FE7x: Immortal Sword - Part One Complete

[BwdYeti]

Well she has base luck after 18 level ups at 25% so there is that

I think her problem is mainly that everyone else in Tr3 is running around with promotion bonuses against promoted enemies. For the main game she stays competitive with her group for tier 1, and promotes early enough she won't be left behind for tier 2

@activation skills: they fill at the start of each turn and partially for each battle where the unit attacks, and the amount gained is based on the relevant stat (so more lck means Sol charges faster, etc)

Edited April 24, 2013 by BwdYeti

[Rambo M]

I suspected it might be that. Very slick, looking forward to the full thing!

[Klokinator]

So I'm curious, how did you balance enemy skill activations? Either they all start out with full skill activation bars and are constantly activating Sol and Pierce, or they start out with empty bars and never have a chance to fill the bars, or they randomly start with varied about of bars leaving the player clueless on when the enemy will activate a skill or not, I just don't see a way to balance non-luck based activation because either the player or the enemy will have a massive handicap with set bars.

Edit: Also when I played through TR3 I don't think any enemies ever once activated a skill that was bar based, so I'm guessing they start with empty bars and never have a chance to fill them. I could be wrong though.

Edited April 24, 2013 by Klok

[dondon151]

or the skill bars could be manually set

tedious for the designer, but the flexibility is worth it

[Klokinator]

There's still the issue that unless the players checks EVERY enemy's skill bar before EVERY unit ends it's turn, they won't know whether an enemy is going to activate a skill or not. The bar is also like 1 px big so it could be easily missed or misread. Honestly instead of the two new terrain numbers being showed in the prebattle stats box which serve zero purpose and break the symmetrical look of the box, that should be replaced with a number representing % of enemy skill bar filled or something. Much more useful IMO.

[dondon151]

There's still the issue that unless the players checks EVERY enemy's skill bar before EVERY unit ends it's turn, they won't know whether an enemy is going to activate a skill or not. The bar is also like 1 px big so it could be easily missed or misread. Honestly instead of the two new terrain numbers being showed in the prebattle stats box which serve zero purpose and break the symmetrical look of the box, that should be replaced with a number representing % of enemy skill bar filled or something. Much more useful IMO.

there's also the issue in normal fire emblem that unless players check every enemy's atk and every player unit's HP, def, and res values before ending a turn, then units may suddenly and unexpectedly die

in any case, if the UI can be improved, then it should be improved, but i'm pretty sure this isn't as big of a deal as you're making it out to be

Edited April 24, 2013 by dondon151

[Klokinator]

True, but all of that is on the same screen. Now you have to scroll to the right/left two screens to see the bar, and you have to do it for every unit. It just makes the game more tedious, in my opinion. If the bar was on the main stats screen, that would help out a lot (but then you'd need a bar for every skill and that could get ugly if planning for more than one skill).

Also, even if you don't check stats, checking one enemy unit on the field 99% of the time gives you a good overall estimate of the enemy force's strength. You can usually estimate based on a class what their STR/DEF will be, which is not the same as a powerful skill such as Sol or Pierce activating and doubling power, penetrating defense, or some other effect. Now, one could say that luck based activation is the same issue, where a powerful skill can randomly activate, but the difference is that you know the skill has a chance to activate and you plan in advance mentally for such measures. You also usually have counter measures, such as using high luck units against enemies where the skill has (THEIR LUCK-YOUR LUCK)% chance of activating.

Basically, I'm saying that there's a lot of issues with bar based activations. I think it's a cool new idea, but when I played the map I actually had zero difficulty on the TR3 map because enemies never activated skills. Then again, it would have been worse if they always activated skills. For the future though, making the bar more visible should be a priority, and hopefully on the main stats screen or the battle stats box. Just my two cents.

[BwdYeti]

Honestly instead of the two new terrain numbers being showed in the prebattle stats box which serve zero purpose and break the symmetrical look of the box, that should be replaced with a number representing % of enemy skill bar filled or something. Much more useful IMO.

'you should give me more information in more places'

'whoa stop giving me so much information'

And yes, the skill numbers will be on that combat preview window eventually, just a thing I haven't got to yet.

Now, one could say that luck based activation is the same issue, where a powerful skill can randomly activate, but the difference is that you know the skill has a chance to activate and you plan in advance mentally for such measures. You also usually have counter measures, such as using high luck units against enemies where the skill has (THEIR LUCK-YOUR LUCK)% chance of activating.

