Canceled Dungeons & Dragons UPDATE

[esn23]

hmm to be honest i like lucia as is if i edit her for d and d fans it would make them be like what the hell we have all the d and d chars and and edited lucia.. Maybe instead i should make a boss or enmy and you should keep lucia as she was my fav in the game... Perhaps you should call your guy dark elf wood elf etc or her a dark elf forst elf magic elf etc..

 

[Count Monte]

Esn, yeah if you could make a boss/enemy that would be great.  Don't forget we have the Hippodrome Gladiator arena, where all kinds of enemies fight you 1 v 1.  We'll have the enemies randomized, which means we do need lots of enemies and variety (and they all need to be boss-types).

As for Lucia, well it's up to Bloodbane if she's playable.  He has A LOT on his plate to finish up the game, I'm no expert at scripting and he's working alone.

 

[esn23]

Yes that is why i said an enemy because i know poor bloodbane is swamped with stuff

 

[erf_beto]

You could make a quest about Lucia, something like finding her in a magical forest or being kidnapped or making her an NPC or something,and have her unlocked as a hero. She'd be exactly like the capcom Lucia - unless you heavily edit her sprites, she'd always look like Lucia, and like esn, a lot of people like her and completing that Quest would be something really cool to achieve.

All in a future DLC, I know you guys are working hard just for release.

 

[Count Monte]

LUCIA PROGRESS REPORT
Here's a progress report on Lucia:
All her sprites and animations are done (you saw most of these in the video).
In order to make her compatible I also had to sprite:
-Walking with no weapons for city mode
- Riding Horse, Dragon, Giant Scorpion
- Using Small Catapult
- Jousting
- Holding Goblin King Head and lantern
- New Player Select Screen
- How To Play Bio for her (every character has one)

So all the sprite work is done - I forgot what a chore it is to add new playable characters!  Now it's a matter of coding, but whether we have her in the release or later in DLC remains to be seen.  Maybe if you guys ask Bloodbane nicely  :

I made her a Bard, instead of a Druid or Necromancer.  The reason being - Tel'Erond serves the role of Elf Fighter-Mage nicely and later he gets the chance to add Druid spells to his repetoire.  D'raven has a sidequest where he gets the chance to learn Necromancy and gain those spells.
So really, the only D&D class we were missing was a Bard.  She'll play like the Lucia you know, but her spells will be different (since she's a bard).

In terms of spells, here's the ones we have sprites for the spell FX:
Charm - Lucia can turn one (low-level) enemy into an NPC ally

Blink - Lucia can randomly teleport to another spot on the screen

Sleep - Lucia can cause one (low-level) enemy to drop to sleep

Sound Burst - A musical projectile shoots out from her harp

Rain of Fire - A fireball flies up into the air, and rains down fire

Leaf Storm seems more like a Druid spell, but we might keep it.

The Cleric has spells that buff the party, so I'm not sure what would be needed that the Bard could do that he can't.  Any ideas?

 

[O Ilusionista]

Nice use of the Suikoden II sprite I always wanted to code that char.

 

[DCurrent]

-Walking with no weapons for city mode

In the original Capcom games, all of the characters had idle/walk animations with their weapons put away. Why did you have to do this yourself?

Sleep - Lucia can cause one (low-level) enemy to drop to sleep

Think you may need to look at balancing this spell a bit. If it only works on one enemy at a time, there is no reason to use it. Unless you can coup de grace or at the very least cause extra damage to a sleeping enemy, it will always be pointless compared to Charm.

Sleep: One enemy removed from combat for a few moments. You get a free hit.

Charm: Same, plus gain a free ally.

Either boost the levels Sleep works on compared to Charm, have it target more than one enemy (as the D&D Sleep does) or allow players to instantly kill sleeping enemies. Otherwise it's a waste.

Sound Burst - A musical projectile shoots out from her harp

This seems kind of meh. This is a sonic spell, so like the Mind Flayer's Mind Blast, why have a visible "hadoken" style projectile at all? Have some visual effects if you want them, but only on Lucia as she prepares to fire. The "projectile" should be invisible (or VERY transparent), instantly nail its target and given what Sound Burst actually does, I would say be able to hit more than one if you can line them up in a row. In addition, it wouldn't hurt to add a chance of briefly stunning. You can balance this by having her take just a bit longer to cast it before the projectile is fired.

The Cleric has spells that buff the party, so I'm not sure what would be needed that the Bard could do that he can't.  Any ideas?

