A Valley Without Wind Alpha #12 -- Side View, Undergrounds, and Other New Mechan

[Nalgas]

Another thing on the combat change is the idea of limited use scrolls. I really hate powerful, limited use items. In nearly every RPG I play, whenever I get some rare or limited item, I tend to save it because I don't want to waste it because there may be a more important time to use it. The problem is that the more important time never comes because I always think there will be more important time later on. In Final Fantasy, I never use elixirs or even ethers because of this. In Pokemon, I never use the legendary Pokemon because I fear I'll screw it up and teach it the wrong moves or not properly EV train it (you may not have played the Pokemon games but they have some real surprise depth to the RPG portion of training that really is for the adults who play it). In Elder scrolls games, they have scrolls with spells that I never use because they are limited. Maybe this is more my problem than the games fault though. Also, it may be better in a game where you craft these items because I can craft more but then it falls into the problem of not wanting to waste resources crafting these limited items. I really don't know where AVWW will fall on this point.

I have very strong hoarding tendencies in some of those games, too, but it's possible to balance them properly to get around that, somewhat.  One thing that may help is that it sounds like all of those types of items will be crafted, so you'll be the one choosing how many to make (to the exclusion of other items, presumably, so you can have a ton of ethers if that's what you really want, at the cost of not so many scrolls or traps or whatever).

In an infinite game like this, something else that helps is that you just accumulate so many of every resource over time.  In Minecraft and Terraria, I find myself eventually just using up limited resources because they take up so much space to store them.  Sure, I have a finite number of arrows, but they're already using up eight slots in my inventory, so I should probably start doing something with them at some point, because this is just getting silly.

Additionally, as you start getting to be a higher level, you'll get higher level materials which make higher level scrolls/healing items/traps/whatever, which can be a decent incentive to hurry up and use the lower level ones you've been letting pile up before they become completely obsolete.  If all of those things are properly balanced, even people like you and me can be convinced to use our precious consumable resources.  If they're not properly balanced, I'm sure plenty of us will keep poking them until they are.  Heh.

[x4000]

I feel that this 2D sidescroller view limits exploration. I mean, I do love the Metroid games (mainly Fusion and Super Metroid but others as well, but not the 3D Prime games for some reason) and Castlevania (well I've only really played SotN) and they do have some fun exploration but, I think a lot of this fun comes from the fact that you gain new abilities to explore (Screwball, morphball, ice beam etc...) that made backtracking and being able to explore new places in old areas fun. Would the Metroid game really be as much fun if Samus didn't lose all of her powers at the start of the game? Maybe that isn't really a fair comparison to AVWW but I feel that it will become more like that after X amount of hours playing were you aren't really getting something new, but maybe I am really far off here.

I think you'll be pleased with what we put together.  The fact that you haven't been satisfied by other, somewhat similar games is actually good news to me, to be honest.  If you were satisfied with them, you wouldn't have any reason to like what we're doing.  We're not in the business of making clones of anything, not Metroid or otherwise, and if someone else had done it exactly the way we're going to do it, we wouldn't be doing it.

Anyway, one thing that the Metroidvania games don't have that we do is 3D exploration.  They only include exploration on two axes.  That's never been the case for AVWW, which previously had a Z axis that was down into the ground or up into buildings.  Now the Z axis for AVWW is going "inward" into slices of buildings and the underground, while at the same time having enormous distances that can be traveled in the down-into-the-earth and across-the-surface directions.

And that's all just in one region, before you even start talking about the world map.  So... there are some things in common with a Metroidvania game, but really there's a lot here that's never been done elsewhere.  We'll be showing that off increasingly as we get more and more of that implemented; Erik and I now regret not having shown more of the undergrounds in the past video, but I suppose that's life.  We'll make sure to show more in the next one.

For some reason, the above doesn't seem to apply (for me at least) for 3Dish games. Dungeon crawler type games, Titian Quest, Torchlight, Champions of Norrath, have randomly generated dungeons that are fun to explore even if you can get to all the areas without having to gain new powers to do so. I really do feel that this has to do with the perspective you are playing in (and I do play these games in a top down perspective).

