My Little Pony: The Game

[Rikifive 23,472]

Hello everypony!  

Looks like we have a tie in regards of the style of the game!  Since the game was initially in pixel art, I've decided, that a reasonable solution will be to just keep it that way, so yep! It will be continued in pixel environment!  I've did some science with the non-pixel style and I quickly realized, that it would take longer to create animations there. I believe, that making HUD, UI, maps and other things wouldn't really be an issue, animations on the other hoof, yes. Either way, that tie didn't encourage me to jump over to non-pixel style, so let's just keep it all the way it was. Thank you for your input! 

 

Taking a small step further towards that direction, I think I can announce, that the very basic 8-direction pony sprite is ready!  (it still may have some improvements in the future- probably shading will be added... or not. I'll see which one will look better in-game someday)

Of course, I'm starting with doing science on the pony, that loves science, Twilight Sparkle!  
In this preview she's with both, horn and wings, for better preview and stuff..

 

So that's a start!  

Thank you for visiting!  

[Rikifive 23,472]

Hello everypony!

I'm slowly doing some progress ~ but not with sprites (actually animations from that point), I left these for later.  

Since I'm working with a different resolution than I originally planned, I've been working on re-doing the HUD-- the simple-statuses at the moment, to be more specific.
For a reference, here is what I had so far:

Spoiler

Well that looks great. 
*cough* *cough*
Now I came up with a different design and that's how it looks like at the moment:

Also, the bar with saddle bag () shows the inventory space the pony has. I'm not sure yet, but I plan to make inventories have limited space and make ponies have their own bag to carry. This would make things more balanced and slightly harder - having to organize your inventories (ponies could use only items they own- but of course you could transfer items between ponies outside the battle), rather than just having everything x99 in later stages. ~And no worries, key-items will not take any space, that would be soooo inconvenient, would it?  

That bar will pop out for a moment when picking up items and such to let you know what's going on in ponies' inventories.
If the first pony will run out of space, the item will automatically go to the next one, also notifying you about that visually. That process will go on until everypony runs out of space.

In co-op, this process will cycle only through ponies belonging to the player, who picked up the item. For example, each player will control 3 ponies when having the mane6 in  party, so the process will cycle through 3 ponies, eventually resulting in being unable to pick up items if they all will run out of space. In this case, the player can go to inventory and free up some space (either by using/discarding items or giving some to another player), or just let the second player pick that item, if he didn't manage to steal it from you already.  

 

Getting back to the point-
I was aiming for something, that would be accurate to the source material, but pixel art kinda has its own style, so I guess I went for something ... general? It doesn't really look MLP-ish and is relatively simple, but it's readable and doesn't look that messy, like the previous one, due to shiny colors and stuff.  

 

Either way, I was thinking of some other variations and it's kinda hard to decide!  
Without "HP" title:

1. Full possible length
2. Beginning shaped relatively to end, slightly shorter bar in the result
3. Same as #1, but it has outline at the beginning - bar separated from the heart icon

 

Or perhaps...

Tilted:

4. Full possible length
5. Same thing as #2 ~ also I've been wondering on colors (so far it's green/yellow/red) ~
6. ~or I was also thinking of just giving it a fixed color based on the icon???
7. With 'HP' title.
8. MISSINGDESIGN
9. MISSINGDESIGN

 

I think I'll go with either #4 or #5. Considering, that there will be more bars visible in other places (such as battles), thus there will be some other icons, I think the most compatible design out of #4 and #5 would be the #5 one, but I'll see how it goes.

 

Heh, I know, that most of that stuff is kinda irrelevant, but I was just thinking, that I'll share some development process with you. It took me ages after all, so now you see what kind of silly struggles I have.  

Nevertheless, if you have some ideas, feel free to share these!  

Thank you for visiting!  

Edited January 28, 2018 by Rikifive

[ShiftyLips69 24]

On 9/4/2016 at 3:06 PM, Totally Lyra said:

Oh, if you're signing people up to be alpha/beta testers. *raises hoof and flails it around excitedly*

Yeah man, I'll totally beta test this as it looks really promising

 

Image of grass:

[Rikifive 23,472]

Glad to hear that!  I'll announce things once everything will be ready!  

