Alora Fane

I've mostly been doing cleanup/tweaks this week, polishing, trying to get the game to a point where I can show the early section to some alpha testers, but everything takes a long time! While tidying up some gameplay mechanics, I made a change to how the 'arousal' stat works, which I want to talk about here. Also, another music album!

Atonal Dreams Progress

∞ Last week ∞, I showed off and talked about a video of Atonal Dreams' intro since that's what I'd spent most of the week working on and was really curious to hear people's impressions of the dialogue I'd been stressing over... but people just commented about relatively insignificant things like the minimap, which made me wonder if videos like that are something that anyone's even interested in seeing. I have no idea! What kind of stuff is actually worth writing about in these posts?

I'm still working on polishing the early bits of the game so then I can release them as at least an alpha test and finally get some direct feedback on how the game feels to play (hopefully), but it's taking longer than I thought it would, annoyingly. I'm working on it consistently every day, but there are a ton of little tweaks and tasks that all add up to really eat up time. Mostly I've fixed bugs and added extremely exciting things like code to determine which slots the monsters start battle in rather than just filling them up linearly, though I suppose two things are worth remarking on:

Previously, skills looked like this. Combatants have a stat called 'arousal' which varies between 0 and 100%, represented by the hearts, and in this earlier version, it determined turn order (speed) and skill availability. The gradient on the skills showed the range of arousal for which the skill could be used.

I found from playing that I mostly ignored arousal; at most it was an uncommon minor irritation; it wasn't adding anything of value. Collie has a skill to boost it ('rouse'), though I never used it.

I first used this stat in Taming Dreams, though it was called Excitement then. In that, it was a multiplier for both incoming and outgoing damage: at low excitement, you'd take little damage but do little, and vice versa for high excitement. I think I had fairly significant multipliers, something like x20% to x200%, so at low arousal you were almost invincible but hit like an emaciated grandma.

That led to some interesting gameplay opportunities; much more than the skill restriction thing. So I revised Atonal Dreams' arousal to work similarly:

Now, you can use any of your skills without limitation. Each has several properties - now shown as icons in the space which used to have the temperature gradient (coming to this decision took several iterations and a while!) - that are used in determining damage:

The first is the base damage stat. This can be either Physical, Light, or Dark; the corresponding stat is used as a starting point.

Skills have a growth type: Life, Death, or Spirit. Life skills boost max HP by their level while equipped, Spirit ones fill the speed bar by level% on use. For Death skills, their level is added as a flat number to the damage stat in the damage formula.

Elements are a fairly simple fixed rock-paper-scissors multiplier to the damage stat. 150% if effective, 50% if ineffective, 100% otherwise. Elements can't be changed. Skills have an element, but the user's element is only used defensively (no Pokemon-like STAB).

Some - but not all - skills have a rune. The skill's rune is compared to both the user's and the target's corresponding rune, and the closer it is to both, the higher the multiplier. The multiplier range is wide: an actor with an R rune using an A skill on a target with an R rune would be 20%, while an R runed actor using an R skill on an R runed target would be 200%.

Like with runes, both the actor's and target's arousal values are used as two combined multipliers: (0.5 + actorArousal) * (0.5 + targetArousal). So that gives a multiplier from 25% to 225%.

Finally, the target's defence (or magic defence if the Light or Dark stat was used for offence) is subtracted to give the final damage value.

I'm concerned that the system might seem overly complicated, but compared to other games, this is a really simple damage formula! Compare it to, say, ∞ Pokemon's ∞ or ∞ Final Fantasy VI's ∞, which require long mathematical descriptions to reveal and which took in-depth digging to discover in the first place.

Unlike in standard JRPG damage equations where there's a bunch of complicated stats stuff going on behind the scenes, but much of it is based on factors out of your control (or only slightly modifiable, often through items equipped outside battle), here you can alter the effects of your skills massively through deliberate action.

The total potential multiplier range is huge: 5% to 675%! What that means is that if a character had a base 20 attack and used a damaging skill against a target with 0 defence, if the conditions were their absolute worst (Bliss skill on Fear target, skill has an A rune but both actor and target have R runes, both are at 0% arousal), it'd do 1 damage. But if conditions were ideal (Fear skill on Bliss target, skill has A rune and both actor and target have A runes too, both are at 100% arousal), it'd do 135 damage.

I remember reading about ∞ a way to theoretically build up a bunch of specific multipliers to cause a Pokemon to deal over a billion damage in a single attack ∞, which is amusing but ludicrously unlikely to ever actually happen in real gameplay. So this isn't quite as drastic a damage boost as in a situation like that, but it's also not nearly as unlikely. Some bosses will probably require building up big multipliers like this to take them down, which I think could lead to some more interesting gameplay than just spamming Attack or some elemental spell they're weak to.

Usually, though, the multipliers would hover around 100%, or maybe like 50% to 200% or something. The ridiculous 600+% situations would have to be deliberately set up.

Conceptually, all these multipliers are based around the idea of similarity resonance - skills are more effective the more they're like their target. I find this very interesting, though it's different to the usual STRONGER THAN relationship seen in other games.

