Welcome to another week of SnD Games! The place where sometimes things don't go as planned. Last week I set myself some pretty big goals, but like anything in life, things don't always pan out. No worries because now we have this week! PTD2 is very different from PTD1 on the outside but on the inside it is even more different. Even the Pokemon Center has a lot of new code and different setups than the PTD1 part. I didn't anticipate this so the Pokemon Center ended up taking most of my time last week. I don't really regret it because the results were great. I was also able to find and fix the worst of the bugs, the saving bug, and yesterday I found and fixed the not learning the moves correctly bug so all is well.
Night is coming
So this week we land right at Day and Night cycles, those will be pretty fun. The way I'm thinking about it now is that it will resemble something you might see in a Zelda game. While you are in a town/city time will stand still, but when you are in a route time will start to move. I will try it this way first and see how it turns out. How long each time cycle will last I haven't totally decided yet. I will play around with it as I make it to see what will feel better. A lot of game development is about feel. The better you are about picking out what feels right in other games the better your games will be.
Pokemon will despawn and spawn as time changes, and like the gamefreak games there will be different chances to catch pokemon at different times. Some, like hoothoot, will only show up at night.
Along with Night and Day, Held Items will come out, I talked about them last week. Not much new to add there, other than I'm excited to see them finally in and I can't wait until the everstone is available.
New Story Level
A long with Day and Night there will be a new story level featuring the third trainer that we haven't seen from New Bark Town, Zai! She is also exploring Route 29 but she might have ran into some trouble.
More 1v1 Changes
While 1v1 mode is looking a lot better a lot of people have brought something to my attention and I think I finally found a decent solution. (Thanks to an email I got recently (: ) 1v1 is all about the choices you make. While rare candy those let you choose which pokemon should level up I think there are betters ways of doing this. A good amount of people suggested instead I give out experience that you could hand out. Initially I was skeptical of this idea because it would be difficult for players to know how much to give to each pokemon. Then somebody emailed me that leveling up should just cost money and get more expensive the higher the level will be. This was also something I had thought about but it could bring about more grinding.
But there is a lot of good ideas in there that I want to use. I'll talk about the pros and cons about Rare Candies and I'll propose a new way of doing things.
Rare Candies are:
- Easy to understand and use.
- Annoying to buy them then only use them on levels.
- Since they level up anybody they are most effectively used to level up high level pokemon. In a way this restricts your choices since the best path is usually to have one pokemon that will take you all the way.
My proposal is to give out "Experience Currency" and then you can pay to level up your pokemon. Similar to how PTD1 leveling up was like. That way from level 5 to 6 would cost let's say 5 experience coins and 6-7 would be 10. There you have to option to have three level 6 pokemon or one level 7 and two level 5. I think that choice is more interesting. Also with Rare candy I can only give you so many so that you can't level up past a certain point. But with the scaling of cost with levels I can give you more coins that will help you bring your team up instead of just one guy. I'm really liking this system. At a higher level I can give you experience that might not be enough for your main guy to level but could be enough for your weaker guys to level up a few times. With Rare Candy this is just not possible. The big solution here is that the game will only let you give out enough to level up so you can't give anybody half a level or anything like that. Making it more straight forward to understand.
I wouldn't use coins because people could just grind for them, and some people have thousands saved up so this will be currency that resets when you play and when you hit a check point you will get all that you would have received up to that point. Experience Currency will probably not cost coins unlike Rare Candy. I think there is enough choices to make that I don't need you to worry about buying it since you won't be able to use it as a revive or heal.
Weekly Progress:
Okay so lets look at the list that I have for this week! Keep checking back as I work on these to see my progress and cheer me on.
Alpha v1.21: Released! Have questions about Held Items? Check the FAQ page.
- Next Story Level - Help Zai at different times of the day!
- Zai's Graphics
- Intro
- Battle layout
- Battle Waves
- Enemies in level 8 of 1v1 mode will no longer give out experience
- Relearn Moves - Your pokemon can now relearn moves.
- Fixed a problem with Scratch attack's animation
- Made Zorua's illusion pick from your last pokemon instead of the enemy
- Held Items
- Implemented in Client
- Give a chance for wild pokemon to be holding items, based on the games' percentages
- Implement an icon to show if a pokemon has a held item
- Implement a way to trigger the held item at will- Trigger by clicking on the item on top of the pokemon's profile window.
- Integrate held items into past abilities that required it
- Ability Unnerve
- Ability Frisk
- Implement it so the pokemon will be able to use the held item in combat
- Implement it so that you can give an item to be hold in combat (100%)
- Implement it so that you can give/take an item to be hold out of combat (100%)
- Loading Items
- Loading Held Item
- Saving Items
- Saving Held Items
- Implemented in Server
- Loading Items
- Loading Held Items
- Saving Items
- Saving Held Item
- Add Item Names in the Trading Center
- You can now drag and item from your bag when you select it by holding down your mouse button after you select it
- You can now see the gender and if the pokemon holds an item in the party and check screens
- Added Oran Berries to the 1v1 mode store - They cost 10 coins, they heal for 100, your pokemon carries it, you can only buy up to 6, unlocked after beating level 1.
- Added Chilan Berry to the 1v1 mode store - They cost 100 coins, they reduce normal attack's damage by half, your pokemon carries it, unlocked after beating level 8.
- Lowered the amount of potions you can buy at a time on 1v1 mode to 6 - This if offset by the 6 Oran Berries you can buy.
- Day and Night Story Mode
- Created Overlay graphic that simulates the change in lighting
- Implemented flow of time
- Implemented pokemon respawing and leaving the map as time changes
- Implemented changes in Human NPC Dialog depending on time of day
- Implemented Saving and loading your current time
- New Battles for new Wild Pokemon
- Hoppip
- Hoothoot
- New Map Behaviors
- Hoppip
- Hoothoot
- New Pokemon added (Hoppip)
- Graphics
- Stats
- Evolving Info
- New Attacks added
- Synthesis
- Splash
- New Abilities added
- Infiltrator
- Shadow Pokemon will only have a chance at showing up during the night time
- Added New Pokemon To Trading Center
- Added them to the search and request list- Refresh the page if you don't see them in the request list.
- Wild Solo Pokemon will now give out much more experience
- Fixed a transparency problem with the Sentret, Totodile, Cyndaquil's sprites
- Fixed a problem with Zorua's walking animation
- Fixed bug that says a "Shiny" has appeared instead of a "Shadow" when a wild shadow pokemon shows up for battle
- Fixed a bugged with Shiny/Shadow pokemon's health bar when it gets low and then healed not turning back to gree
- Pokemon Not Learning Moves when multiple pokemon have to learn them at the end of the battle or when using fast speed and learning it at the end of the battle - Finally found the real cause and fixed it for v1.20
Like I told you guys last week this week I will show you some new creatures. With pokemon you usually get to see how the starters will progress since it's an important decision when figuring out who to pick. A lot of people probably pick it based on how it looks rather than how it performs. I know I do :). So without further a due here are the evolution lines for the starters:
(Thanks Kevin and Joel for the concepts)
So that is all we have for this week. Keep checking back, subscribe to our twitter, leave us a comment. Let us know what you think!
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