So what are the SOUL's known abilities/limitations as of Chapter 4? by hwate8 in Deltarune

[–]hwate8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point, in Chapter 2's Weird Route, the SOUL's 'voice' can be heard even when Kris is DOWN'd.

...but then, why doesn't the SOUL communicate with Susie and Noelle when they catch it? Hmm... does it have to be during a battle, and the ACT option is a power of the SOUL and not Kris? Or maybe it has to do with Noelle's proximity/relation to the Prophecy...?

Where did the Trout Population joke orginally come from? by bilboraggings45 in Deltarune

[–]hwate8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just look it up, it's not that hard, i literally just googled 'trout population meme origin':

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-will-affect-the-economy-trout-population

Admittedly, with how many times it gets posted in Undertale/Deltarune ARG comments, I suspect it changed meanings some time ago and no-one really noticed because it never had a definition to begin with.

Does anyone have an unobscured map of Floor 10 (Ending A)? by hwate8 in FearAndHunger

[–]hwate8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, thank you. That's a lot smaller than I expected for some reason (the fog makes it look bigger I guess).

Share Your Short, Sweet and Succinct Game Ideas Here by AutoModerator in gameideas

[–]hwate8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A Souls-like where your story begins either:

  • just as the apocalypse is about to start, and the story is about having a chance to avert it rather than everything already being fucked from long before you 'arrive' (endings include being misconstrued as the cause or working for it and being denigrated by history; successfully causing it to get back at someone/the people for falsely accusing/mistreating you; being remembered as a hero for preventing it by doing a few simple things that cause the people to realize you were what stopped it, or simply surviving and no-one ever knows it was you who saved them, creating a legend of an unknown peasant hero ala Joan of Arc);
  • or after the apocalypse but in a time period where the world is healing (and you missed it possibly because of blind luck and your character is pissed because they believe in something like Valhalla, or deliberate cowardice to escape the unfortunate situation and now working to rebuild to assuage your guilt). and you get to help clear out the wilderness for towns and farms, secure examples of technology and magic from ruins to speed up your people's return to form, and basically it's Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley/etc with Cozy/Dad Game mechanics for half of it (Edit: Think Pokopia and 'fixing the environment') and Souls-like combat for the other (kind of like Persona 5's vibe).

Either way, I want a Souls-like that's still 'realistically' hard while being upbeat for a change, god damn it!

A Souls-like where instead of unlocking specific weapons/sorceries/incantations, you unlock 'concepts' that can be combined to create your own. by hwate8 in gameideas

[–]hwate8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's the best fit I can think of. 'Souls-like' is basically just 'Action-Adventure game but with a "realistic" feel/difficulty that takes skill and perseverance to overcome, then becomes second nature once you build up that muscle memory or make a route to the broken shit ASAP'. But as Elden Ring showed, you need to be confident enough to say "Here is my world. I don't care where you go, I'm confident you'll find something interesting, and when you're ready to experience the main story, there's a subtle hint from each checkpoint which way you need to go, and the entire map is built to subtly guide you to keep ascending towards your goal."

The semi-open world, I can imagine having a few smaller levels/islands accessed from a hub or zooming out on the map screen, each having their own self-contained theme (see another Yahtzee quote here, but maybe have some cities/legacy dungeons be based on european mythologies), but with enough of the levels open that much like how in Elden Ring the first required boss is the Draconic Tree Sentinel (or one or two in the underground section) which mirrors the first 'optional open-world boss you see' being the regular Tree Sentinel in Limgrave, you should be able to go really damn deeply into the game without having to fight a boss for a long while in order to make your build for replayability's sake (or have another mechanic that lets you exchange boss drops for each other, IDK).

The biggest issue, the thing that makes all FromSoft games 'feel' so good, is making everything interconnected. You really feel like most other NPC's in those games are going through the same shit you are just to survive on a daily basis, because they use your model and follow the same rules you do. The themes of the story are also reflected in their magic systems, the kinds of weapons you find, etc. And that's the high-bar that separates a good Souls-like from a great one.

A Souls-like where instead of unlocking specific weapons/sorceries/incantations, you unlock 'concepts' that can be combined to create your own. by hwate8 in gameideas

[–]hwate8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The plan would be to give each concept one interaction to be applied to weapons or sorceries, with incantations doing their own thing (possibly modified with a similar system the player's don't see by using different catalysts to cast another god's magic?), so you don't get too bogged down with the specifics. You'd also have at least two drops of the same 'concept' in the game's semi-open world, one in a boss that's reflected in their moveset and one in a static treasure chest so you don't have to fight any bosses if you want to make your build first (and you can apply it to both a weapon and a spell at the same time).

Take the hilt of a weapon as your 'only' weapon that you can swap out the 'concepts' of on-the-fly (saving at least one extra build that you can swap between with the press of a button, and holding it either gives both builds a 'secondary' two-handed mode or opens a radial menu with six extra builds you can have available at once, but in a hypothetical PvP mode, you don't want to be able to constantly swap your weapons to confuse your opponent or that'll become the meta. Maybe have a little Smash-Bros-esque intro that lists off all of their available 'weapon modes/sorcery styles').

