Mirrors: App + Media + Extra (update) + Fanmade (update)
Sendspace: App + Media + Extra (update) + Fanmade (update)
Adapted Marvel's Colossus. It'd have been awesome if the artist who made Colossus' cover did the rest of the book, but oh well...
With that, we finally got all the Marvel Battlebooks (about time?). I hear Sabertooth, Doctor Doom, Daredevil, Fairchild and my favourite superhero, Deadpool, were supposed to be released as well, but it seems the series flopped pretty hard and they were scrapped.
Also, I've only seen an improved model of Alicia's figure in this month's Hobby Japan Magazine's scans. If that's the only bit of QB news we're getting this month, colour me surprised :S
Coming next: Juri Han, a few pesky bugs corrected, and since we just happened to hit another milestone, a surprise character to celebrate (yay for celebrations!)
Edit (08-28): I just knew that couldn't be all. Yesterday's C3xHobby 2012 event confirmed Grimoire's Alicia and Zara for November. Go Grimoire go!
Analysis for Colossus: He's super overpowered! There's really not much to say... super tough, hit like a truck at all distances, and even has a positive base damage Auto-daze hit... So yeah. Possibly the strongest Marvel, alongside Ironman.
ReplyDeleteWho's Juri? Is that Cammy-like character from Street Fighter?
Yay for bug fixing! I'll make sure to add more whenever I find them :)
New Dlanor won the 10 win test with 1 loss, so looking good there at first glance. Cassandra also got the new worst record: 2 wins total (Which is mostly pure badluck as I consider her relatively strong for a fan-made). Xiaomu does kick a lot of ass after playing more...
And a surprise character, eh? I also have a really bad surprise for you... It should be ready by next weekend... Just to warn you in advance! I'll also be asking for two favors at that point in time. Nothing that requires much time or effor from your part at least, though.
I meant to correct all the bugs you guys have been pointing out lately, but couldn't, meh ^^U
DeleteSo, you could actually make it? Looking forward to her, I wonder why you say it's a bad surprise :D
Also, you can't really call mine a surprise, since you could guess both the milestone and the character (it was requested not long ago), but still...
Yeah, milestone is character #200, I noticed :) I do recall quite a few requests though so I'm not going to hazard a guess on which one it will be.
DeleteBoo! I hadn't rechecked to see if the bugs were fixed. Ah well, I'm sure they'll be fixed eventually.
Why it's a bad surprise? Well, while it is a character, it's neither Kat or KOS-MOS, but I did talk about her before... So you can start feeling dread now! :)
Anyway, I can't make Kat before the "height checking and boosting" mechanism is in the game: It's the basis of the character since it's the closest I can think of to implement her powers. I will likely sort out her pics to build out the moveset after my current's project done, though.
Juri is the new lovely lady from Super Street Fighter 4, she will have her movelist from that game, and the option to use either of her Ultras. I don't like the 5 BP ultra system as it still applies with extra XP; so I'd like to have that set so that Ultras are enabled at 50% BP or so.
ReplyDeleteNow that Dlanor has performed well, we just need to do some tiny tweaks to her abilities. Break Boost will use the All Disarm restriction since it doesn't work against fellow inquisitor Sigui. It drops their shield too and since AFAIK there's no way you can pick up a dropped shield again, it works just as well.
Eva-Beatrice will grant +3 for 2 turns and Ronove's Counter Boost will work for 3 turns. Then that'll be it.
I can't believe I forgot who Juri is... Especially since I actually own that game and know how to play her a tiny bit :( Well, to be fair it's been many months since I last played, and I never played it much either, and Makoto was my most used character by far (With Cammy and Sakura being distant seconds and thirds).
ReplyDeleteRegarding the BP gain from extra XP, I'll refrain from commenting on that. I never use XP personally as it unbalance the game a lot, so I'm in no position to give suggestions regarding balancing skills for it.
Leecherboy: Looking back at the big Restrictions file, I see that Height -/+ actually does exist, so that's one of the things I needed. All I would need now is being able to use Height in Eval equations and I'd be all set for Kat... Well, requirement-wise anyway. I suppose I could also use Height > X like 10 times depending on how many letters a restriction can have, though.
About the current mystery projects, I thought I could do everything without having to ask you anything, but no dice... Two questions:
1) I have a fire bomb attack that I want the opponent to take 2 damage per turn until the battle goes back to Extended Range.
Would the following restriction work for that?
Score Repeat self Onlyopponent Damage 2 until Extended Range
The Curseuntil thingy would work, but splash damage makes a lot more sense than poison/curse... They'll do in a pinch though!
2) I have a smoke screen that amongst other things, I want to reduce the enemy damages by 3 for the following turn. Can I do that? I know there's a function that reduce opponent scores, but it's permanent so it's not what I want. I know I could use Temporary BP for a relatively equivalent thing (except that temporary BP won't prevent crits like -enemy score would), but it doesn't make too much sense thematically. If it's not doable in the current game state, I'll just go with Temporary BP 3 instead: No need to add that function just for this character (The character is not worth adding new functions for, trust me :)).
How would you code in an ability that heals a "Critical wound"? I was thinking about my next possible character and I thought about what kind of new mechanic could be introduced, so I thought I'd start here and ask.
ReplyDeleteOoh, new characters with new mechanics and doubly at that, poor me :)
ReplyDelete@Ayra:
-Though I can easily add "height" to Eval, if for some reason you'd rather work with what there currently is, using "Height > 4 Height < 6" should work for Height=5, for example. Also, I don't think there are size limits on restrictions.
-1) It'd probably be "Score Repeat self Damage 2 until Extended Range"
-2) I think you could use "Timer 1 Extra -3"? You know how extra adds to your attack, then timer for the opponent and next turn, then negative.
@Baofu: Healing a critical wound? As in, restoring the moves lost by a critical you took? That sounds pretty good. And sure, I can do that. In case you took more than one critical, it depends if you want all criticals restored (easier), or just in the order they happened (a little more work).
So Alicia, and Zara are being released in November? do we have any information on when Werbelia will be released? or is she not actually going to be a character book?
ReplyDeleteWerbellia is supposed to be released this year, we know that much. In fact, I was sure she'd be announced this month. Why? Because the drama CD in the 3rd volume has a few tracks of her calling her whip attacks and her special skills (which I won't mention for now), that makes one think her book is nearly finished.
DeleteWhich is why it's weird we know this couple's approximate date before hers, but still...
Ok I was just worried that they had only revealed what she looked like and they weren't actually going to release her book since we hadn't heard anything.
DeleteMaybe Werballia is going to come when around the time when Rebellion season 2 comes out for publicity sake...
ReplyDeleteSo since Grimmoire characters are starting to come out in November (so far away *snif*), this means that they aren't going to make the Rebellion version of the old characters? I kept hoping we'd get a new Elina book since the first one is so nice... Ah well.
For the crit removing ability, I'd HIGHLY suggest putting that on a super beefy character so that it's actually useful. Most regular characters are overkilled if they get critted twice anywhere, so it would be interesting on a super-heavy tank (Say, 25bp, but with ultra low scores for example).
For my character, everything is done ("done" is probably more accurate), but I'm having two problems during my playtesting:
1) Timer 1 Extra -3 doesn't work... At least, not using the syntax you gave. It doesn't crash, but it doesn't do anything. I won't begin to claim I understand all the requirements, and I have to admit that I sometime get confused regarding which player is supposed to get affected by the effect... At least I got 28 out of 30 working properly by myself for this character, so I guess that's a passing grade.
2) If you succesfully Firebomb an enemy (so that they take 2 damage per turn until Extended Range) and that you successfully land a Smoke Bomb later (Doubleturn to 57 and 49 on score), the 2 damage per turn will keep ticking since it doesn't consider that returning to extended range for some reasons... Suggestions?
Beside those two things, I also have to test out the AI, but everything else looks "good". I'll also need to get more strength-testing in, but it's looking pretty good right out of the box in my opinion.
