This game looks amazing and is rumored to be in beta.

Video

Some thoughts on what abilities the classes could have to mix things up. Then there is some terrain and positions to help introduce tactics into the game.

Character Abilities
Knight

• Cleave - hits units in a 180 degree arc with 6 damage.
• Interception - Allies soak 30% of all damage (post defense) for 5 seconds

Painter

• Death Rot - Damages enemy 2 damage/sec over 20 seconds.
• Fireblast - Deals 25 points of damage.

Monk

• Healing Chant - Allies are healed of 50 damage.
• Charm - Single ally gains 1 magic & 1 physical defense.

Scholar

• Tactical Weakness - Allies’ attack is increased by 3 for 5 seconds.
• Target - Single enemy loses 1 magic & 1 physical defense.

Terrain

• Grasslands/plains
• +0% movement
• +0% attack
• -0% defense
• Forest
• -20% movement
• +0% attack
• +20% defense
• River/stream/snow/ice
• -30% movement
• -30% defense
• -10% attack
• Hills
• -50% movement
• +30% defense
• +20% attack
• Road/dirt
• +20% movement
• +0% defense
• +0% attack

Tactical Positions

• Flanked
• attacker +25% to attack a flanked target
• Behind
• attacker +50% to attack from behind
• Pincered
• attacker +40% to attack a pincered target

http://www.gamebrew.com/tactics100

I wrote a simple Inverse Kinematics object in Flex that I wanted to prototype before making a robotic arm project I’m going to work on. It has some instability issues (still needs an integrator), but it’s nifty. Click and drag on the examples to move the control point.

Robo Arm Test

I also found that making a ‘difficult to solve’ position makes for some interesting instabilities, so I made this ‘tail’ example to show that off.

Tail Flick Test

I’ve been kicking around this idea a little bit in my head for quite a while now, and I figured that it would be better if I sat down and wrote about it as opposed to trying to keep it all locked up–Where I’m usually apt to forget about it. Here are just a couple rambling ideas that I’ve had so bear with me..

‘Delinquent - Law of the Fist’

Objective - As a new student at a Japanese School, it’s you’re objective to become the “school guardian” or Head Hoodlum. By joining clubs and forming aliances, you will hone your skills to overcome and crush your enemies, while making sure not to be expelled.

Format -On-Line Based… Though I suppose you could do other things as well.

Attributes -

Strength
Speed
Stamina

Honor Based Systems -

Authority
Classmates
Hoodlum

Authority would be Teachers / Principals / Gangleaders (Yakuza) / Police, etc..
Classmates would be non-combatant characters for who you would interact.
Hoodlum - You’re overall reputation with the other ‘gangsters’ in your school.

You social ranking with these groups would determine how or what you would be able to get away with. For example, say you start off at a 0 ranking in all three attributes. If, for example, you had a Positive Ranking with Authority, you would be less inclined to be bothered by those if you ended up being in a fight.

Club Activities
By participating in certain clubs, for example the Judo Club, you could get further experience in special attributes in certain combat skills. The more you train within that subset, the increase amount of skill you would have for additional combat.

Work
If you decide to participate in a Job, it’s a means to earn extra money.. Or you could do nefarious things like bully your classmates for money (but you would end up getting a negative attribute in doing so.. )

Fighting
Don’t really know how you would go about doing this, but you would have certain hoodlums that have a set social ranking. For example, if you tried to fight a higher end hoodlum, you wouldn’t be able to even approach them unless you had a high enough experience / hoodlum level.

You would start off fighting someone at a lower level and after defeating those people, you could work your way up to fighting the ‘boss’ of that particular gang.

In fighting someone, if you defeat them, you could either form an aliance with that person, or you could utterly defeat them — Making them a pure enemy.
So as you go further up in your fighting, say you got involved with a turf war or whatever, you could call on your alliance of other people to help out in that fight.

Anyway, those are just some ideas I was kicking around in my head. In reading it now, I guess it sounds a little bit hokey… But I figured that if it was an on-line environment, it could have various people going ot the same school, trying to each become the head hoodlum. The clubs could have there own forum, and if you wanted, you could challenge other people online in a gang fight.

I suppose it all comes off either too much like those ‘Pimp Wars’ games (or a more recent type — Bite Fight’), but it would have a specific nitch audience.. Those people who are familiar with the early Japanese Macho Anime / Manga where might made right, and the most extreme weapons you would see would be like a knife, baseball bat, or bicycle chain..

So I guess it would be pretty much a strategy game to a certain degree.. But how to put it all together is beyond me at this point. But I just wanted to share my idea and see what you think.

Influences - ‘Angel Densetsu’ Manga by Norihiro Yagi, Anime / Manga taking place in the late 70’s..

- Rob

Yesterday we talked about expanding skirmish’s mechanics with possibly:

- Melee AND Range seperate attack types
- Two special abilities per class
- Blocking, terrain and victory conditions
- Points to create teams
- More costly other classes
- Points to increase class “level”

Probably one of the easiest to implement that gives the most variance is a second special ability per class. Regarding this, I had a thought: The second ability focuses just on helping yourself, not team mates. Also an idea of charge charing up a couple ‘bars’ (like 3), and abilities used a whole bar, or maybe the self abilities used 1 bar and the party ones used 2 bars.

Been a bit swamped with a combination of work, personal stuff, Supreme Commander, Pirates the CSG, and other things recently. Haven’t had a chance to get as much done on the game as I’d like. I did however recently purchase BESM, 3rd Edition and took the time to jot down some of the mental notes that have been in my head forever regarding some possible RPG games (including a Gemini BESM game).

Have a couple things to do this weekend and Wizard World is next weekend, but I expect to get some time to do some further coding this weekend at some point. I’ve also got some art that I need to scan in and colorize. So much time, so little to do… wait strike that, reverse it.

While Java isn’t my cup of tea (pun intended), this seems to be an interesting toolset. MMO-based toolsets have been up until recently few and far between, but that has been changing rapidly recently. The most interesting element of Darkstar is the portability of it. Good timing with some of the Mobile MMO talk at GDC this year.

games-darkstar: Project Darkstar

TRUE. TRUE.

Good points being made on prototyping for indies. Heard round the world, my brozah

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