I realize that sometimes the all-text updates can be pretty boring (or at least the lack of response to my thread would seem to indicate so ).

Anyway, having played my map - up to the point it's been developed - umpteen times, I realize that the actual battling is the weakest part of my map. A lot of it feels like just Jedi battling all the time, which isn't necessarily challenging.

Anyway, to get some feedback on this, and hopefully find some ways to improve the battle system, I give you Spira: Moonflow.

I threw this together this afternoon. Basically, it's just a flat-ish map on which you can test (some of) the abilities of (some of) the main characters. There's no leveling up in this; it's just a plain assault map. Some notes:

1) You can only play as the player characters from Spira: Besaid. Fiends are not playable.
2) Not all the moves for everyone are unlocked, and none of the overdrives (super-ish moves, I'll explain eventually) are unlocked. Those non-unlocked moves are represented by the "move" "Empty Move Slot."
3) This map does have the ambient music from Spira: Besaid. In addition to commenting on the battle system, feel free to comment on it, because it's really easy to change.
4) You're probably going to get trashed when you play it. All of the characters are at level 1, and they can die really easily if they fight stupidly - and believe me, the computers will. If you win, then kudos - because I don't think I can.

And finally, PLEASE give me some feedback. I don't care if you've betatested a thousand times or never, I'd like your personal opinion on this, so that I can make Spira: Besaid the best possible map.

Thanks!

Download Link

EDIT:

Battle System Primer

I suppose I should make a quick primer on the battle system. A couple things to note:

-Magic has weaknesses and resistances. Ice is weak to fire and fire is weak to ice. Likewise, Lightning is weak to Water and vice versa. Additionally, magic does not affect its own type (i.e. thunder magic will not affect thunder monsters).

-Flans (Ice and Thunder) are fiends that are highly resistant to physical attacks, but much weaker to magic attacks. It would be much wiser to use magic on them (Blizzard, Bio - in this demo) than it would be to use physical attacks.

-Bombs, as their name would imply, are somewhat explosive fire creatures. Sometimes, when they die, they will do a last-ditch "Explosion" attack that can deal a large amount of damage.

Yay a beta

Among other things, the biggest problem I had was that it CTD after I died as Shiva, maybe the code has problems transferring control back to Yuna?

Frisbeetarian wrote:Among other things, the biggest problem I had was that it CTD after I died as Shiva, maybe the code has problems transferring control back to Yuna?

That might happen if your graphical settings are turned too high (why, I can't honestly say). However, I don't see CTD problems as long as I lower my graphical settings.

Wow! I honestly did not expect that kind of ODFery.

A soldier class Deployable. Its genius.

What games are those from? Or perhaps I'm really ignorant, and they're just track names from FFX?

I agree you should have some Final Fantasy music in your map (even though I don't play Final Fantasy). The sides are great though 2 thumbs up!

HobGoblin_264 wrote:I agree you should have some Final Fantasy music in your map (even though I don't play Final Fantasy). The sides are great though 2 thumbs up!

The music that you heard in there is from Final Fantasy 10, the game this is based off of.

Thanks for the compliments! Anyway, I'd love to hear if anyone has any suggestions or constructive criticism of the sides - they're what I feel is the weakest, and I'd like to touch them up if I can.

I almost never run battlefront at anything other than the lowest settings, and for that matter while doing something else, I had made sure they were at the lowest settings before testing.

Frisbeetarian wrote:I almost never run battlefront at anything other than the lowest settings, and for that matter while doing something else, I had made sure they were at the lowest settings before testing.

Well, that's a bizarre problem. I haven't had any other reported CTDs (although there could have been some). I know that resummoning too soon (within a matter of seconds) after having had one's own summon killed can cause a CTD, but that rarely happens due to the fact that one can only summon once per life. Most likely, it's simply a memory issue, which should hopefully become irrelevant with Spira: Besaid, since it has larger memory pools and only one possible summon on the map at a time.

the biggest problem I had was that it CTD after I died as Shiva

same here, but besides that its really great,

cloneknight wrote:

the biggest problem I had was that it CTD after I died as Shiva

same here, but besides that its really great,

Shiva? What are you talking about?

Achronos-117 wrote:Shiva? What are you talking about?

This is Shiva


but dont have a cdt when i died with here but when i try to use she a second time.Then i have a cdt.

I've worked out what's causing the CTD with Shiva - it's when you summon her when you have the empty move space as your primary weapon.

This map is awesome - the blitz ball guy is pretty boring, with only his ball to attack with and his um... bio.

I had fun with the person who summons Shiva, mostly because well, she summons Shiva . It's good that she can heal as well, because those enemies have a lot of health. I assume they'll be easier to beat once we've leveled up?

The guy with the big sword is cool too, mostly because of his sprint attack, because it's easier to get close to enemies. I ought to play more Final Fantasy games - it's a pity I don't have a PS2. Ah well.

Anyway, I hope you can release this soon, it's fun! I just hope there's a few more characters, though I understand if you're not going to include any more, those three must have taken a lot of ODF work.

Rekubot wrote:I've worked out what's causing the CTD with Shiva - it's when you summon her when you have the empty move space as your primary weapon.

This map is awesome - the blitz ball guy is pretty boring, with only his ball to attack with and his um... bio.

I had fun with the person who summons Shiva, mostly because well, she summons Shiva . It's good that she can heal as well, because those enemies have a lot of health. I assume they'll be easier to beat once we've leveled up?

The guy with the big sword is cool too, mostly because of his sprint attack, because it's easier to get close to enemies. I ought to play more Final Fantasy games - it's a pity I don't have a PS2. Ah well.

Anyway, I hope you can release this soon, it's fun! I just hope there's a few more characters, though I understand if you're not going to include any more, those three must have taken a lot of ODF work.

Thanks for the input! You're actually close to what's causing the CTD. I talked a little more to some of the people who'd played it, and I figured out that what they were talking about is the same thing I'd known was a bug. The bug is as follows:

If you summon Shiva, die as Shiva, and then control is switched back to Yuna - if you try to summon again (you press the secondary fire button) before Shiva has finished "dying," then control will switch back over to the dying remote soldier. This shouldn't happen, because the player never should die as a remotely controlled unit since control should have switched. Thus, the CTD.
Put simply, if you're pressing the secondary fire when control goes back from Shiva to Yuna you'll cause a CTD. It's preventable by the player and shouldn't interfere with normal gameplay (as it's not completely random), but this is one of the reasons I'm implementing a save function.

And there actually is one more character, who I just didn't put in this because he's a semi-secret character. Barring a major decision later on, the player will have four party members max - a primary melee character, a primarily range character, a primary magic character, and a magic/melee hybrid (the secret character).