Happy New Year everyone! How have you guys been doing? I hope you guys are having a great new year so far.
Anyway, it's time for Kemo Coliseum's December report!
Quick summary for people who are new here. We have a Weekly Progress report in the secret lab section of our forum. The monthly reports will be a summary of those weekly reports, excluding the exclusive stuffs.
Game Status
We spent more time on other minigames than Kemo Coliseum this month because we want to push everything out of the way first. (Also, Christmas Break!)
We notice that there are a lot on the table right now and it would be best to push some of the small games that we've promised out so that we can focus on Kemo Coliseum.
Nonetheless, this doesn't mean progress hasn't been made. While I'm working on other games, the art team can still work on other aspects of Kemo Coliseum. We still have backgrounds, map and enemies to work on!
Game Design
Discussed about some changes to the game as follow:
1.) No more mana collecting like Puzzle Quest. All skills will consume MP. Collect energy gem will refill your MP.
- This will make skill balancing much easier.
- Having to look at the background of each square adds another layer of complexity which not only make it hard for players to make a decision, but also make AI more complicate!
- The game will be colorblind-friendly. People with colorblind can tell the difference of each gem from symbols and shape, but the background color rely solely on the color, so it might be difficult.
Considering these reasons, it's best to remove the four mana Power, Technique, Will and Magic system, and replace it with one single MP like RPG game.
2.) Simplify Healing gem. The old one is complicated. Healing gem will now simply heal the character's HP, and not repairing the armor.
3.) To make Healing gem useful in the beginning of the game as well, each armor part will now have two parameters, which are defense power and durability. Each armor part will work as follow :
- If that part is not broken, the part will take the damage instead of the character, decreasing its durability.
- The maximum amount of damage taken is equal to that part's defense power.
- Any damage beyond the defense power will be dealt directly to the character's hp.
This should make each match goes faster too, since you can lost HP even early in the game. Also, there will be a difference between a character that deal many small hits, and a character that deal one huge damage hit.
Armor can only be repair through skill.
Programming
Due to the change in game design, I had to spend time on refactoring and rewriting many parts of the code. It's good that we found these 'gotchas' in the design early on though. It'll be harder to change once the game grow bigger.
We notice that there are a lot on the table right now and it would be best to push some of the small games that we've promised out so that we can focus on Kemo Coliseum.
Nonetheless, this doesn't mean progress hasn't been made. While I'm working on other games, the art team can still work on other aspects of Kemo Coliseum. We still have backgrounds, map and enemies to work on!
Game Design
Discussed about some changes to the game as follow:
1.) No more mana collecting like Puzzle Quest. All skills will consume MP. Collect energy gem will refill your MP.
- This will make skill balancing much easier.
- Having to look at the background of each square adds another layer of complexity which not only make it hard for players to make a decision, but also make AI more complicate!
- The game will be colorblind-friendly. People with colorblind can tell the difference of each gem from symbols and shape, but the background color rely solely on the color, so it might be difficult.
Considering these reasons, it's best to remove the four mana Power, Technique, Will and Magic system, and replace it with one single MP like RPG game.
2.) Simplify Healing gem. The old one is complicated. Healing gem will now simply heal the character's HP, and not repairing the armor.
3.) To make Healing gem useful in the beginning of the game as well, each armor part will now have two parameters, which are defense power and durability. Each armor part will work as follow :
- If that part is not broken, the part will take the damage instead of the character, decreasing its durability.
- The maximum amount of damage taken is equal to that part's defense power.
- Any damage beyond the defense power will be dealt directly to the character's hp.
This should make each match goes faster too, since you can lost HP even early in the game. Also, there will be a difference between a character that deal many small hits, and a character that deal one huge damage hit.
Armor can only be repair through skill.
Programming
Due to the change in game design, I had to spend time on refactoring and rewriting many parts of the code. It's good that we found these 'gotchas' in the design early on though. It'll be harder to change once the game grow bigger.
- Finish refactoring the battle code so that now I can implement any damage calculation algorithm very easily! I've also implemented 'block' system, but the algorithm is still just randomly block with a 25% chance right now. In the real game, this should depend on character's speed or something. Still have to think about that.
- Modified how the extra turn work. The importance of action that affect whether you'll get an extra turn or not is as follow:
1.) Armor Break -> Extra Turn
2.) Attack is Blocked -> No Extra Turn ( Lose 1 turn press as normal )
3.) Erase 4 straight blocks -> Extra Turn
The priority is from top to bottom. That mean, even if you make a match of 4, if your attack is blocked, you won't get an extra turn. Unless that attack break enemy's armor part.
- I've updated the secret lab alpha version so that the character'll be naked once you knock him out when all of his armor parts are destroyed. The 'important part' is censored for now, otherwise it won't be fun in the actual game :P
- Finished implementing the armor's defence power. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. If I set the defense power too high, then it's the same as before, since all the damage will go to the armor first and never go to your life point.
On the other hand, if I set the defense low and the armor's durability high, then the character's health will run out before any armor is broken! This is the worst scenario, since I feel that destroying armor is what make the game fun. And I really enjoy the game more when I could see my progress being the enemy's clothes destroyed one by one XD
So I tried balancing again, and it seems to work. I could strip the enemy naked before dealing the finish blow. So the defense might work but it requires a lot of balancing, I suppose.
Arts
Map Sketch
We did a sketch of a map scene. This is not the final sketch though ( the latest ones are already posted in the secret lab). This is just to get the idea out of what does the main map screen in the game should look like, as well as deciding the locations that will be in the game.
We did a sketch of a map scene. This is not the final sketch though ( the latest ones are already posted in the secret lab). This is just to get the idea out of what does the main map screen in the game should look like, as well as deciding the locations that will be in the game.
Donation Report
April $660
May $266
June $465
July $261
Aug $227
Sep $107
Oct $453
Nov $223
Dec $415
--------------------------
2012 Total $3077
June $465
July $261
Aug $227
Sep $107
Oct $453
Nov $223
Dec $415
--------------------------
2012 Total $3077
It's been (almost) a year! Thank you so much for all the donation. I also notice some regular donators =) I don't know what to say but thank you for believing in this project and your constant support!
Thanks to those who help by spreading the games and talk about the games as well. As I said before, working on the game already take a lot of time from us, so we don't really have much time to promote the game. It means a lot that someone would take their time to do it for us.
Thank you again for the support last year and thank you for staying with us. Our goal this year is to push the public beta out so that everyone can get to play test the game.
See you next update!
Thanks to those who help by spreading the games and talk about the games as well. As I said before, working on the game already take a lot of time from us, so we don't really have much time to promote the game. It means a lot that someone would take their time to do it for us.
Thank you again for the support last year and thank you for staying with us. Our goal this year is to push the public beta out so that everyone can get to play test the game.
See you next update!
Reminder
While Kemo Coliseum will be a game that is free to play, it is definitely not free to make. If you can, please help support us so we can keep working on the game, make it better, and finish it faster :)
