Create skills/ spells?

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

Will you ever have a system where we can make our own skills / classes / skill trees?

Want to be able to adjust effects of attacks, aoe attacks, crowd control spells like the stun attack, and make our own skill trees, and attack skills, etc etc.

[Baron]

+1

I've asked for this before as well. The response I got was that it'd be difficult to balance this for pvp or multiplayer, but seeing as how A) both of those are virtually nonexistent right now and B) even if they weren't, it'd actually give map authors who /did/ want to try for pvp or multiplayer far more balancing control.

So I agree it should definitely be added. One thing I'd love to see early on is an alternate set of animations, such as the ability to switch drinking a healing potion animation on the holy protector to be a healing spell, and switch the potion icon to blue squares to represent a mana bar. I'd also love to be able to add some sort of spell or attack animation to the taunt ability, since it has a damage dealt debuff attached to it. Could turn it into a holy spell, to make something resembling a paladin.

In regard to further customization though, definitely need to actually see Mage, Rogue, and Ranger released, with their own sets of abilities. From there, the option to at least mix and match abilities would be great for making hybrid classes.

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

Originally posted by Baron:

+1

I've asked for this before as well. The response I got was that it'd be difficult to balance this for pvp or multiplayer, but seeing as how A) both of those are virtually nonexistent right now and B) even if they weren't, it'd actually give map authors who /did/ want to try for pvp or multiplayer far more balancing control.

I don't get what's so hard XD It's mosty just tweaking numbers. That is a weird excuse to give for not letting us make our own skills, balance is a HUGE factor in a PVP/PVE ARPG, so I don't know if they are really concerned about pvp balance, or if that was just an excuse.

[Boweh]

'mostly just tweaking numbers'? This is a really uninformed statement. What you're talking about is a lot of new code, art assets and animations, a new UI interface and editor to handle it all, a new save/load structure for the storage of this edited skill information and new network code that can upload and share the edited skill data so that it's multiplayer compatible. Even beyond talking balance and numbers, the kind of feature you describe is a massive undertaking. Even just leaving numbers on abilities the same and allowing for cosmedic edits would take plenty of hard work.

[Baron]

While I agree its a lot of work, such is the nature of Early Access. There is quite a lot of hard work still to be done.

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

Originally posted by MistahBoweh:

'mostly just tweaking numbers'? This is a really uninformed statement. What you're talking about is a lot of new code, art assets and animations, a new UI interface and editor to handle it all, a new save/load structure for the storage of this edited skill information and new network code that can upload and share the edited skill data so that it's multiplayer compatible. Even beyond talking balance and numbers, the kind of feature you describe is a massive undertaking. Even just leaving numbers on abilities the same and allowing for cosmedic edits would take plenty of hard work.

Animations are easy as pie, dont know about ""effects"" if they need help maybe they should hire me? No one is asking for new graphics, you just threw that in there randomly, although the game DOES need more graphics, armors etc.

[Boweh]

3D Animation is a lengthy, tedious process regardless of how 'easy' you seem to think it is.

As for graphics, so how exactly are you going to create a UI without new art assets? Aside from that, how are players supposed to 'make new skills and classes' only by reusing what's already in the game? Think for a second about how limiting that would be and you should know no one would be satisfied with that half-finished approach. I added nothing 'thrown in at random.' My point in the first place was that you seem to underestimate how much time and work goes into developing new features of such a scope.

'Just hire more people' is all well and good as an argument only when you're talking about spending someone else's money. If money weren't an obstacle and you could just pay an infinite amount of imaginary talented, like-minded individuals to complete a workload at a drastically improved pace, there would be no reason for Early Access.

I'm asking you to try and be a bit more realistic about the development process, and to understand that these things take time and that developers need to decide on priorities and manage their time and resources.

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

Originally posted by MistahBoweh:

3D Animation is a lengthy, tedious process regardless of how 'easy' you seem to think it is.

