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WU 2020-10D - Concords, Greatshield
5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago3,018 words
This week, I added the beginnings of long-planned mechanical feature: something called 'concords', which represent the connections between pairs of characters, and which grant various benefits when developed. Also, I redesigned Deugan's weapon.

I didn't do as much as I would have liked this week, because of factors outside my control (looking after a dog; ∞ I wrote about it in the personal post ∞). Still, I did something, at least.

I've been unsure about how to handle Deugan's weapon for a while. In MARDEK, he used a greatsword, but I felt that in this he'd focus on defence in a more nerdy/intellectual way. So I gave him a shield and a wand. I thought the wand shared with Emeela could be something he could use as a reason they "have so much in common!!", and I also liked the idea of Mardek and Deugan being warrior and wizard types respectively rather than both just physical attackers (I suppose Mardek's a healer too, but not exclusively; he's not a fragile White Mage type). I also thought that if his primary 'weapon' was a shield, he'd have a free hand, so holding something light and useful - like a wand - would be a good use for it. Still, as a couple of commenters pointed out - and as I'd been thinking myself for a while - it didn't feel quite right.

An earlier concept had a kind of 'bladed mask shield', which some people have told me they liked. I wondered whether to go back to that, though that'd mean he'd have a free hand again. What else could he do with it? Maybe he wields two bladed shields?! Maybe they're both the same, but they combine together to form a larger face/mask shape when he's holding them in a defensive posture? I drew some quick, sloppy concepts:



The two semicircles idea was... interesting, and I actually modelled it, but something about it didn't feel right/satisfying/appealing to me.

Someone mentioned that Zweihänder swords were wielded in two hands, but were designed - or at least used - quite defensively. So that led me to combine the mask shield approach with a two-handed greatsword. I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier, since it seems so obvious, really!

There are a few ideas for how such a thing could work in those sketches. One's just a boring greatsword with a face. Silly. A couple are strapped to a forearm, with the hand of the other arm offering additional maneouverability/support. The one that I liked the most is kind of like an upside-down gravestone on a stick, which I liked because the pose with it gave a very clear defender vibe that I felt the others didn't.

I modelled that and added it to the game:



I liked it at first, but changed my mind when it came to animating it. It couldn't be swung from that standing pose without a drastic shift of the hands, so I had to do this convoluted animation to get it to work:



That took more than two hours, and the results are still really sloppy. Animation takes time in general - longer than you might expect - but that's longer than I'd personally like to spend on one action since I'm not exactly in love with the animation process. It's something I've developed some mediocre skill at over the years, but I tend to put off animating until I absolutely have to do it, and try to minimise the amount of animating I need to do where I can. With this game, I'm hoping to end up with animations that aren't poor, but which won't blow anyone away either. "Functional" and "adequate" are what I'm aiming for; the sorts of things that aren't bad or good enough to attract particular notice!

Another far more important issue with that attack animation is that it's too long. I'd guess that the average player would care a whole lot more that they have to wait a couple of seconds every time they make Deugan attack than they'd care whether his hands made sense when transitioning from an idle pose to a swing.

So I essentially wasted a day messing around with that. It's a shame, but sometimes you have to take a step back and redo something, even if you spent a lot of time on it.

The next morning, I started again, and came up with this:



I greatly prefer this! It looks - I think - like a combination of a shield and a greatsword, plus I find the solution for how it'd be held (a straight pole from hilt to tip, with a convex shield section), and the holding stance itself, really satisfying. It's far easier to animate too, since all he needs to do to swing it is move one hand down to the hilt.

This attack animation took much less time to make, and it's quicker for the player to execute too:



I imagine the shield as sturdy but fairly lightweight, and the attack is about slashing with its bladed edges rather than slamming with a heavy weight (the attack name, 'Bash', is a hold-over from the weightier tombstone version). It's not exactly clear from the model or the animation that this is what's going on though, so perhaps I'll tweak something there to make it clearer. The most important thing is definitely to make it fast for the player; everything else is secondary to that.

