Castle Paradox

[planethunter]

I'm scraping along very slowly with my biobots game...
but i'm getting there.

You see I have the three 'starter' bots done, but I only have ideas for a handful more. But I intend it to be a large rpg, and to do that I need a fair amount of bots to suit as many players as I can.

What that means in english is:
I have about 10 robot characters done/in the pipeline...
but I want some ideas or even feedback, and *if you could
be bothered* even actual bots.

My game is aimed primarily at you guys... like it or not your the only playtesters I can rely on, given your experence with Rpgs of course.

what a bot should have:
[]it's own unique character and look.
[]some relation to an animal of somesort, invent your own, I don't mind. just don't give me any of those crazy bots with chainsaws attached or something.
[]unique special move or attack, or stratagey (optional)

Well I look forward to your ideas, If I failed to explain something... please tell me. *i have a habbit of doing that*
_________________
~PH

[*Worthy*]

By "bots" I assume you mean the characters are robot like.

An idea I have for a bot possibly (I don't know what your game is like so I don't know if this would work or not) but you could make a "customizable bot". By this I mean this bot wouldn't specialize in attack or defense or anything like that, but the player would "create" the bot throughout the game.

Enemies could drop items that could be equipped by this bot (different head pieces, arm pieces, etc...

So if the player was fighting a water elemental enemy, the enemy may drop something like "aqua headpiece lv.1" which would give the bot the water elemental status and the bot would know a water elemental move or two.

Throughout the game items could be found like "aqua headpiece lv.2" in which the bot would learn stronger water moves.

Also something that may be interesting depending on your game, you could make a bot that if is on the player's team secret treasure boxes will appear in dungeons that are normally invisible.

I look forward to hearing what you think,

~Worthy

[msw188]

Okay, I know that this is not quite what you asked for, but it occured to me because I'm having some trouble trying to balance this in my game. The problem is having many "heroes" but only ever allowing the player four in a party. As far as I know, there is no easy way to balance level-gaining if a player often chooses the same party, so I thought that your different bots might have different walking abilities. I mean outside of battle. Especially if you're using animal type things. This way, in particular cases, you could 'force' a player to use certain characters in certain places, and hopefully force some kind of balanced level-up procedure for the characters. For example, have certain bots be able to traverse water, some able to jump high and so reach certain ledges, some able to fly short distances (but not high in the air, and vice-versa).

As far as ideas for actual bots, I'd say you can have a chameleon type thing that can blend in with surroundings. In battle this might be an ability that increases his dodge and magic block by a lot, maybe. Also, maybe as the leader of the party he could lower the random battle rate via an "instead of battle" script...? Being a chameleon, maybe his personality changes depending on where he is, or who he's with...?

[planethunter]

firstly:
yeah, bot is short for robot. I just take the habbit of using it too much.

*worthy*, did you ever here of a japanese tv show: medabots?
That's exactly what they do on the show, buy and trade and gamble "medaparts". Which can be added on to the players bot.
I have considered customisation of bots but it would take years
and years to create every peossible hero picture combination.
unless of course I decide to make my own battle system... but
I haven't got round to that.

msw188, I have implemented that idea already... Except before each battle actually starts the hero chooses from 3 bots, if they don't choose
to pick one of the three (that are in reserve) then the player uses the
current bot, i.e. the one they just used. Try to think of it as paper, sissors, stones, there is a certain degree of luck involved.

and on the idea of special abilities, each bot has 4 chip slots in it.(except "wild" ones because only tame ones are fitted with these ports)
Now chips are like the approved way of attacking, every chip has been extensively tested for faults by the national bot battling association (nbba)
And that way tournament holders can be sure of clean fights. Chips can be bought, traded and won. Of course since chips are items that teach spells, you could hardly expect a water type to breath fire. And one other thing,
I also intend to have like, a black market chip store, where people could buy stolen and unoffical chips.

it's funny you should mention the chameleon bot because every bot that the player owns preforms as well as the player. Personalities are formed through a bot's treatment, if you make it use rusty batteries and faulty chips it won't exactly be happy with you... and might even disobey your orders in batle, or worse: run away.

the chameleon bot would be a good idea, but any ideas on the transparency effect?

Also if you have any sketches, I could spend sometime converting them into proper walkabouts and hero sprites.
_________________
~PH

[msw188]

I'm sorry, I do not and never have been able to draw. I was just throwing out an idea. I'm afraid that I do not know what you mean by "transparency effect". Do you mean a way for the chameleon bot to appear invisible in certain areas, as if he is blending in? Perhaps a script could be used on keypress, say, to change the hero pallete to one missing some of the colors. For example, if the chameleon's pallete could be described as:
0. empty (always)
1. White
2. Light Green
3. Dark Green
and so on, it could switch to one that could be described as:
0. empty (always)
1. White
2. empty
3. Dark Green
and so on, with some more empties. Does that make sense?
The chips sound interesting, I'm just wondering about the balance between how customizable any given bot is, and how distinctive it is. Do any bots have distinctive abilities regardless of chips equipped, or is their distinction based solely on their unique equipability, maybe? Should certain chips do different things for different bots (I mean the same chip giving different abilities depending on the type of bot equipping it)? Just ideas.

