Kinetic Cipher (Ace) Dev Blog #6

Basically tradition now… 4 new maps… 8%

So theme roulette is over, I finished a monster collecting and evolving game for it, I describe it as Dragon Warrior Monsters meets Digimon World 2003 but sadly stuff got cut; no monster breeding, no skills 😦 So back to some Kinetic Cipher. This is probably the biggest length of time that I have actively worked on a game, though in some ways the constant contest interruptions are possibly a good thing as I always put Kinetic Cipher aside while wanting to do more and I am always really excited to work on it again.

So in the last few days of development I completed a few more maps but I ran into a problem when doing the above map, that tileset is one of the few that really can’t be easily converted. Not a problem I initially thought, I’ll just parallax it like I did with the world map. However it turned out my new laptop doesn’t like resolutions that small and was upscaling 2k3, I eventually got it to display correctly but it certainly felt like time wasted on something ridiculous. As you can also see from the above image, I implemented the show item when you acquire it animation. It literally is an animation, it draws the icon to a blank animation sheet and then uses that, which is nice and easy for me, all I do with a chest event is change the item id in a variable at the top and then the rest is in a common event. I’ll probably split the animation into two just to tighten the fade out timing but otherwise I think it looks pretty slick. Speaking of icons, I made a start on the iconset, mostly so far it’s just items. I’m going to have to track down some icons for skills ideally which sort of match the existing item ones.

Finally something I thought would be really awkward and then turned out to be easy!

Multi-hit animations now look how I would like them to, initially I thought I was going to have to do some major restructuring of my animated battlers script but while playing Spyro I had one of those eureka moments that normally only happen on TV and five minutes later I was over the moon that I didn’t have to spend even more time on animated battler scripts. Not pictured but I’m pretty much done on a non-animated turn order display, at which point the battle system is pretty much done! Although I would like to replace the temporary damage popups with something more robust.

I’ve decided to just make my life easier with the fonts and change the PP/Chi/Fuel symbol to a diamond (not least because it’s next to the heart on the character map – I also think I can edit the battlers to make it a diamond shape on the PP Drain status without too much hassle). Speaking of stats, I’m pretty sure I’m going to go with names for the others stats but I won’t be using ATK, DEF, MAT, MDF & AGI, still toying with what combination to use. Again while on the topic of stats I did introduce a new item due to their being an additional stat in Ace, Def got split into Def and Mdf, so I needed a new Mutagen and to work out a new link.

I’m amazed how long my origami post in notes have lasted.

I kept it as close to the original as I could I even named it after a greek letter which unless I missed something obvious the original four were named after. So all in all a productive few days. Next steps is to tick off the battle system as being done, I feel like I have enough system wise in place that the best thing to work on would be getting Kinetic Cipher playable up until the Red Tunnel, which will involve a bunch of miscellaneous tasks but should hopefully bring everything I’ve been working on together. Hopefully I can get a whole week over development time in next week before the next contest comes along, fingers crossed!

Kinetic Cipher (Ace) Dev Blog #5

Now 12 maps… so 6% I guess?

So it’s been two months since my last Kinetic Cipher dev blog, most of that time was spent working on Abyssal of the Opera (or recovering from it) but for the last couple of days I found some time to work on Kinetic Cipher. I wasn’t in the mood for coding so I went ahead and did the mapping for the Cipher guild, I also made a start on the eventing, I still have Erin’s door and the bedroom events to complete and then I can move onto Tower Valorus.

I also intended to do some of the battle animations but after the first one and testing Psion Winter, I discovered how badly I implemented multiple target skills in my sideview battlers script all those years ago. So something else goes onto the to do list. Additionally I had to play around with the animation speed to try and get it closer to 2k3’s animation speed, I think I got there in the end though. Hopefully my next dev blog will be sooner than two months time (theme roulette is coming up but it was only two weeks long last time, as opposed to the five weeks of the tasty Tim Tams). I’m hoping to just get a bit of everything done, although it would be really nice to cross something off the list.