Also in that gif: I improved the look of the stratapillar monsters (no textures yet though), which meant adding some technical stuff like glowing parts on monster models. They also have animations, and they dissolve when defeated. All those things took time. I think I did a few other small but important things like that this week too, which needed to be done but which aren't worth talking about.

One of the stratapillars uses a skill called Balance, which balances the Body and Mind values. Seemed sensible for a thing which is literally balancing stones!



The more important thing this week is the beginnings of a system that'll be important for both gameplay and story, which I've been planning since the beginning, but which I've been unsure about the details of until these past few days.

Having emotional connections - represented via accumulating numbers, of course - between characters in games isn't anything new. Pokemon has 'friendship', even Final Fantasy VII had some hidden values which determined whether Cloud took Tifa, Aeris (with an s), or Barret on a date. Star Ocean games did some convoluted relationships thing that I never understood when I played them, I think? Maybe you're familiar with other (less dated!) examples.

In MARDEK, you could unlock backstories for your party members when you levelled them up enough, which players seemed to like (I did too). In Taming Dreams, I no longer had this - since there were no longer levels - but instead there was a deeper 'P dialogue' system, where you could have Mardek talk to individual allies, or you could view scenes where two allies had a conversation between one another without Mardek. In this, I wanted to do essentially an extension of that.

I wanted a system where characters could develop bonds between one another by fighting alongside one another, using support abilities on one another, etc. The depth of these bonds would unlock dialogue scenes between pairs of characters, rather than universal 'backstory segments'.

You're likely familiar with the phenomenon where you randomly think of someone, then you get a text or phone call from them moments later; "hey, I was just thinking about you!". It seems to be a common thing. Some 'parapsychology' types have actually done experiments on this, and they've found that people actually can 'telepathically' predict who's going to call them at a rate significantly greater than chance... but it's heavily dependent on the strength of the emotional connection between the individuals. So the success rate is just random chance if they're strangers, whereas if they're family members, romantic partners, or close friends, the chance of guessing correctly is much greater (though still never 100%).

Whether or not you accept that as 'true' is heavily dependent on your beliefs about the world, and honestly the 'truth' behind it isn't all that important or interesting to me. I find the idea of it fantastically interesting, in a "that seems like something that could be integrated into a story!" kind of way. I wouldn't ever try to convince anyone to believe that it's 'real', nor do I particularly want anyone explaining to me how those experiments were flawed!! or whatever because that's not the point at all here.

I think it's an interesting idea, imagining two minds becoming bound together, as if by some kind of aethereal thread, such that they come to share a kind of spiritual connection. It's a mental image I ran with to come to the name concords, a word which means "agreement or harmony between people or groups", and it has 'cord' in it, like the 'silver cord' that - in similar new age mythology - supposedly binds an astrally projecting spirit to its body (there's one as an item in MARDEK). It's not a perfect name, but it'll do.



Anyway, that's a lot of rambling about why I've added them and roughly what they're supposed to be, but how do they function mechanically? Here's a screenshot:



Essentially, a concord exists for each pair of characters. So there's a 'Mardek+Deugan' concord, a 'Deugan+Emeela' concord, etc. The strength of the concord is a simple number; I'm using 6000 as the max value here, though I'll likely alter that after some testing (Pokemon friendship only has a max value of 255). Different actions would contribute points to the total. Here, you can see that Mardek and Deugan start with a fairly strong concord since they're childhood friends and it'd be senseless otherwise, whereas they've only just met Emeela, so their concord with her is 0, and Deugan's had a brief encounter with Steele before this, so the Deugan+Steele concord has 100 points in it (the concords don't show friendliness, just how much of an impact they've made in each other's minds).