Are you seriously saying a random activation chance is easier to prepare for than a certainty based on whether a gauge is full or not

Also as dondon suggested there will likely be various starting progress for enemies depending on the needs of the chapter, similar to how Laguz were set up. It just didn't seem necessary to Tr3 and there were other things to be concerned with

[Klokinator]

'you should give me more information in more places'
'whoa stop giving me so much information'

"You should stop putting useless irrelevant information in the battle stats box and put relevant things there"

More like that. What's the point in showing "24x2" damage and "95" hitrate along with terrain stats if the terrain stats are literally already calculated into the damage and hitrate? Also the half sized numbers break symmetry and that's ugly. Meanwhile, showing a SkillBar% full would actually be useful.

[BwdYeti]

Like how WTA/WTD or effective bonuses are already included in the calculations, but those have arrows and flashing icons? Or the weapon icon being shown at all, if it's just the numbers that matter. Note, all of those things are smaller than the main combat numbers, because they're less important information but included in case you care to see them

And then any case where the terrain numbers won't act normally, where it's useful to see the how they're changed, since no where else shows that: mounted/flying classes, Parity, Starsphere effect, the Ranger mastery, any other cases that might come up

It's not a choice between those and a gauge or number for skills, I just haven't got to skills yet. And because, other than the Jagen, nobody will have access to them for a while in the main game it'll be some time longer still. But in the meantime Myke will be going over the window and interface design and revising how each piece of information is shown, so it's prudent to wait for that anyway

[Rambo M]

Was FEXP able to support the Steam UI? Because the XNA engine certainly can. (yes, I just realized this)

I understand most things that render in DirectX support Steam's overlay?

Edited April 25, 2013 by Rambo M

[Myke]

:3

I'm kind of on klok's side of the whole terrain data thing but

And then any case where the terrain numbers won't act normally, where it's useful to see the how they're changed, since no where else shows that: mounted/flying classes, Parity, Starsphere effect, the Ranger mastery, any other cases that might come up

is a thing. I'll try to make it as unobtrusive as possible in the UI concepts I guess.

[Klokinator]

You guys should include a "Guide" button like in FE8/FEA/other FE games that had it. Basically where you press A on an empty tile and you see the normal options, then pressing "Guide" takes you to a tutorial interface that explains various game systems. Would also increase the audience you could reach too which I'm guessing is a plus.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Klok

[Myke]

There's going to be a Codex you can access from the title screen - I hadn't considered the idea of accessing it mid-battle, but I can't really see why not. If not that, then from the overworld should be fine.

[Klokinator]

While I personally never needed it, I find that for a lot of people, it's less intrusive than a tutorial level(s?) and 100x better than a FORCED tutorial level.

[BwdYeti]

World map whoo

[Klokinator]

I love how accurate the events are, you can't tell any difference from FEGBA.

[Randombobman]

Oh my GOD that overworld map is detailed to a T. Fucking great job thus far guys. I'm a huge fan of this project and wish you guys continued success and fix the glitch that won't let me change the controls so I can actually play the demos you have out

Edited April 30, 2013 by Randombobman

[Arch]

Ohey, I finally understand the plot.

Edited April 30, 2013 by Arch

[Mew]

Whoa that overworld map is super cool. I find the lack of parchment texture/color kind of weird, but I can see that it's a stylistic choice I guess :V

[Myke]

I find the lack of parchment texture/color kind of weird, but I can see that it's a stylistic choice I guess :V

nah I just couldn't figure out how to make one. Going to try taking hi-def photos of some old paper and see if that'll do the trick

[Klokinator]

The guy who made my world map had skill more with making the paper look parchment-y but was terrible at the lines that make it look like it was written in medieval pencil. Combine my guy with yours and we'll put IS out of business.

[Mew]

nah I just couldn't figure out how to make one. Going to try taking hi-def photos of some old paper and see if that'll do the trick

http://www.mayang.com/textures/Manmade/html/Paper/index.html

Could help if you haven't used this website before, just do a photoshop overlay of one of the crumply ones and play around with the values/saturation. Old paper photos (or scans) would probably work out well too. Good job on the map tho!

[Nayr Farros]

Okay, might be stupid to ask, but shouldn't the map and title screen be reduced to 16-64 colors? Y'know, keep with the overall GBA look instead of having a style clash.

[Myke]

I've been working on a completely new user interface since like 2009. There's even posts about it on this very page.