I'd like them to release Elina, Maria, Melona and the rest... though it's somewhat unlikely by this point. Not all hope is lost, though, until they officially finish Rebellion (as in, finishing the few loose ends and the anime).
DeleteAnd yep, the critical-recovering would have limited uses in a character unless she can take like 2 or 3 easily... or it's supposed to be a leveled-up-oriented character (maybe when I get around to doing a Skullgirls char she'll be oriented towards tag battles).
1) If what you're aiming is for the enemy to deal 3 less damage next turn, are you sure "Timer 1 Extra -3" doesn't work? Because I just tried it by adding that to Leina's parry, and that's what I get :S
2) Oh, so you have an auto-extended-range maneuver, huh... Yeah, the "Extended Range" kinda fails with that kind of redirections. But adding "Page 57-61" instead of "Extended Range" should work for most of the cases.
Well, it turns out that Timer 1 Extra -3 does work... It's just that it doesn't appear on the enemy move selection list. Sorry about that! :)
ReplyDeleteI have two problems again though...
I used:
restriction[31]=Score Repeat self Damage 2 until Page 55-61,Disable move Special Shot,No restrictions
When I did a test where both characters picked Away (and both landed on 57 naturally), the damage keeps ticking. I used 55 too since she has no way to break shields, and you occasionally characters that directly go back to 55 in certain specific conditions, but it's not working at all. I temporarly went back to the old phrase (until extended range) since you rarely would want to force extended range if the enemy is burning anyway, but if you could point out where my restriction is wrong I'd appreciate it!
Problem #2 is about the AI... Here's my AI file:
aimove[0]=0,0,3,2
aimove[1]=0,0,1,1
aimove[2]=0,0,2,2
aimove[3]=0,0,2,1
aimove[4]=0,0,3,3
aimove[5]=0,0,3,2
aimove[6]=0,0,5,5
aimove[7]=0,0,5,5
aimove[8]=0,0,5,5
aimove[9]=0,0,4,4
aimove[10]=0,0,4,4
aimove[11]=3,3,2,1
aimove[12]=0,0,2,1
aimove[13]=0,0,1,1
aimove[14]=5,4,0,0
aimove[15]=0,0,3,4
aimove[16]=0,0,3,4
aimove[17]=1,3,1,4
aimove[18]=3,3,1,3
aimove[19]=2,3,1,3
aimove[20]=2,3,2,4
aimove[21]=0,0,1,1
aimove[22]=0,0,4,4
aimove[23]=0,0,4,4
aimove[24]=0,0,4,4
aimove[25]=0,0,4,4
aimove[26]=2,2,1,1
aimove[27]=5,3,2,3
aimove[28]=2,3,1,3
Move 9 and 10 are the Load action which enables moves 6, 7 and 8. Since it's pointless to do the Load move again when it's already loaded, I originally put a "6" in move 6, 7 and 8 so that the AI always use one of the special shot after loading. It's predictable, but since those 3 moves have no "one answer fits all", it's probably the best option for a strong AI. Unfortunately, the game crashes whenever the AI uses moves 9 or 10.
I thought it was because in the documentation, it's mentionned that 6 is not currently used, so I downgraded them to 5 instead. Thing is, it still crashes whenever the AI uses move 9 or 10, with a "Index was outside the bounds of the array" error message. I'm not sure why...
Beside that, (and the fact that the AI use 27 as often as 22,23,24 and 25 combined for some reasons), the character is "ready". At least, enough for me to ask the two favors I asked about.
Yep, "extra" is more like an instant, same-turn restriction, if you want the enemy to see that in advance, I guess "Bonusagainst -3" would work.
DeleteFor the extended range thing, I'm pretty sure it's not working because it seems you didn't add 57, did you? I did say "57-61" (that is, 57 and 61) would work in most cases, but if you want to cover practically all of them, it'd be more like "Not Score Page 55-57-61".
And for the AI... yay for info on a need-to-know basis! Lucky for you, I'm a puzzle aficionado :D
Let's see, am I right if I assume that the character has moves that have to be activated and has a weapon that CAN'T be disarmed? (or doesn't have one). As in, Yuit & Vante or Tarnyang & Sainyang, with the "Weapon System = Activate Unarmed" in the sheet file. If she can be disarmed, we're looking at a Christabel or Dlanor, 8 states, "Weapon System = Main-Activate" situation. If you're missing that line, that'd explain the error message, that's my best guess with the info I have ^^U
Also, looking at the AI file closely, it strikes me as odd that 9 and 10 are active in the same situation as 6,7 and 8: typically you have 0,0 for one when the other doesn't, like Shanoa... with that, the 27 move anomaly and the abundance of zeroes, I'd bet good money you're actually lacking some states :)
...Well, I admit I'm feeling a bit stupid now!
DeleteI thought that 57-61 meant page 57 to page 61, so 55-61 also covered 57... Page 55-57-61 certainly works a lot better!
Regarding the rest... Well, the base matrix is Claudette. At first, I thought about using Cham-Cham, but after checking quickly, I found some anomaly: For example, Cham Cham Up is so good that she actually evades 36 downward swings by jumping up. What the eff? So Cham-Cham matrix was too good (at least the bits I looked at) for the character I was making, Mina was interesting but has some weird assignations so I settled on Claudette. Which I actually learned later that she uses the same Matrix as Mina beside said assignations... So since I started with Claudette matrix as a base, I also went with her AI file as a base... Which was the mistake.
My charater does have
Weapon System = Main-Activate
and
Always Turn 0 Disable move Special Shot
She does have a disarmable weapon, and she can't do anything beside the usual jumps, kick and retrieve weapon, hence the pile of 0s... Of course, a 4 column AI matrix doesn't actually work for Main-Activate character...
So. If I understand well, I need 8 columns for my AI. The columns 0 and 1 will be identical to what I currently have, and column 4 and 5 will be identical to 0 and 1 (Since she can't use her Special Moves without her weapon anyway). Column 2 and 3 will be identical, except with 0s for moves 6-7-8 since it represents her not-loaded state. Column 6 and 7 will be close to 2 and 3, except with the high values I want for moves 6-7-8 and with 0s for moves 9 and 10 (So that she doesn't waste turns loading when already loaded). So when I do "Enable move Special Shot", the AI will transition to column 6 and 7 (If weapon is equiped and depending on BP level), and will return to 2 and 3 after Special Shot is disabled again. In the -s file, the last column has 1 for any regular move, 2 for the Special Shots and 0 for the jumps, retrieve and kick. Based on the puzzle pieces you have, does that sound roughly fine?
By the way, I also did the following things:
-Fixed seductress Shion Final Seduction skill so that it works properly: Knock out was written with a capital O so it didn't work (Also required 11 points instead of 10)
-Fixed seductress Shion matrix since one of the Final Seduction entries went to crushing hug.
-Changed summoner Shion restriction file so that Dweller Army actually works as originally envisioned (If under 10bp, they drop her to 0 instead of possibly all the way to -4, which does make a good difference in the usability of the move). It's bugged me ever since summoner Shion got released so now I'm finally happy.
Can I attach those three files to my new character files so that those fixes are added in the next version?
I actually did what I mentionned for the AI, and it's slightly better.
DeleteThe good thing is, it doesn't crash anymore. She Load fine, and she does use her Special Shot eventually.
The problem is, after that point she never Load again in the match. I think she gets stuck in the "enabled" state which has 0s in Load.
When a Special Shot is used, I have the clause "Disable move Special Shot". Would I need something else for the AI to understand the state changed (or a disable all?)
... Since she's actually functional and everything works beside reload when she's used by the AI, would you prefer I upload the character and ask my two favors so that you can take a look directly and tell me what my mistake is?
First of all, yep, attach those corrected files as well, thanks.
DeleteThese changes for the AI sound fine, yes. And probably you can fix her with "Disable move all" if you only have one kind of activable move, there may be some bug with individual disables.
...So sure, feel free to ask for the so-called favors whenever ^^U.
