Print

•   Powered by SMF 2.0 RC4 | SMF © 2006–2010, Simple Machines LLC  

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

• • XHTML 
  • RSS 
  • WAP2 

[Verdite]

Verdite Offline

Verdite says,

I'd like to add mental and body fatigue to my game, so I would like to have a few extra statuses to let the player know how Ultorc (Rathmor) is feeling. Would it be possible to have a status that has no screen effects, and just use the text in the menu and an icon on screen?

If its not possible to create a new status, then could it be possible to rename an existing status effect, and remove its screen effect? I know that you can edit the on-screen icon for the effect in the data/menu.

What I would like to add is...
Fatigued
Exhausted
Critical

Author of Moratheia. Lurker, for now.

[Holey Moley]

Holey Moley Website System Administrator Offline

look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology

Holey Moley says,

With do_st it would be pretty simple to support additional text messages. I don't know if player's would welcome them though. That would only be helpful to let the player know their equipment is about to break I reckon.

There is limited space in the Status menu screen.

What do these bad statuses mean?

If you just want popup style messages there is already a discussion thread for that, and it would be easier to do, if you can generate them in your events.


PS: I don't really know about the graphical icons that come with SOM. They are Japanese, and no one has produced suitable replacements. So I'm not inclined to want to mess with them. They can't be textual. They'd have to be universal pictographs. I think they are probably a dead end. Personally I'd rather have the mouse cursor change when inflicted if there were good icons.

Generally if you want to replace the effects, it's probably best to think in terms of translating the names to something else, and choosing an effect that is already close to what you want to do. Then adjust the way the effect works with whatever extensions are available, but the fundamental properties of the effect would not change.

More built in effects could be added eventually if there is agreement on what is called for. But there's no time for that right now. Your best bet in the short term is popup messages if that will suit you. Fatigued, Exhausted, Critical don't much strike me as statuses as such anyway. Seem more like popup alerts if you ask me.


EDITED: Also note that do_st doesn't use the icons in data/menu. If the meaning of the gauge changes an icon might be appropriate, otherwise you get the text status display if you want it. I recommend do_st.

Formerly "Holy Diver" ("Holy") [Holy will be back as soon as I'm back to full form]

[Holey Moley]

Holey Moley Website System Administrator Offline

look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology

Holey Moley says,

You know, I just remembered an idea I had just days ago that is the right way to think about this I think.

I thought about it while translating SOM_PRM actually. Or was reminded of it. BTW, I made room for up to 15 status effects on the item page.

But I just want to speak on the icons.

I think a game like Dark Souls is often very much ruined by these kinds of icons. They are distracting. And the effects that you see applied to the player model are even more distracting, obnoxious basically, to the point that you avoid beneficial equipment or whatever because it has this cosmetic side effect that ruins the game for you. It's basically like a negative effect, just as bad as items that curse you or turn the lights out.


Anyway I can't speak on the player model effect end. In general I just don't think auras or whatever should be used unless there is some obvious reason for doing so. And if so there should definitely be an option.


But on the icon side. What I think needs to be done, is each icon should be a letter in a font. So that authors can pick an icon from a font with symbols, or in the case of SOM just use Japanese characters. Each icon would be able to specify its own font, so that you don't have to be restricted to one font.

But what is more interesting I think would be to make a custom font, just for Sword of Moonlight, that doesn't have letters, but just useful symbols. Like a dingbat font. Then there could be more than one version of this font mapping for different styles...

I think just a monochrome font would be so more more eye pleasing. But also it can scale well, and could be used for the function overlay too. The same way the Dark Souls games use symbols in the statistics page. Because to be honest, some concepts don't even translate naturally into English, even though you know what they mean exactly, there is just no word, and English is not an abstract "know what I mean" language like Japanese... never mind the stumbles that other languages might represent.

I find the 3 "physical" affinities especially confounding to communicate. The best I've come up with is Edged, Blunted, and Pointed Attack. I mean even the word Attack is not really appropriate, because we are talking about a kind of touch/impact or whatever, or how two shapes interfere with one another. Probably symbols, like Demon's Souls and Dark Souls use is as elegant a form of expression there could be in this case.

But regardless of that, and what the player prefers, when you talk about arraying icons up in the persistent on screen HUD, the only thing I would personally find completely acceptable I think would be symbolic fonts...

Like a skull for Curse, maybe pseudo sign language would work very well. Like a person from the waist up, and from the waist down in the case of equipment damage indicators. Plus with fonts you could colorize them pink/red or whatever as damage becomes severe. But anyway, like a person shape covering its eyes for blindness and so on. With contrast the outlines would be very evident.

Like a straightjacket pose for paralysis. And a half in/out version for half-paralysis (Slow or whatever... I like to think of it as becoming free from paralysis, dizzy, or slogging through muck or spider webs for instance)

Maybe arms crossed like a mummy for poison. Symbolizing skull and bones.

The curse one could look like a skeleton Halloween costume, like Voodoo.

Then you could have the ills on the left, and equipment damage indicators on the right.

Formerly "Holy Diver" ("Holy") [Holy will be back as soon as I'm back to full form]