/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3623339
Fair enough. I was going to follow up with a post on a genre or game because I recognized your complaints before even posting the thread, but was hoping someone else would take that lead, and you didn't seem to want to.

Topic: Action RPG mechanics

Some ARPGs /vr/ is familiar with:

Secret of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3
Soul Blazer / Illusion of Gaya / Terranigma
Secret of Evermore
Tales of Phantasia
Zeldas
Crusader of Centy
Castlevania SotN

Clearly there is a lot of variety in this genre, but there are strong unifying themes too. These games are lauded because they engage the player with exploration combined with action, and typically are played over many sittings.

So, back to the topic at hand.

Take SoM. Looking past it's slick graphics and sound, is the game fun mechanically? I think the answer is yes, and there are several reasons why, but it also has significant flaws.

The concept of managing a team, but only controlling one outright at a time, is fun. The poor pathing AI made it frustrating at times, and the computer is pretty stupid, but the concept itself is not flawed. Moreover multiplayer let someone else play along, something almost unheard of in this genre.

SoM has some serious mechanic issues though.

The weapon charging system (not the cooldown time!!) is useless because it takes over 30 seconds to charge up the most powerful attacks, preventing input to the other team members, and taking you out of the action for an attack who's DPS is tiny compared to uncharged attacks.

The magic is also busted. While it is fun and correct that the game runs while animations are firing off, it is broken that animations take longer than the time to cast them, coupled with the fact spell targets are unable to attack during animations, means you can chain magic without retaliation until your MP runs out.

Moreover, magic is too simplistic to be fun. Water creature? Attack with ice. Yawn. Even though this is 99% of magic systems, it's uncreative.

>>2453856
Let me give you the OBJ (SNES sprite primitive) run down.

YYYYYYYYXXXXXXXX
VHPPCCCNNNNNNNN

X=X offset (0-255 pixels)
Y=Y offset (0-255 pixels)
N=Name (tile selection, 512 tile choices)
C=Palette (palette, 8 palette choices with 16 colors each (including transparent))
P=Priority (Determines what's on top of what, 4 layers)
H=Horizontal Tile Flip
V=Vertical Tile Flip

Since you have 512 tiles you'll not exhaust graphics memory. The important things I need are your X and Y offsets and Names.

Keep in mind that X and Y in SNES land (and many consoles for that matter) is a little weird if you've never seen it. The top left is the origin with X increasing to the right and Y increasing Down.

+----------->X
|
|
|
v
Y

Once you give me the X and Y offsets of your tiles in your sprite (my word for a collection of OBJs drawn together), I can add an X and Y offset to place your sprite into the game world.

If any of this is unclear, feel free to ask questions.

PS: The SNES can display up to 128 independent OBJs in a single frame.