Okay.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing: There's few things I dedicate myself over a long period of time. I do something for a while, and then something shiny and new catch my attention and I start doing that instead. While it's not a critical issue since my job and my karate training (ie. at least some physical execise) are things I do take seriously and stick with, there's multiple things that I want to learn to do, but I move away before I give myself a chance to learn.
Drawing is something I've been wanting to be able to do for many, many, many years... The problem is, I have absolutely no natural talent in it. The other problem is that I tend to do 2-3 drawings, be all disapointed in the effort it took me to do something that looks bad and I go do something else that is more fun short term and not draw anything for 6 months, and repeat the process. So I start at 0 all over again each time.
Drawing a QB book is an EXCELLENT way to learn how to draw, both for character consistency and dynamism, and I like building QB characters and playing the game... But there's no way I can motivate myself to draw 32 "good" (by my standards, so bad by anyone else) pages. Unless...
Unless I put out a book so bad and so lazy with my name on it that it makes me feel shameful enough to know it's here. Then, that'll give me good motivation to upgrade the pages so that it's less humiliating. A perfect kick to the butt.
So here's my requests:
1) Add my character to the game despite how bad and lazy the art is. From a functional standpoint, she's actually a pretty decent character. She's the game's second long-range specialist with some interesting options and while she's definitively not the most unique character out there, she is still pretty fun to play. Also, she's a slinger and how often do you see slingers anywhere (Slinging is fun, and completely underrated)? The lazyness is nearly at a genius level though (You'll see what I mean when you look at the pages), and the art is so bad that it might be funny for some people... Maybe. Hopefully. You might want to write again how to remove characters from your version of the game though in case it upset some people!
2) I'd like if you let me occasionally send you new pages to replace these ones. Even by my pre-schooler drawing standards, I can do better than that if I spend multiple hours on a single page, and I can certainly reuse the same art less often if I draw more pages... For what it's worth, the art did get slightly less horrible the more page art I did so there's some hope.
Since the book actually exist and works, it's less daunting to draw the book now that I just have to take it 1 page at a time instead of "Do 32 'good' pages before you can use anything"... So that's my requests to you.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xmngyl
...
DeleteThat strange combination of self-loathing and pride kinda makes me smile for some reason ^^U
Still, the answer remains the same: Sure thing, I'll be glad to. I mean, the art can clearly use some improvements, but as plain as it is, you can recognize the poses and stuff.
Just look at it this way: "Zzz the Zombie" is an official LW book that we have, and the art sucks royally.
I feel that you are being pretty insulting to the creator of the Zombie if you are comparing my "art" to theirs :)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, a big thank you and sorry for you not getting a character you were thinking about!
The poses are recognizable: That's the one single "quality control" issue I put on my art. In fact, all the art has been designed from the start as to be as reusable as possible with some slight changes. As in "Okay, this drawing will cover side swing, shield block and kick, while this one will cover all slinging attack and down swing with the ammos added on it"... In fact, there was one single art for 100% of the slinging attack, but when I was making the pages (pretty much the last thing I do), I just couldn't stomach it and I drew the close-range varation of the special shots... So you got twice the slinging attack art than was originally planned! Wow!
The biggest sore thumb to me is the Retrieve Weapon/Duck/Knocked Down trio... While the drawing was designed from the start to be used for those three pages, I have absolutely no variation between Retrieve Weapon and Duck and I didn't see how I could make one. It's the only two pages that share the exact same art, and I'm irked by it. What irks me more is the Knocked Down: I had placed the head, arm and sling there in prevision of having the art being flipped 90 degree, but man does it look horrible! While all the art is horribly bad, whenever it gets to Knocked Down my mind just screams at me just how wrong that page is... So it's probably going to be the first redrawn one, although it's a really difficult pose to do... decision, decisions...
Regarding the 10 win challenge, she won with 2 losses, which puts her at around the average. Which is what I was hoping for. She can sometime beat enemies super fast due to 4 good long range options(An Incendiary Bomb that lands at Extended Range is amazingly potent), but if she fails the early extended range battle then she's in an uphill battle (as planned)... She has an awfully rough time against characters that have better long range than she does and still have a great close range (Like Alice, Claudette, Annelotte), but those characters are really strong so Ayra being weaker than those is just fine.
What makes me happy is that she kills the Unicorn pretty bad. Finally a character that can kill the Unicorn! It's by far one of the enemies I have the lowest win rate against, and my slinger got it down painlessly twice... Which is swell considering just how annoying it is to fight against.
Anyway, looking foward to see what I did wrong for the files!
Yep, like I thought, individual "disable move" didn't really work, but since I think it's just the dragons that have to use those, no big deal. She does work properly with "disable move all", though.
DeleteAnd well, everything else seems to be working just fine, so congratulations on doing once again a character on your own, you haven't lost your touch :)
Just one thing, the Smoke Shot is supposed to take Ayra to page 49 and the opponent to page 57, right? From page 49's wording, it's kinda implying it's the other way around (see how it's worded in Mina's book). Also, hmm... though I commend you for using the rare "Previous score" successfully (only the jedis used it), it is weird that you can theoretically score on someone in a scoreless page such as 57 (it'd usually be 35)... though with a -4, I know it's kinda hard to damage anyone ^^U
You just reminded me of something, guys. Do you think Erika's Force Counter might be too powerful? In Ougon it made every attack you landed an automatic counter hit, but a Body Wound on block seems a little ridiculous. I'm okay with letting it go, but do you, Ayra, think that Force Counter is TOO strong?
ReplyDeleteMy proposal is that it turns to the body wound page only if they're scored upon and they aren't blocking or parrying. So an Off Balance still becomes a Body Wound and so on. It was never meant to make Dlanor's attacks "unblockable"
Baofu: Well... That's the reason why I had mentionned that Erika was leagues ahead of the other offensive options :) Confirmed hits on big pages are very strong in my opinion and I tend to be careful with those moves. Like with the newly made Ayra, her Heartseeker Shot does automatically hit Body (like Erika), but that move requires activating it to use it once, and it's capped at +0 score. Seductress Shion has a confirmed Daze page, but the move starts at -7 and it takes some time and effort to build it up to deal good damage.
ReplyDeleteOffhand, I believe that Erika's better than any of the other confirmed hits in the game for the QB-level characters. Catwoman has a -2 spammable Daze move which is insanely strong, but without that move she's definitively not Marvel-level. Collossus has a positive score auto-daze which is stupidly broken and overpowered, but I assume he's supposed to be like the T-Rex of the Marvels...
The thing is, Erika lasts two turns, and it has an 8 turn cooldown. An opponent can play safely for those two turns and likely avoid it's damage. You can't use it to threaten an opponent by it's presence, as you can't "hold on to it". The AI has no notion of that, though... So in my opinion, against a human opponent, Erika's fine. Against an AI opponent, Erika's overpowered. I aim my balancing more with human players in mind, so I'd say it's fine as is. It'd still be pretty good with the change you mentionned, though.
Of course, I don't have a ton of Dlanor with Erika experience yet so my opinion might change in time...
Like for example Luna Luna! About 1 week ago I said I put her under "Slightly Weaker", as I have been for over a year. Now, I'm considering her as "Slightly Stronger". Why? Dance of War: Creation. I considered the "Pick the color of the opponent move" skills to be decent... What I didn't figure out is that it's one of the most broken ability in the game (Less than Sigui's Bind with Chain though). The reason? Pick "Green" as the color. Do your downward smash (move 36). Enjoy your free Daze with big base damage, or a knock down at the very least. The only characters who can avoid getting hit for large damage are those few who have Green moves outside of the two blocks (26 and 4) and up and duck. If you have a character with a Cham-Cham like matrix who can somehow evade 36 with Up, just a 24 instead: Less damage, but everything else still holds.
It's the thing of the principle. There are some exceptions to the rules of other games that I can let fly. Having said that, I shouldn't contradict myself by insisting that be changed. A little deviance from the games proper is fine too. Like with Juri, you'll be able to use either Ultra because she has two completely different ones, rather than being forced to pick one like in her own game.
DeleteSo I'll ignore what I said about Force Counter.
