Shattered World - Update

Posted by Yaru on Sept. 17, 2012, 5:47 a.m.

Just updated Shattered World. Found here: http://www.64digits.com/games/index.php?cmd=view_game&id=5595

Full list of changes:

- Added more names to the list of random names your

enemies will get. It now reaches 890 names, 438 of which

are male names (aka 452 female names). This time I've

gotten hold of more japanese and arabian names in

particular.

- Did an extremely time-consuming, tedious, but necessary

fine combing and utter rewrite of the main AI Action Select

script. Found and fixed quite serious issues:

- AI would only take the HP status of the FIRST friend

unit into account when considering healing due to me

actually missing out on {} around an if block!

- AI would also consider healing when their allies

were dead (since 0 HP is below max HP) which would of

course not be helpful at all.

- Due to a (true/false) vs (value) variable confusion

enemy spellcasters would not cast spells any farther

than ONE PANEL AWAY no matter what range the spell had.

- Enemies would use the Healing score check script

when using unranged Buffs and thusly give less priority

to buffing full-HP allies (more precisely, give zero

priority to them, which means they'd never buff when

they actually SHOULD - when not needing to heal or

having the opportunity to attack!)

The resulting (actually working) AI might have increased

the difficulty of some stages. Or, more precisely,

restored it. Hopefully, the game will now also feel

more challenging in a good way (aka, feel less boring).

- Talk with Donovan after the Last Stand stage and he

will increase the maximal dispatch value to 8 characters.

- Cervantes is now gone when you replay

Ruruu Field: Last Stand and is replaced by a generic

character with lower stats.

- Removed some unused classes from the game.

- Tinkered with some classes, in particular Whiteblades

will now be a bit more balanced. (But they're still

Glass Cannon characters like they're supposed to). Also,

Ironkegs now have higher DEF/RES aptitudes.

NOTE that class data is saved in the character data, so

characters in your party will not be affected. Only new

characters generated in 0.4.00 and later will have the

new base stats.

- Added a new class, Lancer.

- Fixed issue with casting a buff spell not counting

as actually doing something, letting you spam them.

Had stuff in wrong order, so the script aborted without

setting the "Move Successful" thingie to true like it

would do after an attack / healing spell.

- REALLY fixed: pressing Cancel on a character that

stands on a entry panel would let it escape even if had

performed an action this turn. The previous "fix" would

remove the character from play altogether! This would

even net stages unloseable since the removed character

would count as "in play", but would be impossible to

actually target by enemies. (Its position would be

set to the numerical value of my NULL constant, which

is negative and thus lies outside the game board)

- Added 2 new stages to Ruruu Canyon: Blood Bridge and

Going Berserk.

- Removed a debug button I'd forgotten to Dev Only.

Lucky nobody found it out.

- Added new debug features: Execute Yarucode and

Instant Grinding. May make the bedug mode available to

general public at some stage in the future, but for now

it is Dev Only.

- Made magic spells create pop-up messages

"WEAK!!" and "Strong…" when you have an elemental damage

boost/nerf of at least 20% to clarify why the damage

from spells can vary so much: the elemental multiplier.

Misgaia didn't do this and I always found it so annoying

now knowing if "+50" was good or bad. That's also why

I've color-coded weaknesses red and resistances green

instead of having them color coded by the element of

the spell as Misgaia did. XYZ Tactics Advance, as far

as I know, had no weakness/resistance at all but

had items that made you immune to certain elements when

equipped.

So, put short, I now think I've chosen the best method

to handle elemental weakness, improving the system I

liked the most by removing the flaws I hated the most.

- Sarhya, Ironkeg, Armor, Red Witch, Mageknight and

Miko now have different elemental resistances than before.

Sarhya has no weakness and resists Fire/Water. Armor

and Red Witch are neutral to all elements, Ironkeg,

Mageknight and Miko resists all elements at different

rates.

- Began coding basic stat aliments (Poison, Stun, Sleep,

Amnesia and Fear) to add a new tactical dimension.

Bosses are not immune to stat aliments, but have a

higher resistance to them so that they'll last a shorter

time until curing.

- Dragons (Sarhya and Aegis included) and Clerics have

a higher resistance to stat aliments too. Which means

the Cleric finally has a selling-point argument over

the White Mage after being vastly inferior for a while.

- Bats now starts with a skill called Venom Fang that

poisons the target when it hits. If you want to have it

on your cherished bat, you can always convert a new bat

and let your old bat absorb it at a Guild Hall.

- Added 5 more stages to the Greatwall Guild Hall Arena.

The final stage has a Lv.256 boss enemy, and the level

progression in this guild hall is very fast, so if you

want to face additional challenges after beating the

game (er, the last stage of the demo for now) you

should go here.

- Hopefully fixed a rare error about going out-of-bounds

in an array called "hit_box" during the main AI script.

- Fixed a bloody freakin' MEGA SUPER FATAL glitch in

the position a Unranged Special would be executed from

when done by an AI character. It used the character

one step in the facing direction of the special instead

of the actual character who would use it. Since it

were likely facing a player character at that point,

you can guess the rather odd effects coming from this.

- Fixed the same glitch even more. Now it should be

100% fixed.

