It is a bit like the original Diablo; characters do not level automatically anymore. Instead, once you have enough exp to level a character up a button will appear on their character sheet that when clicked will allow you to spend exp and level up that character. The main difference is when your characters do stuff to earn exp, the points are put into a shared exp pool, and can then be spent on any character in your party, not just the one specific character that earned it.
Everyone still earns exp, and everyone still levels, it is just they do not carry around their own exp, in the same way they do not carry around their own gold. If a character picks up a gold coin they throw it into the shared party gold coin pool and that gold can be spent on any character; now the same thing happens to exp. If a character earns exp the point is thrown into a shared exp pool and can be spent on any character.
Let's say for example you have a veteren fighter and a novice mage in your party. Your fighter could run around beating stuff up for exp, while your mage hangs back and throws the occasional fireball; the fighter is going to earn more exp then the mage. In the old system where everyone earned exp for themselves and leveled automatically that would mean the fighter would level up a lot faster then the mage. In the new system all of the exp earned by any of your characters goes into a single exp pool, and is shared between all members of a party. Characters do not level automatically in the new system, instead the player controlls when characters level by spending party exp. You could spend your party exp to level up your fighter to elite, or level your mage to veteren, or you could use your exp to unlock a new class, such as Knight or Witch.
This way, the new system does not force a player to use a class they do not want to use. If you do not want to level a witch, but really want a tier 3 mystic class in your party, you can use a different class like fighter, to earn exp for the unlock. If you have enough exp you can unlock a new class, recruit a new party member of said class, and then level that character to max without ever using him in combat once.
Using the old system if you wanted a necromancer you would have had to level a mage to level cap to unlock the witch class, then leveled a witch to cap in order to unlock necromancer class.
Considering the nature of that site, with a number of games having spirites ripped right out of official big budget titles, I would not be suprised at all if they did not care in the slightest about a friendly poke.
So I have almost finished the new streamlined user interface fo rDungeon Tactics. A huge amount of research went into the design and it has been a huge development effort to implement, but it was totally worth it from a gameplay perspective. Everything is much easier to navigate, and the options available to the user are presented in a much more straightforward manner.
The revamped mob info panel now shows allied unit icons along the left hand side of the screen and opponent unit icons on the right side. This change combines home base and unit list functionality with the info panel. In addition the support menu functions have been combined with the turn indicator. So, that is five discrete interface elements that have been combined into two.
The other major interface change is the removal of the Disgaea style stat block in favor of a Tekken inspired opposing health bar system. This pushes a lot of the game's numerical complexity out of sight, and while the statistical data is still available it is not nearly as overwhelmingly prevalent in the design.
The interface overhaul is only one of 4 major features in the new version. In addition there is also the attribute overhaul to increase mob and item variation, the Character development overhaul which flattens the vertical model to allow for more horizontal progression, and the revampped loot system which gives the user more control over the rewards receaved.
I am not convinced that there would be a drastic drop in the number of participants without the monetary reward. And even if there is a substantial drop, getting even more consistent art that follows the LPC graphics style would be a win in itself. It would also benefit existing games that use LPC art.
That is only if future LPC entries follow the same styleguide, which in my opinion, should not happen. Assetts built using the current LPC style guide are extremly ineffecient; as with the LPC rules, the style guide should be refined to produce more consistant and useable entries.
So I managed to get Dungeon Tactics running on Debian without installing any non standard libs. I fixed the makefile so you dont have to build it through an IDE, then created an automated build script, and lastly I packaged all the dependencies that you cant get from synaptic together in a single archive. You can download it now on the official website, at dungeon-tactics.com/files/xenos-1.2-src.zip
Follow the install instructions included in the archive. You can use Synaptic to install most of the deps, don't forget to install the development packages as well the libs. Once you do that, you should just be able to run ./build.sh to compile the rest of the deps and the main app.