I don't think it has to do with the perspective at all.  I've played and enjoyed games in both perspectives, including side view games without that sort of progression.  I think it has to do with level design, plain and simple.  In other words, our level design is not like a typical Metroidvania game, because those are hand-crafted specifically to emphasize movement-ability increases and backtracking.  It's a cool model, but not something we want to do here; excessive backtracking is the last thing we'd want to encourage.

Maybe I'm wrong about AVWW's exploration and it will be fun like Terraria's and also hopefully AVWW will have more lasting appeal because there will be a lot more other goals than just exploring.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the time beta rolls around, but time will tell!  I'm confident that the game will speak for itself by then.

I also feel a little sad that it is going to be a magic only combat. I like the idea before that you could use swords and maybe make a sword that shoots fireballs as well. You don't really like close combat? How about become a mage with tons of spells or go stock up on guns and shoot you foes from afar, possible making you gun shoot fire or ice bullets too. Again, maybe this change will be alright when I see more and if there is a huge variety in the spells.

Huge variety = yes.  Also, we're not removing any mechanics, it's all a visual thing.  So the effects that you could get with swords, or a gatling gun, or whatever else will be represented as magic instead.  It simplifies certain things, and mainly is a boon to the art.  But with the switch to magic-only we haven't ditched any gameplay mechanics if that makes you feel any better.

Another thing on the combat change is the idea of limited use scrolls. I really hate powerful, limited use items. In nearly every RPG I play, whenever I get some rare or limited item, I tend to save it because I don't want to waste it because there may be a more important time to use it. The problem is that the more important time never comes because I always think there will be more important time later on. In Final Fantasy, I never use elixirs or even ethers because of this. In Pokemon, I never use the legendary Pokemon because I fear I'll screw it up and teach it the wrong moves or not properly EV train it (you may not have played the Pokemon games but they have some real surprise depth to the RPG portion of training that really is for the adults who play it). In Elder scrolls games, they have scrolls with spells that I never use because they are limited. Maybe this is more my problem than the games fault though. Also, it may be better in a game where you craft these items because I can craft more but then it falls into the problem of not wanting to waste resources crafting these limited items. I really don't know where AVWW will fall on this point.

I never use elixers in FF, either.  And ethers only in the few games where you can buy those in shops, and those rarely even then.  Here's the thing that separates AVWW from them: whenever you get a new raw gem, you also get gem dust as a byproduct.  You can then make limited-use scrolls and traps with that dust that you got essentially for free.  That stuff has the same tier as the gems do, so that means that within about 5 hours those are all going to be underpowered.  So there's really a 5 hour timeframe where you probably want to use those scrolls and traps in, because after that you'll have a much better set of scrolls and traps that you also get as a byproduct of having more raw gems.

The problems with elixers are:
1. That they are excellent from the start of the game all the way to the end.
2. That they are extraordinarily rare, and impossible to gather more of if you run out.
3. That you have no way of knowing how many, if any, more elixers you will ever get, or when you will get them.

Our system doesn't have any of those problems.  I've seen our sort of system work before in the ancient game Demon Stalkers, with its death scrolls.  It works really, really well when done properly.  And I hate elixers just as much as you, so no worries.

One thing I noticed in the video that you didn't seem to address (or I just missed it) is that the characters now have varied colored clothing. Care to elaborate on that? (how did you manage to do that, how much variance will we see, etc...)

Oh yeah, there was too much stuff changing at once, thanks for reminding me of this.  I know there are other small things like this that I also forgot.  The way that I managed this was by finding an HSV shader that someone else had created, and adapting it slightly to my uses.  So the shirt is rendered as a separate texture on top of the character, and then a single float is used to determine what the hue shift value is.  That lets us do the shift right on the GPU, it only requires pixel shader 2.0 (which is ancient), and it will failover to not using any hue shift at all if you have that old of a GPU (we're talking early 2000s here).