I spent a couple of hours adding this:

This shows in battle when you hold down a certain button (I'm using the right trigger currently). It displays a breakdown of the factors involved in determining the damage for the last 10 damaging skills used. Useful if you just did something and got an unexpected effect ("why did I just do 0 damage?"). Compare the two uses of Tame, for example (0 damage vs 17 damage).

It feels overwhelming to even look at, but I've found this to be the case with a lot of games when seeing their unfamiliar nitty-gritty UIs for the first time. It's the norm for me to take a few hours to get my head around a game's technical details before they finally click, though I wonder if it's this way for other people too or if they expect everything to make sense instantly.

But making a system that can be fully understood instantly but still has enough depth to lead to interesting gameplay later just seems impossible!

You could say that games like Pokemon have mechanics easy enough for a child to understand but which can be manipulated in greater detail by skilled endgame players, but I'd like to hope this isn't too dissimilar. Most of the early game content would be passable enough just by using basic attacking skills and essentially ignoring runes and arousal. You could probably get through the whole game that way, actually. Mastering the mechanics just makes things more efficient.

I actually wrote about this ∞ in a public post on my Patreon ∞ during the week, since I wanted to get some thoughts out but wasn't sure where. I'll probably do that again if I have something game-related on my mind mid-week.

Anyway, I spent quite a bit just playtesting the game this week while recording bugs I found, and I do think the mechanics that I have are quite fun to play with! They're varied enough that each battle doesn't just feel mindless - or at least you can choose to play in a way that's not mindless - but I didn't get stuck in frustrating corners or anything either. I also used Collie's arousal boosting skill quite often now that arousal has a more directly relevant effect on gameplay; it can really make a big difference as to whether she can tame a target in one turn or two.

I'm hoping to have a playable alpha soon. I thought maybe I'd finish off the polishing this week, but that wasn't the case because these stupid little details take so much time. Hopefully over the next week I'll be able to finish off refining this starting area, but we'll see!

Music Album of the Week

Since everyone was BEGGING me for it, literally on their knees in tears telling me that they NEED this or else there's just no point in living, THERE JUST ISN'T, here's another collection of old "piano" musics I composed when I was a fresh young 18-or-so-year-old.

Link: [LINK]

I wasn't sure whether these pieces would even be worth making an album out of, though after listening back to them while adapting them to wav files, I did find myself enjoying them more than I expected to! I've been listening to the album while writing this, and it just finished, but I've restarted it because I want to listen to it again!

They're from around the same time as the Piano Rambles pieces, and about the same quality. Shorter, though. An hour and ten minutes total duration.

The album art's from around the time they were composed again this time!

I've still got over 20 albums I want to upload, though I'm enjoying working through them; I've been wanting to archive all my old music for years, and doing it on a weekly basis like this is actually motivating me to do it. I'm fairly directionless about it though; I'm going roughly earliest first, but I haven't uploaded these in the chronological order they were composed. If you have any requests for old music of mine you remember and want me to make an album of next, let me know! Otherwise I'll just choose another one at kind-of random.

Also, maybe I should make a separate blog category for these music albums. Maybe!!

Other Indie Games

I haven't played another indie game since Timelie, annoyingly. I'm still working my way through Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity! Almost done now though; I'm trying to get some final little (tediously grindy) details to reach 100%, which I didn't expect to do but I got surprisingly into it.

I have however started trying to spend at least half an hour a day on Twitter browsing through various indie dev stuff. I'm trying to make a note of at least one thing a day so I can compile them in my weekend blog post, though I only did that for 3/5 days this week. Here's what I found:

∞ Here's a postmortem of a Zelda clone called Lenna's Inception ∞. A useful read for me, though it's long. It was released in January 2020, but started life 8 (!) years earlier. The developer talks about working at an indie game publisher for a while and learning a lot from that, and how meeting other people - including one who's now his business partner - was the most valuable and important part of the whole process. He calls its release a failure because it only sold 6800 copies; this is around three times more than MARDEK (currently at 2241)... but then again I didn't work on MARDEK for 8 years, and it was a Flash game I'd released for free years ago - and as such it felt wrong to market it now - so its Steam release isn't really comparable to something released primarily on that platform. He also mentions it got 22% of its purchases on itch.io#:

People underestimate itch.io. Steam might have a larger overall audience, but only a fraction of Steam users are actively looking for indie games, while almost everyone on itch.io is! Itch.io also has better curation, etc.

So that's worth noting.

∞ Here's a Kickstarter for a game described as "A 2D pixelated fantasy RPG with immersive story-telling and battle between two distinctive worlds. Inspired by Hongkongers." ∞ I personally feel it looks... mediocre, though it seems to be the first game by a student who's working solo, so I suppose it's impressive enough for what it is. Plus most indie games probably look like that! He's asking for around £10k, and has £1.5k in around a week. I'm not sure how or why, and it'll be interesting to keep an eye on it to see where it goes, but as I've been wondering whether to do a Kickstarter myself for ages, seeing something like that is fairly promising, I suppose?

