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Rossay In reply to ThatOnePaul [2013-09-12 14:24:04 +0000 UTC]

Yes it is! Inspired mainly by Monster Rancher 2 -- I liked the unique battle system in that game but I'm hoping this will feel different and not a complete copy of MR2!

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ThatOnePaul In reply to Rossay [2013-09-12 15:40:32 +0000 UTC]

awesome!

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Rossay In reply to skeddles [2013-09-11 21:28:46 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the feedback! You're not the first person who has disliked the little heart so I think I'll remove it.

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Rossay In reply to Bunni89 [2013-09-11 21:14:51 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, the extra space is for larger Spirits (which haven't yet been designed) but I imagine that certain bosses will be quite large.

I'm using an adaptation of the monster rancher battle system. I loved those games hugely when I was growing up and I've never seen any battle systems similar to it. I'm hoping with a few changes, the battle system will feel unique and not just a rip-off of monster rancher though!

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Bunni89 In reply to Rossay [2013-09-11 21:56:38 +0000 UTC]

Ahh... well maybe just do something like.. draw a pixel box that'd be the maximum size of spirits and bosses and stuff? I think it's honestly hard to judge if the names are too big when I'm not sure how big everything else will be, so sorry I can't be of much help
Just one thing- I think it looks kinda weird that the name boxes are so big but the writing is small. Obviously this is so you can have names that're 15 or so letters, but it looks a lil weird when its a short name. May I make a suggestion? Make the font bold! It's a bit of an illusion that makes the text more noticeable so it looks bigger! I think being not very noticeable is more of a problem than the size itself, the box is very vibrant with a bright coloured outline so your eye is drawn to it instead of the text. Could be annoying when you're trying to look at stuff for only a split second during intense gameplay and you keep missing details. Lord knows I have that problem sometimes! I try and work so fast that I end up taking ages to read one thing- I'll keep looking at it quickly, and then looking again, and then looking again and then finally registering what it actually said XD
That's why I think this style of interface is awesome with the move images as well as names :3 Much better than other realtime action battles that're surprisingly text heavy.

And haha yeah I didn't mean it's identical to Monster Rancher, I was just excited to see a cool tribute to it! I noticed that yours seems to be like a cooler updated version, what with being able to switch through lots of movesets during battle and I'm assuming there isn't that element of not being able to control things, since you didn't mention it. I dunno about you, but my monsters "doing foolery" all the time right when I was trying to attack was the most annoying thing! And with the time it takes to train them out of that I coulda been training actual stats What is "foolery" even meant to mean? Like... a jester act or something? XD the translation was odd at times XD
Will this mean that the game is also similar to monster rancher in other ways? Like can you train your spirits in errantry minigames or fuse them together? Or generate random spirits somehow, similar to the discs thing? I can imagine that'd be hard to impliment.
Honestly I think I'd like it more if it perhaps WASN'T like Monster Rancher, it'd be more new and interesting to see this style of battle system in a different sort of game

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Rossay In reply to Bunni89 [2013-09-12 14:38:31 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the suggestion but I like the name typography the way it is at the moment; although I will concede it looks better with longer names!

I appreciate you giving such length detailed feedback, it's really helpful. I completely agree with you about the interfaces. Like you, I have a huge preference for games with interfaces that combine text and images. I don't like the "flow" of games which have text-heavy based battle systems (cough final fantasy etc... cough ).

I'm hoping that the game will feel sort of like the sequel to the Monster Rancher franchise that people deserved and never got. MR1 and MR2 were amazing games; the sequels MR3, MR4 and MR-EVO seemed, in my opinion, to get progressively worse! Apart from a couple of titles for the DS and an MMORPG which was never released outside of Japan, the MR franchise has basically died off -- which is a shame considering how much love and potential it had.

I'm not sure about the whole "foolery" idea. I'm kind of tempted to put something similar in, because I sort of like the idea that the control you have over your monster is determined by how well you treat it?

I think I'd like to implement something similar to the CDs -> giving random monsters. I might implement a system where you could use passwords to generate them randomly? I couldn't copy the CD idea exactly because Tecmo actually went as far as to patent that!

Originally, I wanted to have a system where you could combine two Spirits together to generate a cross-breed, but after realising how much of a pain in the ass that would be for spriting, I've decided to have instead "families" of similar Spirits which you can breed between to get different creatures.

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Bunni89 In reply to Rossay [2013-09-12 16:27:39 +0000 UTC]

Okie doke, glad some of my feedback could help I'll try and give more detailed comments on your pics in the future

Yeah definately! Personally I don't mind FF since it's usually meant to be played slowly, but it's a bugger when it isn't. I only really like the ones where the ATB has a Wait option- so it pauses the action while you're making choices, and thus it doesn't matter if you can't make split decisions. Then again that makes it playable but not very exciting, it's about the most boring visual representation of a battle ever XD
But it's not like turn based systems are never actiony, I'd reccommend Mana Khemia and Persona 3 for games that did the best they could with what they had. They really surprised me and made me actually LIKE the gameplay, even if it's still piles of annoying text. (Though at least they have text + move icon)

Oh hell yes! You're getting me even more excited! XD I don't necessarily think that the sequels were objectively worse, just... not monster rancher at all. Possibly fans of cliche'd standard rpgs would like them but they were horrible HORRIBLE sequels to a franchise that was never anything like that T^T I do love Monster Rancher DS though, I think its an almost worthy sequel to the original two, plus the coolness of stylized art and the addition of some of the cool monsters introduced in the crappy sequels. Just a shame that it's really buggy and has a lot of crappy gameplay decisions... aside from the prettyness it feels like it was a sequel made in the 90s. I coulda forgiven all this stuff on early playstation hardware but for a modern console there's just no excuse. But the new errantry system is actually very fun, at least.
I wish we got the MMO though, it looks AWESOME!

Well, just my personal opinion is that it's needlessly annoying and reduces battles to a matter of luck. Seriously, that bollocks only EXISTS to stop you when you're about to make the killing blow and paralyze you so the enemy can smash you into little pieces. Battles are won and lost because foolery happened at the wrong time! personally I'd prefer if you thought up a different system for how good treatment affects your monster in battle. The idea is good, I just think foolery was a bad way of doing it.
But perhaps open the question up to your fanbase and see what other people think about foolery?

Passwords is good! If I remember correctly one of the GBA spinoffs used that. And the DS games used drawing on a screen or yelling into a microphone. A silly idea that's probably not even possible- perhaps you could upload an image into the game and it generates a monster based on that?
Wow, they patented it? o.O

Definately yeah, I know the feeling when you have to sprite a giant pile of similiar things in different colours XD Breeding families is way cool though, I wouldn't even have the patience to go that far if it was me! XD

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