All of this accomplishes what diffuse colorization that is more standard cannot do in a pretty way, which is why I was opposed to colormasks before.  The difference is the HSV shader.  The range of colors it can do is every hue variation of whatever the base color is.  So that means that saturation and value aren't changing, but just the hue is.

Also, I noticed in this video, and maybe it was changed before but, I really like how you changed, on the world map, when new tiles are uncovered that they fade in now instead of swirling in. I think it looks much better.

Yeah, that was on feedback from folks on the videos, too.  I also really prefer it now, in the end, though I still resent the "looks like powerpoint" remarks a bit, heh.

[Nalgas]

Also, I noticed in this video, and maybe it was changed before but, I really like how you changed, on the world map, when new tiles are uncovered that they fade in now instead of swirling in. I think it looks much better.

Yeah, that was on feedback from folks on the videos, too.  I also really prefer it now, in the end, though I still resent the "looks like powerpoint" remarks a bit, heh.

If it'd been done on a full screen level instead of just the surrounding tiles, it might've looked more like a JRPG battle transition effect instead of a PowerPoint transition.  Speaking of transitions, I guess you kind of lost your "collapse into the ground/unfold from the ground" transition animation you were so pleased with with the change in view point.  Oh well.

[x4000]

I am sad I do not get my miniguns though (not really that sad)

Actually, we do have some "charge spells" that allow for the exact same gameplay, just with magic instead of the gun.  There isn't a specific spell that can do this, but rather its an effect you can get by plugging any offensive spell into certain kinds of crests.

My first impression was actually that of a old Turtles game i Played on the NES. Were you ran around on a map and could enter buildings and such, and fight stuff. In other words, very different then Zelda/FF6 on the SNES, but not bad at all.

Oh yeah, I remember the original TMNT game!  That was a really cool one, though I never had it.  I had TMNT2 and played that a lot more, although I missed the exploratory aspect that the other seemed to have.  But the combat in the first seemed more stiff, so that made the sequel preferred to me at the time, as a kid.

I think this looks fantastic!  I liked the angled perspective, but now having seen it side on, the whole style just seems to fit together better.  I can't wait to enter some of those lava areas, the detail and effects look amazing  

Thanks!  And, welcome to the forums!

A very interesting change, not at all what I had expected.

And now people see that we weren't jerking them around with that "big changes coming" post.  It's rare we feel like we need to do that, but this time we really did!

My biggest issue with Terraria is the extensive need for backtracking. Sure, I have found a magic item that lets me travel back to my base of operations; but each time I need to get down to the bottom of my excavation tunnels I  have to find a way back down my ant hill of tunnels. I’m glad to hear that you are evaluating different solutions to this problem, and trust that you will come up with some suitable solutions.  An idea that came up was a spell that, the first time you cast it stores the coordinates you’re at and after that it brings you back to those same coordinates.

Yep, that's a good idea, and we have a big stable of similar such ones.  Another thing in our favor is that this game already has several inherent fast-travel systems: the world map, and the surface regions.  The surface regions are quick enough that you can scoot across them without too much trouble most of the time, and as you go you see all these buildings that you can go into.  When you go into a building, no matter how long it takes you to get through it, it's much quicker to get back out and then you're right back on the surface, which is sort of a hub.  When you go into underground caverns, it works exactly the same.

If you're a compsci sort, then this will explain it even better: the entire game is a series of trees each rooted on an overworld map tile.  So the reason it takes you longer to explore inward than out is that you explore each leaf in turn, and there are many leaves, but then the path back from any leaf to the root node is only a couple of nodes long instead of dozens.  This is very different organization from the linear progression common to many games, and it's equally different from the "all one big contiguous world" design that is done in Minecraft (and I guess Terraria?  have not played, so not sure).

This general design makes the need for backtracking inherently less, but as we're playtesting and evolving this more we'll also be looking at various other fast-travel mechanics to go along with if need be.