Interestingly, there's ∞ this playlist of streamers who've made videos about the game ∞, which sounds impressive enough in theory... though if you look at the videos themselves, they mostly have like 30-50 views. Interesting to me; puts things in perspective, and makes me wonder how many gaming youtubers there are out there who get similar view counts if they're lucky. Makes my own low view counts on the few videos I put on there, and on the posts on this blog, seem slightly less pathetic.

On a sadder note though, ∞ here's a Kickstarter for a game that the devs had been working on for 5 years, which only raised £3.5k of the £22k they were hoping for ∞. I've only skimmed the page so I don't understand what the game's about, but I wonder whether it just didn't stand out or whether it's just tough to draw attention to a Kickstarter in general. I wonder whether I'd do any better if I have MARDEK as a past project to show what I'm capable of, though maybe Atonal Dreams isn't similar enough to it for old fans of that to be interested. My biggest concern with Kickstarter is all the stupid extras you have to promise; I notice this one mentions some physical products they were offering to backers. Having to decide on and make things like that are the main reason I'm still hesitant about starting a Kickstarter (it's hard enough just making the game!)... though I'll keep looking into others and see if any offer minimal 'rewards' and still succeed.

Also...

I've been thinking more about Discord, since that's something I should have finished setting up ages ago. I'll probably write a separate post about that though. I keep half-writing Personal category posts on Saturdays, intending to finish them on the Sunday, but then I just don't bother... bleh.

15 COMMENTS

Spectre35~4Y

Is there a reason why effective moves are 1.5x while ineffective moves are 0.5x? I am currently playing another game which has this damage formula. I am curious about the thoughts of devs behind this formula because it seems to me it is uneven. You do 3/2 and 1/2 amount of damage for effective and ineffective moves respectively. Why not 3/2 and 2/3, or 2 and 1/2?

Tobias 1115~4Y

But isn't 1/2, 2/2, 3/2 more balanced than 1/2, 2/2, 4/2? If you take a base damage of 100, then it's plus or minus 50 either way using what I am, whereas with the more Pokemon-like half or double system, that's either -50 or +100; effectiveness is twice as potent as resistance.

That's just for elements here though, which is only a small part of the overall formula.

Spectre35~4Y

Oh yeah. This makes total sense. I guess playing too much incremental games numbs my common sense. LOL

LevProtter42~4Y

It's sort of hard to react to multiple topics at the end of an article.. I feel like I should take notes at this point, so I can comment on what I mean to.

The game mechanics are interesting.
UI design is always a bit difficult, and balancing
RPG numbers is always a fascinating problem.
I remember watching a GDC talk about the witcher, and the systems and formulas they made for handling that sort of thing.

I also remember reading Craig Sterns RPG articles, and agreeing about the 'keeping numbers small' and modifiers additive instead of multiplicative.
I really agreed with his points, and they ring even truer when you introduce some of the more interesting damage mechanics.
On the other hand, I like where it's going, and there is a case to be made for the big % stuff making things pretty satisfying. (I remember really enjoying stacking equipment so that enemy damage healed me in mardek.) I always love how these mechanics create cool emergent gameplay and strategies.

Those two kickstarters make me feel things.
Kickstarter is all about aesthetics, music, and marketing (from what I've seen).
I feel like the first one, though mediocre looking, has just enough charm to *maybe* have some sort of chance, though a very small one.
The second one feels like it would succeed if they had really tight aesthetics, music, and a better edited video. I can't say much about community and marketing, since I don't feel like looking into what they did.

An example from a while back (in the Kickstarter hayday, so idk how useful it is), is this:
[LINK]
I've been following this project from time to time, and it's an odd one. To me kickstarters are curiosities, and probably the best place to learn about marketing and appeal.
Sui Generis has been in development (hell?) for a while, but they released a demo, and who knows what the future holds.

I like the music! (and find the cover art to be fun)
(though I ain't liquid for the next long while.
I played flash games as a child after all.)

I think that covers all of it. Cheers!

It's sort of hard to react to multiple topics at the end of an article.. I feel like I should take notes at this point, so I can comment on what I mean to.

The game mechanics are interesting.
UI design is always a bit difficult, and balancing
RPG numbers is always a fascinating problem.
I remember watching a GDC talk about the witcher, and the systems and formulas they made for handling that sort of thing.

I also remember reading Craig Sterns RPG articles, and agreeing about the 'keeping numbers small' and modifiers additive instead of multiplicative.
I really agreed with his points, and they ring even truer when you introduce some of the more interesting damage mechanics.
On the other hand, I like where it's going, and there is a case to be made for the big % stuff making things pretty satisfying. (I remember really enjoying stacking equipment so that enemy damage healed me in mardek.) I always love how these mechanics create cool emergent gameplay and strategies.

Those two kickstarters make me feel things.
Kickstarter is all about aesthetics, music, and marketing (from what I've seen).
I feel like the first one, though mediocre looking, has just enough charm to *maybe* have some sort of chance, though a very small one.
The second one feels like it would succeed if they had really tight aesthetics, music, and a better edited video. I can't say much about community and marketing, since I don't feel like looking into what they did.

