Castle Paradox

[Razor_Blade]

I'm shocked that noone else seems to do this! I thought to do this on my first game(which I never released but oh well...) using chaining not just for jumps and draining spells/techs but, also for visual effects and "special criticals"

--------------------------------visual effects--------------------------------------

this is what shocked that not many people do...say for jump attacks instead of it being 2 part make it a several part attack like this:

1. used to select target but all this does is "lock on"
2. this will be the actual jump aimed at the "locked" target, use a little dust could under the hero sprite to make it look like he's actually jumping
3. this will be the "contact" do this like you normally would

now that may or may not work, I haven't made any jump techs for Chronicles of draconia yet but, I have made some fire spells/techs and this is what I do for them...which is what I'd like to see more people do...simply make an attack called smoke that does no damage (unless you want it to lower accuracy) and have this chained at 100% from any/all fire techs, it works out quite nicely, except making the smoke look good is kinda hard to do...

------------------------------------"special criticals"-------------------------------

ok, this may sound complicated (not that it is, it's just I have a hard time explaining things) basically make enemy type 1 (or whatever) be "undead and enemy type 2 be living and enemy type 3 be "hemophiliac" (whatever it is where the blood doesn't clot) and make an attack that chqains at maybe 10% from physical attacks called "bloodspray" or bloodshed" and have it be inneffective on undead normal on living and bonus v.s. hemophiliacs, this could also be done to make "blunt" do more than "sharp" as in having blunt attacks more effective on undead but, that's not multiple part like blooodspray/bloodshed is and I thought an example of a more complex one would be better

I was just wondering why not too many people seem to be doing this

[The Drizzle]

About the jump thing. It sounds good in theory, and I've tried this before, but the "dust" that comes under the hero doesn't come up until the hero is already well into his jump. Some people still do it though.

About the special critical thing. This is something like what I'm trying to implement in my game. It gets complicated because damage bonuses are so high for enemy types. 80% more damage? That's a whole lot of bonus.
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My name is...
The shake-zula, the mic rulah, the old schoola, you wanna trip? I'll bring it to yah...

[djfenix]

For the first one, Drizzle said all that I had in mind. Sure, theoretically it works, but it doesn't look all that good anyways.

For the second one, I've done something like that in my game, Redemption, where the first attack is a slash, then chains to a blood squirt. I didn't do the hemophiliac type thing though. (Besides, the enemies in that game were all undead)

The best effects I've seen in a game were done by Ken Soto (sp?), I think. He left all his cast frames blank, and used the attack frames as extra frames for the heroes. There were little blank spots in between frames, though, because there's a small delay between attacks.

[TMC]

Effects like that used to be quite common but I haven't seen so much of them lately.

Montery Penguin had one where the frames of an attack were used to create a 3 frame walking animation for.... the chicken, who would walk up to enemies before attacking them.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[junahu]

well... as long as everyone's complaining here...

I haven't seen any games where the hero graphics change depending on what kind of battle they're fighting (they always look the same, whether they're fighting little imps they've killed 1000s of times already, or the mega uber huge bleeding 32000hp boss thingy. It's not right!). Of course, I haven't played all the games so I'm probably wrong on this.
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[Aethereal]

This thread is about IMPLEMENTATION, not DESIGN. It looks like I might have to make a post noting the differences between those two...

Moved.
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[LeRoy_Leo]

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

TSSE and TS1 pull off "Limit Breaks" using chained attacks. Same thing with Esuna in FFH and TSSE. A curative spell can only restore one stat at a time, so to make a spell like Esuna, you'd have to chain several attacks together all in rapid succession.

So in short, it's been done before.

[Shadowiii]

Stop's abilities are an abismal use of chaining and waiting (in theory. I haven't leveled the characters enough to actually test their abilities, but they SHOULD work).