A second concern is with the “meta third-dimension” when going thru underground doors and doors inside buildings (is this working in the same way?). That sound very interesting, but also as if this cross chunk traveling can get quite complex (which doors leads where). If that’s the case - which I hope it is, more exploration! – I think that Itchykobus idea is a map similar to that of Odin Sphere could be useful for showing the connections between the chunks you have explored.

We actually color-code the doors on the minimap by "has entered" and "has not entered," which helps quite a bit.  But also we're going to have the ability for you to leave magical markers of various colors so that you can leave brief little notes to yourself about where you want to go back to, etc.

And lastly, I hadn't thought of doing a Metroidvania-style cross-chunk map for each region, but the more I think about it the more I like it.  I've added that to my list of things to explore, as I think that visualizing those relationships would be a handy thing for players, as well as a handy thing for us to convey how large the exploration really is.  I don't think it needs to be involved with the minimap, but for making a region map to go with the chunk map, that would be really helpful, I think.  I still remember the pain of trying to memorize all the doors in BTTF2&3 on the NES.  Not a good game, that.

Anyway, that’s my 2c, hope it came across as constructive critique.

Lastly - just out of curiosity – the lava environments, being as hostile as you describe them, can you get dropped off by a windstorm in them? Or is there some game mechanic that prevents this from happening.

Lava flats, like desert, the junkyard, and the deep, are what we call "hostile" regions.  So as soon as you step onto their tile at all, if there is not a wind shelter or settlement there, you immediately get lost in the windstorm sense.  But the monsters aren't amped up unless the windstorm turn counter also happened to reach 0 at just that move onto that tile.

The simple way to avoid that is: never step on lava tiles if you don't want to go there!  They are always in really small patches, so it's really straightforward to just go around them.  Windstorms are like playing hot potato but with a counter that you can see, and the ability to slowly deliberate your moves.  You know exactly when the windstorm is going to strike, and each move you make brings it closer (or you can now hit spacebar to "wait" where you are for a windstorm counter turn, which is also helpful).  Anyway, so if you're strategic about where you put your wind shelters and you are deliberate in your overworld map movements, then there's no reason to ever get caught in a windstorm in areas that you've built up some.  You still will in new areas, but you can choose when and where, there.

Thanks for a great update, glad to see the progress made.  I eagerly await beta, possibly more so now than before

Awesome!

[x4000]

In Final Fantasy, I never use elixirs or even ethers because of this. In Pokemon, I never use the legendary Pokemon because I fear I'll screw it up and teach it the wrong moves or not properly EV train it

I asked the same question. He responded with asking for an amount of trust for balancing. I'm not sure how you achieve scarcity without hoarding, but I look forward to finding out. He understands the point at least, he references the right games that have those problems.

Interestingly, I never felt this way about any of the Castlevania games I've played. Or Zelda. So maybe the secret lies there.

I think I misunderstood this part of your question, or I would have addressed it more directly -- sorry.  I responded to c4sc4 more directly, but I'll also add that the secret is periodic renewal paired with periodic obsolescence.  If you only have so long that your consumables are actually worthwhile before they expire, and you only have so long before you can get more, it's no big deal.

Even in FF, there's no complaints about potions or even hi-potions, right?  That's not quite the model I'm really going with here, but my point is that it's only the ultra-rare stuff that is so problematic.

[x4000]

One thing that may help is that it sounds like all of those types of items will be crafted, so you'll be the one choosing how many to make (to the exclusion of other items, presumably, so you can have a ton of ethers if that's what you really want, at the cost of not so many scrolls or traps or whatever).

Exactly.

In an infinite game like this, something else that helps is that you just accumulate so many of every resource over time.  In Minecraft and Terraria, I find myself eventually just using up limited resources because they take up so much space to store them.  Sure, I have a finite number of arrows, but they're already using up eight slots in my inventory, so I should probably start doing something with them at some point, because this is just getting silly.

Well, sort of, but that won't really happen here because you'll want to have the latest-tier stuff or close.  In terms of consumables, I mean.

