Totemikai: The Quest Battle System Demo

edited in Projects
Hi All. Welcome to the "Totemikai: The Quest" topic.

I've put this up so I can get more feedback on development.

Current Status:

Game is still very Alpha and will remain so for quite some time as I'm making every asset (except music) plus doing code (badly) solo.



This is a Battle System demo for the game.

UPDATE TO POST. Video preview of upcoming demo added:





Download: https://dl.orangedox.com/zsjAYS61EeKSEpFKNW

File size: 9mb


image

image

image

Controls:


Z - Horn Charge (A light Physical attack)
X - Leaf Shuriken (A Plant Element attack)
C - Sting Spore (A counter attack that temporarily stuns opponent) CAN ONLY BE USE WHEN ATTACKED. Does not negate damage. Watch for the warning.


Otherwise you can only attack (using Z, C) when PURPLE meter full (bottom left)/bottom squares (placeholder buttons) not transparent.
You will hear a chime.

Yellow bars are STAMINA/MP pool.

Purple bars are PTC meters (Pseu-real Time Combat. If you are familiar with Final Fantasy games, its basically ATB). Your PTC is in the lower left corner, your opponent's is under them.


Game is intended for phones and tablets but mapped for keyboard input to better emulate that experience on desktop.

Hope you enjoy playing and please give feedback.

Notes:

Type bonus is not in play as that would likely make this demo battle too easy.

There is a larger RPG overworld in the works. But as I'm doing all art assets myself (and can't really work with random placeholders), and am more interested in play testing/refining my battle system; this may not make it to an exe for a while.

Demo music from here http://www.tannerhelland.com/6/ominosity/

Known issues:

1. Animations are janky. It takes A LOT of work to crank out the individual attack animations, so tweaking is last item on list. Will polish when I get to that bridge :)

2. Interface is perhaps too busy? Suggestions on how to tone this down appreciated. Perhaps you don't need to see if opponent ready to attack?

3. IS the pace too fast? Early feedback suggests that while the first playthrough is a shock, subsequent plays "put you in a zone". Please report back on your individual feeling on this.

Play. Enjoy.
Thanked by 1ZEFcookie

Comments

  • @Kasei Hey not sure if your looking to work with a partner, but I really enjoy your game. I would be willing to help with artwork and stuff on the side between work? Keep up the good work XD
    Thanked by 1Kasei
  • Hi @ZEFcookie glad to hear you did. Can you be more specific on the enjoyable aspects? Was the AI challenging? And thanks for the offer. I'm not really in need of a partner to handle art assets at the moment but I'd be glad to look at a portfolio link or sample image of your work. Have you programmed any games? And if so what engine/language are you familiar with? Feel free to PM me.
  • I gave it a bash earlier today and play a couple of rounds. At first, I had no idea what was going on. I read the instructions but there are so many abbreviations in that that I didn't actually know what half of it meant. :P There also seems to be some mistake as to which button does what in the description. Also, put the download higher up and very much visible. That way no one has to read anything to get to it ;)

    Fixing the OP might seem like the wrong thing to give feedback on, but when you spend effort in presenting something cool to me in a way that I can grok quickly and start engaging with asap then I'm much more likely to play it. :)

    It also confused the hell out of me that horn charge and Leaf Shuriken weren't mapped the other way around no the keyboard. Z is left of X, but Leaf Shuriken is left of Horn Charge. o.O This might just be a personal thing though.

    It took me a while to see that an ability would sort of "light up" when I was able to use it. Also, having the mana/energy bar at the top and showing me when the ability is available at the bottom while I'm also trying to look when to counter an enemy move is difficult.

    I had an idea for something that I think might be cool for showing how much energy the moves cost

    image

    So the idea is that each of the little "bracket" indicators shows how much energy you'd need to use an ability. This does assume that your moves are always sorted from least expensive to most expensive, but I thought it might look cool. :P You probably need to take advice from someone with more design experience.

    I'm also not sure what is happening in the top middle. The messages always seem to be out of sync, and half the time I couldn't really tell what was going on anyway. I think it might be useful to show status on the creatures themselves. So if the enemy is stunned, show little stars surrounding his head or something. Then I can take in all the information (my energy, their status their moves and my moves) at once and I don't need to worry about missing crucial information. You could also do without the messages that tell me which ability I just used. I can see I'm using horn charge from the fact that my creature is actually running towards the enemy. Having it as a message at the top is redundant information that is actually harder to parse than the animation that's already in place.

    I really like that it's based on the combat timer. I feel that as this progresses you can create really interesting gameplay with it. I'm especially excited to see what you come up with in terms of counter moves. :) I believe that I previously played a version of this. I can't remember exactly what I said about that one, but this seems a lot better anyway. :)

    I really like the style of the art as well. The creatures look a little Chibi-ish. It's interesting to have the juxtaposition of creatures so cute actually doing aggressive battle.

    I hope this has helped! Keep going! :)
    Thanked by 1Kasei
  • edited
    Thanks @Rigormotis. Good feed back. And you have indeed played a version of this; 2 years ago. Struggled with a solution for emulating what was meant to be a handheld touch screen experience, got busy with life then one day "Why not just touch keys on keyboard?" Anyway to answer your feedback:


    It seems that there's an error in the build (had initially mapped Horn Attack to Z and Leaf Shuriken to X using similar reasoning to yours, that LS being a stronger attack would typically be second in progression but seem to have made a change in final build that I didn't notice). Actually glad for the error now, other feedback I've received indicates that the keys didnt really matter; if a user thought "I want to use Horn Charge" muscle memory from first few deaths just had them pressing X, to get the lower STAMINA cost attack... which means I could safely map this to a PS2 or x box controller and the visual layout for buttons wouldn't matter. But again thanks and will make the amendment as it creates an unnecessary additional challenge for some players like yourself, in what I hope is already a pretty challenging battle already.