Importantly, each person in the concord has a different 'impression' about the nature (or 'valence', to use a psychological term) of that concord. That screenshot is of Deugan's concords screen, so it shows that he believes he has a 'harmonious' friendship with Mardek, and that he Adores Emeela and Loathes Steele.

This is what the concords look like from Emeela's perspective:



And from Steele's:



The distinction between the 'impression' and the actual concord depth is an important one. Deugan Adores Emeela despite having 0 concord points with her because that represents fancying someone you don't actually know at all. It's obviously one-sided though. Steele believes that he and Emeela are relatively close, but from her perspective the relationship is toxic; this is definitely a kind of relationship that occurs often in the real world.

Characters gain bonuses based on the type of their impression and the strength of the concord. Essentially the impression determines the max percentage, which is multiplied by the fullness percentage of the concord. So if Deugan Adores Emeela, that might give him a base 30% strength bonus, and if they have 3000/6000 concord points, that's multiplied by 1/2 to give a total bonus of 15%.

Adjacency is also important. Characters gain significantly more bonuses from the concords of characters directly next to them than they do from someone at the far end of the party. This presents some interesting strategic options! For example, Emeela has negative feelings about Steele, which have some detrimental effects, but her negative elements (Fear, Destruction, and Sorrow) are also boosted quite a bit, which is important for her since she exclusively uses those. Concords would also grow much faster between characters standing next to one another.

Originally, I was intending for concords to grant team-up skills, kind of like the ones in Chrono Trigger, to use an example I'm familiar with (you might know of others). That'd be fairly complicated though; I'd have to plan all the skills, and work out how to animate them, what their costs would be, balancing, etc. It's easier to have the concords grant passive effects, kind of like how friendship works in the later Pokemon games (it gives a chance to evade attacks, survive KO, recover from status effects, etc). I played around with a few ideas, and currently have these:


Strength Bonus - This would be a straight multiplier applied to max Body and Mind, which - as described in previous posts - serve as both offensive power and HP.

Positive Element Boost - This would be added to the power of Courage, Bliss, and Creation skills.

Negative Element Boost - This would be added to the power of Fear, Destruction, and Sorrow skills.

Assist Chance - When a character uses an attacking skill, this is the chance that adjacent allies will follow it up by using their weapon skill on the same target, at no cost.

Avenge Chance - When a character is hit, there's a chance their allies will use their weapon skill on the attacker.

Cheer Chance - On a character's turn, there's a chance their allies will cheer them on, increasing their Mind by a few points. Restoring mind was an issue with what I had previously, so this should hopefully help with that.

Console Chance - When a character is damaged, their allies might reassure them, restoring some Mind (not Body, since these are non-magical effects), and increasing their 'time' slightly.

Victory Restoration - I like the thought of the "VICTORY!" bit at the end of battle, where everyone does a pose, having some functional effect. Characters' Mind recovers by an amount based on the strength of their concords with their allies.


Both Avenge and Console activate when a character is hit, which is less than ideal. Either I could remove one, or give characters some individual value that determines which they do (Steele would Avenge, Emeela would Console), or at least the percentage ratio for each one (Mardek has a 50% chance of either, Steele has a 100%/0% chance). Or I could replace one with a "Defend Chance", where an ally jumps in the way of an attack and takes the damage, but that's harder to code than the others, it'd require a new animation (probably), and it might not even be desirable for players.

I might change, add, or remove some of these if they don't work well during actual gameplay. I'll also need to tweak the numbers, but balancing stuff like that is always going to be part of the process.

I imagine that certain skills could add to or multiply these base percentages. For example, Deugan's "White Knight" passive, suggested in a previous post, could maybe give him a +50% chance to Cheer, Assist, Avenge, or Console Emeela? Perhaps moods could multiply them too, so someone Depressed is less likely to do any, someone Brave is more likely to Avenge, etc?