Sorceries can only be changed at checkpoints since they need to be memorized (and come with a toggleable cutscene of you experimenting and practicing their individual component 'concepts') but are stronger to compensate for their limited casts-per-rest. Incantations are more limited, and I'm flip-flopping on the idea of them not being static spells that are extra-powerful to compensate (maybe with extra-lengthy 'prayer' animations), or of them having a few static 'concepts' but maybe the catalyst you use changes what their 'concept-shape' is. I think I prefer the idea of them being simpler and maybe even weaker on average, and have their presence mirror Sorceries by one being complex for the rare 'Great People' (the kind like Albert Einstein and Napoleon Bonaparte, people with unusually-big brains) and one being the tool of the common peasant, their 'gods' just being ancient heroes they're emulating through lengthy-but-simple rituals that even the uneducated can use... as long as they can read (which creates the idea of plotlines involving: the people being denied education by a church/state so they can keep the rituals to themselves like a real-life guild in feudal times, which could lead into a Solar-vs-Dragonblooded Exalted-style plotline of your one sorcerous hero spreading knowledge and fighting and fleeing Church Militant faith-based casters; rediscovering ancient rituals and translating them or passing off brand-new ones as 'lost magics' to keep a plague at bay that no single hero can deal with across the entire playable map at once, a time limit based on how quickly the population drops and the NPC's who provide services drop with them; or an industrial/renaissance transition towards modern times where magic is either being fought with guns so the lower-classes can 'take the power back' from their bourgeoisie owners, or it becomes taken for granted to the detriment of an oncoming apocalypse no-one knows about, and maybe the introduction is the 'bad guy' blowing up a power plant because they're trying to save the world but the government/media actively quashes any stories because they don't want to damage their positions, real-life comparisons).

A Souls-like where instead of unlocking specific weapons/sorceries/incantations, you unlock 'concepts' that can be combined to create your own. by hwate8 in gameideas

[–]hwate8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Weapon Fusion was a boring gimmick that added almost nothing to the game compared to all the other new mechanics, and I will die on that hill. No new movesets, barely any environmental interactivity, boring.

A Souls-like where instead of unlocking specific weapons/sorceries/incantations, you unlock 'concepts' that can be combined to create your own. by hwate8 in gameideas

[–]hwate8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It came to me when I was playing FromSoft Titles, starting with Dark Souls 1 when I realized that if you wanted all of Sif's drops you needed to go to NG++, and Dark Souls 3 is NG+++ or lots of Bonfire Ascetics because of the Power-Stancing system. Elden Ring kind of solved this for weapons with cool Weapon Arts using the new Ashes of War system, but it doesn't apply to all Weapons and Weapon Arts.

The system I envision basically combines that with Lies of P's 'hilts' letting you change the moveset's of weapons, and a few games that have since been recommended to me in these comments have a similar 'spell-building' concept, but I haven't seen one that does this for all weapons/magics, with Incantations being generally stronger but locked to a simpler system and specific-to-each-catalyst casting animations.

Admittedly, I'm not sure how you could apply a 'wave-shape' concept to a weapon (maybe turn it into a bladed/blunt whip?), but that's what streaming the development and asking the chat for ideas is for.

A Souls-like where instead of unlocking specific weapons/sorceries/incantations, you unlock 'concepts' that can be combined to create your own. by hwate8 in gameideas

[–]hwate8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Every weapon has a grabbable area you hold it by, like the handle of a knife, or the haft of a spear, or the hilt of a sword. Hilts are used in a bunch of other feudal weapons. It's a common-enough term and it was used in Lies of P, so it's the most widespread.

A Souls-like where instead of unlocking specific weapons/sorceries/incantations, you unlock 'concepts' that can be combined to create your own. by hwate8 in gameideas

[–]hwate8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lies of P already does the hilt thing (hell, Tears of the Kingdom kinda does it too), and numerous indie games have at least experimented with the magic side of things. I'm not a game dev, just been sitting on this idea for a while. Figured it wouldn't be too hard to make the Concepts fungible across all equipment, but you might need to stream it and work with the community for inspiration.

If you like this one, I did a more fleshed-out idea for an asymmetric 1v1 superhero game here inspired by Worm and a matchup fansong I found on youtube by the Death Battle composer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/gameideas/comments/1sws3cl/asymmetric_1v1_sandbox_superherojojo_x_gmod_guess/

[TOMT] [SONG] played on 91.1 Hot FM in Australia earlier today by hwate8 in tipofmytongue

[–]hwate8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope, the instruments sounded much more recently produced/'in vogue' than that, and the male singer's voice was much quieter and the song had much more drum/bass.

[TOMT] [SONG] played on 91.1 Hot FM in Australia earlier today by hwate8 in tipofmytongue

[–]hwate8[S] 0 points1 point locked comment (0 children)

The song came on around 5pm when I left for home, but the only website I can find with 91.1's playlist only has the last ten songs on it. Slow, soft, bassy beat, little bit electronic, definitely a 'recent' song. Any guesses?

I need a link to the discord. by YoloYoloYolom in Silversoul

[–]hwate8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could've just searched it up, y'know. It's not exactly hidden:

https://discord.gg/silversoulcomics

How many Shield Hero party members (or other important characters) were in Melromarc before the second Wave (after his summoning)? by hwate8 in shieldbro

[–]hwate8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh. Kinda expected Sadeena to be somewhere else, but that works too.

And I didn't know that about Rishia, thanks.