Well, the only question I can answer was "Do you think it is too strong?" and not what is better thematically since the only thing I know about the game is what you've written so far :) Strength-wise, it'd still be a good pick even without it breaking through parries. I don't think that Dlanor is too strong or too weak no matter if the change is made or not.
DeleteAlthough... Based on what I've seen so far, unless it's a bug or a character turning out completely useless, characters usually don't get adjustments so I wouldn't cross my fingers on it :)
Oi, don't make me look bad here, lol. Since my chars don't come out perfect (despite my intentions), I do agree to most minor tweaks if they're reasonable, especially for recent characters... though maybe I disregard or forget about them if I don't think they're that important, yeah ^^U
DeleteI didn't mean it that way :) It's just the nature of things, and I'm worse than you about it.
DeleteI mean, the Dweller Army implementation bugged me ever since summoner Shion got released a year ago... and I just changed it this week (Granted, I didn't know how until I figured it out while removing bugs with Seductress Shion).
I keep saying and thinking that Guardian Shion didn't pan out exactly as planned since she was aimed to be a "Punish enemy choices" character but the implementation didn't really succeed at that... yet here she is still, unchanged since release. She has pretty much an uncoesive moveset: Her Guardian implementation is fine (She's actually the first fan-made dual-bp character and the second after Katja), but then she has a core "Turn Around" buffing mechanism and a "Lose BP if you do X color" mechanism. That's too many completely different focus that don't mesh together well unlike, say, the seductress. Despite that, the character is still viable and quite playable (A bit weak, but there's far worse out there) so I left her alone... But she's still a failure on a design standpoint.
So if I ever bug you too much about making a tweak, you can just tell me to shut up and go fix Guardian Shion first :)
Oh! Speaking of minor unimportant tweaks... Mei-Fang "Genbu Toujin->Rekka" moves gives a +1 to scores next turn but the page doesn't mention it :)
leecherboy: The whole "what actually apply to you and what apply to me" and the phrasing used makes my head hurt... That's why I keep having those things wrong. I'll fix the page and send it to you again later.
ReplyDeleteFor the Smokebomb being able to do damage on a 57, it's kind of an imperfect compromise for flavor sake. Originally, I indeed had the bomb making the opponent go to page 35. The problem is, the -3 score was completely pointless, since no characters can attack from an extended range body wound. Not only that, but it was basically working as an Heartseeker Shot with Extended Range added to it.
Since Ayra's long range is so good, I didn't want her to get a free attack on top of getting back to Extended Range, especially since it's already placed on the most reliable of the protected attacks slot. But logically-speaking, even though it's not designed to hit hard, if you get hit in the head by the smoke shot it should still hurt a bit. So that's why I went with Previous Score: It seems to make a lot of sense, but the only problem is the lack of visibility (You don't get to see that you actually were slugged right in the head)... It's the best compromise I could come up with, though.
In an unrelated subject, I got some good news and some bad news.
The bad news is that I'm not managing to make a coherent moveset for Kat that does her justice. A standard "do damage, slug it out" book would be a disfavor to her uniqueness, but I'm not able currently to do an effective Gravity-centric moveset inside the confine of the Lost World system and with the images I have... I consider her "On hold" and not "Cancelled" though, and I'll keep an eye out on new pictures occasionally in case they'd unblock the whole thing.
The good news is that I got a few new artbooks lately, and I have one whom the content jumps to my face and screamed to me "Do a QB character of her!" Beautiful high-quality work with little to no need to censor or edit anything, good pictures for every states (Maybe a bit light on attack moves but I've dealt with worse), enough pictures with a horse to make her a mounted character ala Annelotte (Not enough to make her as horse dependent, but should still be a positive)...
I'm literally THRILLED to be working on this character. Not as much as if I was making a new Shion of course, but still thrilled :) As usual, it's pretty sexy but I'm hopeful there won't be any "approval" issue as I'm expecting the art set to land somewhere between Ninja Shion and Christabel.
Oh, too bad about Kat. I bet it's mostly the pics, since even for a not-really-a-fighter type as her, you still should be able to make up some new style, wouldn't be the first time. In the unlikely case you hadn't checked there, here's what pixiv has on her: http://www.pixiv.net/tags.php?tag=%E3%82%AD%E3%83%88%E3%82%A5%E3%83%B3
DeleteAnyways, glad to see you're inspired to do a new character, looking forward to what you come up with :)
... No, no I hadn't checked there. I knew there was somewhere important I hadn't checked. There is certainly a fair amount that I don't have (conversely, I have a fair amount that's not here). It's probably enough to pull off something: At least there's an actual kick in there! Considering how many kicks she throw during the game, it was kind of hard to do a moveset that didn't contain her main attacking move...
DeleteThe problem about making the moveset coherent and not too binary still stand, but I have a few more options now... I'll have to think about it. If you could add the Height function it'd be really handy though so that I could try some things out (The > and < way would quickly become an absolute nightmare to deal with) to see if it would work or not.
New character is going first anyway: The 32 images are selected and ready (There's one I'd love to use, but it's outside my editting skill to censor it so I can't use it unfortunately) the moveset is all built, so all that's left is make the actual files! The matrix should be quite fun to do since she has a unusual move sheet ala Seductress Shion (though not as drastic). Restriction page should go smoothly... And the actual putting the text on the 32 pages is going to be an hellish bore. Man I hate putting the text and images on the page so much... Even making the AI file is more fun. Ah well, it has to be done... I'm pretty happy of the character and moveset though so that helps stave off the boredom of page editting a bit :)
Can't help much with the text editing (and you wouldn't let me anyways), but I do have a mini-app that takes the usual images I use (usually 400x600 to 450x600), frames them to a height of 800 and numbers the pages. Do you think that'd make it less of a bore?
DeleteSo on a whim, I prettied up the miniapp in question, and you can also use it to search restrictions and matrixes somewhat, it's a 3 in 1 :p
Deletehttp://www.sendspace.com/file/pfj3v3
Also, it turns out you can evaluate heights just fine right now, I guess those readme on the files aren't as updated as I thought...
... Yes, yes it would. I wish I had that a long time ago!
DeleteI use GIMP for tool. I already was formatting all my images at 453x603 beforehand: It's a really stupid format, but when I first did a character, I had measured one of your images at that size so I went with it (Obviously I was off a bit). The one redeeming value of that format is that when making my possible image sets, I know that in GIMP when I select an area, a 0.75 ratio that's one tick off 0.76 will give me my 453x603 nearly spot on when shrunk or expanded (Expanded usually result in poor image quality so that's more rare). That way, I could easily see if I can take the part of the image I want without having a ton of stuff I want... It's effective and it's one of the part of the character creation process I enjoy. Fortunately, none of that is obsolette with your tool, although I'll probably consider doing 450x600 next character since it does make a whole lot more sense than 453x603...
The place where it's going to save me time is the part I hated most: To be fair, I did have some templates in GIMP created for each page (so the numbering was already prepared alongside the location where the image would go), but this is going to save me from having to name all pages, clean up the previous template text (I was considering making a clean template set but I hadn't got to it yet) and having to painstalkingly paste my image in and make sure it's at the exact right pixel. I assume you have to do page 38 all manually though still, right? Do you have a "clean" image file of it without any text I could have if you have one? It's not that handy when I have ordering messes like the seductress but it's certainly useful for more standard movesets :)
So thanks for the app! The restriction check thing can be useful when I'm looking for examples of some of those rarely seen restrictions...
And for the matrix check... I guess I did use Cham Cham matrix for the seductress after all! Well, it's pretty modified and it's like 16-18 or less similar only in most pages, but... I didn't recall what I had used. And it seems it's mostly Melpha for the Summoner... Uh. And Elina has a mostly unique matrix (It's around 16-18 closest matches and those are all over the place). I think I'll be having some fun with that!