At a glance, the system seems perhaps overly complicated; so much for keeping things simple! But it's not, really. It's not as if you actually have to concern yourself with or alter the numbers; essentially they're just bonuses granted by having characters stand next to each other through a lot of battles. You could definitely go through the entire game without even looking at this screen. Many games would just keep numbers like this hidden, but I thought it could be interesting to give the player the opportunity to see them if they're curious.

The presentation of the information is somewhat confusing though, since I couldn't think how better to do it. Here's the Deugan example from earlier:



The green numbers on Deugan's box are the totals he's getting from everyone. So his Strength Bonus is the 20% from Mardek - the 0.1% from Steele (it feels a bit ugly using non-integer values, but if they were rounded down, many of them just wouldn't show up at all). The green numbers on characters other than the selected one show what they're contributing... but the white numbers on those characters show how likely the currently selected character (in this case, Deugan) is to help them out. Perhaps it'd make more sense for this to show the likelihood of them helping Deugan out, which would mean a total could be calculated for Deugan (so if all three allies had a 33% chance to Assist Deugan, his total might show a 99% chance). That's misleading though - three 33%s wouldn't be the same as an almost-guaranteed chance at all - plus I wanted this screen to show things from their perspective. So Deugan doesn't exactly know how likely Mardek is to help him out, but he does know how likely he is to help Mardek out based on how close to him he believes himself to be (they do both have Harmony with one another, so they're equally likely to help one another, if you're curious).

Characters' impressions wouldn't be directly manipulated by the player on a battle-by-battle basis, though plot events - and perhaps optional side quest - would alter them, and perhaps changes to these would alter certain events, or at least what characters say during certain events. Having a branching story would be far, far too difficult, but having dialogue variants (with the same grander plot outcome) would be definitely achievable and certainly appealing.

This system - and the associated UI - is brand new, so maybe it'll go through some revisions as time goes on. I'm curious to hear your thoughts though, as always!



Thanks for reading! I read and appreciate all comments, though I'm aware that I've been terrible at actually replying to them recently. I'm hoping to improve with that, though!

22 COMMENTS

MarninPL33~5Y
I really like the Concord idea, although it seems quite complicated. However, this is something that you can slowly learn as you play, so that is not a big issue. However, don't you think it will limit your team-comp options? You know, once you level bonds switching between characters can be a bad idea, and that can limit tactical thinking when it comes to choosing characters.

Also, I really like the new idea for Deugan! I would suggest adding some actual blades to the weapon, since right now it doesn't look like it can deal much damage (because it's just light wooden shield after all) but apart from that it looks very promising!

When it comes to animation did you consider just making them a tad-bit faster? Like, 5 or 10%. I have no argument besides me thinking that it would make animations a little bit more dynamic. Anyway, those are my thoughts on this post!
2
SafiyaMukhamadova11~5Y
Spikes would probably be easier to implement and less confusing than adding bladed edges to the shield. Although, after doing some googling, apparently Spartans were able to knock people out with their hoplon shields that weighed 15 lbs/7 kg. Maybe instead of straight damage like a sword the weight of the shield could increase, which would increase chance of stun at the cost of exhaustion?
0
Natry3~5Y
I'm a little concerned about the negative element boost since it's kind of rewarding players for encouraging toxic relationships. I don't think we want Emela and Steele to end up together, but if someone was min-maxing for a challenge run or something, putting them together would be the "correct" choice. I could imagine a bonus boss weak to negative elements leading to people making parties where everyone hates each others' guts!

Not sure of another way to do it. Maybe make the stat decreases start higher and have both them and the negative element boost decrease as the toxic Concord levels up, symbolizing that a character still hates the other one, but at least understands them a little. Which also means players that want to use the big negative boost are motivated to not make toxic pair-ups unless they really need it.
1
Tobias 1115~5Y
The way it works currently, it's unlikely that there'd be any way to deliberately make any characters develop negative impressions of one another, so gaining benefits from these darker connections would be a rare, situational thing rather than something the player could actually build as a long-term strategy.

