Here's a new trailer, showing a bit of just about everything. Some things are still lacking sound effects, like the recently added spells, and you can still consider everything potentially placeholder. So many things to tweak...
Also, attached is a screenshot of the new 'Play Game' menu option, which is basically 'New Game' and 'Continue' combined. There are currently five save slots to use to either start or continue a game. You'll notice in the trailer that I added the same window border and corner decorations to several other windows too. Fancier that way. ;P
I love the way you combine New Game and Continue ^^. Great video ! It looks better and better !
Good job with the spell effects. It's nice to see that we can customize the controls. The Stamina Gauge charges fast. I have to admit that it's a bit empty without music.
That Shadow Spell is usefull . I love the fact that the ball goes on enemies.
Loved the title screen and main menu! The graphics are amazing, did you do them yourself or do you have a dedicated artist? I'm really looking forward to this, it's gonna be the shit!
Shiru:
Thanks. I plan to add more summoning spells later on. I'm keeping the spells pretty basic at this point, so that there's room for more functions in the higher level spells.
Eternal Man:
Thanks. I do all the graphics myself. It's a passion of mine to experiment with that stuff.
Really a great game you have there! I love the graphics and the gameplay seems a lot like a mix of Castlevania and Diablo (lol I think that you mentioned that somewhere^^).
I have a few things that you could take a look at.
First, I don't know why, but for me the camera seemed very hectic. I don't know why, maybe because I just played Dragon Age 2 for a couple hours, but the camera seemed kinda jumpy. Same goes with the menus - when you go to the pause menu, there was text and whatnot all over the place and I felt confused what you were doing there. Maybe it's just me
Second and this might be kind of important, because I have got this critique for my games in the past A LOT. The weapons and abilities you're showing in the game are all very weak. You hit enemies like dozens of times before they die. Players don't like that. Players want to feel powerful while playing a game like this and you should consider cranking up the damage significantly for your spells and weapons, because players get easily bored when you force them to hit every enemy 10 times.
To come back to Dragon Age 2 - even in this modern RPG there are a lot of enemies that I can just one-hit. It makes me feel like playing a truly powerful character.
Sorry I'm kind of in a rambling mood^^
Still great video and I hope you will continue this! It looks like it can become a classic
The camera can be smoothened out if needed, but it's definitely easier to follow the action when you're the one in control. You know what direction to expect the camera to move to next. Same thing with the inventory. I accessed the inventory so rapidly that even I have somewhat hard time reading the contents in the video. ;P The inventory pauses the game, so the player can take as much time as they want to. Ultimately, the inventory is supposed to only show info on equipment, number of other items, map, and possibly a list of skills.
Regarding attack powers, that's one of the points of an RPG. If you want to one-hit kill enemies, then go level up and get nice weapons. With a Level 16 character and an ATK+5 hammer, I was able to kill most enemies with one hit, and even the toughest enemies (Cyclopedes) fell from 3-4 hits. Then again, you're normally supposed to kill those enemies with a level 1-6 character. Killing tough enemies in difficult areas gets you better loot than insta-killing lower level baddies at easier locations.
Spells may need balancing though, that I can admit. I rarely end up using them currently. The problem is that if they're too powerful, and if MP is too easy to restore, spells become too powerful and easy to use. It'd be boring to just sling ranged homing spells to enemies from distance.
And in all honesty, I'm kind of opposed to enemies that are too easy to kill. I've actually designed the enemies so that the first time you encounter them, they may be too tough to handle, on purpose. Leveling up a bit is relatively easy, as there are always some enemies that you can kill relatively easily, after which you can much more easily kill the tougher enemies too, and thus get a sense of growth. If you insta-kill enemies right off the bat, then once you grow, you'll still kill them with one hit. There's no sense of growth or progress. It's much more satisfying to insta-kill an enemy that was tough before, right? Kind of a 'payback' feel. You just need to work a bit to achieve that.
Shiru:
A difficulty option is a possible addition, but only after there's been enough testing to see how necessary it is, and in what scale. In most action RPG's of this type (hack'n slash + looting) there is no difficulty setting, probably because if your skills aren't good enough to go forward, you can just make your character better and manage that way. If the player wants a difficult game, then they can just skip enemies and exploring and go for tougher dungeons with lower level stats and equipment. If you want enemies to be quick and easy to kill, just replay the lower level dungeons a few times and get some extra gear and experience. Either way, there's always some progress, and every obstacles can be passed eventually.
