Hardcastle and Cromwell and other Chronicles

[DaFool]

I don't really have much of an opinion about what the panty attack and panty defend magical spells should be named, only that they are 16 total:

One special attack and one special defensive / heal spell each:

earth (orange)
wind (green)
fire (red)
water (blue)
light (yellow)
dark (violet)
time (orange-yellow)
space (pink)

Of course, technically it can be expandable to include more spells, but remember I'd have to draw each sequence and still stay within budget ^_^.

Suggestions for creative names are appreciated, but I'll leave it mostly to the Engine. When suggestions are made please explain exactly how the spell works visually so I can get a head start in sketching the animation sequences. Thanks.

EDIT: As is usually the case in an RPG there are more offensive than defensive spells. Maybe to implement here for balance sake some panties are purely defensive while the rest are purely offensive (light - heal for example).

[DaFool]

Okay, I've thought of a few spells. Comments / critiques welcome. But if Counter Arts says "Uh, that spell is kinda hard to implement", then I'll guess we'll have to find another one.

I'm going all out here, but if it's easier to just implement standard RPG attacks (or ones taken from the RPG you're most familiar with), that's ok too.

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earth (orange) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: Barrier Breast
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Enemies
Description: A wall of Oppai-shaped Earth rises from the ground surrounding your enemies, effectively creating a semi-bulletproof shield that reduces the enemy's shotgun attacks to 50% damage. The downside is that it also reduces incoming shells to 50% effectivity. Effect lasts 3 rounds after casting.

Name: School Rumble
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Enemies
Description: Harima Kenji makes an appearance with his motorcycle gang, and the ground under the enemies shakes for the next 3 rounds, effectively reducing their hit accuracy down to 50%.

Name: Comiket Comet
Type: Offensive
Effect: All Enemies
Description: Tokyo Big Sight comes falling from the sky, crashing down on the enemy force, dealing 10% earth damage each all around.

Name: Gravion Gravity
Type : Offensive
Effect: One Enemy
Description: A Giant Robot steps on the enemy and effectively flattens it (damage ~50%).

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wind (green) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: Almighty Wind
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Allies
Description: A fresh breeze refreshes all panty-wearers, increasing the effectivity of any allied magical attacks up 25% (or 125% of original specs) for 3 rounds.

Name: Typhoon Snatcher
Type: stat-adjusting
Effect: cast on one ally / effect on one enemy.
Description: Strong winds pluck the panties off one Ally and place it on the head of one enemy, effectively blinding it so it can't shoot for the next 3 rounds. Unfortunately, your Ally will not be able to cast magic for that time also unless she switches panties. Panties fully retrieved after spell wears off.

Name: Fly Me to the Moon
Type: Defensive
Effect: One Ally
Description: Ally's panty becomes extremely lightweight, making her float in midair and avoiding all enemy physical shotgun attacks for the next 3 rounds.

Name: To Kill a Mockingbird
Type: Offensive / Defensive special
Effect: Probability / One-All Enemies
Description: You cast the spell on an Ally, but the effect are on Enemies. All enemies of the same Elemental powers as the panties of the selected Ally automatically die. Only works on minions.

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fire (red) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: Flamin' Pantsu
Type: Offensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: Probability / One-All Enemies
Description: You cast the spell on an Ally, and her shotgun automatically becomes a Flame-thrower for the next 3 rounds, dealing extremely hazardous fire damage (~25%?). Downside is that you'd have to wait for that Ally's turn to see its effect in action.

Name: Burn-Up Excessive
Type: Totally Offensive
Effect: Everyone - All Allies / All Enemies
Description: Your team better have their HP up, since this one-shot attack destroys the whole area with a nuclear blast. Works well in starting off a boss battle or breezing through an annoying minion battle.

Name: Heat Wave
Type: stat-adjusting / Defensive
Effect: All Enemies
Description: A blast of humid air scorches its way through your enemies, reducing each enemy's magical attacks by 25% (down to 75%) for the next 3 rounds.

