Matt's thoughts in response to a Reddit post on team fighting in Heroes of the Storm.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Monday, March 9, 2015
Making an Empath
One more plot room, then a four-room bonus dungeon, and Ch.2's first draft should be done. In the two side scene rooms, the officer attends a debriefing and the doctor returns home to an NPC that he's mentioned in his text through most of the game so far.
The bonus dungeon explains the Green Knight's ghost companion and builds up some of the background NPCs. Before I start building that dungeon, I need to:
1. Build all four characters the player will use for the dungeon.
2. Make sure their gear is locked so people can't steal their stuff.
3. Refine the exact story arc I want the dungeon to have. I have a very vague outline, but as with everything I do, there are probably still four or five re-writes before I'm happy with it.
The first real challenge in making the first four characters was the Empath. I wanted her to be able to transfer buffs and debuffs around, but there's no good way to do that (the .erase and .remove only work on states, not buffs/debuffs). So, I was stuck on finding a way to make a skill that:
A. Removed Debuffs on an Empath
B. Transfers that Debuff to an enemy, but only if the ability succeeded.
What I had to do is make a special state where an Empath is flagged as having a state that does two things. First, this special state lowers the Empath's stats, but teaches them an attack skill. This skill clears the state on the user [losing the attack], but inflicts damage and a status ailment on a target. It can also let me allow the empath to do different things. For example, right now the Empath gets four skills:
1. A basic Health Transfer that hurts the Empath to heal an ally. This allows for the use Health Funnel.
2. Health Funnel: A damage dealing attack that drains HP and removes the debuff from Health Transfer.
3. Defense Bond: Boosts an ally's DEF, but lowers the user's defense. This allows for the use of Defense Transfer.
4. Defense Transfer: Clears the lowered defense, lowers the enemy's defense and deals damaged based on the Empath's Defense.
I'll get some other nifty Empath stuff for higher levels, but I feel like this is a fairly solid starter skill set.
The bonus dungeon explains the Green Knight's ghost companion and builds up some of the background NPCs. Before I start building that dungeon, I need to:
1. Build all four characters the player will use for the dungeon.
2. Make sure their gear is locked so people can't steal their stuff.
3. Refine the exact story arc I want the dungeon to have. I have a very vague outline, but as with everything I do, there are probably still four or five re-writes before I'm happy with it.
The first real challenge in making the first four characters was the Empath. I wanted her to be able to transfer buffs and debuffs around, but there's no good way to do that (the .erase and .remove only work on states, not buffs/debuffs). So, I was stuck on finding a way to make a skill that:
A. Removed Debuffs on an Empath
B. Transfers that Debuff to an enemy, but only if the ability succeeded.
What I had to do is make a special state where an Empath is flagged as having a state that does two things. First, this special state lowers the Empath's stats, but teaches them an attack skill. This skill clears the state on the user [losing the attack], but inflicts damage and a status ailment on a target. It can also let me allow the empath to do different things. For example, right now the Empath gets four skills:
1. A basic Health Transfer that hurts the Empath to heal an ally. This allows for the use Health Funnel.
2. Health Funnel: A damage dealing attack that drains HP and removes the debuff from Health Transfer.
3. Defense Bond: Boosts an ally's DEF, but lowers the user's defense. This allows for the use of Defense Transfer.
4. Defense Transfer: Clears the lowered defense, lowers the enemy's defense and deals damaged based on the Empath's Defense.
I'll get some other nifty Empath stuff for higher levels, but I feel like this is a fairly solid starter skill set.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
RPG Maker Thoughts and Regrets
I'm breaking down and working more on my RPG Maker game now. I've put a lot of thought into what I did wrong, and what I've done right. This all appears below.
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