[Galladin]

Ohh, I remember Kikan vaguely...quite buggy indeed...but this looks quite kick-ass. Some of the colors are a bit too bright for my liking though, but I guess thats a part of your style. Keep it up.

[Exophase]

I'm still looking forward to it too. MZX could use a game of this quality about now..

- Exo

[djtiesto]

Quick progress update:

Systems:
Title Screen - 100%
Options (Tutorial/Sound Test/Credits) - 10%
Battle Engine - 1%
Victory Tally/Experience Calculation - 0%
Status Screen - 99%
Shop Screen - 99%
Intro - 100%
Ending - 0%
Game Over Screen - 0%
Minigames - 0%

Areas:
(Map Design/Cinemas/Interactions/Item Placement/Enemies and Enemy Balance)
Bridge: 100/100/100/100/0
Town 1: 100/100/100/100/NA
Shoshinkai: 100/100/100/100/0
Towers of Dub: 100/100/100/100/0
--for these next few areas, I'm using a lot of the graphics/map design from the original Kikan, with several aesthetic changes-
Town 2 (new): 0/0/0/0/NA
Zoo: 60/0/0/0/0
Bootlegging: 80/0/0/0/0
Town 3 (new): 0/0/0/0/NA
Carmageddon: 75/0/0/0/0
Blue Room: 90/0/0/0/0
Final Area (mostly new): 10/0/0/0/0

Total:
No idea, probably around 30%... once the battle system is done it'll shoot up to 40%, and the game will move much faster (hopefully). I'm gonna be gone this weekend after that I have the next 3 Fridays off, so I'll hopefully be able to work a lot on the battle engine.

This post has been edited by djtiesto: 05 February 2006 - 07:26 PM

[Koji]

Ah progress, I miss thee :<

[Taffer]

WOw Djtiesto the game looks great and its nice to see that its still in production. Kikan is definatly going to be one of my anticipated games for MZX. Keep up the good work.


Damn I wish I could do MZX graphics like that

[djtiesto]

Yes, I am *STILL* working on it! That's because the battle engine is taking a lot longer than I expected... I want it to be the most fully featured MZX battle system ever. Its coming along (I'd say 70% done), right now I'm working on enemy attacks/spells, and finishing up with the spell/item animations. Once the battle engine is done, the rest of the game should be a lot easier to create. But, I'll use this post to talk about what the battle engine will feature:

---Random encounters are in - yesss... the bane of all RPG fans. But this time, they are explained in the story. They're actually figments of B.D.'s meth-fueled imagination.

---The "Judgement Line" system - which, if you are familiar with the Shadow Hearts games, is very similar to the "Judgement Ring" system. When you attack/focus attack/use a spell/use an item, a line appears on the top of the screen. This line has several cyan/green areas called "target areas", and a smaller pointer that scrolls through the line. Try and hit "SPACE" when the pointer is in a target area, to score a hit. Different characters have different amounts of target areas (indicating different amounts of attacks)... for instance, Mina can attack twice, but if she fails to strike in the target area, she'll miss the attack. Spells require you to hit all the target areas before they are successful.

---The "Focus" system - Have a character "charge up" for a turn... then, on the
next turn, they have the chance to hit for 2.5x the damage. Unfortunately, the target area of the Judgement Line is now smaller and a bit harder to hit.

---Preemptive Attacks/Ambushes - just like your favorite RPGs

---Weaknesses/Strengths - Has Fire/Water/Earth/Wind elementals, if you discover an enemy's weakness, you will do 2x the damage, but if the enemy is strong against that attack, you will only do 1/2x the damage.

---Status Anomalies - Poison, Blind (miss much more), Stun, and Death

---50+ original monsters to battle against (only one a palette swap!)

---New backgrounds for every different area you go to

---Item/cash/experience drops and full-fledged levelling up system

Here's a picture, for your viewing pleasure -



And a picture showing the Judgement Line in action -

This post has been edited by djtiesto: 13 August 2006 - 11:48 PM

[Goshi]

djtiesto... you've been playing too much Dragon Quest again haven't you >_>

Anyway its nice to see that your still working on it, good luck on finishing it.

[asgromo]

This all actually looks pretty fantastic. I had just been wondering about seeing another update...

[weasel]

Interesting concepts for the battle engine. I can't say I've ever played any of the Shadow Hearts games (though I've heard that they're pretty enjoyable - I ought to look for them the next time I'm out hunting for cheap games).

[RoSS]

/me Kikangasms.

[Spectere]

Wow, that looks neat. Any idea when it's going to be ready for release?

[Roto]

Looks really good, Luke.

[KKairos]

The monsters are pretty cool--the best IMO is the one on the right, although I have to appreciate seeing the standard RPG "blob" in the fray.

[CJA]

djtiesto, on Aug 13 2006, 07:48 PM, said:

---The "Judgement Line" system - which, if you are familiar with the Shadow Hearts games, is very similar to the "Judgement Ring" system.

shadow hearts <<<<<33333

[NoahSoft]

im stoed on the judgmenet line.


... it would be sweet if it was pixel perfect!

[Tixus]

judgment LINE? Come on...couldn't it have been a judgment square? :p

[djtiesto]

Alrighty, big news my niggas...

The battle system... is DONE! Yes, aside from working out some kinks, the battle system is finally finished, and working pretty damn smoothly! The base spell effects and several different enemy types are in place... of course I still have to add in enemies and encounters on an area basis, and of course BALANCE the encounters, make it fairly challenging, the most important part of a good RPG. The battle system was a MASSIVE undertaking, and is undoubtedly the biggest and most complex MZX RPG battle system ever... raking in at ~150k total.