Name: Scorched Pantsu
Type: Offensive
Effect: one Enemy
Description: You target an Ally, and she takes off her panties, sets it on fire, and hurls it at an enemy, effectively killing it. She won't have any magic for the remainder of the battle unless she switches to different panties to wear. The panty is fully recovered after the battle. Attack works only on minions.

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water (blue) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: Gondola Kebab
Type: Offensive
Effect: One enemy
Description: A gondola from Neo-Venecia comes crashing on top of an enemy, and the enemy drowns in its leaking water. More of a physical attack, but whatever.

Name: Fascist Beach
Type: Offensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Enemies
Description: All enemies are forced to participate in a mandatory beach episode, taking part in 'hit-the-watermelon'. Each of their MP is reduced 25% each.

Name: Fascist Hotsprings
Type: Defensive
Effect: All Allies
Description: All allies are forced to dip into some hot springs, replenishing their panties' MP 25% each.

Name: Water World
Type: stat-adjusting
Effect: Everyone - All Allies / All Enemies
Description: Biblical deluge floods the whole place, removing everyone's panties in the process. The effect is that no more magical attacks are possible. Use wisely against very magical enemies and you can finish them off easily with physical shotgun attacks. (Still debating whether this effect should only last 3 rounds or until end of battle)

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Ok, need to give my (perverted) brain a rest, will think up more later.

[monele]

You, my friend, have totally cool ideas XD... I didn't think you'd go all out on this . School Rumble cameo? woop~ XD...
I like how you've made most magics be strategic choices (often affecting *everyone* in a way that could be negative or positive depending on the situation).

[Keitsu Han'ei]

LMAO... whoa those are wonderful ideas XD

in my opinion...

earth (defensive, aggressive)
wind (aggressive, defence/accuracy support)
fire (aggressive, atk support)
water (healing)
light (alter stats/aggressive to undead)
dark (alter stats, evasive support)
time (delay support)
space (aggressive) ... why must it be pink... =_= lol

well... i like aveyond done by hanako <3<3 so some of the spells could actually be created but it'll take time with scripting.


school rumble sounds REAL lurvely... but barrier breast seems a little easier to create. i'm favouring gravion gravity as i could imagine the humourous sight XD

Almighty Wind sets me off laughing... will you be putting blushes on 'em? XD.
fly me to the moon is so marilyn monroe LMAO.
To Kill a Mockingbird sounds like a very easy killing spell... you could try making the spell a little hard to get (like once used, you'll have to get new panties for it) OR, you could do it like a counter... if same elemental atks ally, the dmg rebounds to him. but if non-similar elemnetal could deal dmg on her.

Burn-Up Excessive is a love... there should be at least one spell that dmgs the allies too. definately a love.

heat wave should be made to affect the ally wearing it too.
*snorts on scorched pantsu* now that reminds me of all the panties thrown onto the stage at a concert lol

i would really LOVE Fascist Beach to be in XD HAHAHAHA all the enemies will be show angry veins XD
Fascist Hotsprings.... KAKAKAKA but doesn't appeal as much as the beach.

water world should be 3 rounds.... won't be fair for the enemies themselves to die off THAT easily.

[DaFool]

Thank you for your comments. I think we might have voting at some point. More spells:

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light (yellow) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: Care Bears Countdown
Type: Offensive
Effect: All Enemies
Description: All the Allied flourescent panties start beaming a rainbow consisting of rays of flourescent colors which hit the enemies, causing maximum damage if they are dark elementals.

Name: Hongfire Heal
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Allies
Description: The casting member summons the heavens (her posture resembles that of the girl on hongfire web's main logo), raining healing energy onto all teammembers, replenishing HP 25% each.

Name: Shining Pantsu
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: One Ally
Description: The targeted Ally's panties temporarily become the Light Pantsu, glowing and replenishing the Ally with at least 50% HP.

Name: Christmas Lights
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Allies
Description: All Allied panties glow, replenishing their respective wearer each at least 25% MP.