- Dragon Drop now has a 30% chance to stun each target.

- Venom Shot now has a 95% chance to poison target.

- Headcrush now has a 95% chance to give target amnesia.

- When selling an item, the description window would

change to show your money instead of just going empty.

This looked glitchy.

- Made all Staves cheaper, especially low rank ones.

- Added some new ACCESSORY-type items:

>Shoes that blocks movement but increases defensive

stats at the same rate

>Armlets that increases your Counter

>Gowns that increases resistance to all elemental magic

- Caused game-crashing glitch at enemy phase start…

- Hopefully fixed it. Seems like me fixing the above

MEGA SUPER FATAL glitch caused a new one; I didn't

realize that attacks and unranged specials were

anchored at different relative points so I broke

AI attacks when fixing AI unranged specials. Caused

annoying, but neccessary inline expansion rewrites

having to be done.

- Really fixed it.

- Tinkered a bit with the XP requirement formula since

you started to need extreme amounts of XP really quickly

(from Lv.100 to Lv.120 the XP needed would double which

is too quickly; the actual rate should be that for double

level you'd need quadruple XP, or a double in this case

at Lv.142)

I did not adjust the amount of received XP from enemies,

though. Might need to lower that too later… but for now,

essentially, LESS GRINDING FTW!!

- Noticed again the glitch that on stages with many enemies,

characters "overwrite" each other and creates chaotic

glitches. This actually happens BEFORE enemies reaches the

cap of number of enemy characters (29) for some reason.

- Added more stages in the Estahaan Guild Arena which

previously had a pathethic 3 stages.

- Realized my previous limit of 24 enemies. The game can

handle up to the actual ceiling of 29 enemies, but once

you pass 24 there starts to be issues with the player

character IDs. I have forgotten what caused this!

Will look into it, because fighting huge armies is

more epic than fighting mere 24 enemies.

(24 is actually pretty much, but never mind)

- Drew a new loading image featuring a snapshot of the

world map and Sarhya. The sky is the limit!

- Redrew the Shihikas (aka Desert Witches) that you can

speak with in Estahaan.

- Added a new stage to Ruruu Canyon: River Source.

Next one will be the boss stage!

- Added a world map Shinto shrine. Still not entirely

obvious, but a lot easier to find than the academy

shrine. So now everyone should have access to the

Essence system.

- Added a new cutscene called Lost Love Found.

- Palette tweaks for Female Black Mage and also an

graphical edit to the hair of the mugshots of the first

two ranks of that class.

- Added a new class, Mage Knight.

- Finally started working on Master Uranus's sprite.

- Finished sprites and mugshots for Master Uranus

and King Stefan (of Autonomous Area Of Estahaan) so

that I finally could make that important cutscene.

- Player characters now has a 50% bonus JUMP when

judging whether they can move to panels on lower

ground (so you can go down some ledges you can't

go up, such as Level Forest stage 3 "Waterfalls"'s

archer hilltop which made most units stuck if thrown

up there)

- Cheap whips now have a range of 2. Actually forgot

to give them increased range! Also made some whips

further up the ranks have ranges of 3 (Bull, Critical

and Lion whip now have a long range).

- Added background (parallax) functionality instead

of the old single-color backgrounds.

- If you haven't noticed it by now, there's been a

whole damn lot of changes.

- Enemy healers now consider healing someone at full

HP a (somewhat) negative move rather than a neutral move.

This should hopefully avoid them wasting SP on healing

people already at full health.

- The two female Armors you fight during Rubeus' First

Test are now indeed female instead of just having female

names.

Comments

ludamad 12 years, 3 months ago

Congrats on the update!

Toast 12 years, 3 months ago

I can only imagine what a headache it was to fix this many bugs!

(well, at least if your approach to game programming is like mine)

Ferret 12 years, 3 months ago

Shouldn't the winner of the 64RPG contest have a fancy badge of sorts?

I'll hand over the generic "won a competition" badge for now, but I think a contest as large as 64RPG should a unique badge. Toast should make it, considering he made the contest and now he's suddenly a good pixel artist :P

Toast 12 years, 3 months ago

I already pm'ed Cyrus about adding badges I made (yes he didn't reply, yes I am offended (jk Cyrus)), maybe you can do it Ferret?

I made these very quickly so they're not great.

Either of these for finalist badge (I wasn't sure how many people know the "newfags can't triforce" meme, or if the joke would translate):

This one for winner (that is, Yaru):

Castypher 12 years, 3 months ago

If Ferret can't, I can.

Ferret 12 years, 3 months ago

Haha those are awesome! I'll see what I can do, but I think someone else could do it faster considering I still need to set up my Git on my tower.

Edit: Please do Kilin, thanks! (I was thinking the two gold ones were perfect)

Castypher 12 years, 3 months ago

So out of the finalist badges, which one do you want to keep?

Castypher 12 years, 3 months ago

Fuck you for stealing my glory.

Toast 12 years, 3 months ago

Quote:
So out of the finalist badges, which one do you want to keep?
I was leaning towards the gold one because it amuses me, but I was leaving it for the mods to decide because it might infringe upon the "64d isn't 4chan" philosophy.

Toast 12 years, 3 months ago

oh no

brb