    Lol. There are only 3 abbreviations. 2 which are gaming staples and only 1 I created and explained. Don't mind moving download, though it is likely to increase number of players who don't read the instructions *sighs*


    The brackets you've created exist. The energy bar, I call Stamina, is the one immediately below the health bar. The combat timer called PTC, is the one at the bottom corner. Early feedback suggests this is optimal relation as PTC determines IF you can attack which requires priority in combat over WHICH attack to use (that info can be kept in peripheral of thought "I just hit him with a simple Horn attack I SHOULD have plenty of energy still left to counter his next move if need be and then punish him again or recover my health" etc)

    Top middle is notifications. It's less labour intensive than creating animations at this stage and gives some useful feedback. To elaborate: I am planning to test symbol based notifications. Basically imagine when bleeding or poisoned/attack raised that a symbol (blood drop/poison bubbles/sword) overlays Totemon, shrinks, and shoots up into the bar area where it resides so long as the status persists. As for tfeedback;l feedback the enemy's blue card for example reads "Enemy charging up for an attack" it's again a simpler solution than my more fanciful idea of the shadow/base being lit up while a rising pillar of power rises. The Stingspore counter card lets you know that you're pulling off a move and not randomly frozen. Trust me I tried the game without these info cards, these 2 mechanics countering and recharging suffer without that feedback to the player. So yes more juice to come... when the level of the game calls for it. But again thanks, the feedback, it suggests I'm on the right track with future plans.

    Calling Your Attacks is an Awesome genre trope. I intend to keep it (for these test specifically because the user isn't reading about the move and its effects within some ingame menu or skill tree yet)


    I look forward to your feedback on the other powers I'll be updating with.
  • It's an exe so I can't play cos I'm on OSX :/

    It looks very close to pokemon :P Sorry can't give better input at this moment...
  • Hey @Kasei, gave this a whack, died 4 times and won 3 times and I was never quite sure why I won or lost.

    I agree with some of the other comments that the various recharging bars need to be closer together. Having to constantly check the top then bottom of the screen while keeping an eye out for when I need to counter felt a little overwhelming. (Ps, in FF I always set my ATB to WAIT :) ) I would very much appreciate it if the game waited for my input when my ATB bar was full, as I like planning my next move carefully. This is just my preference of course.

    Also is the ATB bar really necessary? Could you not perhaps have a cooldown on each of the abilities?

    Good luck with the rest of your game. And yeah to another GameMaker user :D
  • edited
    Hi. @pieter thanks for playing. Thanks for the feedback:

    The AI is stronger than you, more attack power and attacks without hesitation. Winning 3 times out of 7 is pretty good :) Troubles me that you don't remember why you won though, suggests button bashing which happens when the user isn't sure how to get the desired effect. The rest of your points indicate that this may indeed be the case as you simply didn't feel you had time to think about WHAT to do now, "Argh just hit him!"

    Certainly planning on a more concentrated UI for the bars. One of my play testors on GMC did this lovely mockup of the final look I've got in mind, so expect something like that in next update along with a couple of other changes.

    image


    The AI punishing slow decision making is a must. The wait style takes a lot of pressure off the player and that's not really where I'm going with this. (Would often switch between wait and active in my FF7,8 and 9 days myself. Some fights went better when I could slow them down, others felt like a drag like that)

    Anyway, I digress. The idea is to not focus on the typical rock, paper, scissors mechanic to win. The various Mon and their movesets willl be more tailored to the type of Totemikai you are: Offensive, Defensive, Strategic etc

    You for example could have a Totemon or team of Totemon that specialize in moves that buy you time to stack an advantage. Eg. Battle commences and my first Mon out is a type up and faster than yours, so I hit you quickly for a quarter damage; instead of switching out or some other negative strategy typical in a game like Pokemon, you might use the move "Phoenix Husk" (which you would know you have, unlike this demo where you don't know what you have) that replenishes health throughout the match simply so you can eventually execute "Savage Garden" a move that boosts all Plant style attacks for your next Totemon or to boost current Mons "Mega attack".

    My hope is that this allows you to in the heat of battle adapt the fight to you the player's actual strength and not have to pre-pack a team tailored for this battle. Anyway that's pretty indepth and there's still a lot of work to do. But noted and if I can wrangle this default mode into stability in the bigger game I'll look into accommodating a more leisurely pace.

    One big tip though. Trust your ears. The PTC is just a backup. The ping is really what means you're in business.

    PS. Did you also struggle with reconciling what move you wanted to execute vs which button was where?

    And yep we are pretty rare around these parts.
    battleCircle_zpsytkpsoyr.jpg
    408 x 178 - 42K
  • @tuism no problem. Please do give feedback when you get to a Windows machine.
  • edited
    Is game maker still useless at making a Mac build or a web build at all?
  • edited
    @Tuism apologies don't own a Mac. Since I'm unfortunately limited to my mobile contract data, posting an additional version of the game in html is something I'm reluctant to handle at this stage.
  • UPDATE TO POST. Video preview of upcoming demo added:

Sign In or Register to comment.