An example from a while back (in the Kickstarter hayday, so idk how useful it is), is this:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1473965863/sui-generis
I've been following this project from time to time, and it's an odd one. To me kickstarters are curiosities, and probably the best place to learn about marketing and appeal.
Sui Generis has been in development (hell?) for a while, but they released a demo, and who knows what the future holds.

I like the music! (and find the cover art to be fun)
(though I ain't liquid for the next long while.
I played flash games as a child after all.)

I think that covers all of it. Cheers!

Tobias 1115~4Y

I should probably be writing smaller separate posts instead of clumping together a bunch of unrelated things, but I suppose I'm still figuring that out and I'm very aware of the dwindling view counters on these posts so I don't know if anyone would read them!

It'll be interesting to talk about Kickstarter in more detail at some point if I'm going to do one, since I'm absolutely not sure what potential backers might be drawn in by! That Kickstarter you linked to (which isn't as old as I was expecting) is interesting because it earned a whole lot but, what, they just never finished? Are people upset about that? I googled their website, and it's only got a few updates on the front page from years ago.

The whole thing feels so... well, massively different to how I'd do it, for sure; the devs come across as more professional and probably marketing-focused, or maybe just more adult or something, what with their inclusion of business-profile-looking photos and a phone call and meetup/meal as backing rewards (god, I could never do that), whereas I'm some solitary nutjob making something maybe more idiosyncratic? And yet I think I could actually finish it within a few more months rather than letting people down with years of nothing after I've taken their money...

The more I see of Kickstarters, the more uncertain I am of whether they'd be a good move for me... though I suppose I'll write a post specifically about that once I've sorted out a demo and stuff. Thanks for commenting!

It'll be interesting to talk about Kickstarter in more detail at some point if I'm going to do one, since I'm absolutely not sure what potential backers might be drawn in by! That Kickstarter you linked to (which isn't as old as I was expecting) is interesting because it earned a whole lot but, what, they just never finished? Are people upset about that? I googled their website, and it's only got a few updates on the front page from years ago.

The whole thing feels so... well, massively different to how I'd do it, for sure; the devs come across as more professional and probably marketing-focused, or maybe just more /adult/ or something, what with their inclusion of business-profile-looking photos and a phone call and meetup/meal as backing rewards (god, I could never do that), whereas I'm some solitary nutjob making something maybe more idiosyncratic? And yet I think I could actually finish it within a few more months rather than letting people down with years of nothing after I've taken their money...

The more I see of Kickstarters, the more uncertain I am of whether they'd be a good move for me... though I suppose I'll write a post specifically about that once I've sorted out a demo and stuff. Thanks for commenting!

Maniafig222~4Y

I'd have commented last week, but I already talked about the intro scene in the Patreon update. FWIW, I'm more used to minimap being in the bottom right for RPGs like this, I associate top right maps more with action-heavy games.

I'm pretty sure that back in Taming Dreams, being at 0% excitement made you entirely immune to damage and unable to inflict damage, except for calm-powered skills. That was particularly good for Meraeadyth for that reason.

So, is the base damage the black number in the exp bar, or is that some sort of exp thing? I'm guessing its exp needed to level up, and it goes up by 1 for amount of damage dealt/healed, or 1 in the case of status moves.

It's probably for the best that arousal now scales from 25% to 225%, the variance it had in Taming Dreams made characters with innately low excitement pretty useless in random battles.

To be fair to Pokémon, the specifics of the actual math don't matter too much, it still boils down to "high move power, high attack, high level and low defense increase damage", nothing that's particularly hard to understand. It certainly gets more esoteric with games like FF where there's a lot more stats and a lot more hidden parameters, like not knowing the base power of most spells.

It certainly does make me appreciate games like Paper Mario and Bug Fables, which use very simple and clear damage calculations in which +1 ATK or DEF feels incredibly meaningful because the games use much smaller numbers than other games.

The dream of setting up big combos to do a small amount of big attacks instead of a long battle of many small attacks is something that seems more common in RPGs than it used to be. Octopath Traveler certainly did it with its brave system and breaking, and Epic Battle Fantasy gets a lot of mileage out of it too, even the game's superbosses can be beaten in 2 turns with the proper amount of set-up.

I think the clarity of the effectiveness log would be much higher if every percentage multiplier also showed you how it actually affects the base damage! That would make it more like a step-by-step process rather than a black box with a single input and output.

For example, the first bar would show 12 base damage, then 50%=6 damage, then 155%=9, then 90%=8 and then it applies 6 defense. I think that would make all the numbers look less scary then having to calculate (6*50%*155%*90%)-4=2.

Aside from that it's impressively clear and readable. Certainly easier to parse than trying to figure out why you're doing X amount of damage in most RPGs! I wish more RPGs would have indicators like this.

My one remaining question is how exactly turns work, is it like Taming Dreams where during a turn every character goes in order of their start-of-round excitement, or is it like Final fantasy Tactics games where every character is constantly charging their turns and you could have characters that get 5 turns for every 3 turns of a slower enemy?