New Progress:

Systems:
Title Screen - 100%
Options (Tutorial/Sound Test/Credits) - 50%
Battle Engine - 95%
Victory Tally/Experience Calculation - 90%
Status Screen - 99%
Shop Screen - 99%
Intro - 100%
Ending - 0%
Game Over Screen - 25%
Minigames - 0%

Areas:
(Map Design/Cinemas/Interactions/Item Placement/Enemies and Enemy Balance)
Bridge: 100/100/100/100/100
Town 1: 100/100/100/100/NA
Shoshinkai: 100/100/100/100/25
Towers of Dub: 100/100/100/100/10

--for these next few areas, I'm using a lot of the graphics/map design from the original Kikan, with several aesthetic changes-

Town 2 (new): 0/0/0/0/NA
Zoo: 60/0/0/0/0
Bootlegging: 80/0/0/0/0
Town 3 (new): 0/0/0/0/NA
Carmageddon: 75/0/0/0/0
Blue Room: 90/0/0/0/0
Final Area (mostly new): 10/0/0/0/0

Total Progress:

Maybe about 60% or so? Not sure how much exactly, but the biggest hurdle to pass (the battle engine) is now complete, so things should go a lot faster. Still working at my Master's thesis, but that is coming along quite nicely too. So, this is definitely a 2007 release... hopefully early 2007 but we will see. Stay tuned for further updates!

Finally, one new teaser picture...

[Seventh Shade]

That's awesome.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Very nice. Good work!

[Goshi]

The red crab thing better be called "GIANT ENEMY CRAB" >_>

Awesome work though, nice to see your still working on it

[Spectere]

djtiesto, on Oct 2 2006, 08:58 PM, said:

The battle system was a MASSIVE undertaking, and is undoubtedly the biggest and most complex MZX RPG battle system ever... raking in at ~150k total.

Holy shit! O_O

Glad to hear that everything is coming along well! I'm looking forward to this (re)release.

[Dr Lancer-X]

That's a bit more than 1.5x the size of my relatively inefficient Avatar of Darkness battle engine.. but that one was pre-port, and had the memory restrictions, so a lot of the code went into the global robot D:

[Koji]

hrrrm, well the impressiveness of this figure depends on what all he's counting in the size.

I mean he could be counting all the graphic mzm's involved and other such resources.

Also what does the code that takes up that area do? Just because it's huge doesn't mean it's AWESOME. However usually it is

[Spectere]

Koji, on Oct 2 2006, 11:04 PM, said:

hrrrm, well the impressiveness of this figure depends on what all he's counting in the size.

I mean he could be counting all the graphic mzm's involved and other such resources.

Even so, that's a lot of space taken up by bytecode, 8x14 characters, and collections of tiles. Not to mention that it's only for a single engine.

Edit: And finally, a compex battle engine isn't something that you're going to implement with a handful of code. Based on a few of my engines (given whitespace seperating major sections of code and labels, occasional comments, and descriptive labels), 100 lines is roughly 2K of bytecode -- a very rough and inaccurate guesstimate, but just bear with me. Given that, you're looking at roughly 7500 lines of code. For a highly complex engine (and a console-quality RPG battle engine could very well qualify as one given the sheer number of variables that come into play), I can see it using that many lines, especially if things like inc/add/sub and friends are used instead of expressions and other things.

This post has been edited by Spectere: 03 October 2006 - 05:01 AM

[Dr Lancer-X]

Spectere, on Oct 3 2006, 02:54 PM, said:

a complex battle engine isn't something that you're going to implement with a handful of code.

Is that a challenge? XD

[Spectere]

Lancer-X, on Oct 3 2006, 12:41 AM, said:

Spectere, on Oct 3 2006, 02:54 PM, said:

a complex battle engine isn't something that you're going to implement with a handful of code.

Is that a challenge? XD

Eh, why not. DO IT.

[Koji]

Oh it can be done, it'd look messy as sin, but it can be done.

Especially since you can cram alot of logic processes into an expression, which Lancer is notorious for

[Exophase]

Spectere, on Oct 2 2006, 11:54 PM, said:

Koji, on Oct 2 2006, 11:04 PM, said:

hrrrm, well the impressiveness of this figure depends on what all he's counting in the size.

I mean he could be counting all the graphic mzm's involved and other such resources.

Even so, that's a lot of space taken up by bytecode, 8x14 characters, and collections of tiles. Not to mention that it's only for a single engine.

Edit: And finally, a compex battle engine isn't something that you're going to implement with a handful of code. Based on a few of my engines (given whitespace seperating major sections of code and labels, occasional comments, and descriptive labels), 100 lines is roughly 2K of bytecode -- a very rough and inaccurate guesstimate, but just bear with me. Given that, you're looking at roughly 7500 lines of code. For a highly complex engine (and a console-quality RPG battle engine could very well qualify as one given the sheer number of variables that come into play), I can see it using that many lines, especially if things like inc/add/sub and friends are used instead of expressions and other things.

Define "complex."

[steel_dragoon]

Looking at these screenshots, I remember having played the origonal a while ago and enoying it quite alot. Hopefully this will be even better!

[djtiesto]

The ~150k estimate is if I hit Alt+Y on the battle engine stage... and I don't use MZMs (don't know how).