By the way, the new character MIGHT also be ready before the next update (if it's in 2 sundays as usual)... I'm not sure if you prefer keep one in reserve for a busy week so there's at least character in every update or if you prefer to have a mega-update with 4 characters (maybe 5 if Baofu's Juri is done too). Anyway, I'll leave that to you. I'm not expecting to have too much time to dedicate to QB in the following few days and I might be hitting some hurdle in making the matrix and restriction work okay, but we'll see.
I only made the auto character formatting like half a year ago, actually, because I was getting fed up with all the framing. But yep, the sheet page is still manual, it doesn't take that long to edit that for me to make it automatic, anyways. Here's my template, you can copy-paste and fill all the required numbers except for 7, that isn't anywhere:
Deletehttp://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=wk20x4&s=6
I suppose I could still refine a bit the restriction search (if you don't add preconditions like "Score " for some, you won't find any), the matrix search (to only check for "successes", and ignore if a char hits with a 3 and other with a 5), and remove the need to specify the folder everytime you search, so let me know if you think any of those would be useful.
As for characters... usually I'm not pressed for time, so I don't mind the amount, just make sure you don't rush them ^^U
*gasp* Are you implying that Ayra looked rushed for some unfathomable reason? The nerve! :) I'll TRY to be careful and not overdo things like before. One thing that didn't help last time though is that I kept struggling in trying to make my Cassandra functional and coherent, and I never managed to due to never getting the unblockable working like I wanted to... That sapped pretty much all the enjoyment out of making characters, so I should just have thrown Cassandra away and do others I actually had working ideas for. But yeah, 1 character per week is definitively too much for me on the long term so I'll slow myself down a bit.
ReplyDeleteI'd LOVE a Success search matrix. The biggest difficulty in making is sometime figuring out if a move is too safe or not safe enough for what it does.
If I'm not too greedy, what I'd like best is being able to pick a character, and have a list (in a grid maybe?) of the success for each move. For example: Move 2: 18. Move 4: 14. Move 6: 20.
Like right now, I based my horse lady on Annelotte matrix, but some numbers look out of whack for some moves. Like some moves with 20 succesful outcome out of the 24 possible picks (Alleyne bola toss is the only one I did see previously with that high results, and since it's a 1-shot weapon it felt fair but here?) But maybe it's not so uncommon but checking manually the files and columns is pretty time consuming. So it'd be useful to know if I need to add a few additional failures to the matrix or not :) Plus, it'd let me see just how horrible the Hulk and the Thing matrixes are exactly. To push the grid idea further, if you could load two characters and have something like...
Move: 2 4 6...
Elina 14 18 16...
Alleyne 16 14 16...
It'd be the most useful possible tool for me. It'd start not being a too "mini" app, though.
Can you guess what day it is? It's "Asking about stupid restrictions" day! I guess it comes out fairly often :)
1- I have a Trample attack that I want to spiffy-up a bit. Logically-speaking, an horse that tramples you should do more damage if you were knocked down on the floor previously... But unlike Ninja Shion finishing attacks, I don't want the Trample attacks to be unusable if they are not knocked down. What's the best way to do that? While I can check the current turn page, I can't check the previous turn's page which would be what I need. At worst, would putting something like
Aftercheck Page 41 Bonusonly 3 move Trample
in the -s file be functional? As in, if the enemy is knocked down for whatever reason, on your move list you get a +3 to Trample for the next turn? It's a bit less elegant, but if that can work it's definitively an acceptable compromise.
2- How do I do a Repeat for two turns? I want her kick to have a light bleeding effect, so a bleed for 1 point of damage for 2 turns sounds good. However, from what I can see in the help file, Repeat is either forever, or until some condition is met, but I didn't see a "for x turn" condition. There's a turn condition, but it applies to the turn #, and not number of turns since now.
3- Is there a way to have a check for multiple random effects? Like 1/3 doing thing A, 1/3 doing thing B and 1/3 doing thing C? If not, it's okay: I'll just make it that you can have all of them happen if you are really lucky (Three separate random check), and none if really unlucky.
Weird, for some reason, your comment had ended up in the spam, and there were some perfectly valid comments from Locus there as well... :S
DeleteAnyways, ask and ye shall receive, success search and grids galore:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/thjpsa
The characters with shield throw the successes off because of the 45-49-63 parries, but still...
And for the questions:
1) "Always Page 41 Bonusonly 3 move Trample" would work fine indeed (aftercheck is mainly for the mechas, that can be restricted on overheat), or if you don't want bonusonly, "Turn self 1" whatever, I guess
2) There is a "Repeat for X", see the Ougon guys
3) There isn't yet a multi-random one... but if you don't like 3 separate throws, you can use "counters" (new technology ahoy :D, made for Dlanor and co) and maybe do like:
Random X/Y Set counter self "R1"
Check counter "R1" restriction1
Not Check counter "R1" Random A/B Set counter self "R2"
Check counter "R2" restriction2
Not Check counter "R2" Random C/D Set counter self "R3"
Check counter "R3" restriction3
And I guess, have in the -s file:
Always Delete counter self "R1"
Always Delete counter self "R2"
Always Delete counter self "R3"
Why, of course that's horribly contrived :)
My comment probably ended up in the spam because the spam detector probably thought: "There's no way she can possibly type that much that often! She has to be a bot spam!"
DeleteThanks a lot for that program! That's the best function EVER! It also helps me solidify a few of my thoughts after checking around 15 characters:
1) Alleyne matrix is just stupid good compared to anyone else.
2) Leina sucks. Really, really, really bad. Not only are her damages and options low, but her matrix is utterly trash.
She's not the only one like that though.
It seems that there's been at some point a huge "matrix improvement" going on sometime in the Lost Worlds books. The average success count is about 3 higher for the "new" batch than the "old" batch (it varies from equal to up to 8 more success). The old characters are severly outmatched, and get hit more often than the others. The QB characters that are based on them are of course subject to the same issue.
For example, Nanael on paper should be relatively good, but in practice she fares horribly. The reason is her horrible matrix.
Characters with horrible matrixes I've seen so far are: Leina, Risty, Tomoe, Nowa, Nanael, Mirim, Branwen, Echidna (For an old matrix type she's significantly better but she's not "new age"). The last three are still effective characters due to godlike score pages (or great damage and BP for Branwen), but the otheres are not so lucky.
Amongst the new types, there's also some significant interesting variations. For example, nearly all characters have 12 success on Up, with an handful having 13. Elina? She has 17! This means that it's substancially safer to use Up with Elina than with nearly anyone else. She has very solid numbers all the way though, which helps explain why she does so well, despite decent but not great stats on paper... I'll definitively will be using Up with her more often! Her duck's also superior to most characters.
On her side, Alleyne is just insane. For example, her Dodge has 18 successes (her long-range dodge is 100% success), she has multiple 19 success moves (and good ones too) and she has equal or better in every aspect than any character except for a few exceptional ones that beat her in one category or two and lose in the rest (like Elina). Aldra (r) big spells have 17 to 19 success, which confirms how they really are the only things you need... Guardian Shion has a few "old matrix" mixed in, which helps make her less effectual: Really poor jumps that usually result in low damage pages (but those damage her directly for big damage, so they are a big detriment to her).
However, to my surprise, Christabel actually has one of the best matrixes in the game... I always thought that was the reason why her (and captain Liliana) fared pretty poorly, but I guess that's not accurate... I guess I'll have to dig deeper to see what's the issue in that case! Anyway, there's tons of fun to be had with that tool, and it's going to help out finding and balancing new characters!
I think I'll stick with the "All random" restriction after all. In the artwork, she's holding 5 cards, and I'll just use poker rule style so that she can discard from 0 to 5 of them. It's going to be the less reliable move in the game, but... It could be fun for the occasional laugh. Here's what it looks like:
restriction[24]=Bonus 1,Can't use move Sheriff Life,Random 1/5 Bonus 4,Random 1/5 Regain 3,Random 1/5 Bonus -3,Random 1/5 Damage 3,Random 1/5 Damage self 4
... I'll make sure to play test the character a lot before I send her to you :)
Problems time!