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time (orange-yellow) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: No-Pan Squadron Turbo
Type: Stat-Adjusting
Effect: All Allies
Description: The perfect way to finish a game quickly. All allies take off their panties, and their resulting embarrassment causes them to hurry up, increasing everyone's attack time in the process. As a result, for the next three rounds, Allied team members always attack first. (I'd like them to keep their magic capabilities however, but unsure how to iron this out)

Name: Before I was Scanned
Type: Offensive
Effect: One enemy
Description: Time moves backward for targeted enemy, rendering it into an uncleaned rough black and white sketch for the next three rounds. Realizing that its sakuga quality has been reduced, it becomes miserable and becomes the one with the slowest attack time, becoming last one to act in the round.

Name: Diarrhea of Dread
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: One Ally
Description: Not something you'd want to do to a friend. The Ally, feeling a need to go to the bathroom, becomes the one with the quickest attack time for the next three rounds, performing her actions first. However, during the fourth round, she disappears because she really couldn't control it anymore. She's fast, so by the fifth round she's back, having all her stats replenished after having gone to the toilet.

Name: Matrix
Type: Defensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Enemies
Description: Bullet-time may sound cool, but when cast on the enemies it slows their attack time, making them trail your allies in actions everytime for the next 3 rounds. Plus, they suck at bullet-time, meaning you can still hit them.

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dark (violet) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: Blow Up Da Jeepney
Type: Offensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: All Enemies / Everyone
Description: An environmentalist's worst nightmare. First, a passing-by jeepney erupts into a massive fireball, dealing damage to all enemies. Next, for the next three rounds, unburnt diesel smoke engulfs the area, reducing visibility and hit accuracy of everyone by 50%.

Name: Summon Hikikomori
Type: Offensive / stat-adjusting
Effect: One Enemy
Description: A cheap Japanese one-room apartment laden with unwashed clothes and anime goods encloses and traps the targeted enemy within, rendering it totally unable to do anything for the next 3 rounds.

Name: The Blue and the Gray
Type: Offensive
Effect: All Enemies
Description: Civil War breaks out among the enemies for the next 3 rounds, causing them to target each other as well. (Debating whether they go purely for friendly fire or whether they just go on a rampage with 50% probability hitting their own teammates)

Name: Summon Vampire Bishounens
Type: Offensive
Effect: All Enemies
Description: A group of handsome, homosexual vampire bishounens descends upon the mainly male enemy camp and starts flirting with them, distracting them and reducing each of their hit accuracy down 50%.

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space (pink) spells candidates (4 listed; we only need 2):

Name: Black Hole
Type: Offensive / Stat-Adjusting
Effect: Target One Enemy / One Ally
Description: The targeted enemy's MP get totally sucked up and transferred to a targeted Ally through a summoned micro warp gate. The enemy will still be able to perform physical attacks.

Name: Temptress Tactic
Type: Offensive / Stat-Adjusting
Effect: Target One Enemy / One Ally
Description: the targeted Ally performs a French kiss on the targeted enemy, sucking 75% of his HP and giving it to your Ally.

Name: Un-Kyoto Animation
Type: Offensive / Stat-Adjusting
Effect: One Enemy
Description: The sakuga quality of target enemy becomes so craptastic that he commits harakiri. Works only on minions / doesn't work on bosses.

Name: Vacuum Da World
Type: Offensive / Stat-Adjusting
Effect: Everyone - All Allies / All Enemies
Description: The entire battlefield is transported into space, where physical shotgun attacks are prohibited due to the No Junk In Space legislature. Thus everyone will be limited to magical attacks for the next 3 rounds.

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Hmmm, usually enemies share the same spells as the allies. But in this case we are limited to non-panty-centric attacks.

[Recca Phoenix]

those are some hilarious ideas ^_^

[monele]

Name: No-Pan Squadron Turbo

Name: Summon Hikikomori

Name: Summon Vampire Bishounens

Oooh yeah... Nihon Hikikomori Kyoukai, and No-pan for the win~ (and you could just go with random yaoi bishonen if you want to allow cameos from various series such as Gravitation and others which names I can't remember right now)

[Counter Arts]

Glow effects?