[MickeyAdaptus 2,209]

Looks really good man! I have been developing some really small RPG games myself over the last years but you seem to be making something far better then I could ever hope to make xD.

[Rikifive 23,472]

Ooh you never know.  With time everything will be getting only better.  Thank you!  

[Prospekt 10,984]

Yay! I'm glad this is still a thing. It seems to be moving along pretty well. And I'm especially liking the visuals.

[Rikifive 23,472]

I'll not give up!  Thank you!  

[Rikifive 23,472]

This weekend I've been working on something different - on something I really like doing - The menus!  

For now, I came up with a design for Status Screen, where you'll be able to view all the details of your characters.
Currently there's only one page done. It shows the most important parameters:

To make comparing equipment easier, this screen offers a detailed information regarding their calculations visible next to specific parameters. 
I have MAX HP&MP and calculations in brackets next to parameters in mind.

Here are some examples of the formula&format, that will be displayed there:
POWER     20
Without any bonuses, it will just show its plain total value in white color.

POWER     22 (17+3+10%)
That's how it will be displayed, when wearing an equipment that will give bonus points to the parameter.
There will be two types of that bonus: Additional Point Increment and Bonus Multiplier.

POWER     
That's how it will be displayed, when having a status/buff, that multiplies the parameter.
The value will go RED when getting below 0%, due to debuffs, for example.

POWER     
And that's the full formula. The color from status/buff takes priority.

Thanks to that format, players will easily know what is happening behind the scenes, which will allow them to compare things better. They'll also know how high is the parameter without any equipment-- without the need to unequip these.

Summarizing, that's the current formula for parameters:
Base Value + Equipment Point Increment + Equipment Bonus Multiplier 
~where of course following the math rules, the Status/Buff/Debuff value is applied at the very end affecting every value preceding it. So if you'll get a debuff reducing your POWER by 50%, it actually will decrease it by 50%, unless stacked with other states, buffs and/or debuffs.


The icons with elements mean resistance to specific elements, where it is scaled in percentage of damage&effect reduced.

 

I was thinking of balancing the Physical and Magical Damage Reduction.
Initially I was planning to just put a percentage of damage reduced. However, that would require scaling the value with enemy level as well as other things, because otherwise it wouldn't be nice.
For example on first levels you'd have around 5-20% of damage reduced- but that would do pretty much nothing in environment of low damage. If somebody would hit you for 7 HP, it barely would reduce 1 point. Adding tons of defense just to reduce one or two points of damage seems unbalanced. It would get better on later stages though, as each character would for example have around 50-75% of damage reduced and the damage would be scaled in high numbers. There, it would have a visible effect. However, eventually it would raise to let's say, a maximum of 75% making further defense increase meaningless. So that approach would be efficient only in the middle of the game.
There wouldn't be a problem in scaling the value to few factors, but personally I don't like, when the value suddenly changes for some invisible-to-player reason.

Plain Point Reduction is very sensitive to work with. It's extremely easy to get to the point, where one character completely blocks the damage, while the other one barely survives.

Sooo I've decided to combine these two and see what will happen.

As you can see in the image above, it says:

Phys. DMG Reduction     8 (Up to 75%)

8 is the amount of damage reduced. Simple as that.
Up to 75% on the other hoof, serves a purpose to avoid completely blocking the damage, or like it happens in many RPG's, reducing it to 1.

That way, the damage reduction will be scaled to enemy damage and the player will see that.

It sounds good in theory, but I'm not sure how it will perform in practice, as it is about to be discovered at later stages of development.



LP stands for Learning Points and will be used to learn and improve abilities/spells.

Rest Time simply means the time, that the character needs to take another turn. The higher the SPEED parameter, the often the character takes a turn.

 

The rest are self-explanatory I believe.  

 

I'll add another pages with in-depth details, such as critical strike chance, critical strike damage multiplier and such in the future. I always like to be able to see as much details as possible when comparing equipment, so naturally I'll offer that to my potential players.  