As for graphics, so how exactly are you going to create a UI without new art assets? Aside from that, how are players supposed to 'make new skills and classes' only by reusing what's already in the game? Think for a second about how limiting that would be and you should know no one would be satisfied with that half-finished approach. I added nothing 'thrown in at random.' My point in the first place was that you seem to underestimate how much time and work goes into developing new features of such a scope.

'Just hire more people' is all well and good as an argument only when you're talking about spending someone else's money. If money weren't an obstacle and you could just pay an infinite amount of imaginary talented, like-minded individuals to complete a workload at a drastically improved pace, there would be no reason for Early Access.

I'm asking you to try and be a bit more realistic about the development process, and to understand that these things take time and that developers need to decide on priorities and manage their time and resources.

They don't have to pay me a salary, and animations ARE easy. I could also give them some 3d obj files if they need it. I have made swords, axes, armors, etc.


You seem to think we are in the Japanese-Anime world where you have to draw each frame by hand. 3d animation is just moving rag-doll parts, or perhaps typing in perameters ( move forarm such and such degrees, X Y Z) then when you move all the parts of the ragdoll or the "skeleton/bones" you have an animation.

Honestly if we could just tweak the numbers on the skills, and decide which classes get what skills it would still have a lot more customization than it currently has, and their excuse of pvp balance seems like just that.... an excuse.

Edit: If they truly do have some pvp balance in mind for some kind of e-sport pvp I commend them, but honestly I'm just not buying that answer.

[Baron]

An example of how current abilities could be modified to make a new class: Paladin Subclass.

Take the whirlwind ability damage and the taunt effect / damage debuff, and apply a spellcast animation instead of the current. Attach an appropriate yellow flash spell effect to the animation.

Ability 1: Blinding Light - Nearby enemies are unable to see your allies, forcing them to attack you. Their obscured vision causes them to deal reduced damage. The flash sears their eyes, dealing light damage.

Take the Stun ability, attach it to your attack.

Ability 2: Your next charged attack within a few seconds also applies the stun spell effect. Apply a holy glow to your weapon, for the duration of the buff.

Take the bubble shield, make it channeled.

Ability 3: As long as you hold the key, your character holds the bubble, slowly draining stamina and preventing damage. Cannot attack while active. Add a maximum time that it can be held, start the cooldown when you release the button.

Remove the damage immunity from poison bubble, change animation

Ability 4: Holy Fire - Holy fire surrounds your character, dealing damage to nearby enemies for the duration of this buff. (This is a tactical ability because the damage staggers enemies. Very useful.)

Change the potion icons to blue squares, to represent a mana bar. Change the drink potion animation to instead use the animation from ability 1, add a basic healing glow effect. Now you have a self healing spell.

Paladin Subclass.

If we could adjust abilities in even half as detailed a manner, we could have tons of new classes, balanced exactly the way we want. This is very important for an RPG maker.

[lifetap23]

We need to be able to make our own moves its a must.

[Boweh]

And describe to me, Baron, exactly how you would introduce a universal UI element that says 'but make it channeled' or 'but only activate on attack', etc. When you sit down and actually think about the practical challenge, it becomes 'okay, so I want my UI to be select an ability but be able to tailor it in half a dozen different specific ways' but many of those same toggles won't work for other types of abilities so you have to build and code separate menus and interfaces and options for everything, in addition to all the new parts and effects so that the editor actually functions as intended on release, rather than only doing half of it and having to completely redo the UI again later when everything gets more than three options. And on top of that, it needs to look professional and easy to use for an interface, rather than cluttered and unintuitive, and designing a clean UI is deceptively complicated.

RPGMaker's ability editing pretty much goes as far as name it, pick cost, pick target, pick visual effect, and pick level learned at, and largely anything else you want to do, you have to manually draw and/or script yourself. MyWorld is not an adaptible engine designed for third party modification. MyWorld is not a compiler with its own language. It does not have that luxury, and every effect or ability has to be made BY the developers.