But then is it worth giving benefits at all for these rare dark connections? Maybe not. I mostly did it this way to make this particular section with Emeela and Steele on the party more interesting, but maybe it's worth revising.
0
Natry3~5Y
I do like the concept of having dark connections, so I wouldn't want them made completely irrelevant. Most rpg parties eventually become Best Friends Forever by the end. It would be more interesting and a little more realistic to have characters that dislike each other but tolerate each other because they both want to save the world. It would give the Players more to do with party selection too; having to balance charachters' fighting ability with how well they can get along together.
1
Astreon152~5Y
Why not go full defensive road with Deugan?

My feel is what's the point of abandoning the greatsword if he handles the shield like one anyway ?

I'd imagine, as a side character, his role isn't to attack, but to protect. He could maybe have a few support skill (like bash, which would resemble a push action, like mob police), but they would inflict ailment and not dammage (stun, affect the mindset of opponent by making him focus on Deugan, etc.).

That would also save the need for attack animation. Just make him parry, for himself or with a side-glide for a teammate, and from same half-crouching stand, bash forward with the shield.
If you have time and energy, you could add animations for other skills (e.g. deflect a projectile).

For team skills, Suikoden had tons of these, but they were character specific, whereas yours, beside the negative/positive ones, seem generic?
I understand and like automatic skill activation, but besides passive effect, couldn't there be active and character specific ones, depending on combinations ?
Like, Emela and Steel could team up, if they have a high concord value, and Emela's negative feelings toward Steel would be redirected towards the enemy to increase spell damage (or something more subtle...), but maybe Steel would be affected in some way (scared ? or concord would drop, because the "don't come near me" message would have made it through ?).
Deugan + Emela with high concord would be automatic shielding, with counterattack (Emela takes revenge for D.), or something along those lines.
Deugan and Mardek would have a special "childhood attack" of some sort, that they'd have created back in the days^^

Basically, concord should be a factor taken in for the combined skill, but mind and class also (a bliss mage and a bliss swordsman wouldn't support each other in the same way, depending on whose turn it is to act).

As for the rest, i only skimmed through it (sorry, not much time on my hands), but graphics seemed cool, and everything was easy to understand and seemed user-friendly :)
0
Tobias 1115~5Y
Deugan is mostly defensive, though I imagined it'd be less fun for players during sections where they just had Mardek and him and he couldn't even attack.

It also means that he has an attack to use for the Assist/Avenge Chance concord effects.

While it might be more interesting on some level to have every concord effect unique to each pair, that's much more complicated both to make and to understand for the player. With this, I can make general, always-useful effects that apply to everyone, and which the player would always know to expect, whereas with more specific ones, I'd have to plan them all, and players would have to look over what they all were before making decisions, or (more likely) they'd just ignore them. Maybe. JRPGs are often full of these overly-fiddly systems that I tend to not even bother trying to understand, and I'm trying to avoid that in this. Ideally this would be even less complicated than it is, and maybe some way to simplify it will arise eventually!
2
astralwolf92~5Y
Concept sounds fun and interesting
1
Maniafig222~5Y
I'm glad you tinkered around with Deugan's weapon! I didn't realize the final design had a slicing edge though! It looked to me like Deugan just twacked the enemy with it. Maybe it's clearer if the edge is ribbed?

You're definitely right about animations needing to be functional and snappy first and foremost, otherwise combat starts to feel sluggish, especially if animations can't be turned off.

The Stratapillers look much better than their original 3D model as well! The gemstones are actually recognizable as gemstones now.

Taming Mind not only had inter-party chats, but also the inner thoughts of party members! Are those still going to be in the new game? There's some things that would make more sense for characters to think to themselves rather than say to others.

Hah, there's one game series that is very heavily about the concept of people with close relations being able to connect with each other like that, as well as a lot of parapsychology and pseudoscience in general. It's a visual novel series called Zero Escape.