Not everything has to be in direct spell form. What makes Bard music so powerful is unlike most spells, most Bard songs don't continue to use up your actions while active and become exponentially more effective as the number of friends/foes increase. This can be simulated in your game by adding passive effects. An easy example: When Lucia is in the party, give everyone (including Lucia herself if not alone) a small (10%) damage boost. In a two player game this would probably be no big. In a 3/4 player, it would be nasty! You could also simulate the Bard's counter song ability by making enemy charm/sleep/whatever effects less effective when she is around. Another little touch would be having her pay slightly lower prices in shops due to her looks and charm - what self respecting Bard doesn't have high ranks in the Persuade skill?

These kinds of things would make Lucia an OK choice for 1/2 player games, but highly prized when you have more friends around - just like a real D&D Bard!

DC

 

[darknior]

Really impressive work guys

 

[Count Monte]

Damon, those are excellent suggestions!

You're right, I didn't have to sprite the walking without weapons - I just had to rip the sprites for that particular animation and clean them up and fix the palettes.  I was just making a list of all the animations that need to be ripped and/or sprited to make a playable character.  And from that new select screen, you can see there's no more room to add new characters (and no 2nd row please!)

I've been trying to make sure each character can be fun to solo play the game with, first and foremost.  With the bard that means giving her spells that will be effective and fun to use.  But that would be great if she boosts the other players damage just by being there

The idea with Sleep was that if she's outnumbered and overwhelmed, she can put some bad guys out of commission for a short time, so she can then deal with the other ones in a fair fight.  We could have it affect more than one enemy at a time, but if everyone on the screen drops to sleep then she'll have to wait for them to wake up before continuing on (we don't have the ability to hit enemies that are lying down in this game currently).  Don't forget we have the mana meter to balance things out, so Charm could cost 50 mana to cast, and Sleep could cost 20 (to hit one enemy).  I would prefer sleep to be an area effect spell though ideally.

Your sound blast suggestion should work great - stunning enemies makes sense.  We could make that projectile more transparent, and turn it upside down (it resembles her harp).  And it could fire a stream of them if you hold down the button.

As for discounts in shops, if Bloodbane can figure out how to code that, it would be awesome.

 

[Count Monte]

CAVALIER UNLOCKABLE PLAYER

While we're on the subject of unlockable players, I've finished making the Cavalier.

From the D&D Wiki:
CAVALIER - A cavalier is a mounted warrior mostly in the service of good.  Representing the ultimate in mounted warfare, the cavalier is the quintessential knight in shining armor.

All his spriting is done, including riding all animals, walking without weapon, etc.
He's built off of the Fighter, so they have the same moves (which is why I was able to add him fairly easily - I just had to swap his head and palettes for each sprite... well that wasn't exactly easy since it's a ton of sprites )  In order to distinguish him, I was thinking we could give him a couple unique specials:
1)  He can summon his horse anytime
2)  Once on his horse, he can call in other knights for an archery barrage.

Here's a short video showing the Cavalier:
VIDEO Knight Horse Test

He'd start with the first armor upgrade already (Mithril armor) so he'd have more defense than the Fighter.  If he gets the 2nd upgrade (Adamantine armor) he gets a new palette:

Any other suggestions on how to make him different from the fighter?  In terms of helpers, specials, abilities etc?

 

[erf_beto]

I'd keep the Leaf Storm animation the same as before. Make it an "Elf racial ability", not a bard spell.

Have you settled on grey for the character's main pallete? I don't know, it looks dull for a bard. In my mind, they are more merry, kind of showbiz people. Just saying.

Other than that, I think Damon said everything I would, and probably more. 

I also believe soudburst and sleep should all hit multiple enemies (either those near her, or in front of her). Both are a sort of "stun", but soundburst causes damage, and sleep lasts longer  - I actually think sleep should last "forever" until awakened/attacked, though it only affects low level creatures.

Bards are also entertainers, so Illusions, Invisibility, Polymorph, etc should be in their repertoire as well. They are knowledgeable, sages and Jacks-of-all-trades, so they should get bonuses finding traps, using all kinds of different magic items (wizard wands FTW!), discovering side passages, getting new quests, unlocking different NPC interactions, etc.

And don't forget: bards can also heal! This one is important.

I love Damon' suggestion of passive benefits. That could make the bard feel different than the other spellcasters. They could even be "bought" the same way as spells - you could call them "Songs".

But if you want to make the bard really unique (here comes a new challenge!), make bard songs a different kind of spell. Once activated, they affect everyone listening, either all allies or all enemies. There are songs that increase the party's attack, defense or speed, songs that recover life or mana, others that slow or reduce enemies power, etc. The "casting time" of a song would be long, but Songs are a continuous effect and last for as long as the bard keeps singing, or start a new song. They can still move and fight while singing, but a bard can only maintain one song at a time (so you cannot sing a Healing Hymn and an Aria of Battle together). They are passive benefits, but you can "swap" for others.

