Since I've been out of commission lately due to both sickness and surgery, I have had some time to work on this some more while the work for Lucretia is finished up. I know that some of you out there like to read about dev progress and techie stuff so I figured I'd jaw about some of the recent progress of MS2 and how things have changed from MSR.
I started work on the battle program for MS2. It was obvious from the time this game was first thought of that the original MSR battle program was inadequate for all that MS2 has in store. MSR's battle program is very simplistic and limited; I needed something with a bit more power. The original program defines each enemy unit as a 64x64 sprite.. even the tiny little slimes are 64x64 internally. With so much free space, we should have made larger sprites, but we didn't. Oh well, live and learn. Anyway, a fixed sprite size makes certain things easier, such as hit response and centering. Only the main mode final boss has a sprite that is larger, and I ended up coding separate functions for its centering and hit response. It was inefficient and I can do better. So, MS2 does things better. First of all, the enemies are much larger now. Some of the weakest enemies in MS2 are larger than some of the most powerful bosses in MSR... to say nothing of the powerful monsters in MSR that are now absolutely massive in MS2 (such as the Dragon and the Mega Wyrm). Because enemy sizes can be variable now, a better system for handling their combined sprite blocks was implemented. It means more data is being manipulated, but this isn't an action game so moving around more data is not an issue. Additionally, enemy units can now make use of more than a single palette at a time. MSR only allowed a single palette per enemy unit. In MS2, "normal" sized enemies are still limited to a single palette, but "large" sized enemies can use 2 and "huge" sized enemies can use 4. No overlaying of colors is allowed, but individual sprite blocks can make use of different palettes, giving some of the bigger enemies more than the usual 15 colors. Up to 4 palettes can be used in total for enemy units. "Normal" enemy units can appear 3 at a time, but "large" enemy units are limited to 2 and "huge" enemy units are limited to 1. The game can use 1 "normal" and 1 "large" enemy unit at once as well. What defines their size is the number of full horizontal sprite blocks they use up... "normal" enemies have a maximum width of 2 (64 pixels), "large" have a maximum width of 3 (96 pixels), and "huge" have a maximum width of 6 (192 pixels). Vertically, enemies can now be as tall as 160 pixels, but the vertical size does not affect their size category since the issue is horizontal pixels... make them too wide and in too high a number and you get buffer overflows and pixels are lost.
Because of the much larger sprites, the interface had to be redesigned as well. I completely did away with the top portion; the game now uses a dynamically-changing bottom part. Much less text is used and battle turns progress on their own, unlike in MSR which was almost entirely text-based and had to be moved along manually. Damage now comes up as "bouncing numbers" a la modern Final Fantasy games rather than text displays. Spell selection is now more streamlined as well, and looks more like something out of a Climax RPG, with spell "levels" that can be selected rather than a verbose list as MSR used.
Another important aspect of battling in MS2 is the experience system. MSR used a fixed chart, like the original MS. However, for MS2, I ditched the chart and used Monolith's algorithmic leveling system instead. It means less data has to be stored and levels are essentially limitless, so you can keep growing more and more powerful with more time spent on grinding... if you want to. It won't be necessary though, as MS2 is a bit more balanced than MSR was, although power players who love to grind are still going to be right at home here.
Also, whereas MSR's story was thin and basic, MS2's story is a lot more detailed. Plot elements are key, and there is a hell of a lot more character development this time around. People just wanting to murder stuff can ignore much of it though. Ryanna is the main character this time around, so most of the story revolves around her, whereas MSR focused almost entirely on Spear.
I did not remove the conveniences that MSR implemented, though... for example, you can still dash around, even on the world map. That's one of the things that made MSR more fun to play. Nothing's more obnoxious than zipping around a town but then having to plod along on the world map. Dialogues and menus are still really fast, and I have implemented the ability to both use and buy multiple items in one go, unlike in MSR where items were bought and used individually. "Camp magic" now also functions this way, so spells don't have to be selected each and every time you want to use one. Also, since MS2 is a hell of a lot bigger than MSR, "save points" have also been introduced... you no longer have to only save at inns.
So yeah... these are some of the things to look forward to in MS2. Obviously I can't spill everything, but I figured I'd talk some tech about the new MS for those interested. It will still be awhile before this game comes out, but when MGC comes around, it will be available for demo play. There *may* be a public demo at one point but that won't be for some time.