[planethunter]

I get the chameleon transparency effect now, a simple script that checks the the current tileset, and changes the chameleon's picture to blend in.
you know, so it would blend in kinda with the background. Of course I reckon the chameleon bot would blend in with it's surroundings if it felt under threat.

Well I won't reveal too much about chips, in the game your supposed to work out which ones work best yourself and make your own strategies.
But I can tell you this, say for example two bots are equiped with the same chip. One is a fish and the other like a frog. The fish is specialised in water so it would be better suited for water type chips, but the frog is a more general all rounder. So rather than specialise in one or more attacks the frog would be more flexable in battle, able to learn a wide range of moves. So even though both bots may seem similar, they both have different strategies in winning.

And yes, certain chips can be combined to make a totally new chip.
example: a player has an Ice blast chip, and a Wind gust chip.
When both of them combine they make the Blizzard chip, a more powerful chip that mixes the attribrutes of both parent chips.
_________________
~PH

[Eggie]

Medabots is a scary show full of odd people and robots. Even though Canada gets only a little Anime shows, it's there and I only needed to see it once.

Anyway...

Try an armidillo (I don't think I spelt it right) as a bot. It could have high defense, and dig holes. It's a nice idea.

[planethunter]

firstly, Medabots is a bad show but granted it still used a pretty original concept. I just mentioned the concept, it's not like i'm a fan or anything...

the idea of an 'armidillo' would be pretty ok... but I just wondered what you guys were interested in, I mean the games main audience is you.
All i'm saying is what would you like, anything you guys want in particular I can try my best at.

I have a heap of various bot types lined up, from the mythical to the infectious. Just one small problem, the bots themselves!

I have a large table for all the various types and strategies, they all work.
I could just plough through the game, design hundreds of bots but I'd be working in the dark.

As my master plan for an expansive-free-for-all Rpg is about to take foot,I just wanted to know is their anybody out there willing to provide input? I mean physical input, sketches and actual bots. if so please do so.
_________________
~PH

[RedMaverickZero]

Medabots reminds me a lot of Pokemon. I actually liked Metabots towards the end when they wrapped everything up. But anyways. An idea for robots. You should make the bots different elements. So the player can adjust to make a strategy. Here are some suggestions for elemental bots based off animals:
Water: Shark, Octopus, Jellyfish... you get the picture for it...
Nature: Raccoon, squirrel
Earth: Mole, Armadillo (hehehe, Eggie)
Lightning: -Blank on that one-
Fire:
Ice: Polar Bear, penguins, seals, walruses...
Flying: Eagle, falcon... etc. etc.

Okay by now you get the picture. Well, if you do it like this you can make the attacks a lot easier, and the concept sounds actually pretty cool. Since you said it's for "you guys" I just thought I'd give my opinion. But if you made a flying type bot you could make them invulnerable to Earth bots. Well, it's your game, here's some ideas. Enjoy.
_________________
---------------Projects----
Mr.Triangle's Maze: 70%
Takoyaki Surprise: 70%

[Setu_Firestorm]

Planethunter, I got your PM. I'll start working on that as soon as I finish the handful of tracks I have left for Purgatory. (only like 5 tracks.)
_________________


Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgerpowell
Newgrounds: http://setu-firestorm.newgrounds.com

[planethunter]

will do setu.

I have all the elemental types done, and the balances too.
I have an idea on how the player develops their own strategy
too. Just the actual bots, that's all I want.

As time goes on I'm becoming increasingly more tempted to use an alteranative battle system... I have ideas for over 20 different types,
but the standard bs uses only 8. Bigger hero pictures would be swell
because I'd like to include every kind of bot I can think of, from dragons
to dogs. The enemies in the standard bs are more like statues, I would be
good to change their picture to weak, or even an attacking or hurt animation in a battle. with all these options in mind, I guess I'll just have to either find a way round it or code a bs by myself.
_________________
~PH

[Rpeanut]

Suggestion: unno, how about a worm to fill into the lightnening category, lol lighhtening worm. The slowest bot from the fastest category.
_________________
...eh?

[planethunter]

the worm type is actually one of the starter bots. although slow moving it has thick armour and jaws lol, yes pinching jaws. All three starter bots are balanced out so no one type is superior. Think of my game as one huge game of Paper-sissors-stone, no one type is better than all others.
_________________
~PH