ReplyDelete1) Is it possible that your random is just rolled once no matter how many time it appears in the restriction? I thought the random just didn't work since I didn't have any effect appearing, but I eventually got a crash (Due to Damage self 4 being incorrect). After replacing it for Lose 4, I'm having the problem that either 0 condition apply, or all 5 apply. Never anything in between.
2) Is it possible to apply temporary bp damage AFTER regular damage instead of before? I have a move with the following:
restriction[29]=Score temporary damage 4,Bonusagainst 2,No restrictions
That actually does regular damage too. Basically, if the opponent has 8 BP and I hit her for 6 BP, she won't KOed. The only time the temporary damage will do something is if she has less than 4bp in the first place.
3) Repeat changes the target of the effect and I'm having a problem doing what I want due to it... I did manage to fix the Bleeding for two turns by doing Repeat for 2 Lose 1
Deleteinstead (which does "You hurt yourself" instead, but it's okay) but I can't fix Eternal Optimism:
restriction[25]=Temporary BP 2,Score Repeat for 3 Temporary BP 2,Can't use move Sheriff Life
It sort of works, except that on score, it gives the opponent the temporary 2 BP for 3 turns... How do I switch it around?
1) I'm pretty sure it works how it's supposed to, with individual rolls. I tried your 1/5 rolls above, and I could get some of them separately (often you get nothing, but that's what 1/5 means, no matter how many rolls). If it keeps failing for you, I'll give you a "multirandom" restriction :p
Delete2) Sure, I guess that's how it should work, considering the turn's score as well (no one had damaged with it until now). I'll fix that by next time.
3) For both cases, you're looking for "Repeat self". Also, I think "Temporary BP" is somewhat unreliable (I never got around to fixing the problems around 0 BP because they're hard to pinpoint), you'd be better off using "Reduce damage X" like Dlanor
I did another 20 tests, and here's the results:
ReplyDelete0 trigger: 16 times
1 trigger: 1 time
5 triggers: 3 times
Those results look really, really suspicious to me! I have a pretty fast computer, it's surely not something taxing on the computer, and if your random is based on the clock, I can see that it's the same calculation being applied 5 times (except the odd one out that actually switched time). I might be way off, but I really should go buy a lottery ticket if I'm lucky enough to get 0s and 5s all the time with a true random :)
Thanks for the change on the temporary damage. The current moves using it are really worthless so I'm trying to make one that's useful. It's on the "I am the Law" move (yes, I had a lack of actual attacking artwork) which is made to hurt the enemy bad enough that they panick and surrender, but if they are still in shape to go on, they deal increased damage to her because they feel that she is just showing false bravado... That's the logical thinking to explain the gameplay balancing anyway :)
I did see the 0 BP happen once or twice with the Seductress Shion... Despite the bug, I think I'll have to keep using temporary BP for her, since it's made to synergyze with Till Death Parts Us: It reflects damage taken -1 so with enough temporary BP it's a positive trade for her while reducing damage taken will always result in a losing trade (Unless the reflect damage applies before the damage reduction, but that sounds unlikely). Since reduced damage is always better (except for seductress Shion), I guess I'll have to tone down Eternal Optimism somehow...
It's a good thing I haven't written any text on the pages yet: I figured I'd need a whole lot of tweaking after playtesting/debugging so not having to redo them over and over certainly saves time!
Typically the randoms are initialized on the clock, yes (the milliseconds), but I've never heard of a proper random giving equal results... anyways, it might have been caused by initializing various succesive randoms instead of using the same one, so this might fix both the temporary damage and the random:
Deletehttp://www.sendspace.com/file/uj60xg
And yeah, I guess that synergy wouldn't work with Reduce damage.
I'm not sure what you did, but it certainly works a lot better now :) Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThere were 2 things that came to evidence pretty early during playtesting:
1) She was too strong
2) She was really fun
Fixing #1 while not disturbing #2 was pretty hard... If some moves don't have high damage, they don't work. If she's so squishy she dies in one hit, it doesn't work (No one does in my opinion, though). If her bag of tricks get slimmed down, then she becomes more plain.
After 7 minor downward tweaks, I feel that I reached my goal pretty well... She definitively doesn't fit under weak, but I'm pretty confident that she's a bit weaker than Annelotte overall.
I still have the AI file to do (although she seems fairly effective already using Annelotte's file), and I'm still scratching my head regarding the random. It works right now, but I can't help but feel that one of them should be changed but I'm out of ideas.
Right now, the page does:
+4 score bonus
-3 score bonus
+3 BP
-4 BP
3 damage to opponent
Four of them apply to Juliona, so it feels strange that one applies to the enemy... I'd prefer if I could have another effect that applies to Juliona instead of the 3 damage to opponent, but I have no ideas as to what I could use that you have visual feedback for. If you have any ideas for the fifth condition, I'd be all ears! Ideally, it'd be something positive so that the average result is beneficial to Juliona since it's on a not particularly safe move and it needs to complete succesfully.
There's also some artwork that got uglier by my whole conversion process somehow... One of the key pages got all pixelated and stuff, which is strange considering that it was one of the really big and nice base images... After I'm done I'll send her to you.
Found the culprit :)
DeleteThe image quality went down when I used your miniapp. If I compare the before/after images, the after ones are more "pixelly" than the before ones. It's not too noticeable in some images, but in some the difference is quite glaring. It may be due to my 453x603 format for my images though: I'll do a test sometime with 450x600 ones to see if the effect is still the same. Even if it is, it still frames, numbers and names so it still saves time even though I have to drag the old image files back in.
You took the words out my mouth; in some rare cases you can notice a quality drop, though I haven't really compared the others.
DeleteSo Juliona it is, huh? Kickass taste as always, I see :D
As for rare boosts, it is hard to come up with any you of all people haven't though of ^^U, but for immediate, noticeable ones, I guess it could be Melpha's Max BP up, recovering your weapon or mounting if you're dismounted, going to extended range (if that's an advantage) or behind enemy... because I don't think you're considering Izumi's move boost or Airi's dematerializing.
Oh, scratch the page turns, you won't keep your others boosts if YOUR page changes.
DeleteAnd... done! I know it's very unlikely to happen, but I'll try my luck:
ReplyDeleteTO ANYONE READING THIS:
There's 3 additional image files. "To Edit Villains Best" is an image file that would be absolutely perfect for the Villains Cannot Hide page... But it'd need some censoring and it's outside my editting skills. If anyone could make a censored, usable version of that page, I'd be extremely thankful!
"To Edit Villains Easier" is the current base image for the Villains page. It's less nice, but it works okay... Problem is that it also needs some censoring, but much easier one. I currently use that one (juliona_11.jpg), but it's only a very crude and ugly edit... So if you are unable to do the other picture but can do better than I did, I'd still be thankful :) Fortunately, it's the only picture that required editting in the entire set.
The third additional file is just to confirm a translation... Since I already have most of Shirow's Pieces characters done, I might as well do the remaining two eventually. It's not really a short-term plan since I don't have an actual moveset in mind: They're both gun users with no special skills, and while I know they'll end up quite plain, if I were to do them right now they'd be pretty WIMPIL-like beside the nice art. I'd still like to know their name for the occasion where I'll actually do them. The one from Pieces 2 is Cyril. The one from Pieces 3...
Well, that's the one I'm not sure about. The third image is the one where they give her name. What I get is "Fuara"... But what kind of name is that? Fuala isn't any better. Especially since it's for a British character (pretty much)... So I'm wondering if I got it wrong somehow.
Anyway, I'm pretty proud about Juliona. She's fun, enjoyable to play and the art is really pretty and sexy. When I saw that smile (the one in her Eternal Optimism page), I knew I just had to make her a QBB character. Her moveset is not amazing like seductress Shion (the best designed moveset in the game for multiple reasons according to my very biased opinion), but it's quite enjoyable in it's own right (Disclaimer: your tastes might not match mine) and she has the big advantage of not consisting of 95% badly editted art like the seductress.
I thought that I'd be able to give you one page for Improved Art Ayra at the same time since I had one that started well, but... I ran into some difficulties eventually so it'll have to wait unfortunately.
