about to start the game, but if we end up using different sets of symbols, it's going to make it very difficult to share combinations with people anywhere other than in the actual game itself.
Plus people will probably just skip past the bit where they're allowed to choose, unaware of the importance and confusion that lead to it in the first place.
V98.2 (2010/08/17)
Changed spell combo notation from positional 'DOWN, RIGHT, UP, LEFT' to letters 'A, B, Y, X' (Xbox controller layout).
All characters now have shadows.
When game begins the conversation box flashes for a moment at the beginning of the tutorial.
Minor text errors corrected.
Keyboard controls setup now displays the current configuration.
Menu sound effect plays when a control is set.
In theory this should help prevent as much confusion as possible. Before some people thought 'press UP UP FIRE' meant you had to make your character do a little dance by moving to do a spell. Now its been changed to A B X Y it should be better so long as people don't think they have to literally press the 'a' key on their keyboard'. The new keyboard controls screen should stop that since it is now much clearer.
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3kliksphilip 
Developed for the Indiepub dev contest. This is a fully functional demonstration of ‘Spellinx’. Spellinx is a co-op Action-RPG with a unique gameplay feature. The gameplay is based purely around spells and does not get bogged down in hundreds of statistics, weapon/armour types like most RPG’s. To perform spells rather than just selecting the spell and pressing fire you have to link button presses to form a chain and then activate the spell. More powerful spells require a longer more complex chain. The skill is being able to remember the right spells to use, the combo of buttons you need, and the ability to perform them quick enough.
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