Concord, sort of like the opposite of discord. I think it's a fitting term.

Does concord value persist between episodes? Would it be possible to grind Mardek/Deugan's relationship to the max from the start or would every episode raise the cap so you'd need to maintain the relationship?

I don't like that Pokémon uses 255 as the maximum number for friendship or EVs! I get it's a 16-bit thing, but it's such an ugly number!

I like how there's more than just "like/dislike"! Most of these systems have the friendship thing be very binary, so having the concords be more varied than that is interesting. It also means the concords can change with the plot!

It amuses me that Steele doesn't know what to make of Mardek. In TD Mardek seemed to want to get along with Steele unlike the other party members, I wonder how that's going to work here. We also don't get to see what Mardek's concords are!

Also amusing that Deugan loathes Steele while Steele only dislikes Deugan!

I think making the effects passive is a better idea yeah, that way it's always relevant and it's much easier to implement and balance as well!

I think Avenge and Console work better than Defend, are are also more character-fitting.

I think the way it currently looks is easy to understand. The only thing not clear is what "a few points" means!

Having concords affect the plot seems like it'd be risky, better to stick to one plot instead of having to write several lesser variations for every bit where it matters I'd say.
1
Tobias 1115~5Y
Something I've been wondering is 'how do I make the edge actually look sharp?'. I've tried a few different things, but none felt right; I want to return to that.

I'd forgotten about what happened in Taming Dreams' P-dialogue for just one character; I was remembering Mardek being a part of all the exchanges, like in MARDEK. Maybe the personal thoughts could return as something situational, whereas the pair dialogues are mostly or entirely concord-based? I'll give it some thought!

I was thinking I probably should add concord caps, even if it doesn't make sense! I'll probably add caps to a bunch of stuff; I never liked how you could get to such a high level in MARDEK 3...

I imagined the relationship between Mardek and Steele like two work colleagues who've never interacted with or thought about one another put in a group project together, and they each see the other as an unremarkable person they have to work with, after which they'll just forget about them. So they both have an "Unsure" towards eachother, which is the 'neutral' one. Mardek has Harmony with Deugan and "Like" towards Emeela, largely because he knows Deugan likes her so he assumes she must be alright. I've grown since the days when I made all the guys want her just because she's a girl!

I'm not sure what 'a few points' means myself yet! It's something I'll have to play around with.

I definitely wouldn't want to have very variable concords affect every little thing! Perhaps it'd only be on rare occasions that someone's reaction might change from "oh, whatever" to "oh no!!" if they have a sufficiently high concord with a certain character. Like maybe after Steele's 'death', if for whatever reason the player had taken the time to grind concords between him and Deugan or Mardek, they might unlock a couple of bonus lines where they show more concern about him than they would otherwise (though the actual events wouldn't change).

I also like the idea of essentially unlocking new Impressions as rewards for certain quests. So rather than getting a new sword or piece of armour, instead maybe A shifts from Unsure to Like about B, and that changes a dialogue line between them here and there. It wouldn't be something frequent though!

I've still not played Undertale, obviously, but I've heard that your actions in that heavily affect the plot? I wonder to what extent they do.
1
Maniafig222~5Y
The P-dialogue for people thinking to themselves is just that, inner thoughts! Mardek's only involved in his own inner thoughts, though Rohoph joins in after he start sharing a body with Mardek.

Undertale is sort of strange in that regard, since it's not really that long of a game, and the path taken through the game doesn't usually diverse much, but the relations with the characters in the world do drastically alter depending on whether the player kills opponents or spares them. The idea of doing multiple runs of the game or looking up the other routes online in order to fully experience it is very much baked into its identity!

You can imagine that the character interactions in a run where you're pacifistic and befriend everyone plays out very differently from the one where you systematically hunt down enemies to the point that random encounters stop even spawning!