As for scaling enemies' stats to the player's, I dislike that a lot. It's like the game chooses battles for you, instead of allowing you to choose how difficult opponents to fight. That stuff made Oblivion extremely annoying to play. Luckily there were mods to fix that and a ton of others things in that game, but still. I want to decide whether to go kill easy enemies at location A, or tougher enemies at location B, instead of getting average level enemies everywhere.
If after intensive testing these things don't work as hoped, then I can consider alternative approaches or options.
Yes, you're right for the average level for enemies. The Difficulty Setting is a better option in that case. Well like you said, it's better to think about that after intensive test ^^
I don't believe enemies in platform games should take more than 1 or 2 hits to kill, unless they're the occasional tank enemy, mid boss or end of level boss. It leads to very badly paced levels, i.e., it makes it boring and slow. You want "pop corn" enemies mixed inbetween tougher enemies in action games, you want well designed stages to keep the action flowing and satisfying.
alastair john jack:
Well, I'll be honest, I for one find platformers like that dime in a dozen, and often not very interesting. Especially if they're supposed to have RPG elements, and there is no room to see the difference between a low and high level character, aside from some ridiculous attack moves (or items) that characters can suddenly obtain between level X and level X+1, which doubles their attack strength (or somesuch), making the whole RPG system pointless. I intentionally want to avoid stuff like that in this particular game. The enemies' stats have a meaning, and you're supposed to see the gradual change leveling up and finding better items causes. Killing an enemy with one hit a minute into the game and still killing the same with one hit ten hours into the game... despite having the different stats and items, the results would still be the same. THAT would be boring and unsatisfying. I'd rather have enemies require ten hits one minute into the game, and then allow the satisfaction of killing them with one hit at the ten hour mark. Not all enemies, mind you, but the majority. Some enemies will be weaker, so you'll have easy opportunities to obtain experience, and to have variety, whatever your stats.
Castlevania:SOTN and Diablo use this setup at least up to a certain extent, succesfully. In both games, trying to take on higher level enemies with poor stats and equipment was tedious and hard. Certainly there are some enemies that die from fewer hits in very early game, but overall, enemies are tough and require many hits if you're taking them on too early.
I plan to stick to this concept for now. I want try something different first, before succumbing to too many clichés. If it fails in the long run, I can definitely change things at that time. Or I can add an arcade mode that skips majority of the RPG elements, grinding and all that, in which you can play from beginning to end without needing to bother with stats, equipment and town visits at all. Not sure what fun that'd be though, but if someone enjoys that, then... Comment edited by HitmanN on 3/11/2011
Yeah, Castlevania SOTN is a good example. You should keep going with your current system. An Arcade Mode isn't a bad idea but you should think about that later !
I can see your point and I don't want to burst into a great discussion with this. It's your game and of course your choice. I myself had the problem with an early rpg mod that I made for WarCraft3, where I redesigned the whole combat system. At first, I had every enemy take at least 6-10 hits and I thought it was challenging this way. After a few beta testers got the game, they all agreed that the characters they played felt too weak and combat was tedious, not challenging. I lowered the enemy hitpoints and also increased the amount of enemies so that combat would take the same time but you would kill enemies with 2-3 hits (crit would one-hit them) and even I felt the gameplay was much more enjoyable because the character I played felt like a total badass, but the game was still challenging because of more enemies.
EDIT: Maybe it would be a good way if you do it like in Diablo2. There are some areas with very weak enemies where you can just bash through dozens of them in no time and then there are areas in the same dungeon where tougher enemies spawn which need more strategy to kill and you want to kill them one at a time. Comment edited by Blue66 on 3/11/2011
I definitely want to avoid making the combat boring and tedious, unless it's because you're trying to do something that you're not really supposed to be doing yet to begin with, which is meant to be exactly that.
I guess what I'm trying to do is make a game that requires grinding, but instead of having to spend an entire evening to get the needed boost, you can achieve the same in 15 minutes in Twisted Tower, but you still need to do it. I like building up a character's stats and equipment, and the fun part is achieving and obtaining new stuff, not the time-consuming grinding part, so that's the element I want to minimize.
But... I'm definitely not ignoring any suggestions anyone makes here. I've already decided to change a few things slightly, such as halving the HP of the Small Slimes (the blue slimes, which are likely the first enemy you'll encounter), and instead have twice as big spawn chance for them. If that turns out fun, then I'll probably do the same to some other enemies too.
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HitmanN 
So many things to tweak...
. I love the fact that the ball goes on enemies. 
Or I can add an arcade mode that skips majority of the RPG elements, grinding and all that, in which you can play from beginning to end without needing to bother with stats, equipment and town visits at all. Not sure what fun that'd be though, but if someone enjoys that, then...
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