Kinetic Cipher (Ace) Dev Blog #4

You can blame displaying Nero’s second attack for why I am still on 3 maps.

It’s been a while but I’ve been really busy first with work then with personal life but I have worked on Kinetic Cipher. Like anyone who has made a game, the last 10% of something seems to take as long as the first 90%. Displaying the second attack for the dual wielders (and using the correct hand) took a silly length of time to implement. Speaking of things taking a silly length of time, getting the turn order display (not pictured) to work and display both the current and next turn is also taking a silly amount of time – I should really just ignore animating it for the time being.

As for the rest of the battle system, it has come along nicely. Everyone takes their turns individually and you can pass to take your turn later in the turn. I haven’t yet finished the experiment with agility giving you additional turns as I’m working on the turn order display first. I think as much as I loved the icons for stats in Kinetic Cipher, it’s only going to give me headaches going forward, I’m going to try and retain them for  HP/MPs being as the battle sprites have some cool animations for stats involving them but as you can see in the screenshots, the MP symbol didn’t work and honestly I’m not sure why, I got it from the character map of the exact font that is being used.

At least the battle system is beginning to feel almost complete.

It’ll probably be a while before the next dev blog as RMN is having a five week contest but after that it’ll probably be time for release something to come around and I’m hoping I’ll be able to use Kinetic Cipher for that, assuming I move from coding systems to actually making content.

Kinetic Cipher (Ace) Dev Blog #3

So much touching… Also still on 3 maps… Also look the animation is now 1-2-3-2!! Over 30 Aristocrabs were harmed during the making of these gifs.

So I didn’t strictly achieve what I set out to do this week, I had hoped to have completed the battle system by now but when I set that as my goal I didn’t consider how much work the touch encounters would be. It has taken me the best part of three days to code the touch encounters. First to get a satisfying collision detection with the ability to run away and have the enemy wait three seconds before resuming their movement. Second was all the types of encounter which I really did not think about, especially when I then have to code them into the animated battlers… So three days later I’m fairly happy with how they’ve turned out. Everybody now faces the correct way when attacking and attack on the correct side of their target.

As for the other four days I was busy two of them and the other two were spent improving my battle character converter and adding in weapons and trying to change how dual wielding worked animation wise (sadly still not done). I’m away next week so it’s unlikely that I’ll do a dev blog. Naturally the battle system will remain my goal though when I get back.

Kinetic Cipher (Ace) Dev Blog #2

For anyone keeping track, 3 maps down, 197 to go.

Busy week but I managed to get a fair amount down. I did the intro with Insandru first this week but then I put off mapping the next area as things like chests will be easier to do once the database is done. Databasing is also one of my least favourite parts. So I moved onto Nero. In the original Kinetic Cipher it was possible to fail the test at the beginning of the game and then Nero didn’t join your party until much later, in Kinetic Cipher again that was done away with and Nero is so far a pernament fixture on the team. Where as Karen suffered from too many skills, Nero only has two skills, although it looked like he was close to getting his third skill (having gone through the database). His skill system was mentioned after he learned Brain Buster, Nero was set to learn skills by defeating specific opponents. Given that I had the upgrade system in place already for Karen/Nate I decided to extend it to Nero (and probably all non-guest player characters). Kinetic Cipher is a long game and it’s more fun when your characters develop along the way. So for Nero’s skill system display I broke it down into two parts. First is a screen listing his skills and their potential upgrades. Second is a list of challengers, which will get added to as you play. Hopefully it is simple enough and straight forward.

 

 

The pirate will show up after you’ve met those other pirates.