MyWorld is also designed to me an entry-level tool, and that means you have to focus on making effective, intuitive user interfaces which won't leave a user feeling overwhelmed, which is a challenge in and of itself that only gets worse when we're talking about such a high volume of customization.

I'm not saying it's impossible, far from it. All I'm saying is that it takes time to do right, and then consider on top of that there are other things that need to be worked on that all take time and there are only two people that can only do so much, and the only reason i joined this conversation in the first place was because

Originally posted by Christian2222:

I don't get what's so hard XD

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm saying it's not doable or possible in the long-term. I am, however, saying that it would be a hefty long term goal with a lot of workload, especially when the team is already focused on and committed to other tasks.

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

I mean, I get it, coding is hard, and making GUI's and blah blah, but don't give the devs excuses for not doing stuff. Right now this is not a ""make your own arpg"" and I don't want the devs restricting our ability to customize things for the sake of clean GUI's and user friendliness.

RPG maker isn't THAT bad. You could create a LOT of your own skills in RPG maker, they just made some mistakes, like how enemy spawns are handled, to have a randomly generated spawn you basically have to make 7 different spawns if you want to have a random spawn using 3 guys, so thats guy 1,2,3, 1+2, 1+3, 1+2+3, 2+3. instead of simply being able to say random - unit, and give a % chance.

It's real easy for people who just want to make generic spawns, but as you said just to simply make some random spawns is a lot of work, or you need a custom script that makes random units run away at the beginning of the fight to emulate a random spawn.

Same thing with items in RPG maker, instead of having a proper loot table you can select 3 items that can drop from a monster.

So I really don't like the way rpg maker did a lot of things, if you wanted to be real specific it was fine, if you wanted more dynamic, generated stuff then tough luck. But at the very least you could create your own classes, and skills that had such and such status effects, damage, etc, etc.

[Baron]

Well, WC3 world editor has a very in depth tool for this, and since it came out over 10 years ago and basically invented this genre, that tool is a pretty iconic option to have in an RPG maker.

The way WC3's ability editor handles this problem, basically, is that you have 6 types of abilities, and those 6 types of abilities have a few parts of the ability you can edit. Its very similar to how the character editor works, except instead of choosing how the mob behaves, you choose how the spell behaves, and instead of choosing how the mob looks, you choose how the spell looks. And the sliders, instead of things like damage, attack speed, and health, change things like damage, casting speed, and mana/endurance cost.

The types are:

Targeted AOE (Effect is in a location)
PBAOE (Location is point blank around your character)
Line (Location is a line or cone between the caster and the target destination)
Single Target (Hits your target)
Self (Affects you)
Summon (Summons a unit of your choosing)

And some of the things you can adjust are

Range/Radius, Damage, Casting Speed, Spell appearance.

So say the Stun ability in game was in this editor.

The stun effect would be the AI, and you could add damage to it, increase its range or casting time, make it cost stamina, add a spell effect to the ability, choose an alternate animation. In WC3 there are tons more options, but those would be sufficient here.

In this way, we could make a countless number of abilities, the same way we can make a countless number of custom enemies, because of the sheer number of combinations that become available when you are able to mix and match like that. In fact, all of the abilities in WC3, of which there are hundreds in the base game, are simple combinations of the 6 targeting systems, and a core group of spell effects.

The spell effects are: Stun, Direct Damage, Channeled Damage, Damage over Time, Damage debuff, Immobilize, Sleep, Accuracy Debuff, and Damage Shield.

So for an example of an ability editor, picture it like the character creator.

You pick a spell effect and a spell targeting system, the same way you pick the AI. You adjust the spell appearance and colour the same way you select a body, Your sliders change casting time, resource cost, range, and damage.

In an avatar creator, you have a page where you pick your 4 abilities, and can choose from the ones you've created.

I'm not saying its not a lot of work. Its an enormous amount of work, which is part of why there are so few quality RPG making tools. But this is one of the tools that defines a quality RPG maker. Without it, Myworld isn't one.