 

 

Oh and also, the bubbles, chibi-ponies and arrows at the top will be animated, probably something else as well.  

 

I'm so proud of this design, because the previous one I had was pretty 'meh' in my opinion.  

 

And I almost forgot to mention- The design was inspired by this image I've randomly bumped into in Google Images:

Spoiler

As soon as I saw that image among the wall of others, I instantly had a vision of what I could do.  

[Fluttershy Friend 25,445]

This screen with Twi from your game looks very profesionally. I'm glad that you working at this project again. Effects are very interesting! 

Edited February 5, 2018 by Fluttershy Friend

[Rhythm Red 6,484]

Dude. This looks awesome. I can't WAIT!

[Rikifive 23,472]

On 5.02.2018 at 1:58 PM, Fluttershy Friend said:

This screen with Twi from your game looks very profesionally. I'm glad that you working at this project again. Effects are very interesting! 

Yay, thank you!   

On 6.02.2018 at 3:12 AM, Rhythm Red said:

Dude. This looks awesome. I can't WAIT!

Glad to hear that!  

[The Bad Ass Echidna 29]

This has come a long way since I've first seen this! Looking good!

[Hierok 11,829]

This looks promising. Is this only the first season, or the first three, or all the seasons?

[Rikifive 23,472]

I plan to wrap everything into a game focusing on the main story, so I'll be aiming to cover all the seasons- at least their main points.

Hence the pretty much lame, yet accurate title of the game. It will be just MLP- as a game.  

Of course everything is subject to change.

[Totally Nyx 35,469]

This is looking better and better all the time. I can't wait to see what you have for it next.

[Yotes 108]

This game looks jaw-dropping gorgeous and I'm eager to see where you go with it. Designing menus and interfaces that are colorful and easy to read at a glance is a skill I'm working super hard to perfect right now. Top-notch stuff, looking forward to more progress, finishing a game is the hardest part after all!

(P.S. those diagonal health bars with the pony faces looks so good I outta use it in my next pony action RPG)

[Rikifive 23,472]

Awww, why, thank you!  I'm really happy to hear that!

Heh, beginnings aren't any better!  

You made me curious though- have you worked on something before? -- or are you working on something?  
Nevermind, I've bumped into your introduction thread right after posting this. Decent stuff is going on there, looks great!  

Edited March 8, 2018 by Rikifive

[Nyactis Mewcis Catlum 670]

Let me start with prefacing that your artwork is absolutely gorgeous, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the direction that this project takes. Also I would totally beta test but that's not important. Now, with that being said...

On 1/27/2018 at 5:38 PM, Rikifive said:

Nevertheless, if you have some ideas, feel free to share these!  

I was looking at the sprite work that you had on the over world. Of course, I'm sure right now you're just attempting to get an overall scheme working for it, but once you've got that, if you plan on sticking to these bigger sprites at the bottom, might I suggest making another expression for when the pony is low on HP? I always find small touches like that really nice in games. If it's possible, an idle animation to your main sprites too could work wonders, but I can understand if that part would be too much of a hassle.

EDIT: If you want an example of this, Kingdom Hearts has got a nice one.

Also, something else -

On 2/4/2018 at 11:02 PM, Rikifive said:

Rest Time simply means the time, that the character needs to take another turn. The higher the SPEED parameter, the often the character takes a turn.

Are you going for a system similar to the ATB system such as that used in earlier Final Fantasy games? Because if so, count me in approval of it. The ATB system is a great system. If you plan on implementing that, though, you might want to implement a Wait mode for it on top of the normal mode, so players can go at different paces. Final Fantasy VII is a good example to go by for ATB, as it's got an Active, Recommended, and Wait mode. Active is everyone goes literally once they get the chance to and you can also skip turns as long as someone is able to act; but this also applies to enemies, so they can attack you while you're not doing anything. Wait makes it so turns go at the player's pace entirely, so enemies can't attack until after the player characters have already gone. I believe Recommended is a mixture of the two.