After Nero, Robin is next to grace the party. Brickroad did a thought exercise a long time ago where he detailed five things he would change about Kinetic Cipher (http://scibbe.com/archives/1804). I’ll go through the list but the pertinent point is that he would change Robin’s status as a playable character to that of a guest NPC. I don’t 100% know what Brickroad considers a guest NPC to be; until corrected I’m going to operate under the assumption that it’s a one time party member who never rejoins the party after their time is done. The alternative would be that Robin travels with you but not in any combat capacity; which given that I am remaking Kinetic Cipher again and the fact that Robin was a big part of Kinetic Cipher again would feel wrong to me. I designed her system such that with a couple of minor edits it could later become a stand alone crafting system (say Robin sets up shop and you visit her to craft). It works very similarly to Kinetic Cipher again, you combine a metal and an element to create either a gadget, consumable, weapon or piece of armour. Though now it’s done via menus rather than text boxes. You have the ability to filter all of Robin’s possible creations by their various options. I think it turned out well.

 

 

Sorry about the confusing icons, icons are becoming a job I need to do sooner rather than later.

Going back to the five things Brickroad would change, for the most part I’m going to incorporate them into my remake but there are two exceptions. Going through in order the first was that the world map would be smaller; this is one of the things I’m not at this stage going to do anything about. I agree with the points Brickroad makes but I am terrible at making world maps and at such an early part of development it’s much easier for me to keep it as it was. Brickroad’s second point is about introducing Melissa earlier, I’ll take it on board and try to insert her somewhere sooner, the boat ride between continents seems like it might be a good time for a “Meanwhile…” Also she is the only character without a pre-designed advancement system, I already scribbled down some ideas which you can see below, though no doubt it’ll change while I’m actually implementing it (I’ve included Karen, Nero and Robin’s pages for comparison). The third point I’ve already addressed partially, but Cor can have the same treatment as Robin, though I might pass giving him a system, he can just use the Cipher skill tree system that Karen and Nate use – albeit with severely reduced options.

Next is the battle system, I agree completely ATB was cool in the 90s and early 00s but rarely did it actually add anything good to game. I’m not a fan of them. While I haven’t started on that side of the battle system yet I’m very much anticipating a turn based system where everyone inputs their commands on their specific turn (like FFX) though I’m also considering a twist based on agility which was one of the dominant stats in Kinetic Cipher again. I’m thinking that if your characters are at least double the speed of the average enemy speed that you could sometimes get a second action per turn – I think it’s an idea I will try and then decide whether or not it was a good idea. I’m also thinking that to allow for more tactical planning you might be able to postpone your turn e.g. Nate the healer goes first but everyone is fully healed, waste of a turn but if you can postpone his turn then he can take it after the enemy have had time to damage you.

 

 

Karen’s layout changed multiple times. Also sorry about the fading pen on Melissa’s first page, it’s safely in the bin now. Also if you’re curious about the little man on the corner of the page, this was a birthday present and they drew an old school flick-book animation on the corner of every page. The animation is me being hit on the head by an overhead hoist.

The final point is the one I disagree with, Brickroad says he would have “dramatically shortened the freewheeling.” He describes his new plan to be get around the world as fast as you can then open up the freewheeling. I’m really not a massive fan of when games do that I really enjoyed FFX until post Zanarkand where suddenly I’ve gone from playing a really linear game to one that is now nearly all side content. I much prefer it when games are consistent through out, I don’t mind linear games and I don’t mind game with sprawling side content but I find it jarring when games try to be both. I loved the Tidal Caves (with the slight exception of the final puzzle) and the stuff with Tristan is one of my favourite parts of Kinetic Cipher. So I’ll be faithfully recreating the side content in Kinetic Cipher again as best I can.