I recently started playing an indie game called Iconoclasts, which looks really polished, but also is constantly baffling me with how poorly its plot is paced, it feels like reading a novel where you skipped a bunch of chapters worth of set-up and character interactions, it really sucks me out anytime a cutscene happens.

"Immersive" really feels like one of those marketing-speak salespoints that any Kickstarter will slap on there so long as it's not a purely mechanically-driven crunchy game. Is there any narrative game that is not going to try to be immersive?

That INZANE kickstarter definitely looks like a game in the style of Limbo and Inside. I guess that could be why it failed, it's easy to draw parallels to those other games and conclude it probably won't provide a better experience, so why not play those instead? That's the problem with making a game that seems very much like other games which don't make people go "I want more games like this!" as some genres do but others do not.

The Discord, yes! It's pretty barren currently!

I'm pretty sure that back in Taming Dreams, being at 0% excitement made you entirely immune to damage and unable to inflict damage, except for calm-powered skills. That was particularly good for Meraeadyth for that reason.

So, is the base damage the black number in the exp bar, or is that some sort of exp thing? I'm guessing its exp needed to level up, and it goes up by 1 for amount of damage dealt/healed, or 1 in the case of status moves.

It's probably for the best that arousal now scales from 25% to 225%, the variance it had in Taming Dreams made characters with innately low excitement pretty useless in random battles.

To be fair to Pokémon, the specifics of the actual math don't matter too much, it still boils down to "high move power, high attack, high level and low defense increase damage", nothing that's particularly hard to understand. It certainly gets more esoteric with games like FF where there's a lot more stats and a lot more hidden parameters, like not knowing the base power of most spells.

It certainly does make me appreciate games like Paper Mario and Bug Fables, which use very simple and clear damage calculations in which +1 ATK or DEF feels incredibly meaningful because the games use much smaller numbers than other games.

The dream of setting up big combos to do a small amount of big attacks instead of a long battle of many small attacks is something that seems more common in RPGs than it used to be. Octopath Traveler certainly did it with its brave system and breaking, and Epic Battle Fantasy gets a lot of mileage out of it too, even the game's superbosses can be beaten in 2 turns with the proper amount of set-up.

I think the clarity of the effectiveness log would be much higher if every percentage multiplier also showed you how it actually affects the base damage! That would make it more like a step-by-step process rather than a black box with a single input and output.

For example, the first bar would show 12 base damage, then 50%=6 damage, then 155%=9, then 90%=8 and then it applies 6 defense. I think that would make all the numbers look less scary then having to calculate (6*50%*155%*90%)-4=2.

Aside from that it's impressively clear and readable. Certainly easier to parse than trying to figure out why you're doing X amount of damage in most RPGs! I wish more RPGs would have indicators like this.

My one remaining question is how exactly turns work, is it like Taming Dreams where during a turn every character goes in order of their start-of-round excitement, or is it like Final fantasy Tactics games where every character is constantly charging their turns and you could have characters that get 5 turns for every 3 turns of a slower enemy?

I recently started playing an indie game called Iconoclasts, which looks really polished, but also is constantly baffling me with how poorly its plot is paced, it feels like reading a novel where you skipped a bunch of chapters worth of set-up and character interactions, it really sucks me out anytime a cutscene happens.

"Immersive" really feels like one of those marketing-speak salespoints that any Kickstarter will slap on there so long as it's not a purely mechanically-driven crunchy game. Is there any narrative game that is not going to try to be immersive?

That INZANE kickstarter definitely looks like a game in the style of Limbo and Inside. I guess that could be why it failed, it's easy to draw parallels to those other games and conclude it probably won't provide a better experience, so why not play those instead? That's the problem with making a game that seems very much like other games which don't make people go "I want more games like this!" as some genres do but others do not.

The Discord, yes! It's pretty barren currently!

Tobias 1115~4Y

The black number in the exp bar is the exp required to level up; skills have no attack value of their own and use the attack, light, or dark stat of the user shown on their 'statue'. This means I'll have to come up with interesting skill ideas rather than just several identical ones with slightly more power! Whether that'll work out remains to be seen; technically the code includes potential for skills to have a power multiplier.

(Instead of just having 150 power or whatever, some MEGA NUKE skill could maybe do Abstract++++ and arousal + 100% for both the actor and target before applying the damage...)

I remember when Pokemon started including the power of its moves, and how strange and pleasantly surprising it was that wow, this game's actually giving me some idea of what's going on behind the scenes and I don't just have to completely guess!

Is Bug Fables a well-known indie game? It's one that I've bookmarked to play as a Game of the Week - I almost played it last week actually - but I know absolutely nothing about it, other than that it looked heavily inspired by Paper Mario, which is blatant enough that I recognised it despite never having played that!

Interesting that EBF does the multipliers-building thing; I still need to actually play that one of these days...

I was originally going to include the damage at every step on the skill inspector things, but it wouldn't be an actual reflection of what's going on behind the scenes! All of the multipliers are applied at once, then rounded to an integer, so rounding to ints to display each number might give misleading results. But I could experiment a bit maybe.