If I'm completely off the mark, though, feel free to let me know. 

Edited March 25, 2018 by Wolfhog

[Rikifive 23,472]

Oh, thank you! I'm really happy to hear that.  As for beta tests, I'll surely need more ponies, but that's something for the future. I need to get to a certain point with development first, so that I'll know what exactly I'll need to test and basically what to require from testers. Once I'll be close, I'll announce recruitment with all the details, because there'll be something more than just playtesting it and having fun.   So.. stay tuned!  However, I'm not gonna lie, I'm afraid that won't happen anytime soon, as work is giving me a bad time lately. Progress is going even slower than before... Hopefully things will change, that's at least, what I'm focusing on... but thank you for your interest either way! Hopefully we'll get there!   

9 hours ago, Wolfhog said:

I was looking at the sprite work that you had on the over world. Of course, I'm sure right now you're just attempting to get an overall scheme working for it, but once you've got that, if you plan on sticking to these bigger sprites at the bottom, might I suggest making another expression for when the pony is low on HP? I always find small touches like that really nice in games. If it's possible, an idle animation to your main sprites too could work wonders, but I can understand if that part would be too much of a hassle.

That's of course a great idea and that all is planned.
I also really love small details - I always appreciate these in games. So do the negative ones, such as text going out of the box. A small thing, yet disappointing, isn't it?  I'd never leave texts going out of the boxes in my games, otherwise it would be haunting me. 

Most likely these won't be implemented right away, but I'll be coming back constantly improving things wherever and whenever possible and your suggestions will be added for sure.  

 

10 hours ago, Wolfhog said:

Are you going for a system similar to the ATB system such as that used in earlier Final Fantasy games? Because if so, count me in approval of it. The ATB system is a great system.

Yep, it's gonna be the ATB system. I dislike the system, where you're taking actions for all characters at once before the turn starts, then just watch what happens. It really makes coming up with strategies harder and kind of not fair, as you need to assume what may happen. I really prefer making choices in real time in RPG's like this.

 

 

10 hours ago, Wolfhog said:

If you plan on implementing that, though, you might want to implement a Wait mode for it on top of the normal mode, so players can go at different paces. Final Fantasy VII is a good example to go by for ATB, as it's got an Active, Recommended, and Wait mode. (...)

You've poked a good subject there. I've been wondering on that one for a while.  
As for FF games, I've played X and X-2 on PS2, so I'm aware of how Active/Wait modes work. Most of the RPG's I've played used Wait type of ATB though and this is what I'll stick to I think.

From my FF experience, Active Mode seems more fun, I really enjoyed the energetic battles, but sometimes it was acting weird - sometimes it felt unfair, due to all that mess. Out of curiosity I switched to Wait mode to see how it would feel and the battles became neater and way easier. Having that in mind, I don't think I'll give the players a choice to pick the style, as it may generate balancing issues. Even if you perfectly know what you're doing and where the commands are, you still lose these little moments when browsing the menus - on wait mode, you save a lot of time, not mentioning, that you can take your time to think of a good strategy, especially when some unexpected situations require some planning. It would be much harder to maintain balanced difficulty if players could switch ATB modes. The ones, who would prefer Active mode basically would be punished for nothing. I imagine players suggesting "Switch to Wait Mode on bosses, that makes stuff easier" to the others having troubles. I prefer having one balanced difficulty instead. That itself may be a challenge to achieve, so most likely it would be best to avoid making it even more complex.  

Forcing these two on the other hoof, could work.. "Active" for random encounters for faster gameplay, "Wait" for bosses and such for non-invasive difficulty. ..But I honestly think it won't be necessary - focusing on one will make the mechanics more optimized and less buggy.

So, everything will be happening in real time, but it will be paused when somebody will be taking a turn. That's what I'll go with I suppose.  

Active mode would be more engaging on multiplayer though, rather than making the players wait for each other, but eh, I'll just stick to wait mode as it seems more reliable to work with.

---

11 hours ago, Wolfhog said:

If I'm completely off the mark, though, feel free to let me know. 