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

Originally posted by Baron:

Well, WC3 world editor has a very in depth tool for this, and since it came out over 10 years ago and basically invented this genre, that tool is a pretty iconic option to have in an RPG maker.

The way WC3's ability editor handles this problem, basically, is that you have 6 types of abilities, and those 6 types of abilities have a few parts of the ability you can edit. Its very similar to how the character editor works, except instead of choosing how the mob behaves, you choose how the spell behaves, and instead of choosing how the mob looks, you choose how the spell looks. And the sliders, instead of things like damage, attack speed, and health, change things like damage, casting speed, and mana/endurance cost.

The types are:

Targeted AOE (Effect is in a location)
PBAOE (Location is point blank around your character)
Line (Location is a line or cone between the caster and the target destination)
Single Target (Hits your target)
Self (Affects you)
Summon (Summons a unit of your choosing)

And some of the things you can adjust are

Range/Radius, Damage, Casting Speed, Spell appearance.

So say the Stun ability in game was in this editor.

The stun effect would be the AI, and you could add damage to it, increase its range or casting time, make it cost stamina, add a spell effect to the ability, choose an alternate animation. In WC3 there are tons more options, but those would be sufficient here.

In this way, we could make a countless number of abilities, the same way we can make a countless number of custom enemies, because of the sheer number of combinations that become available when you are able to mix and match like that. In fact, all of the abilities in WC3, of which there are hundreds in the base game, are simple combinations of the 6 targeting systems, and a core group of spell effects.

The spell effects are: Stun, Direct Damage, Channeled Damage, Damage over Time, Damage debuff, Immobilize, Sleep, Accuracy Debuff, and Damage Shield.

So for an example of an ability editor, picture it like the character creator.

You pick a spell effect and a spell targeting system, the same way you pick the AI. You adjust the spell appearance and colour the same way you select a body, Your sliders change casting time, resource cost, range, and damage.

In an avatar creator, you have a page where you pick your 4 abilities, and can choose from the ones you've created.

I'm not saying its not a lot of work. Its an enormous amount of work, which is part of why there are so few quality RPG making tools. But this is one of the tools that defines a quality RPG maker. Without it, Myworld isn't one.

Granted it was 10 years ago but it was made by a HUGE company while this is just a 3 man company.... I don't know why I'm being devils advocate all of a sudden :P But I'm past my 2 hour mark now, and can't refund, so devs better deliver XD

[Baron]

I mean yes, sure, Blizzard is one of the most successful gaming companies of all time. But WC3 is what created this genre, and Defense of the Ancients, which was a WC3 editor map, was so popular that it inspired DOTA 2.

I understand that they don't have the resources to do everything WC3 did, and the truth is that WC3's editor is way more advanced than the basic breakdown I gave here. But if they don't even have the resources to build a core tool comparable to something released over a decade ago, then how can they hope compete with the current other games on the market?

What is the point sticking with this game through Early Access and buying the DLCs and investing hundreds of hours in map making if they can't deliver?

I'd like to believe they can, and the game has a lot of potential. But that potential is because it doesn't have these core tools yet. If it can't have these core tools, then it doesn't have a lot of potential.

You don't see an early access shooter being released and taken seriously that can't match the mechanics of Team Fortress 2 (which is a decade old now)

You don't see an early access slasher being released and taken seriously that can't match the mechanics of Dark Messiah Might and Magic.

As much as I want Myworld to succeed, if it can't even compete with last decade's competition, it is already doomed to fail.

Not having the resources to compete because its a small indie studio isn't going to make people buy the game. Its going to make people not buy the game.

[Boweh]

Originally posted by Christian2222:

Granted it was 10 years ago but it was made by a HUGE company while this is just a 3 man company.... I don't know why I'm being devils advocate all of a sudden :P But I'm past my 2 hour mark now, and can't refund, so devs better deliver XD

Three? When did they get a third?
I assume by company you mean the people doing work on the game rather than the publishing company, and that would mean just Ravey and Mass.