It is a bit like the original Diablo; characters do not level automatically anymore. Instead, once you have enough exp to level a character up a button will appear on their character sheet that when clicked will allow you to spend exp and level up that character. The main difference is when your characters do stuff to earn exp, the points are put into a shared exp pool, and can then be spent on any character in your party, not just the one specific character that earned it.
Everyone still earns exp, and everyone still levels, it is just they do not carry around their own exp, in the same way they do not carry around their own gold. If a character picks up a gold coin they throw it into the shared party gold coin pool and that gold can be spent on any character; now the same thing happens to exp. If a character earns exp the point is thrown into a shared exp pool and can be spent on any character.
Let's say for example you have a veteren fighter and a novice mage in your party. Your fighter could run around beating stuff up for exp, while your mage hangs back and throws the occasional fireball; the fighter is going to earn more exp then the mage. In the old system where everyone earned exp for themselves and leveled automatically that would mean the fighter would level up a lot faster then the mage. In the new system all of the exp earned by any of your characters goes into a single exp pool, and is shared between all members of a party. Characters do not level automatically in the new system, instead the player controlls when characters level by spending party exp. You could spend your party exp to level up your fighter to elite, or level your mage to veteren, or you could use your exp to unlock a new class, such as Knight or Witch.
This way, the new system does not force a player to use a class they do not want to use. If you do not want to level a witch, but really want a tier 3 mystic class in your party, you can use a different class like fighter, to earn exp for the unlock. If you have enough exp you can unlock a new class, recruit a new party member of said class, and then level that character to max without ever using him in combat once.
Using the old system if you wanted a necromancer you would have had to level a mage to level cap to unlock the witch class, then leveled a witch to cap in order to unlock necromancer class.
I just updated the game's indiedb page with info about some more changes in the next version.
Check it out, tell me what you think!
Considering the nature of that site, with a number of games having spirites ripped right out of official big budget titles, I would not be suprised at all if they did not care in the slightest about a friendly poke.
I only bring it up because it deeply offends my sensibilities...
^^
So I have almost finished the new streamlined user interface fo rDungeon Tactics. A huge amount of research went into the design and it has been a huge development effort to implement, but it was totally worth it from a gameplay perspective. Everything is much easier to navigate, and the options available to the user are presented in a much more straightforward manner.
The revamped mob info panel now shows allied unit icons along the left hand side of the screen and opponent unit icons on the right side. This change combines home base and unit list functionality with the info panel. In addition the support menu functions have been combined with the turn indicator. So, that is five discrete interface elements that have been combined into two.
The other major interface change is the removal of the Disgaea style stat block in favor of a Tekken inspired opposing health bar system. This pushes a lot of the game's numerical complexity out of sight, and while the statistical data is still available it is not nearly as overwhelmingly prevalent in the design.
The interface overhaul is only one of 4 major features in the new version. In addition there is also the attribute overhaul to increase mob and item variation, the Character development overhaul which flattens the vertical model to allow for more horizontal progression, and the revampped loot system which gives the user more control over the rewards receaved.
I'll post more when I have it...
^^
That is actually really handy. Nice work...
That is actually really handy. Nice work...
I am not convinced that there would be a drastic drop in the number of participants without the monetary reward. And even if there is a substantial drop, getting even more consistent art that follows the LPC graphics style would be a win in itself. It would also benefit existing games that use LPC art.
That is only if future LPC entries follow the same styleguide, which in my opinion, should not happen. Assetts built using the current LPC style guide are extremly ineffecient; as with the LPC rules, the style guide should be refined to produce more consistant and useable entries.
/crickets
So I managed to get Dungeon Tactics running on Debian without installing any non standard libs. I fixed the makefile so you dont have to build it through an IDE, then created an automated build script, and lastly I packaged all the dependencies that you cant get from synaptic together in a single archive. You can download it now on the official website, at dungeon-tactics.com/files/xenos-1.2-src.zip
Follow the install instructions included in the archive. You can use Synaptic to install most of the deps, don't forget to install the development packages as well the libs. Once you do that, you should just be able to run ./build.sh to compile the rest of the deps and the main app.
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