Additionally, as you start getting to be a higher level, you'll get higher level materials which make higher level scrolls/healing items/traps/whatever, which can be a decent incentive to hurry up and use the lower level ones you've been letting pile up before they become completely obsolete.

Right, this part is exactly it.

If all of those things are properly balanced, even people like you and me can be convinced to use our precious consumable resources.  If they're not properly balanced, I'm sure plenty of us will keep poking them until they are.  Heh.

I have no doubt of that, and in fact count on it.

[x4000]

Also, I noticed in this video, and maybe it was changed before but, I really like how you changed, on the world map, when new tiles are uncovered that they fade in now instead of swirling in. I think it looks much better.

Yeah, that was on feedback from folks on the videos, too.  I also really prefer it now, in the end, though I still resent the "looks like powerpoint" remarks a bit, heh.

If it'd been done on a full screen level instead of just the surrounding tiles, it might've looked more like a JRPG battle transition effect instead of a PowerPoint transition.  Speaking of transitions, I guess you kind of lost your "collapse into the ground/unfold from the ground" transition animation you were so pleased with with the change in view point.  Oh well.

Ah, yeah, another thing I forgot to mention (sooo many things changed).  I did keep the general logic for those sorts of transitions, but they now do a general fade-in on all objects instead of the collapsing.  With the side view the collapsing just looking incredibly terrible.  It was probably iffy even from top down.  But the collapsing-down effect is still there for objects and entities that die, though, and that still looks cool.


Another thing nobody's mentioned are the shadows.  Obviously those got taken out with the switch to side view, since there's no way to realistically project those now.  The objects themselves all have realistic shadows on them, which is probably partly how nobody seems to have noticed.  I was sad to see the in-game shadows go, but there's literally nowhere to project them and no right way to do it.  That was one of the biggest chunks of past work that just got summarily tossed out with #12.  But, in the end, that was for the best too.  The shadows were great in top-down, though.

[Nalgas]

I was sad to see the in-game shadows go, but there's literally nowhere to project them and no right way to do it.

You can't just project them on the sky like in whatever really early version that was?  Heh.

[x4000]

I was sad to see the in-game shadows go, but there's literally nowhere to project them and no right way to do it.

You can't just project them on the sky like in whatever really early version that was?  Heh.

 

[getter77]

Good thing I ate that meal awhile back----served to prep well for this!

Overall, I can't help but just nod along with the dramatic change given the robust nature with which it is being embraced content wise.

But....and it is frankly disturbing to me that I'd wind up "a guy" along these lines, as you would think that would've been the case in the early version before now...but...

The player character movement.  It is rather jarring now---with the worst offender being the male spell casting animation.   It sort of worked with the old view, but with the new, augh.

With the new perspective, Zelda has shifted from a focal point of reference to the likes of Metroidvanias and Terraria and such---that's good.

But with the character visual style being what it is, I plead to Arcen:  ALSO examine and implement/pick up on visual cue tricks from the likes of the old digitized Mortal Kombat games, and even moreso---classic Prince of Persia or Nosferatu on the SNES.  I don't have a link handy, but I have a hard time believing that after all these years that there can't be some manner of Indie-friendly Rotoscopic tool available----it was as if the video punched me in the face within seconds "Rotoscope this!"    There has to be something in this realm out there...

If the current models could gain Rotoscopic-level movement, and said movements be revisited so they still retain maximum impact/flair/evocative quality, even in a minimalist sense---then all seems quite bright indeed on top of adding a much needed sense of fluidity.

I find it incredibly odd that THIS was the first thing to really strike out hard at me after all the videos and notions thus far, but here we are.  This is one of the only times I can remember of a visual thing sticking out so much to me in all of my gaming and ponderings.


But otherwise, on another note entirely, I see some robust rumblings in regards to Unity 3.4 and 3.5 on the horizon----any inklings as to how they might come to impact AVWW going forward depending on how it all shakes out with regards to timing and such?