 

[Count Monte]

erf, I love that you and Damon are D&D experts -- your input and advice are so helpful! 
My one hesitation about Leaf Storm is that it basically acts like Fire Shield spell that Tel'Erond has, so he doesn't need 2 protection spells that knock enemies back, whereas the bard could use one (in solo play especially).
Great suggestions overall!
Now, since Bloodbane is the expert at coding, I'll let him determine how many of them can be implemented    Of course, since this project has gotten so big, in order to release it sooner, if anyone can help us it'll speed things up.

 

[erf_beto]

Hah, I wouldn't say expert, but I do like my share of dungeons. 

Regarding the Cavalier.

Admittedly, I don't know much about the original D&D Cavalier, but in recent editions, it has been re-introduced as a Paladin sub-class, sharing its divine abilities and spells. I'm not getting that "vibe" from your Cavalier, specially since you already have a Paladin (whose abilities I'm not aware of, so I can't offer advice on how to make them distinct). 

On the other hand, the horse is a common theme, so let's elaborate on it.

Horse summon is ok, I think. I'm not sure your coding will prevent the horse to be used by the other players though, and maybe it is weird to see a horse appear *anywhere* but whatever. I guess this would make more sense as the Paladin divine ability to Call Mount, so perhaps the Cavalier/Paladin relationship could work here (you could even "upgrade" the mount from a simple horse, to a unicorn, a celestial charger, to a pegasus, to a griphon...)

BTW, make the horse white (it's more "knight in shining armor" impressive).

As far as other abilities, the Cavalier could have more/better powers while riding the horse. I don't know what to suggest, I can only think of a "charge!" right now...

The "summon helpers" are an interesting idea.  The rain of arrows remind me of Castle Crasher's grey knight "magic" attack, and King of Dragons archers.  You could also summon an NPC squire to fight with you, a group of knights riding past the screen stomping through everything... but remember the play area is not too big, so it might get a little crowded.

 

[Count Monte]

I'm more of a 1st and 2nd edition D&D guy - this game takes place in Gary Gygax's Greyhawk, and actually is based on the 2nd edition From the Ashes update to Greyhawk by Carl Sargeant.
I'll throw in some 3rd editon stuff here and there, but this Cavalier is strictly a fighter sub-class (not paladin).  Unicorn is a great idea, although we already have a subquest to rescue the last unicorn from Kelek the evil wizard.  Gryphon would be great, but I haven't been able to find good sprites for one.  Well, you can see I sprited a gryphon here for a cut scene, but it wasn't feasible to animate it as a mount:

The "charge" attack is definitely something we discussed and pretty easy to implement.  The summon horse idea is similar to something from Warriors of Fate, where there was a gong you'd use to summon your horse.
EDIT - Good call on the white horse!  Check it out: 

 

[Bloodbane]

since you already have a Paladin (whose abilities I'm not aware of, so I can't offer advice on how to make them distinct). 

Our Paladin class is more Strongheart based. He's the only one capable of summoning his friends i.e Elkhorn, Peralay and Ringlerun in battle. He can summon them all at once BTW.

In addition to that, he can also cast Cure Critical Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Cure Poison and Turn Undead.

Good ideas for Bard Damon, bard class is still new so we still need to discuss her abilities and spells.

"I guess this would make more sense as the Paladin divine ability to Call Mount,"

Is that true?

 

[aL BeasTie]

Some of Bard's spells could have the side effect of changing the music played in the level,
and/or while the music is active the other players receive the buffs etc.

 

[erf_beto]

"I guess this would make more sense as the Paladin divine ability to Call Mount,"

Is that true?

I meant that as the explanation to why a horse can be summoned from thin air, even underground. That's how newer editions work, you "teleport" the mount from out of celestial plane (or something like that).

Good spells for Paladin. If you manage to include those passive benefits to whole party, I'd also give him an "aura of courage" ability, that grants a defense bonus to nearby allies.

 

[Count Monte]

I've been working on adding and updating NPC's the last 2 days.  Here's the latest peek - Dimsdale visits the dwarf citadel of Greysmere, where he learns about the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords and the war against the Dark Elves.

 

[Count Monte]

GRYPHON WIP

After saying it wasn't feasible to sprite a gryphon, I decided to give it a shot.  Here's my progress so far:

 

[Count Monte]

Here he is with a saddle and rider.  I think I'll add white fur around his front forelegs.  The next job will be to add the Cavalier's sprites (attacking, pain etc)

The big question is when would the Cavalier use this?  Would this be his 'dragon' mount instead of the real dragon on the dragon riding level?  So the other players would be on dragons but he'd be on this.  If so, he'd need some kind of projectile attack.  Or would this be his horse (instead of the white charger) for the horse ride levels.  Or would this be the animal he can summon anywhere?
It could fly in and land, then walk once he's on it.  Or, instead it could walk in, and once he gets on it could then hover/fly.