You actually got it all right and I appreciate your suggestions and opinions. Thank you!  

[Nightfall Gloam 18,231]

Awesome! Can't wait to be a beta tester some day ^^

Knowing me, I'd probably go finding all the completely unexpected Easter Eggs throughout the game, if you plan on including any... 

[Rikifive 23,472]

I also can't wait to get to that stage!  

Easter eggs? I have no idea if there will be any.  

[Nyactis Mewcis Catlum 670]

3 hours ago, Rikifive said:

Oh, thank you! I'm really happy to hear that.  As for beta tests, I'll surely need more ponies, but that's something for the future. I need to get to a certain point with development first, so that I'll know what exactly I'll need to test and basically what to require from testers. Once I'll be close, I'll announce recruitment with all the details, because there'll be something more than just playtesting it and having fun.   So.. stay tuned!  However, I'm not gonna lie, I'm afraid that won't happen anytime soon, as work is giving me a bad time lately. Progress is going even slower than before... Hopefully things will change, that's at least, what I'm focusing on... but thank you for your interest either way! Hopefully we'll get there!   

No problem! I'll be sure to keep an eye out for that. 

3 hours ago, Rikifive said:

So, everything will be happening in real time, but it will be paused when somebody will be taking a turn. That's what I'll go with I suppose.  

Fair enough! Wait mode is probably the best one to implement if you're going to implement any of them and stick to one. I only recall Active being helpful for me in FFVII when I had to build limit breaks and so let my opponents attack me, and I'm doubtful that limit breaks will actually come into play with this game. (Or will they...?) I would stick to Active just because it's faster when playing FFVII, but Wait mode is far more accessible because then enemies can't attack you during menus, so I'm not surprised you would lean toward that instead.

Will it be possible to skip over turns if you have more than one character with a filled, er...whatever term you're going to use once Rest Time is full? That was something I appreciated in FFVII since it allowed more versatility in strategy as opposed to waiting for everyone to go in a set order, so I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

 

And no problem! I'm looking forward to this!

[Rikifive 23,472]

On 26.03.2018 at 7:26 AM, Wolfhog said:

Fair enough! Wait mode is probably the best one to implement if you're going to implement any of them and stick to one. I only recall Active being helpful for me in FFVII when I had to build limit breaks and so let my opponents attack me, and I'm doubtful that limit breaks will actually come into play with this game. (Or will they...?) I would stick to Active just because it's faster when playing FFVII, but Wait mode is far more accessible because then enemies can't attack you during menus, so I'm not surprised you would lean toward that instead.

Another factor is having to control 6 characters in battle (most of the time, at least). That could be confusing in a fast paced environment, which is the active mode. Also I can imagine Active mode being more messy- spamming commands just to get over it, rather than focusing on what is actually happening. In addition to that, I'm kinda afraid, that Active mode could be too difficult for some players in some circumstances.
Most of the RPG's use the wait one and I think it is way more reliable than active mode, even though it's faster and more fun.  

As for skills and other battle related things - While I have a general idea on how it will look like, everything is subject to change, so I'll see how it goes before saying anything in details. I just have to see how well it works for the game.

 

On 26.03.2018 at 7:26 AM, Wolfhog said:

Will it be possible to skip over turns if you have more than one character with a filled, er...whatever term you're going to use once Rest Time is full? That was something I appreciated in FFVII since it allowed more versatility in strategy as opposed to waiting for everyone to go in a set order, so I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

Actually it will be kinda unlikely, that multiple characters will fill their ATB at the same time on their own, due to different speeds etc.. I think that will happen rarely.
Nevertheless, of course there will be the option to skip the turn and I think I'll give players two options:

Rest Command -something like guard, recover a little bit of energy, as well as give a temporary buff, that increases the power.
Wait Command - simply deselects the character and unpauses the time, waiting for others to be ready. The character keeps the ATB bar full, so players will be able to select that character back anytime, by pressing a button. Waiting makes multiple characters be ready at the same time doable and then, of course players can switch between ponies. Perhaps characters will have damage taken from attacks reduced a little while waiting.