I ended up going with Izumi's boost. It's a big boost, but it's a 1/5 chance if the move complete succesfully, and the sum of the other option is negative so I think it'll be fair anyway. Melpha's Max BP would definitively work if I had kept the +1BP on succesful Eternal Optimism use... It got downgraded when I switched it to prevent damage though (and downgraded again by making it a -2 score page instead of scoreless). I guess we'll see how it goes!
Since the image files are roughly at ninja Shion or Christabel level, I'm hopeful that there won't be approval issues for the images, but if there are, please tell me which and I'll see if I can replace them.
Juliona files:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/oo8dpm
Awesome work there, and no issues with the images, indeed. More Shirow is always welcome in my book :D
Delete...Though, is not-score Eternal Optimism currently taking effect next turn like the page says? Maybe it should be "Timer self 1 Reduce damage 2"? Also, page 35 should say "only Brown" ^^U
For the japanese name, ファラ・リゼル・オリン is pronounced: Fara Rizeru Orin, though searched separately in Google, seems to be more like "Farrah Risel Olin".
And well, if no one shows up to lend a hand, maybe I'll eventually try my best with either of those... though I'd still appreciate if someone came to our help :)
Thanks! I didn't have too much in form of good images that didn't require editting leftover so it's certainly a relief to know that it's good as is.
ReplyDeleteUgh... I think I might have got page 35 right maybe once ever... I'll try to send a fixed version by tomorrow night (I should be done with 1 page for IAA so I want to include it at the same time).
I didn't notice that it was a "small" A... Fara/Farrah certainly sounds a whole lot better!
I'd be insanely surprised if anyone else actually read through 47 long replies so I'm definitively not crossing my fingers about the edits! It'd be swell if somehow did, though...
About Eternal Optimism, well, I'm not sure to be honest! When I had it as Temporary BP, if I scored I had +4 temporary BP for 1 turn and +2 for the two others, which is what I wanted. I sort of assumed that it do the same for Reduce Damage... I guess I'll go test it out and change it if needed for the thursday fixes.
Beside that, odds are it'll be a bit before you get new characters from me. Reason is because my current pool of currently lined up characters is the following:
- Kat: I'm still having trouble patching up a balanced moveset for her that represents her well and that I'm happy about... It's slowly getting there, but there's big holes still. I might end up just giving up and making her plain beside two neat tricks, but... Not just yet. Gravity Rush is the only game I've ever got Platinum on (or 1000/1000 for X-Box users): I don't care for achievements, but I loved the game enough to do absolutely everything in it... So half-assing Kat feels kind of wrong!
- Milk Juliona: I have the images and interesting moveset all lined up so making her would be quick and easy... But it's obviously not allowable at all. It's not censorable at all, and even the base concept is kind of twisted I have to admit... It's not the first undistributable character I make, but it kind of make me feel as if the time investment is less worth it due to no one else being able to use them...
- Cyril: I started having some ideas about her, but I have the W Tails Cat book in the mail which features her. My scans always turn out kind of choppy (See Ninja Shion Daze as an example), but there's no scans of that book online that I know of... And there might be some good images of Cyril in there so I'm not making any plan until I get the book and see the content is it might change dramatically what's available.
- Farrah: No real moveset ideas so far. I haven't actually made my 453x603 images yet, so I'm not even sure yet if there's enough valid pictures to fill the 32 pages. Unlike Cyril, there's no more content comming for her and she's not featured anywhere else, so what's in Pieces 3 will have to do... Hopefully. Maybe I should just go make the usable image set to see if she's even doable in the first place or not.
- Shion: Pretty darn unlikely, but a girl can dream, no? :) I'll be receiving Pieces 9 at the same time as W Tails Cat, which does feature the Shion universe. However, to the best of my knowledge it's not actually Shion-focused and the amount of actual really new pictures is quite low (The rest being from Toguihime, which I already used here and there for the ninja and guardian). So it's awfully unlikely that I'd get enough Shion images out of there for a new book no matter how much I'd love to... I do have a small handful of usable pictures that were not used previously though... And I have the utterly genius Spider idea used in my rated A Shion that I would love to be transfered in a releaseable form which may be possible with some editting wizardry... So MAYBE I will be able to scrounge something up once I get Pieces 9, but I'm not terribly hopeful.
- KOS-MOS: It's like trying to put an accurate Superman in this game without him being overpowered... Backburner for now!
News time!
DeleteGood news: Next is going to be Kat after all. I finally figured out how to do what I need to do without requiring thousands of lines of restrictions... She won't be as fancy as I would have originally liked, but she's going to be at a satisfactory level at least. Date estimated: Probably sometime near the end of next week.
Neutral news: I got a page for Improved Art Ayra done... But it's got sizing issues (Head and leg too big for the rest). I'm still including it because it is Improved compared to the old page, but... It's not improved enough to be part of the final product.
Bad news: ... you guys are going to get a new Shion. I'm really sorry. I was flipping through my togihime book and a great idea hit me. Sorry. I'll wait until I get Pieces 9 in case it nets me a few good options (So probably in 2 weeks depending on duties).
Really bad news: The more I think about it, the less I want to let go of my improved spider idea... Let me explain. The concept of the idea isn't problematic: You have 3 moves related to it. The first two are identical, they just have different move numbers so that you aren't locked helplessly. Basically, you have one page that is dedicated to "direct page trafic", and your Special counter is linked to it. First time you use the skill, it shoots you to page A, you get Minor Entanglement, and you lose 1 damage on all scores. Second time, sends to page B, you take more damage and gets major entanglement. And so on... Your other skill is "Give up", which gives you back all your penalities and reset your entanglement to 0.
If you succeed in reaching the end, you are completely free and get massive permanent bonuses and a partial heal. The thing is, since it goes on a 14-pages character (ala seductress Shion) and that the whole Spider/Willpower test thing is only 3 move slots due to how it's built, there's still enough move slots and pages for a full acceptable moveset so she's not forced at all to go that route.
The rest of the moveset concept is not transferable to an approvable character, but I have a new perfectly allowable moveset with the Toguihime one. The spider CONCEPT is transferable, but the images... well...
With the fix for Juliona (you were right) and IAA image, I'll add two sets of images. One is the spider images I'm using... Basically, I want to know if it's possible for me to use those if I manage how to heavily edit them.
If it's impossible, I also included another set that could do the same concept in theory... It's less visually fitting, there's one page less and it still needs some editting, but I think it might be easier to edit to approvable status.
If neither are approvable even post edit... well... uh... I guess I'll scrap the idea since I haven't seen any image sets that can pull off the concept right. It's not a must for the character, but it'd be a bit sad to let the idea rot, although it might be implementable with something else eventually... Maybe.
Well, since I had time before sleep, I guess I'll actually be giving you tonight the updates for Ayra and Juliona + images to check if there's a chance they'd possibly be okay after edit (I haven't bothered to crop the parts I want so it's just the base images right now). The rest of the character would be no issue.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vj36cs
How do you convert attacks with autoguard properties? You could probably use the Block and Strike type move, as that technically counts as an attack in which you automatically block at the onset of the move.
ReplyDeleteNow that I think about it, what exactly is the benefit of using a Block and Strike with any given character? (Annelotte, Alleyne, etc) Is it designed to beat out standard moves like it should? I never looked at the matrices closely enough but in theory, a Block and Strike move should cause the user to block an incoming type of attack (vertical or whatever) and attack back.
Well, there's really three types of "Block and Strike".
DeleteThe most common is scored Shield Blocks, usually on moves 26 and 4. They generally are quite safe moves (they complete successfully often) and some have damages or bonuses to them: On the other hand, it's rarer for characters to get scored on by move 26 or 4. Since they are score pages though, they are vulnerable to attacks that do x-thing on score, like knockdowns and stuff. Those generally are assigned to page 17.
The second type is the scoreless block pages, like Alleyne has. It's usually also on move 26 and 4. The big advantage of scoreless block pages is that you take no damage no matter how damaging the enemy attack is, and it also makes you invulnerable to any "on score" page. Those usually lead to page 63. Very few characters have scoreless block pages, and those who do tends to be extremely good characters.