For example, Rosemary has an ability called "Full Clip." I fires eight consecuative shots to a single enemy. However, after that there is a slim chance that there will be a pause, Rosemary will "reload", and fire two more shots. Nothing special, but a nice touch to add realism.

Another interesting effect is Null (who is a Shadow-born...OMFG SPOILER yeah right...). He has a skill called "Sucumb" (spelled correctly ) where basically he will cast a variety of spells non-stop (each costing him 25-100 hp a strike) until he dies. Its a plot device, actually...giving in to the shadow's power...

The think I haven't seen (yet) is incorperating battles into the actual storyline. That is, abilities/spells in battles have nothing to do with the story, they just are learned "because thats how RPGs work." Sure you learn some because oh, some wise sage taught it to you, but the battles THEMSELVES don't tend to have a deep plot interlinking...ness. The closest I've seen was TSSE (though it was more with the items system), where you don't get money but instead get "paradox", which lets you pull objects from the previous time. Of course...this isn't battle...

*Cheap plug* Because I was dismayed by this fact, Stop's battles are invaluably intertwined with the story. Hence Sccumb. In fact, all spells are that way. Learning some abilities also means you can use them outside of battle (ok, you can't really "use" them...jsut if you have them some scenes are very slightly different). White (the power of girls in Stop) is a key point to the story, and also WHEN someone can use white. There are a other few details...in Stop^2 you start knowing every spell you learned from Stop, except about 75% of the time when you cast it the character can't remember the spell (you have to regain the memories before you can get 100% casting rate). Another thing is there is no money...weapons and items are formed by one's magical power to bend matter. Battles you don't gain experience, you get memories...so you remember the things you forgot.

Eh, long cheap plug. Thats just what I want to see...battles being more as a part of the game instead of a totally different thing. Having the two intertwined (FF6 comes to mind with the whole esper magic thing...though it would have been pretty sweet if your magical power had been majorly impared when Kefka controlled the power of the Sorceress Statues....oh well) is sheer genius. Few games have done it as well as FF6, now that I think about it (FF7 sort of explained materia, but it sucked at it. Phantom beasts in FF8 were a joke. FF9....didn't really explain much, I guess people were born with the powers [except summoners]...I haven't played FF10 but I'm guessing they aren't taht intertwined)

But yeah. The lack of attack frames is somewhat frustrating though. Having someone do "Omnistrike" but only attack the same way over and over is dull.

Oh, and with regard to junahu's comments about changing clothes...I agree. Tifa should have worn a snowcoat when I made her fight in the snowy mountains. Having hero graphics change when you enter different areas would be pretty sweet (or have several different sets of clothing as items that would change physical appearence when used...hey...that's a pretty sweet idea )
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But enough talk, have at you!

[Battleblaze]

This is dumb. I assumed chaining was just a givin sort of thing. In my game I'm making(first game) all my cool showy attacks are chained. Hero powers up, hero blows the crap out of enemy. It adds flavor to games if you also use bitsets for flying and liquid-like enemys so attacks fail.
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"Aeth calls PHC an anti-semite; PHC blames anti-semitism"
-squall

[Shadowiii]

[The Drizzle]

Battleblaze what are you talking about? I can't tell exactly what you're saying, but no one said that chained attacks should not be used for extending attack animations. The only thing that was said is that the "dust" coming up when the hero jumps doesn't work right because of the delay between chained attacks.
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My name is...
The shake-zula, the mic rulah, the old schoola, you wanna trip? I'll bring it to yah...

[TMC]

I think he meant that it was rubbish that chained attacks are hard or high tech or anything, and eveyone should be using them anyway.
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

[The Drizzle]

Oh. Fair enough. That's true.
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My name is...
The shake-zula, the mic rulah, the old schoola, you wanna trip? I'll bring it to yah...

[LeRoy_Leo]

Set all chained effects to zero delay...

Once again, yours truely has stated the obvious...
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---msw188 ---
"Seriously James, you keep rolling out the awesome like gingerbread men on a horror-movie assembly line. "