[x4000]

Regarding the character movement, the timing is off simply because I need to tweak the animation speed -- it has nothing to do with unity.  We don't use unity for anything physics or animation related, we just use it as a conduit to opengl on multiple platforms.

In terms of the various animations and such with the characters, adding more stuff: we'll see.  I really hate how slow the original POP felt when turning from one direction to another.  At any rate, all the characters are being rendered in the latest version of Poser, so it's certainly possible to do flips and such.  It's certainly much more feasible to add multi-frame animations now because I only have to do each one once, but I don't share the opinion that this is the one central issue that is so incredibly important that it should take over all development for a while, or anything like that.

[getter77]

Regarding the character movement, the timing is off simply because I need to tweak the animation speed -- it has nothing to do with unity.  We don't use unity for anything physics or animation related, we just use it as a conduit to opengl on multiple platforms.

In terms of the various animations and such with the characters, adding more stuff: we'll see.  I really hate how slow the original POP felt when turning from one direction to another.  At any rate, all the characters are being rendered in the latest version of Poser, so it's certainly possible to do flips and such.  It's certainly much more feasible to add multi-frame animations now because I only have to do each one once, but I don't share the opinion that this is the one central issue that is so incredibly important that it should take over all development for a while, or anything like that.

Right on, I mainly meant on the technical/content end of things with Unity...workflow, etc.   

I guess it boils down to things like a "disappearing arm" on the cast that wasn't there on the old version.  The old MK games were all about keeping as much of the digitized actor visible/lively to cheat past the inherent jankiness of it all.     Beyond that, giving the characters a more organic versus mechanical feel---at least for the organic ones.  Some manner of Rotoscopic ninjitsu being applied to add a...I don't know..."visceral" feel to stomping about the stomping grounds with a contact vigor seems like a good way to 1.  Tip another hat towards classic trailblazers like PoP and such and 2.  Add a nowadays "uncommon" or distinguishing slant to the presentation of AVWW aside from the static art style itself---as animation techniques are certainly a thing, especially in regards to trailers.   I don't think that brief bits of "ragdoll" are what it comes down to, just adding a deliberate weight/momentum to the actions.

Heh, look up some videos on that Nosferatu game, as it played with the notion a bit differently than Prince of Persia.

[x4000]

Right on, I mainly meant on the technical/content end of things with Unity...workflow, etc.   

So far the only thing that has really caught our eye is the memory profiler improvements.  The new GUI system sounds interesting, too, but it also sounds like a lot of bugs waiting to happen.  Basically every other feature they list wasn't something we use, so hopefully there are interesting smaller features that weren't on their big list.

I guess it boils down to things like a "disappearing arm" on the cast that wasn't there on the old version.

Disappearing arm?  There's no such thing that I'm aware of.  The cast pose is identical now to what it was.  At any rate, doing enormous amounts of character animation isn't a strength of ours, and there's only me working on the entirety of the art, plus about half of the programming.  So more time spent animating characters means less of a lot of other things.  Hence why I don't rate it abundantly high on my todo list, aside from obvious things like the animation speeds being off, etc.  I'm not sure what will come of spellcasting and jumping animations, if they will pick up some more frames or what, but I'm more of a gameplay kind of guy for the most part.  Grr, super mario world got by with one-frame jumping and falling and fireball animations!

[Zhaine]

Well so far a lot of reaction seems to be falling into two broad categories: people who've not read all the diaries generally quite negative and disinterested and/or think you've copied Terraria (see RPS), and those who have read and, with some reservations, are quite happy with the change and are looking forward to the game as much as before (or more).

I think the former is pretty understandable, as it was exactly my initial reaction (while I'm now much more in camp two). I'm not sure what you can do about that, apart from get those you can to try and read and understand the motivations for the change and then accept that some people are just going to be turned off by the switch.

There are a couple of points of consensus as far as I can tell though:

- The game is much, much prettier side on. Yay!
- However, the animations could definitely use some more work.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

It might also help if you released more of what the game does in the next or next-next video.  Mostly its been graphics with spells, but now we need a bit more if I had to guess.

King