I'm glad that seems like a useful feature though!!

Each character has a hidden 'time' value. When nobody's taking a turn, all characters have a calculated speed value (80 + 40 * arousal) added to this time variable. Then, the game checks if any participants have a time value above a certain threshold (I think it's like 1000? Or maybe 10000?), and adds them to a list, ordered by their time (which can exceed that threshold). If this list is empty, the cycle is run again until it has at least one entry. When that happens, the first entry in the list takes a turn and is removed from the list. Then, keep repeating that until the list is empty. When it is, go back to the start of the cycle.

Simple, right??

It means that it's technically possible to take two turns before another character or monster takes one, but it's not likely, and I don't think you could get more frequent turns than that due to the 80-120 speed range.

Iconoclasts is a game I've never heard of which I see has 2469 Steam reviews, which means it did far better than most! I'll add it to my To Play list as I am doing with every indie game I see.

It's honestly annoying to me when games advertise themselves as 'immersive' or 'story-driven', since my immediate assumption is that that's very unlikely to be true. It's as if they feel like adding the bare minimum excuse plot or basic dialogue makes it 'story-rich' (which seems to be the tag on Steam?), or that making a nameless, faceless almost-stick-person go on some dialogue-less walk through an ambient forest counts as such... I'd hope maybe Atonal Dreams might be remarkably actually story-rich, but I wonder all the time whether other people will get that impression or not!

I haven't been in the Discord in ages! I'll probably need to do something with it soon if I'm going to do an alpha test... whenever that might be.

Thanks for commenting!

(Instead of just having 150 power or whatever, some MEGA NUKE skill could maybe do Abstract++++ and arousal + 100% for both the actor and target before applying the damage...)

I remember when Pokemon started including the power of its moves, and how strange and pleasantly surprising it was that wow, this game's actually giving me some idea of what's going on behind the scenes and I don't just have to completely guess!

Is Bug Fables a well-known indie game? It's one that I've bookmarked to play as a Game of the Week - I almost played it last week actually - but I know absolutely nothing about it, other than that it looked heavily inspired by Paper Mario, which is blatant enough that I recognised it despite never having played that!

Interesting that EBF does the multipliers-building thing; I still need to actually play that one of these days...

I was originally going to include the damage at every step on the skill inspector things, but it wouldn't be an actual reflection of what's going on behind the scenes! All of the multipliers are applied at once, then rounded to an integer, so rounding to ints to display each number might give misleading results. But I could experiment a bit maybe.

I'm glad that seems like a useful feature though!!

Each character has a hidden 'time' value. When nobody's taking a turn, all characters have a calculated speed value (80 + 40 * arousal) added to this time variable. Then, the game checks if any participants have a time value above a certain threshold (I think it's like 1000? Or maybe 10000?), and adds them to a list, ordered by their time (which can exceed that threshold). If this list is empty, the cycle is run again until it has at least one entry. When that happens, the first entry in the list takes a turn and is removed from the list. Then, keep repeating that until the list is empty. When it is, go back to the start of the cycle.

Simple, right??

It means that it's technically possible to take two turns before another character or monster takes one, but it's not likely, and I don't think you could get more frequent turns than that due to the 80-120 speed range.

Iconoclasts is a game I've never heard of which I see has 2469 Steam reviews, which means it did far better than most! I'll add it to my To Play list as I am doing with every indie game I see.

It's honestly annoying to me when games advertise themselves as 'immersive' or 'story-driven', since my immediate assumption is that that's very unlikely to be true. It's as if they feel like adding the bare minimum excuse plot or basic dialogue makes it 'story-rich' (which seems to be the tag on Steam?), or that making a nameless, faceless almost-stick-person go on some dialogue-less walk through an ambient forest counts as such... I'd hope maybe Atonal Dreams might be remarkably /actually/ story-rich, but I wonder all the time whether other people will get that impression or not!

I haven't been in the Discord in ages! I'll probably /need/ to do something with it soon if I'm going to do an alpha test... whenever that might be.

Thanks for commenting!

Maniafig222~4Y

Bug Fables is reasonably well-known, I think it really scratches the itch people have for a Paper Mario game that plays like the first two entries in the series, and I'd say it absolutely delivers on that front. It's a very good game!

I talked about it more here, in that yearly roundup blog I write every year! [LINK]

The time value system makes sense to me, that's basically how the system works in games like Final Fantasy Tactics. It's good to hear the Time value is bounded between 80 and 120, often in these games the Time value isn't bounded enough and you get ridiculous cases where one side barely ever gets to act, or even gets to never act!

Iconoclasts is rather baffling to me so far, sometimes to the point of frustration, it feels extremely polished in a visual sense, and it definitely has an ambitious plot, but a lot of it feels like unearned melodrama without proper set-up or build-up. I get the feeling it mostly coasts by on its admittedly great visuals, as the gameplay feels more standard and kind of obligatory. I'm hoping it'll all come together in the end.

