[2:05pm] jetrel2: DDR: the other thing I'd like to do is add about 2 additional mana abilities for frogatto, like I'd mentioned. One I've got pegged to be a ground-following "acid spew".
[2:05pm] jetrel2: the other, I have no idea.
[2:06pm] jetrel2: There are a lot of possibilities.
[2:07pm] jetrel2: I'm a bit remiss to do a basic damage ability - it might be very interesting to do some indirect ability
[2:10pm] ActionJackalope (~ActionJac@205.178.39.125) left the chat room. (Quit: ActionJackalope)
[2:10pm] jetrel2: I'd also like to have a shop in tempo-village; I'm thinking it ought to be easy to stock it with a few pretty simple purchaseable upgrades (we really want to hold off on doing purchases which require an inventory screen until 1.5).
[2:12pm] jetrel2: What I'm thinking right now is: a medium mana-talisman, between the two existing ones, and a mana-bar extension which gives you a deeper mana pool to draw from.
[2:13pm] jetrel2: Finally, one idea I'm batting around but haven't fully committed to in 1.4 is of having "super attacks" for your basic abilities.
[2:15pm] jetrel2: I've decided the best way to do these is to introduce a new kind of ammo, because this gives us a great consumable to sell in shops, which won't yet require an inventory screen, and also it's a *super* addition to have as monster drops - to give players *some* reason to farm enemies (like the missiles in cave story).
[2:16pm] jetrel2: We genuinely do want one or two extrinsic motivations to go around killing enemies; intrinsically I find them pretty fun to kill, but some extrinsic one would be nice to have.
[2:16pm] jetrel2: The intrinsic ones I think are just that they're fun to kill, and also that more troublesome ones often are good to "get out of the way".
[2:18pm] jetrel2: A third possible upgrade for the forest shop would be an "acquirable item magnet" - shantae did this and I thought it was a pretty clever trick; if you walked within 3-4 tiles of an item you could pick up, it would get pulled towards you like you had your own gravitic attraction to it.
[2:18pm] jetrel2: It would be a big convenience upgrade for mana cubes and such.
[2:29pm] DDR: Agreed.
[2:30pm] DDR: How about an ability, an attack, that when used freezes all enemies on screen for a few seconds?
[2:31pm] jetrel2: DDR: that sounds like an excellent "super mode" of some power
[2:31pm] DDR: Mosquitoes rain down to the ground, eg. :P
[2:31pm] jetrel2: actually
[2:31pm] DDR: But it doesn't actually kill them, they defrost.
[2:31pm] jetrel2: actually, that's kind of a rad idea for a lighting ability? here's a thought..
[2:33pm] jetrel2: We could include some lightning ability which deals "electrical" damage; the catch would be that most enemies would gain a special-case response to electricity that would actually cause them to state-change to their thrown state.
[2:33pm] jetrel2: So maybe on the short-range, this lightning ability would work like in kirby and do a short-range area of effect around frogatto
[2:33pm] DDR: oo, I like.
[2:34pm] jetrel2: But on the long range, it would "shock" everything onscreen; doing a kinda piddly amount of damage, but stunning everything
[2:34pm] jetrel2: so e.g. all sorts of fliers would fall out of the air when you did it.
[2:34pm] DDR: btw, if we wanted to do 'ice' I think one could whip up a /mean/ shader effect for it. And make a resizable ice-cube object.
[2:35pm] jetrel2: Yeah
[2:35pm] ? DDR nods.
[2:35pm] jetrel2: Ice is a great idea, but we need to put it off till later because of potential issues with shader support.
[2:35pm] DDR: Yeah. Hence the ice-cube object... it just wouldn't refract without shaders.
[2:36pm] jetrel2: Yeah.
[2:36pm] Maketwo: 3D is so boring so I made a 2D raytracer: http://xob.kapsi.fi/~makegho/trash/flatland03.png
[2:36pm] DDR: If we can arrange for shaders to just not happen if they're not supported, it would work.
[2:37pm] Maketwo: (joking of course, it's part of analysis for understanding another problem)
[2:37pm] DDR: Maketwo: I'm doing that too, but mine only shoots rays downward, through the plane.
[2:37pm] jetrel2: Another idea, though more troublesome, is re-doing the "slow time" power - the question lies in how to trigger it.
[2:38pm] DDR: When, and only when, the player holds the attack key with the slo-mo ability on?
[2:38pm] jetrel2: Since the most sensible way would be to have it be a channeled ability (c.f. the "staff of somaria" in zelda").
[2:38pm] jetrel2: DDR: yeah, see that would preclude any other attacks. :(
[2:38pm] DDR: Yes.
[2:38pm] DDR: Plus, there gets to be a lot of abilities to switch through.
[2:39pm] jetrel2: It leads to a totally natural "super version" where time completely stops, though.
jetrel2: DDR: regarding other abilities…
[3:37pm] jetrel2: I’m thinking the super-versions for the existing abilities? we have several possibilities:
[3:38pm] jetrel2: Fireball: 1] could be a “ring of fire” which expands from frogatto, filling ~ 1/3-1/2 of the screen, acting as a local “screen clearing” ability 2] could also be a very deadly direct shot foward (which of course passes through terrain)
[3:40pm] jetrel2: Energy Shot: 1] could be an omni-directional “flurry” of shots in all directions 2] could be the aforementioned “super shot” 3] could be a sudden “zap” to everything on the screen
[3:41pm] jetrel2: Homing shot: 1] could be the old dorky “ring of projectiles” around the player, acting as a shield
[3:42pm] DDR: The homing shot also lends itself to simply homing in on multiple targets. More interesting alternatives might be a very fast, long-lived homing shot that didn’t die on contact, or a steady stream of homing shots.
[3:42pm] jetrel2: 2] could be a special homing shot that doesn’t die right when it hits an enemy, but instead persists and keeps doing damage over time, potentially hitting multiple
[3:43pm] zookeeper (~lmsnie@wesnoth/developer/zookeeper) left the chat room. (Ping timeout: 256 seconds)
[3:43pm] jetrel2: 3] another idea is to have a whole flurry of “mini” homing shots, evenly distributed amongst all the different enemies on the screen.
[3:43pm] DDR: And suddenly, no more mosquitoes.
[3:44pm] jetrel2: Well, this would differ in that it would be fairly effective against a single enemy as well.
[3:44pm] DDR: oo, steerable homing shot
[3:44pm] jetrel2: Steerable is a cool, but difficult idea.
[3:45pm] DDR: Mm, could be pretty easy… if we had a way to pause the player.
[3:45pm] jetrel2: We’d balance it so the electric zap was more powerful against some enemy types than the multi-homing shot
[3:45pm] DDR: Steering-wise, all we have to do is read level.player.ctrl_left and ctrl_right.
[3:45pm] jetrel2: i.e. if you attack flying enemies and toss them all to the ground (and into water or something), it’d be more powerful.
[3:46pm] DDR: And make level.player not respond to those controls.
[3:46pm] jetrel2: But if you are just facing a few enemies, the homing one would be better.
[3:46pm] DDR: Perhaps possible via a set event handler swallowing the event?
[3:46pm] ? DDR nods.
[3:46pm] jetrel2: Yeah, the problem lies in “make player not respond to controls” - and it’s not an implementation problem, it’s a gameplay problem.
[3:47pm] jetrel2: I.e. it’s kinda horrible to freeze the player in most circumstances.
[3:47pm] jetrel2: I’ve seen powers like this in e.g. kirby, and they’re pretty much a useless novelty.
[3:48pm] DDR: Hm.
[3:49pm] DDR: OK, scrap that then.