The big advantage of those two types is that they are Green moves. There's quite a few conditions that forces you to do only Yellow or Green, so if you have blocks, you have more options than just using the 4 basic jumps. Not only that, since most blocks have a positive damage value, it allows you to try to inflict damage to the enemy instead of just jumping or screwing yourself over by using Wild Strike.
The third type of Block and Strike is the "fake" ones, like Elina. It's called a "Block and Strike", but in reality it's just a regular move that usually has a very favorable matrix. They usually aren't green and don't use 26 and 4 so they are just blocks in name.
Generally-speaking, no attacks have innate autoguard properties. It's really just that Green = nearly always available, so you have more options to fight your opponent with. If you try to make an anti-guard skill, it's actually really hard to do so. If you make something that catches pages with scores less than 0, you'll catch the first types of blocks, but you don't catch the second. If you try to catch enemies using 26 or 4, you'll catch characters who have other moves located to those positions (Like Annelotte 26 for example). They are rare, but they exist.
In most cases, move 36 (the big downswing) pretty much destroy most characters guards, though.
Well, I mean, some common moves in swordplay involve the standard parry and riposte, which can be done in the same motion. Or like in Soul Calibur how some attacks would have auto Guard Impact properties during certain frames of the move against certain attacks, which would automatically parry the attack during your own attack.
DeleteAnyway I have some equally bad news of my own.
You're getting a new character, but it won't be released until October 4-6 and it might end up being painfully obvious. I'll give you a hint that she has roughly the same system as her predecessor.
Oh! Well, I guess I didn't actually answer your question... Note to self: Do not post right before going to bed.
DeleteThere's no easy way to do that. The Lost World system sort of already assume that swordplay happens all the time so it doesn't offer much opportunities otherwise. It's why the two players pick an attack and that it can result in parries or that one player hits and the other doesn't.
There's kind of two 'meh' ways to go around it: An easier one that's probably not what you seek, and one that may fit better. There might exist more, but... I haven't actually thought about them yet :)
The first way is to pick a move number that already is a 100% counter to the other. While there's some hefty variation between characters, there's a few hard rules. For example, let's take Juliona: Her Villains Cannot Hide move (#6) has a +5 damage bonus if the enemy uses Away (#16). 100% of character gets hit if they do Away when the enemy does move #6: The majority will be unbalanced, some will be knocked down or take a wound of some kind, but all will get hit. This way, I have a move that directly counters a specific enemy move. So if you want to counter vertical swings, you would look for hard counters in matrixes for move 24 and 36 (and mayyybe 44, although you'd occasionally catch a non-verticial for an handful of characters).
The second way is like I did with Sophitia's Guard Impacts. Basically, Sophitia Guard Impacts any move that matches her own. For example, if you do move 24 and she does move 24, she guard impacts you. What I did was modify her matrix: Anytime she did a move that matched the opponent, it sends her to the guard impact page (move 24 also guard impact 36 since she lacks that move). The guard impact page forces the enemy to go to the Leg Wound page and take some minor damage.
That approach can of course be modified and used in a smaller (or larger) scale depending on the needs. It unfortunately requires matrix editting though, and you have to be verrryyy careful about not overdoing it (else your character guard impacts too much and becomes incredibly frustrating to fight against).
And awww for the late release! Well, better late than never... I assume it's from the same serie as Dlanor?
Actually, thinking about it, Irma does have a relatively similar system. It might be worth your time to check out, although it's kind of all over the place regarding it's counter parries.
DeleteYou'll see what I mean when the time comes. I'm not a huge fan, but I couldn't help but notice that date was around the corner. ^^; And I was born in the same year.
DeleteAnyway, that answers my question pretty well. Irma reminds me of that lady with the Main Gauche in her offhand, so the way she fights makes sense. Thanks!
Hopefully the next update will include the other changes you proposed too so you can give the newly improved characters a spin. I already made some of the corrections but we'll see how this goes.
I don't think "bad news" means what you guys think it means, lol.
DeleteAlso, mysterious foreshadowing from Baofu aside, that's around the date she'd have been released anyways, since we have the next char lined up and I'd rather work on one at a time as well.
For the set of images, I guess alternate 2 and 4 only need slight censoring, alternate 3 would need just a little bit more, spider 1 and 4 about the same, spider 3 needs some pants, and spider 2 needs too much work ^^U. Spider 5 and alternate 1 are alright.
Now you got me intrigued with the spider concept, I guess it's a step-up from the "you get punished sometimes" like Nyx' fizzle, Alice's fumble or Mirim's, only getting punished on purpose...
Also, regarding the autoguards, there's kind of a third type that we used recently, the one that doesn't rely on matrixes, but on restrictions, like Shannon's autoguard. It needs some adjusting as well, but without fussing over the matrixes, it'd let you easily enter a temporary state where you could block/overpower any attack you scripted it to.
And you know what, I quite like that new page of Ayra, you sure are showing some progress there :)
In that case, I admit I have absolutely no idea which character Baofu is talking about... Maybe if I wasn't gone for so long I'd know, but for now I haven't got the faintest idea. I suppose I'll see in due time though! :)
DeleteI know you said "More Shirow is always welcome", but I admit I'm a bit surprised that you'd consider Shion #5 to be good news! They all play pretty differently from each other, but it's still the same character... Well, if you don't mind more Shion I'll definitively more than happy to provide! :)
Thanks for the comment for IAA! Unfortunately, it's more a case of "How much time I dedicate to the drawing" instead of "I am getting better"... But beside the body being too small for the rest, I have to admit I'm not unhappy with it. It's much easier for me to make armor look good, but I wanted to use a traditional slinger outfit and armor just didn't fit. I had to add the bracer for the parry to make some sort of sense though. Anyway, I'll be making 1 page per week at least... It'd certainly be nice if the last pages turn out better than the first ones but I'm not holding my breath!
Thanks for the spiders approval! I'll be trying to whip out something eventually (well, before next Shion), but no ETA on that at all, since...
You know how I mentionned that I figured out how to do Kat without having nightmare conditions? That turns out to be false. Well, the idea made perfect sense in my head, but when I tried to draft up the overall sheet I'm having a problem...
Basically, Kat has two states. Normal and Gravity Shift. She also has a Gravity Gage, and as soon as she runs out, she returns to Normal. So in her Sheet, I have the following:
State = Normal/Gravity Shift
Initial Energy = 10
Maximum Energy = 10
Special Name = Gravity Gage
Weapon System = Activate Unarmed
Aftercheck Eval special < 1 Change state 0
Aftercheck State 0 Disable move all
Aftercheck State 0 Height = 4
Aftercheck State 0 Enable move Gravity Shift
And in the restriction file, I would change her state when she uses one of the two Gravity Shift moves... It's the only non-nightmare implementation that I could think of. But as we've seen with Ayra, the AI cannot cope properly with Enable/Disable of specific moves and I have no idea how I could implement this otherwise.
Estimates of late next week still stands by the way: While I do have all the images picked and formatted (to 450x600 for once) and the moveset is built on paper, there's nothing actually done in any file yet beside what I wrote up there, and balancing will be a nightmare: I'll need a ton of play testing and value tweaking and I'm not looking foward to that too much!
Well, if you get enough images and you have one of those kickass ideas to make her feel different than the others, sure she's welcome (it's kinda Shirow's fault if he doesn't draw more chars :p)
DeleteI think I "mostly" fixed the disabling problem last time as well, so maybe changing "Aftercheck" to "Always" can make her work... or if not, I'll look into it after this next update.
And like I said, take your time, just don't get burned out here :)
guys where can i find this one : http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=NEOBK-1227362
ReplyDeleteI still haven't compiled the whole 3rd volume, but you can find the individual stories here by clicking the "qbr illustrated stories" tag, they start from "Queen's Blade Rebellion Illustrated Stories: Showdown" chapter 1 to 11.
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