Sunday, September 22, 2013

9/22/13 - Rings Defined

I finally figured out what sort of rings Spike will be able to acquire throughout the game. Below are eight different rings each with their own magical properties. There may or may not be a ninth mystery ring [a quest item], but I wont go into detail about that one ;)


Rings described from left to right / top to bottom:

Heart Ring:
Slowly reginerates your health, at the expense of your magic meter.

Green Orb Ring:
Slowly reginerates your magic.

Blue Orb Ring:
Reduces the use of your air meter by 1/2, enabling you to swim beneath water or lava twice as long.

Silver Diamond Ring:
Increases your luck in finding bombs / arrows / health hearts / and magic jars

Shield Ring:
Decreases the damage you receive from enemies by 1/2 (not effective on spikes, drowning, or roasting in lava (when you dont have the fire charm)

Morning Star Ring:
Decreases your magic usage by 1/2

Mirror Ring:
Reveals hidden paths and ghost blocks [at the expense of your magic meter.]

Gold Diamond Ring:
Increases your luck in finding coinage (money)

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Again, let me remind you all, you can only have one ring equipped at a time. So there's no mixing of the varying powers.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

9-12-13 - Inventory Screen Preview

Its high time that I should post another update. And show off some progress :P


Its still a bit early in development and its the reason I havent posted any updates in the past week. This has been one tedious bit of the game to work on, having to integrate an actual inventory screen to the game. And while it looks good now, its still missing quiet a few important elements which I may start updating on since I've revealed it here just now.

A few things to go over here...

The top bar is the actual in-game hud bar which I've also added to the inventory screen (perhaps the laziest thing I've done in the game so far instead of just adding a proper stats panel :P ) Here you can view your HP which is displayed in the visual form of hearts. Then you can view your current fire breathing power (first little window next to the hearts) and then eventually your current item-in-use in the second little window (not yet properly integrated) After the item and power windows you see your current MP useage. I've explained how this works in another blog post, with the use of a proper magic meter and then the magic container jars which acts as your max-magic increase system (you collect these magic jars throughout the game each one increasing your maximum magic usage)

Moving away from the game's hud bar and to the Fire Power panel, you see your five major fire powers that your able to select here on the inventory screen (as well as toggle through them on the game via the L and R trigger buttons and the keyboard buttons 1 through 5). This panel is pretty self explanatory and is currently the most functioning of the current three panels.

Moving down to the next panel, this is your Items panel.  Here you can see all the major equipment type items that you'll be able to collect and use throughout the entire game. I'll go over this more in depth in another update (but I suppose you can guess what most of these items are and maybe even have a vague idea on how they work). There are five jars that you can collect, used to store certain potions and other things (I left one jar out just to show what the empty jar slot looks like... simple cosmetics, that.). The question Mark item is a placeholder for your quest items, which will not be function-able in Demo #5 (quest items as in the items that you collect from certain npc's, take them to other npcs to collect the next item and so on... Ex: most Zelda games, Donkey Kong Country 3, etc)

That last little panel just displays the Ability Charms that you've collected. I've explained how these little charms worked in another blog post and I think I've also explained that you dont have to equip them. Once you've collected them, they auto equip themselves and your able to use their functions instantly.

That's all I've got for now. I'll post more updates on this development in later days. As always, stay tuned!


Sunday, September 1, 2013

9-1-13 - Magic Rings

Three rings for the Alicorns in their great halls.
Seven for the Earthly Ones in their wooden barns.
Nine for the Pegasi in their cloudy lofts.
Four for the Unicorns in their Magic Circles.
One Ring for the Dark Lord on his Evil Throne.
In the world beneath Equestria where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them.
One Ring to bring them all and in the darknmess bind them.
In the world beneath Equestria where the shadows lie.

lol, just kidding. None of that has anything at all to do with this game. 9_9;

But there are a few different magic rings to collect and each one has its particular use.

Magic rings in this game are used to increase luck, whether it be for collecting certain objects such as magic crystals (used to replentish your MP) or heart crystals (for replentishing your HP)

Or they can be used as a regen item (health or magic slowly regenerates)

You can only have one ring equiped at a time and as to hows many types of rings there are and how they will all work, its a system I'm still working on.

I like the idea of having a ring that increases your luck as well as having other rings used for regeneration and other things, but its a system that needs to be perfectly balanced for this sort of game. Perhaps I should study up more on such things from the Castlevania games. :P

If anybody has any suggestions for this system, please let me know something! I'll actually be making another such post once this system is all figured out. So stay tuned!