The No Frills KISS CE Quick Demo

The Demo only takes you through one session of combat, but each time you play you will face a group of enemies with varying capabilities and strengths. Sometimes you will win easy, sometimes it will be a battle, and sometimes you will face certain destruction!

http://www.greatworkgames.com/testdistro/wtgs-dist.jnlp

Best played at 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution (those were the design sizes, but it should scale if choose a larger size). Since this is a no frills demo, your graphics window may hang in blackness for 5-10 seconds while the program charges up. No sound is available on this round. The demo should work on Windows XP/Vista, Linux, and MacOS. Java VM 1.6 or higher is required. Go to http://www.java.com and get it if you don't have it.

CONTROLS:

Arrow Keys: Menu Navigation
SPACE Bar: Select Menu Item
Esc: Cancel Action, Move Back One Menu, Exit Game from Game Over Screen
F-12: Exit Game From Anywhere

MENUS:

ACTION: Main Menu
-> ATTACK: Physically attack an enemy
-> CAST: Cast Magic
-----> Heal: Single, regain a small amount of HP for one player
-----> Super Heal: All, regain a small amount of HP for all players
-----> Small Fire: Single, damage enemy with fire based magic
-----> Big Shock: All, damage all enemies with lightning based magic
-----> Poison Air: Single, poison an enemy
-> USE: Use Item
-----> Potion: Single, regain 100 HP (you'll need this!)
-----> Ultra Potion: All, regain 100 HP for all party members
-----> Zap Bomb: Single, prevent an enemy from using magic
-----> Neuro Tea: Single, regain 50 MP for a party member
-----> Remedy: Single, recover from all status effects
-----> Sick Bomb: Not implemented
->TALK: Not Implemented Yet
-> GUARD: Not Implemented Yet
-> ESCAPE: Escape from Battle/End Game


Enjoy!!!

Demo Nine

Another phase of integration and improvement has ended!

The following video shows expanded Enemy AI (cranked up to nearly a boss fight level), Status Effect Administration, and Recovery Bottle Usage. The first two rounds look like this (in words):

ROUND #1
(Gold Witch (2): Big Shock -> All Friendlies)
Starman: Zap Bomb -> Blue Witch (0)
Stella: Poison Air -> Blue Witch(3)
Blue Witch (1): Physical Attack -> Starman
Blue Witch (0): Remedy -> Self
Blue Witch (3): Physical Attack -> Starman

ROUND #2
Gold Witch (2): Big Shock -> All Friendlies
Starman: Ultra Potion
Stella: Big Shock -> All Enemies : Blue Witch (3) is ko'd
Blue Witch (1): Physical Attack -> Starman
Blue Witch (0): Physical Attack -> Starman

ROUND #3 and beyond:
(... see video below ...)



MUSIC by Raum.

KISS CE Core Enemy AI

I had travel plans for this past weekend that fell through on a technical issue and not by my hand. It would have been great to see my SoCal daughter, but I guess the stars weren't right for it -- for one reason or another. So having a long weekend at my disposal, I decided to buckle down and steep myself in the KISS CE code and implement the core enemy AI (as the video below demonstrates). Enemies, according to their specific and unique stats, are now able to cast spells (Heal, Big Shock, and Small Fire) and use items in their bag (Potion, etc.) based on various combat conditions. Also, I coded in some movement for physical attacks so that that both enemies and friendlies move up to their chosen target, strike (to be visually accentuated later with an attack animation and special effect), and then return to their original field position. Player items are now available for use in combat (Potion, Ultra Potion, and Neuro Tea for now) and a "turn disk" has been added so that it's easier to get a visual lock on who's turn it is (aside of the Turn/Round HUD) and which enemy is using nefarious magical attacks and healing. The next step after adding a few more items and spells for general use will be to implement both the delivery and cleansing of Status Effects for both sides of the combat zone. This will most likely be addressed slowly over the next couple of weeks -- modulated in accordance with basic money-work brain-power drain.

The Day of Integration

Well... the Day (or Week) of Integration turned into the Weekend of Integration due to having to spend a lot of brain power on money-work this week. But in the end, it all turned out as planned. The video below demonstrates the special effects that I've been working on integrated into the KISS CE proper. Ahh... I feel better now, and the day of getting back into the overworld game, and the attendant puzzles that will hinder the player's progress, is getting closer and closer. But before that, I think that I will take the time to model a robot for Starman and Stella as a third party member for their journey, and do some battle animations and movement for the characters. And then... the completion of Frank Starman and the Planet of Mysterious RPG Powers will get underway!

The Time is Nigh at Hand

Now that I mostly have Persona 4 out of my system (see video below ;-), I have started to lay the ground work for the integration of the combat special effects into the KISS Combat Engine proper. Ahh... getting back to it fills me with a sense of both happiness and foreboding. The latter is my natural feeling of undertaking a large/huge code project and is just something that I have to discipline myself and muscle through/past. After that bit of adjustment takes place the work is usually/mostly smooth sailing -- not only coz my skillz are r0x4r but also because I have taken the time to foresee how all the pieces will fit together. More later.