I talked about it more here, in that yearly roundup blog I write every year! https://maniafig.blogspot.com/2020/05/2020-roundup.html

The time value system makes sense to me, that's basically how the system works in games like Final Fantasy Tactics. It's good to hear the Time value is bounded between 80 and 120, often in these games the Time value isn't bounded enough and you get ridiculous cases where one side barely ever gets to act, or even gets to never act!

Iconoclasts is rather baffling to me so far, sometimes to the point of frustration, it feels extremely polished in a visual sense, and it definitely has an ambitious plot, but a lot of it feels like unearned melodrama without proper set-up or build-up. I get the feeling it mostly coasts by on its admittedly great visuals, as the gameplay feels more standard and kind of obligatory. I'm hoping it'll all come together in the end.

Falcon64~4Y

Not commenting on something does not necessarily mean someone didn't enjoy it. I'd think that if they didn't, they'd be *more* likely to comment about it! A lack of comments generally just means someone has no specific feedback or useful things to say about something. Personally, I already commented on the intro on Patreon, which is why I didn't repeat my thoughts on the previous blog post, focusing on the other things instead.

I think one thing that would serve to make the system far less arcane (and it's really quite simple once you understand it!) would be tutorial elements explaining all of its aspects. I've noticed that you like making tutorials part of character dialogue, and that approach could work here as well, but a system of tutorial popups during battle might be clearer—something like introducing one aspect of the combat system per battle, for the first few battles the player participates in.

During the intro battle, the taming system might not be immediately clear to players from the get-go, so I feel like a popup explanation of the light/dark gauge and taming could be very useful. Then the second battle could introduce elements, the third one runes, the fourth one arousal, and so on. Some sort of MARDEK-like "encyclopedia" section of the menu that includes all of this tutorial information from the get-go could be nice as well, for those players who want to learn about everything before even starting their first battle.

I think one thing that would serve to make the system far less arcane (and it's really quite simple once you understand it!) would be tutorial elements explaining all of its aspects. I've noticed that you like making tutorials part of character dialogue, and that approach could work here as well, but a system of tutorial popups during battle might be clearer—something like introducing one aspect of the combat system per battle, for the first few battles the player participates in.

During the intro battle, the taming system might not be immediately clear to players from the get-go, so I feel like a popup explanation of the light/dark gauge and taming could be very useful. Then the second battle could introduce elements, the third one runes, the fourth one arousal, and so on. Some sort of MARDEK-like "encyclopedia" section of the menu that includes all of this tutorial information from the get-go could be nice as well, for those players who want to learn about everything before even starting their first battle.

Tobias 1115~4Y

I hope it didn't come across as me demanding feedback or something, or guilting people about not giving any! I'm just grateful anyone comments at all ever! But I'm constantly anxious about whether people will even like what I'm making or if I'm just wasting my time and life for what'll be no pay in the end, and a lack of feedback just makes my demons assume the most negative possibilities. But I'm also the sort of person who assumes that if someone doesn't reply to a text within an hour that they hate me, even though I take days to reply myself fairly often.

The first area is designed as a tutorial, though I'm trying to avoid what I feel was a huge mistake in Taming Dreams, where I had the characters talk in great detail about the game mechanics right from the start. It really bogged things down and probably wouldn't appeal to most people! I probably won't bother explaining runes at all - maybe I'll just hint at them and have some optional NPC go into detail later on -though I at least have references to elements and arousal. Since each monster says a silly quote before battle - like Pokemon trainers - I'm probably going to use those for succinct tutorial tips.

In Belief, I had a screen showing the relationships between runes and elements (or sentiments in that), which showed when you held down a button (left trigger or something). I'll probably do something like that again, so it's instantly available whenever you need it rather than hidden in a menu!

The first area is designed as a tutorial, though I'm trying to avoid what I feel was a huge mistake in Taming Dreams, where I had the characters talk in great detail about the game mechanics right from the start. It really bogged things down and probably wouldn't appeal to most people! I probably won't bother explaining runes at all - maybe I'll just hint at them and have some optional NPC go into detail later on -though I at least have references to elements and arousal. Since each monster says a silly quote before battle - like Pokemon trainers - I'm probably going to use those for succinct tutorial tips.

In Belief, I had a screen showing the relationships between runes and elements (or sentiments in that), which showed when you held down a button (left trigger or something). I'll probably do something like that again, so it's instantly available whenever you need it rather than hidden in a menu!

Falcon64~4Y

Those seem like good ideas! It's hard to figure out the full extent of the tutorial just from the intro scene, I guess. And yes, mandatory info-dumps seem like they would turn many people off—for the ones who are interested in ALL THE DETAILS about the combat system, those should be optionally-accessible content.

I didn't assume you were demanding feedback, just sharing my observation on why people might not comment on something. Don't worry!

Verdusk21~4Y

I feel your attempts on marketing is becoming more relevant to me lately, as I start to think about the release of my game. I've only done Flash games before, but the pattern is that I release the game, it gets a few thousand views on Newgrounds and Kongregate, maybe a dozen or half reviews and that's it.