Say, is there something in renpy that has a "colour add" mode on it? Then we can have some pretty nice effects.

[monele]

Would be cool . And if I'm not mistaken, not too heavy on the proc (not heavier than regular alpha blending?)

[DaFool]

I guess it kinda shows I was inspired a bit by Shoujo Attack.
This is the kind of thing that will make a Ren'Py game win the Great English Visual Novel Race in the long run -- hybrid games. No matter how polished a visual / kinetic novel can be on onscripter or Blade Engine, you can't imagine an amateur version of Gadget Trial made with them.

So, is the ambition too much? Right now, I can just grab one or two arcs from the story I've written so far, make a few event CGs, and release them as standalone kinetic novels...and it won't take even a weekend to do them. (I've gotten most music composed and most BG pictures already). But I want something totally badass.

And yet we're on a budget. So the cost-cutting will also reflect in the design. So here's how the battle screen will look like: The top 2/3 of the screen will be the battle screen (in widescreen), with 2D chibi sprites. Not exactly fully chibi or 8-bit quality, but something that's pretty cute and not too detailed...like Grandia II, my favorite game ever.

All the elements will be made into separate, controllable sprites, especially the panties (so you can just use python code to adjust the color glow on them and move them around). I'd hate to impose more on the programmer, but it seems simple enough, definitely far simpler than doing frame-by-frame animation.

When a new background effect is used to reflect a change of setting caused by a spell, the new BG will merely drop / slide / bounce down behind the sprites. Now, for spell effects, what I'm curious is if Ren'Py has a burn effect that can be targeted on several small portions of the screen--if so, then I can cut down on prerendered overlays.

Superimposed on the bottom 1/3 of the screen is show_side_char dialogue, with talking heads (rendered with a bit more detail) who will effectively narrate the battle. We can also have the Action Select Menu be confined to the bottom 1/3 so we won't have to hide the battle screen.

[PyTom]

What do you mean by color add?

I don't believe we can do a burn, although it might be possible to make work by having images with the appropriate alpha channels on them.

In general, it's fairly hard to add new image operators while still maintaining reasonable framerates.

[DaFool]

Hmmm, I guess I can start working on the sprites then, so it would be easier to test things once we get the prototype in. I might as well post resources here and keep it open-source, so that in case I disappear from internet-dom, my dream of a panties strategy game will live on.

As proven by the MagBou thread, a gameplay-centric Ren'Py game will always be fresh when a new update is added...unlike a story-centric game which it's better to keep things under wraps until actual release, especially for a kinetic novel. So that is the approach I'd recommend to take...the actual battle development process will be iterative in true software development style, while the story I keep hidden until the battle engine is finalized.

What do you mean by color add?

I don't believe we can do a burn, although it might be possible to make work by having images with the appropriate alpha channels on them.

In general, it's fairly hard to add new image operators while still maintaining reasonable framerates.

I imagined Alice Doll where you adjust the hue and saturation of the color of the image. Perhaps it works similar here?

[monele]

What do you mean by color add?

I don't believe we can do a burn, although it might be possible to make work by having images with the appropriate alpha channels on them.

In general, it's fairly hard to add new image operators while still maintaining reasonable framerates.

http://wscg.zcu.cz/WSCG2006/Papers_2006 ... 3-full.pdf

Enhance blending section. Basically, additive alpha blending is used a lot for particle effects.

[Counter Arts]

Yeah, the reason why I suggested colour add is that it doesn't look like a taxing effect. I am guessing that you are using the transparancy blending already, and this stuff is like two operations faster. I probably seen this effect in an SNES game before.

Haha... so, is it like possible?

BTW: I've been doing a little bit of overtime recently so programming is slow. I haven't seen anything too hard to implement though.

[PyTom]

By color add, do you mean recoloring, or add layers? We do recoloring already. We don't do add layers yet. There are a couple of tricks we do with alpha blending to prevent it from being too expensive. There's no branching in the alpha blending code, for example. I don't know how to do addition without having to check to see if a pixel overflowed, which is a branch (really, 3+ per pixel), which could be expensive.