But still, things are subject to change. I'll be making adjustments to make the battles more balanced if needed.

 

On 26.03.2018 at 7:26 AM, Wolfhog said:

And no problem! I'm looking forward to this!

So do I!  

[Rikifive 23,472]

Hello everypony!

 

It's been a while, but the status screen is now ready! (Pinkie seems to be happy for that!)

There players will be able to view all the parameters the characters have, duh!  

Everything about that screen in general is rather obvious, but you may be wondering why there is an option to skip animations. The thing is, that this screen is partially animated, including the pages themselves. The pages have slide-in animation, where tabs appear one by one when switching between these, so it is more than obvious, that some ponies will not like to wait a little bit longer for pages to appear every time they'll be wanting to view parameters, so this option is for skipping that. When enabled, all the tabs appear at once, for faster navigation. So while I offered a kind of a fancy thing, player experience is also important, so this choice will be entirely up to you, with that convenient setting available on the fly.

You'll be able to see the animations at the end of the post.

For now though, let's take a look at the pages.

Page 1: Main Parameters

The most important things are displayed there. Level, HP, MP; nothing fancy.

The 5 icons with 0% represent elemental resistance. What elemental resistances exactly do however, will be explained when the right time comes.

Below resistances you can view the base parameters, with the main stats attached to them.

"LP" stands for Learning Points. These points will be used to learn and improve skills/spells, probably even raise parameters a little. For that, there will be a skill tree, where you'll be following paths. Ponies will have abilities they'll be improving along with progress. The damage will be scaled in percentage, so for example, a magic projectile spell will deal 120% of magical damage, so no matter how far you'll go, it will be always scaled to your parameters, thus will catch up to your level. There may be various improvements, such as more damage, additional projectiles, longer duration etc. etc..

The saddlebag bar represents the space of pony's inventory, as it will be limited.

 

Page 2: Detailed Parameters

There you'll find various details.
If the pony will have a certain bonus to something, that won't be displayed on the first page, it will appear here.
So for example, let's assume you equipped something, that increases the exp rate, the tab with that information will appear here.
Or perhaps having a defense boost when on low life? It will also appear here.

Everything will be shown before players, so that they'll know what exactly do they have, rather than wondering if something actually works or not.

To be honest there's not enough of these to fill the whole screen yet, but I do have that possibility in mind so I've prepared the concept for handling that:

Hmm... Perhaps an achievement for managing to fill it that way?  

 

Page 3: Character Information

Probably the most useless page, but may be somewhat helpful for newcomers (I have some non-brony friends who are waiting for the game too (I think?))-- but who knows, perhaps the game will attract some non-bronies in general. Shush, the game will be so awesome, that even brony haters will definitely love to play this!  (Just kidding of course)

Joking aside, it's just a typical little biography page. The information here will be updating along with progress, so if the plot will suddenly get too complex making the ponies flip upside down and you won't be able to keep track of something, perhaps you'll find it there. Consider that as minimalist wikia page in-game. ... Because why not!  

 

---

I consider that menu as done, though adjustments of course may be made along with development progress.

Below you can view the in-game recording, showing the animations I've mentioned before.
/!\ Note: Due to large filesize, I'm unable to put preview here in the post, so I'll leave a direct link to it. The file behind the link is in .gifv format and thanks to filesize, it may take a little moment to load or perhaps it even might not display at all on some devices. The original file size of that .gif file is 47,5 MB; where the .gifv in preview shows 9,60 MB.

CLICK HERE FOR IN-GAME PREVIEW

 

 

On a side note, I plan to support multilanguage, so everything is made having that in mind.
All the text is stored in external .ini files, which will allow 3rd party ponies to translate the game, if anypony would be willing to do so, that is.
Since Polish is my native language, I'm going to include that language 'by default'.
And since Applejack didn't appear in this post yet, there's an image with her. 

~where PN stands for Punkty Nauki.  And actually PŻ and PM would suit it better, wouldn't it?  

 

That's all for now! Thank you for visiting!  

Edited May 13, 2018 by Rikifive