Portralis 0.5 alpha version release date.

[Variaz]

I plan on releasing the alpha version of 0.5 by October 31.

The alpha version will consist in a vanilla-style gameplay, in the sense that there will be only one town, and two dungeons. The first dungeon will have Quazar as the boss, the second one will have Balcia in her final form.

The goal is to test the new system, test the new balance and gameplay changes, monster level system, etc... To see how it plays out, to gauge the level of difficulty, etc. Before revamping the quests and making new ones, I want to see how the game plays out, so that I can balance the quests properly.

Not all classes will be playable for the alpha. I am not sure how many will be done, but we already have Warrior, Fighter, Mage and I do not expect Marksman to require much changes at all. So all three main combat styles will be playable, and I also want Monster to be playable as well.

This should give us a good feel of where the game is going. Stay tuned for more updates!

[zekk]

Finally!

I hope the new system works out...

[atan59]

Sounds great!

I'll have a look once it's there, but not before having spent more time on 0.4, since I'm still new to the game and there's a lot to discover

[sekira]

Ok, so I've been thinking about this for a while, and I believe that the way that leveling weapons increase their dice and dice sides is not very well done.

There are two things I don't like... First of all, I don't like how the increases come every 15 levels, I think increases should be more gradual.

Second, I don't like how big the increases are for weapons with high values, and weapons with low values (like dice or dice sides below 4) don't ever increase. I guess I haven't tested that low values idea too terribly much, but that is the impression I got... Am I wrong about that?

What I propose is that every item have 2 more values in the save file, like dicepartial and sidespartial. These values should start at 1000 x the number of dice for dicepartial and 1000 x the number of sides for sidespartial. Every time a weapon levels, the dicepartial and sidespartial values are increased by say 2% each, and then the actual dice value is calculated as the integer value of 1/1000th of the new dicepartial value, and the new sides value is calculated as the integer value of 1/1000th of the new sidespartial value.

This means that a 1d3 bronze dagger would increase to 1d4 at level 16 or so, and 1d5 at level 27 or so, and 2d6 at level 37 I believe. A 6d8 Ice Halbered would increase to 6d9 at level 7, 7d9 at level 10, 7d10 at level 13, 8d10 at level 16.

Currently the maximum level we can expect a weapon to achieve is about level 45, so looking at that as a benchmark...

a 1d3 weapon would become 2d7
a 2d6 weapon would become 4d14
a 4d6 weapon would become 9d14
a 6d8 weapon would become 14d19
a 12d16 weapon would become 28d38
a 24d32 weapon would become 57d76

It may seem complicated, but it would only add 2 int values to the memory size of each object, and change 4 lines of code in the item leveling code (I believe, haven't actually looked at the code, just going by how I know item leveling works).

the new values would be item.ddpartial and item.dspartial
the old code which read something like

if (item.level%15 == 0) then
item.dd = item.dd + item.dd/4
item.ds = item.ds + item.ds/4
endif

would now read something like this

item.ddpartial = item.ddpartial + item.ddpartial/50
item.dspartial = item.dspartial + item.dspartial/50
item.dd = item.ddpartial/1000
item.ds = item.dspartial/1000

I am assuming in both old and new code that all values are integers, so all division is integer division. I know, my syntax isn't really C it is more like a generalized pseudo code, but the concept is still the same, even if the exact commands are a little off.

EDIT: I put this suggestion in this thread because it is a suggestion for a 0.5 change, and this is the 0.5 thread in the suggestions forum. Feel free to move if you want to V.

[Gando]

Don't forget to round those numbers

[Variaz]

It's true that the current formula isn't very good, and unfair for some weapons. In fact, due to rounding issues, some weapons currently CANNOT gain any power while leveling. Bee Sting, at 1d3, cannot ever raise it's power.

Your idea of storing a second set of values in the item is pretty good. However, I'm not sure if I will use this exact formula in 0.5, because of course, the damage formula is different, and weapon damages will be too. But I'll keep that in mind while reviewing the item leveling formula.

[Variaz]

We are getting close to October 31, and we now have the following playable classes:

Warrior
Fighter
Mage
Monk
Marksman

All these classes have been adapted to 0.5. As you've already seen, most classes have gone through major overhauls in terms of abilities(I haven't posted the Monk yet, but it's done), only the Marksman remains pretty much unchanged, save for a few tweaks.

And of course, the Monster race is now playable as well! I believe this should be enough for now, for the first alpha release of the 0.5 version. These classes covers much of the gameplay elements.