Here is a spell combat and special effects choreography system I'm putting together for an upcoming release. This system will go into an update for CastleGuard2 as well as an upcoming spell duel game I'm working on. I guess it also shows one of the new enemies for CastleGuard2, the mischievous and ornery Grog. Enjoy! See you soon
Pretty cool stuff. Reminds me of the PS2 graphics in those old school Final Fantasy series (especially when you do a summon). One comment though. There is a fair amount of detail while casting the spell, but the projectile of the spell itself was over in like less than a second lol.. Maybe could make it look more like the fireball that appeared while casting it. I only saw a little red ball after it was cast.
I am adjusting the timings of the trails and emitters on the fireball itself, it takes too long for them to instantiate and at close range it's over quickly. It doesn't help that they move so fast either But you have a good critical eye and I appreciate that! The engine I've built for spells is XML based, so it's easy for me to create new effects and tweak things outside of pure code.
And another spell design finished! Now added the ability to manifest shapes and change their materials on the fly, for all the various shield/buff/debuff spells I need to make. Vid: http://screencast.com/t/sPN8ByEvQO9
Spell Duel Gameplay Design I've been honing in on some gameplay mechanics for spell dueling, and I think I am getting closer to what I want to be able to play. It's going to be turn based and focuses around the concepts of building up spell energy and using a strategy to take down your opponent, while maintaining an active defense yourself. I have broken up spell effects into a series of pieces. Right now I have Offensive and Defensive type spells, and spell modifiers that can be used with some spells. I can either leave the player to assemble their spell from the menus, or I can pre-assemble the spell components into spells and do a card-game style of gameplay with a hand of cards, like Magic. This has gone through many pages of my notebook but should be close to workable. I arrived at these by thinking carefully about what I would want to be able to do as a player, and what would be cool to see done. The player will have a multi-level menu to choose from. Attack (Opens up Offensive) Defend (Opens up Defensive) From there, the player will pick a spell. One tap to select (and a description will come up). Double tap to continue. If the spell has any options, they will show up next, like the spell modifiers. If the energy cost of the spell is too high and the player does not have enough gathered energy, the extra energy needed to cast the spell will come out of their health Every spell will also have a chance of misfiring. Offensive: Disrupt: Destroys a lingering effect/summoned thing Blast: Projectile Goodness Bleed: Secondary direct damage (can linger) Drain: Drains life from target, gives to caster (can linger) Reflect: Reflects damage taken back at the caster (can linger) Defensive: Spell Sink: Counters the next spell targeting the caster (can linger) Summon: Wall or Pet (and others) Shield: Reduces damage taken (can linger) Spike: Increases damage output (can linger) Heal: Heals some damage (can linger) Modifiers: Penetrate: Ignores some amount of shielding Magnify: Increases damage or healing output Prolong: Increases duration of linger Delay: Pay spell cost now, spell goes off when delay has elapsed Focus: Decreases the chance of the spell misfiring I'd also really like to work in the concept of spell chaining or Combo cards, which let you cast multiple spells. However at this time I don't have a category for those. Maybe if I added some other abilities like Dodge or Feint or Taunt as playable actions... then a combo card would have a cost like everything else but allow you to cast two spells in the same turn... if you save up enough spell points! Players will have the option to choose a bonus/penalty. Examples: Intense: Player's spells have less of a chance of misfiring, but on average do less damage Brutal: Player's spells nudge towards the more powerful variety, but misfire more often Hardy: Player begins the match with more than normal health but his spells also cost more to cast Heir: Player gathers an additional energy every round, but has incurable sickness and loses one health every round Once I get these rules into a data format, it should be about a month to develop the game. I am aiming for single player, same-device multiplayer, and internet-based multiplayer modes.
A new thread to keep track of dev updates had been started here: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=19699
The RPG that the system is going into (CastleGuard2) has movement. The system itself was so fun to work with that I developed a separate turn-based game using it, and it's almost done (one more week until submission). I will then get back to work on the main RPG project.
