NEPETAQUEST 2011: Incredibly serious business.

[Frost]

Do the enemies have the same combat options as the players minus the items thing?

Eh, no need to be so formal about it. They're always going to be able to do more than "aggress" every turn.

As for fleeing enemies... I wouldn't recommend it. What would be the point?

[Snuffleheim]

Eh, that would be true. XD

Anyway. Exploding robot heads, anyone?

[shadowedPhoenix]

As for fleeing enemies... I wouldn't recommend it. What would be the point?

The one reason that springs to mind is making an enemy such that it has the chance of giving big loot or experience, but making it harder for the player to get it via the enemy's legging it whenever they get the chance.

Also, exploding robot heads for the win.

[orderboundChaotic]

I think it would be impossible for us to not use exploding robot heads for no other reason than they are exploding robot heads.

[Snuffleheim]

Ok, I can't say why I'm going gonzo on details for EXPLODING ROBOT HEADS all of a sudden, but eh, I'm gonna roll with the muse.
The exploding robot head has around a 50% chance of either doing a really weak and lame regular attack or (wait for it) exploding in your face and dying. The amount of damage this does depends on how much health the head had left, so ideally it should have an average-to-high health stat and a really low defensive stat (if we're going with those). The chances of it destroying one of your items is also dependent on its health at time of boom. On the upside, there is a chance that it will start out with only partial health. Also, the sound effect is robosplode.

Also, upon rereading the thing for Gamzee's special: mostly a wording thing, but perhaps it should be more like "requires stardust" (or whatever) "to be used, effect varies depending on stardust"? And in that case, I think a more appropriate name would be MiRaClE/mIrAcLe. To keep the limiter ability of it being associated with an item, stardusts (or whatever we're using) of all kinds should be rare (unable to buy, for the most part) and extremely valuable (sells for a whole fricken' lot).

[Alphadin]

I had an idea for health bars

Just a thought.

Of course there can always be a display of total and current health on the healthbar, or where Nepeta's name is at.

[Snuffleheim]

Oh, that is cool. Although I think the sign should be a little more visible. And maybe the health bar should resemble their blood color?

[Alphadin]

Oh, that is cool. Although I think the sign should be a little more visible. And maybe the health bar should resemble their blood color?

The blood color idea is great, I wanted the sign to be a bit concealed.
Edit:

Changed it a bit.

[Snuffleheim]

Oh! What if the thing with the sign on it were made to be remeniscent of the psychic thingummies? Like in the troll flash?

[shadowedPhoenix]

That's a nice-looking health bar! Would look lovely on the hi-res sized screen; if the order of the day ends up lo-res it looks like it'd resize pretty well, too. (The biggest catch would be that that would lose the ability to use the original sprite closeup.)

[Geekthras]

Baha I came back here just after I finished making the health bars look like they did in the earlier mockup, all ready to show off. Oops.

[Snuffleheim]

Whoopsies! XD

[shadowedPhoenix]

Damn fast moving threads! Ah, well. Stuff to show off is always good, right? And I suspect there'll be more ideas before this thing's done.

[Mr_Ham97]

Have you considered having a hi-res screen with lo-res graphics? Instead of scaling everything, we scale the sprites and stuff manually. I did that a lot with my old retro-ish gamemaker games. If you do this then you can have all the hi-res things you want, which would be useful for cutscenes and the gui.

[Frost]

I'd much prefer we stay consistent. I can't speak for anybody else, but I'd find that sort of thing massively jarring.

[Alphadin]

So should I make some more versions of the health bar?

[Snuffleheim]

I say yesh. I likies them.

[Drillgorg]

I'd say basically EVERYONE make EVERYTHING so as to create more awesome.

[Geekthras]

It would help if you made the design of the health bar 16-bit style, kind of like the portraits in Alterniabound, which didn't feel jarring at all to me.

edit: I take this as my cue to try some more music.

[Dudemaster47]

I think the health bar needs more ridiculously large and arbitrary numbers on it, like 413612/612413 or something.

[Frost]

RE the healthbar proposal, the Nepeta face is a bit... uncanny valley? It sort of looks like someone's killed her and made her head into a drum.

I do like the idea of making each troll's symbol and colour a prominent part of the UI, though. Good visual shorthand.

[Geekthras]

Well I might as well post a screenie so you can see what I had for comparison (note: the only test sprites we had were Nepeta and Nepeta)

show spoiler

hide spoiler

I originally had the middle as grey but removed that so Karkat's health bar could be grey too.

[Alphadin]

RE the healthbar proposal, the Nepeta face is a bit... uncanny valley? It sort of looks like someone's killed her and made her head into a drum.

I do like the idea of making each troll's symbol and colour a prominent part of the UI, though. Good visual shorthand.

Give me a minute, I'll edit it a bit
Edit: Done

I just now noticed the eye is kinda low

[ectoBiologist]

This is only a very quick post as I am doing it from my iPhone and it is quite late. I am glad people liked my ideas for the robots, and I'd like to give my two cents about the pirate-style enemies for the Vriska/Eridan level. So far, the ideas I've had have been:
Some Vriska-brainwashed trolls (with blank-looking eyes and Vriska's symbol on their forehead) dressed in piratey gear. Perhaps only one or two variants of these with slightly different looking outfits
These guys - again, dressed in a sufficiently piratish style. I can see there being almost different 'classes' of these - swashbucklers, cannon users and the like
Some sort of tentacle beast, similar to Feferi's lusus but smaller, with only a few tentacles and eyestalks sticking out of the water (hit eyes for massive damage!)
Small crab-like creatures (maybe more like scorpions to fit with Vriska!) which are fired out of cannons towards you rolled up into balls and then they unroll and start attacking you with claws and mandibles and grrrrr! cD

On that (ridiculous) note I think I'd better stop as my brain seems to have stopped working in protest xD

[Alphadin]

I made a more compact, 16-bit healthbar.