While I'm not exactly aiming to make a living from the game I'm making right now, it'd be nice to have *some* audience and break out of the "no one really cares what I make" pattern for once.

Some indie developers post their progress on Twitter (which you do too) so they have a potential to slowly build the audience as they develop. I don't know if I can do that with my one-digit number of Twitter followers and zero renown.

I've seen many simple (but relatively polished) games that get frontpaged in websites like Newgrounds and get tens or hundreds of thousands of views, and nothing complex or time-consuming like MARDEK, just something that one can probably make in a month given the required game developing skills, and wonder, when I publish my game, am I doing it on equal grounds with these successful mini games? Like whether they succeed because they already have a number of following, not necessarily just online, maybe enough followers and acquaintances that know their work enough to kickstart the number of plays that may eventually snowball to a frontpage feature, or something.

I guess it'd be nice to start the habit of posting my progress somewhere at least, like Twitter and see if anyone will actually see it aside from my 4 followers, who are exactly my brother, friend from elementary school, college acquaintance and some shady account.

In any case, your post have helped me to be aware of what exactly itch.io is, and I should probably give that a try.

While I'm not exactly aiming to make a living from the game I'm making right now, it'd be nice to have *some* audience and break out of the "no one really cares what I make" pattern for once.

Some indie developers post their progress on Twitter (which you do too) so they have a potential to slowly build the audience as they develop. I don't know if I can do that with my one-digit number of Twitter followers and zero renown.

I've seen many simple (but relatively polished) games that get frontpaged in websites like Newgrounds and get tens or hundreds of thousands of views, and nothing complex or time-consuming like MARDEK, just something that one can probably make in a month given the required game developing skills, and wonder, when I publish my game, am I doing it on equal grounds with these successful mini games? Like whether they succeed because they already have a number of following, not necessarily just online, maybe enough followers and acquaintances that know their work enough to kickstart the number of plays that may eventually snowball to a frontpage feature, or something.

I guess it'd be nice to start the habit of posting my progress somewhere at least, like Twitter and see if anyone will actually see it aside from my 4 followers, who are exactly my brother, friend from elementary school, college acquaintance and some shady account.

In any case, your post have helped me to be aware of what exactly itch.io is, and I should probably give that a try.

Tobias 1115~4Y

Sounds like you're having a lot of the same thoughts I'm having to deal with every day about getting noticed and the competition etc! Aren't they wonderful?!

Most indie devs I see on Twitter seem to be just starting to build their followings, and most are working on their first game. Perplexingly - and annoyingly - some have way more followers than I do despite that, and I've no idea where they got them from. Maybe they're just more actively social or something? Following people and commenting on and liking their posts all the time? I don't know!

Drawing attention to games seems to be the hardest part - or most unnatural for me, at least - so I'll definitely be posting more about that as I research it. Hopefully it'll (continue to?) be useful to you!

It seems that posting screenshots on Twitter and using the tags indiedev and gamedev are how to get the ball rolling... though I don't think I've seen any significant growth from doing that, so who even knows?!?

kidupiscean37~4Y

The kickstarter inspired by Hongkongers as mentioned in your blog reached its funding target a few hours ago (when the kickstarter still had around 60 hours to go before it would end).

I don't think that game (Legacy of Datura) is directly comparable to your game though. That game is based on a real-life incident shocking to many Hong Kong people [LINK] . The police letting alleged triad members indiscriminately attack civilians and ignoring the emergency calls for help is entirely unthinkable. The government refused to admit that it has done anything wrong, and went further to come up with its own version of the incident, and even prosecute some of the victims.

Hence, it is natural that some Hong Kong people were eager to support the kickstarter campaign when the creator wanted to make a game based on the event. The creator even got interviewed by the local media because the campaign was newsworthy (and the media reports in turn helped the campaign increase awareness and the funding progress). The game will serve to preserve an accurate account of the history and let more people know what happened. This is an important aspect of that game, which is very different from yours.

The kickstarter inspired by Hongkongers as mentioned in your blog reached its funding target a few hours ago (when the kickstarter still had around 60 hours to go before it would end).

I don't think that game (Legacy of Datura) is directly comparable to your game though. That game is based on a real-life incident shocking to many Hong Kong people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Yuen_Long_attack . The police letting alleged triad members indiscriminately attack civilians and ignoring the emergency calls for help is entirely unthinkable. The government refused to admit that it has done anything wrong, and went further to come up with its own version of the incident, and even prosecute some of the victims.

Hence, it is natural that some Hong Kong people were eager to support the kickstarter campaign when the creator wanted to make a game based on the event. The creator even got interviewed by the local media because the campaign was newsworthy (and the media reports in turn helped the campaign increase awareness and the funding progress). The game will serve to preserve an accurate account of the history and let more people know what happened. This is an important aspect of that game, which is very different from yours.

Tobias 1115~4Y

Interesting! I'm glad he got it funded, and knowing a bit more about the context helps explain that; I'd just skimmed over it before since I was looking at so many different Kickstarters. I'd hope that having a meaningful goal like that can excuse a lot of technical imperfections for players.