Backtracking a bit now, Robin’s crafting system did lead me to do most of the databasing. All of the weapons and armours are done (except a Robin only item which I never found in KCA but position wise looks like it is right before Robin would leave), all of the character skills except for Nate are done (KCA cast only). A lot of the regular items are also done but there are some left. I still really need to do the status effects though. With all that done I decided the next job really had to be the battle system as once it’s done I can really begin to make the remake playable and do less essential systems later (e.g. menu system). So I started the battle system this afternoon, I started with the animated battlers, I’m adapting my old animated battlers script so it’s missing some features (e.g. weapons) but I’ve managed to get the 2k3 battlers working for the most part. As you might have noticed from the screenshots this week I’m trying to decide how to handle stat displays, hearts or HP? PP, Chi, Fuel or the Star of David? (whose symbol isn’t in my font so I’ve already had to sub it). I haven’t got an answer for this one yet, it’s one of the decisions where I am really in the middle.

So with all this said and done my plan for next week is very much finish the battle system, if I should finish earlier than expected then I might try and map/event the Cipher Guild but I think that might be a stretch. I also want to try and do some reviews for RMN given the current reviewing contest. Anyway thanks for reading.

Kinetic Cipher (Ace) Dev Blog #1

1 map down, 199 to go to catch up to the previous KCA.

I’d say long story short but it’s a pretty short story, so to summarise I asked Brickroad if I could attempt to remake Kinetic Cipher in RPG Maker VX Ace and he said yes last Friday. This is a big undertaking, Kinetic Cipher was a long game with a wealth of content and custom systems. I do not envision releasing anything playable in the immediate future, but at the same time I want to share what I am working on. So after a weekend I have the world map converted, I did start to draw it but sadly my chipset converter didn’t like the sea autotile, I then investigated Tiled and then decided to screenshot every tile in game and connect all the screenshots to make my first ever parallax map.

In terms of what I hope to achieve remaking Kinetic Cipher might best be explained by detailing what I perceive as Kinetic Cipher’s strengths and weaknesses. Kinetic Cipher has the best dungeons of any RPG game (rpg maker and AAA) I have ever played, great characterisation and fun gameplay ideas. As for weaknesses the combat in Kinetic Cipher is often maligned for a variety of reasons, RPG Maker 2k3’s battle system also doesn’t do anything to alieviate the complaints. As much as possible I will be keeping the world and dungeons of Kinetic Cipher as similar to their source material as I can. However combat and the character systems will be getting a complete overhaul.

Taking Karen the main character as an example, in Kinetic Cipher as it ends she has quite a few skills but is also on track to have in excess of 20 combat skills by the end of the game. I feel this is too many. Also when learning skills she has a selection of skills to choose from in what is essentially a skill tree system, sounds great but it was implemented using a series of message windows. Bringing Kinetic Cipher into RPG Maker VX Ace allows me access to scripting, so I’ve done a re-design of Karen’s skill learning system.

Don’t worry about the icons and the hard to tell which skills are available to learn, that will be addressed. This is only my third day of working on Kinetic Cipher.

Previously Karen learned a skill every two levels, I’ve adjusted that to be Karen gains a skill point every level. Additionally her skills are upgradable, this let’s me cut her combat skills in half to probably twelve in total which still feels a lot but they all at least serve a different purpose to each other. Taking Psion Shiver for example, first you must upgrade it to reduce it’s PP (Psionic Points) cost, then you have a choice of improving its damage or allow it to paralyse the target. If you choose the damage upgrade first you can go on to learn Psion Winter, or you can finish upgrading Psion Shiver which will then become Psion Frostbite. The interface itself needs a bit of work to make it clear which upgrades are currently purchasable but otherwise I’m hoping a graphical layout will make it easier to navigate. Each character in Kinetic Cipher has a skill system and I’ll be creating a menu for each one to help keep track of their skill advancement and development.

Kinetic Cipher will be my main project that I work on, outside of RMN contests which I do love to enter. I’m hoping to finish Western Tekiel (the first continent) within three to four months, if that seems a long time please bear in mind that I also need to design and code the battle system and various other systems – rainbrow brothers guild comes to mind. So I’ll hope you’ll stay with as I set out to remake Kinetic Cipher.