Loot Pursuit (Zelda/Grandia/Mario hybrid RPG) 9/29 update

0 favourites
From the Asset Store
Perfect, complete, easy to use to use, out-of-the-box inventory system
  • Most recent update September 29:

    Loot Pursuit is a lighthearted, humorous simultaneous turn-based RPG with a battle system sort of similar to Grandia where you can mess with your opponent's actions and has an environment inspired by Zelda and Mario that has a strong influence in the battles.

    It's a little difficult to explain, so I've got some gifs! The game is still very early in development so I haven't nailed down all the mechanics yet, but this is some of what I've got so far:

    One click to attack

    Dash attack to hit the enemy harder and further

    Hit enemies against walls for extra damage

    Instead of only having stats determine the outcome of an incoming attack...

    ...players have multiple options, such as hitting the enemy first...

    ...dodging to put the enemy in a position where it can be hit against a wall...

    ...or one character can protect the other.

    Spin attack to hit multiple enemies

    Not so good against singular opponents...

    ...unless...

    Traps can hit enemies too! Use them to your advantage!

    The design philosophy is this: I love turn-based battle systems, but think there's a lot of untapped potential. Strategy RPGs add unit location and attack range to the mix, but I don't think they go far enough. It seems like all the innovations developers make aren't what I want in such a system... so I'm making it myself.

    I'm trying to make the abilities have multiple uses and strategic benefits in different situations. Using a spin attack next to a wall is just the beginning.

    It's designed to be a small game so I don't get in over my head with more than I can manage. It's got plenty of potential for sequels or using the battle engine in another game with different characters if I want to do more with it.

    I actually got a previous version of this game about 90% complete a while ago, but it was very different and was the first game I ever tried to make, so I made two main mistakes with it - the first is it was too complex for a first game and my code became utterly unmanageable so eventually everything I fixed broke something else. The second was that there wasn't enough variety to the gameplay. When I attempted to make Shards as a video game I tried to fix both those problems, but I went too far in the other direction while designing it, and the gameplay turned out to be too technical to be fun.

    With Loot Pursuit version 2, I'm solving that problem by this time not trying to make such an accurate simulation of battle, and instead am building upon tried and true game mechanics.

    One of the big factors in my decision to redesign Loot Pursuit rather than use a different setting is that I already have most of the character sprites needed for it, which means a lot less hand usage will be required for the graphics (my hands are injured, so having most of the character animations already made helps a lot).

    Injured hands? How am I making this then? Aside from the graphics, about 99.9% of the work has been done with a head tracker. It's too clumsy to draw with, but I can use C2!

    The primary target platform is PC and it's intended to be played with a mouse (or head tracker like mine), but I hope to be able to put it on mobile and maybe Xbox one if I can figure out how to get it to play well with a controller instead of a mouse or touchscreen (the interface in the screenshot is an early version of the mobile design, I haven't decided the best way for the PC UI to work yet). I'd like to put it on mac and linux, but they depend on the state of nw.js which will hopefully have its kinks ironed out by then.

    Something I've also learned is that even if something seems like it would be fun to play in your head, it can be different than imagined when made real. Because of that, I am currently committing only to a prototype to find out how it plays. If it's fun, then I'll keep working on it.

  • Glad its still in the works.

    Wish there was a way to fix the artifacts on Sprite font.

  • There is, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

  • This project has been around for a good while now... it's awesome that you're still working on it Gifs look pretty cool as well - combat already looks fun ^.^

    ~Sol

  • The battle looks fun! You got a reaction time for the counter/dodge/defend a friend?

  • Simple answer: the reaction time for most of the game is the player's own reaction time, and can be made easier by reducing the battle speed.

    Detailed answer: the basic gameplay loop is this:

    • Game auto-pauses when a character is ready
    • Player inputs command
    • Character immediately performs the command
    • Character pauses for a moment

    Early in the game, the player will get the ability to interrupt the pause after an action and enter a command before the game would normally auto-pause.

    The upside is getting to do the next action sooner, the downside is it increases the stamina use rate so abilities will use more SP than they normally do. All actions require stamina, so interrupting the pause repeatedly will quickly tire a character. Use too much, and they won't have any for when they need it to react to an incoming attack. Waiting for the full pause brings it back down again at a rate that I haven't decided yet and will likely be upgradeable.

    However, there are times where it would benefit the player to use a lot of SP quickly, so I've also got a combo system implemented so players can queue up commands and have the characters do them one immediately after the other.

    Another benefit of doing it this way is instead of just selecting a combo from a list, it means the player gets to be creative and come up with their own combos from the abilities they already have.

    The game is also going to have the ability to easily change the battle speed for people to choose what they're comfortable with - people with better reaction times can crank it up, but they can put the game into slow-motion when things get crazy like when fighting against a swarm.

    I've already got most of what I've described working, and I'll be posting some gifs of the combo system in action after I show some of the other things I've got implemented too.

  • None of the images in the first post are visible to me.... :/

  • Aaaah! Got it. Thanks for the explanation I look forward to seeing more of the game!

  • Colludium Is it still happening? My only idea is my web host might have been down when you looked.

  • Arima - it looks excellent!

    My web filters were preventing access to the images.

  • Got lotsa new features implemented!

    In this one I've consolidated all the individual HP numbers that appear with each hit - with the units moving around so much and so many of them appearing, it's too difficult to tell what's actually happened, so now with each hit it updates the one above them instead.There's also HP/SP bars and a ring shows the character's target. I'm going to improve upon that and make a line connecting the two as well to make it more easily readable.

  • Try Construct 3

    Develop games in your browser. Powerful, performant & highly capable.

    Try Now Construct 3 users don't see these ads
  • A question/thought came to my mind. Have you considered having lines or arrows/other pointy things that show the direction where the target moves after you've hit them? It would help aiming for collateral damage. The length of the line could expand as the characters grow, if you have a growth system.

  • Yep! I've already started on it but my first attempt wasn't very clear. I'm redesigning it to be much more readable.

  • I have been following this project since it started if you can believe it or not! And I am talking waay back! Glad to see some awesome progress being made. Looking forward to seeing more!!

  • Jerementor Awesome! Thanks for the interest, I've got lots more stuff on the way!

Jump to:
Active Users
There are 1 visitors browsing this topic (0 users and 1 guests)