But of course it has to be remarked that's only possible because the game is short enough to have heavy branching like that! It's by no means a new standard for how indie games should be, and even the spiritual successor that's being worked on appears to be more of a traditionally structured RPG, in that there is one linear story with some minor branching here and there.
1
Astreon152~5Y
For the shield, would making the circumference saw-toothed work ? The edges are smooth on the video, making it look more like a blunt weapon as someone pointed out.

Or, you could make Deugan a shield mage: instead of using the actual shield, he would use a casted image of the shield.
A bit like sword light or sword projection in anime. No physical contact with target, so less movement to program ? I can see it work with block, bash and slash actions, but i don't know how that would actually look like, especially compared with the effects of the spells a wand wizard like Emela would cast?
1
Ampersand68~5Y
A small note on the Greatshield- I think it might benefit from being wielded in a manner more like that of a quarterstaff. It already looks kinda similar to this kind of Zulu cowhide shield [LINK] The staff-like grip allows both for strikes and parrying, and Deugan holding it in the middle and striking with the ends might help his attacks look less unwieldy.
1
Tobias 1115~5Y
I actually used those kinds of shields as inspiration for the general design and idle wielding stance! The wielding-like-a-greatsword aspect is mostly a call-back to his weapons in the original, really; it's not exactly practical, but maybe the little bit of nostalgia/reference/silliness is more valuable than making something more sensible? Honestly I'm not sure.
1
codyfun12329~5Y
What about a sideways cut instead of an overhead strike for Deugan's weapon? It's something I feel like would have had a faster setup when it was a big shield, and for the new hybrid weapon it would probably let you emphasize the light maneuverability and sharpness better.
1
Falcon64~5Y
I really like the Concord idea! It makes the game more appealing and unique, I feel, as otherwise it seemed somewhat "empty" as far as gameplay goes. The idea of unlocking bonus quests that explore character relationships if you take the time to unlock them is particularly nice. Some more modern games that utilize a similar mechanic are BioWare RPGs (like the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series). I feel like you might enjoy them, but they are certainly a grand endeavour to undertake, given their length.

You mentioned that character opinions of each other would be unable to be influenced by players, but also that they might end up being "rewards" for the optional quests? I definitely enjoy the second idea more, though it might add extra work to account for the relationships in some dialogue. Imagine being able to take the time to understand and befriend Steele if you wanted to! I feel like that is something Mardek wouldn't be against doing.
2
vladandrei199647~5Y
Glad to see you're making progress. I hope you're in good health and stay at home (because of the virus), don't need to rush anything over your own health.

Also, an out of topic question. Will you write a blog about your progress on releasing MARDEK on Steam? Or will Divine Dreams release before that?
0
LotBlind53~5Y
" (so if all three allies had a 33% chance to Assist Deugan, his total might show a 99% chance). That's misleading though - three 33%s wouldn't be the same as an almost-guaranteed chance at all"

I assume the game will handle the maths for the player? 3 x 33% chance is (1-0.67^3) = 69.9%

The concords idea is nice. I really want to see something new in any JRPGs that I'm about to play. You've got that covered.

Deugan's shield: if it had sharpened steel edges, it'd pass a better impression as a weapon. Maybe the convex part has a flat blade embedded on one side or both? It couldn't cut very deeply but maybe 5cm is enough to cause some hurt in most cases. After the blade is lodged in place, he could pull it to cause further slicing.
1
klimtkiller5~5Y
Hi. I've known about this website for a while but I just made an account here. Does anyone know if i can play taming dreams on my mac? I can't find a download anywhere...
0
RedMetal1~5Y
Regarding games with similar mechanics, based on your description Concords feel very similar to Supports in Fire Emblem. Characters fighting alongside each other gain Support points, then when you have enough, the two of them have a conversation and their Support level goes up, granting them both buffs when fighting alongside each other.
1
Tobias 1115~5Y
I've never played those games myself, but someone else mentioned those, and it's interesting hearing they include a conversation too. What kinds of buffs do they grant?
0
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