Messages

46

General Discussion / So... do we have any idea what project #4 is?

« on: February 24, 2012, 12:45:23 PM »

Like the subject line says - has there been even the vaguest hint of what project #4 will be? I've been away from Twitter for a few days, so please forgive me if I've missed anything.

47

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Level 23 skills

« on: February 14, 2012, 09:08:18 AM »

I love Unison. I need a sequel, among many reasons, that I really want an opportunity to play an entire Fortune Summoners game based around making intelligent use of her ability.

I think any sequel would have to play up the Lost Vikings-esque puzzle aspects a lot more. The trick would be coming up with a couple of unique mobility-based powers for all three characters in order to make the platforming puzzles shine. By the end of the game, Arche already has two - double-jumping and pushing heavy blocks - but Stella and Sana only have one apiece, and Sana's is obsoleted by Mermaid Robe.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: FS fan music (piano cover)

« on: February 14, 2012, 08:54:47 AM »

Yes, and perhaps the worst kind: one on a laptop.

Yeah, that'd do it. The physical proximity is a killer - the analogue-to-digital converter in your audio hardware could be picking up that scribbling noise from just about any nearby component that has a processor in it, and in a laptop, everything is nearby.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Level 23 skills

« on: February 13, 2012, 08:59:13 PM »

Unison is broke as hell anyway, I don't think she needs anything else.

Unison is so uber, it even breaks the soundtrack. 

(If you don't know what I"m talking about, try activating Unison in battle against a tough non-boss opponent. You have to start casting it after the combat music fires up in order to for this to work. If you time it right, the regular combat music will be replaced with an ass-kicking orchestral arrangement of the title theme.)

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: FS fan music (piano cover)

« on: February 13, 2012, 05:29:36 PM »

Sabin, I've checked out OCR before, and while the stuff they do is fantastic, their high quality standard for audio makes it feel a bit intimidating to put stuff like this on there.

Being too shy to ask for the pros for constructive criticism'll hurt you in the long run. Just go for it - maybe explain that you're just trying to get the kinks worked out of the performance itself, and it's not meant to be a production-quality recording.

Incidentally, are you doing your recording with integrated audio? That is, does the microphone plug directly into your computer's motherboard, rather than into a separately installed sound card? If so, I think I know what's causing that "tinkling" noise mentioned upthread: it sounds like your audio hardware is picking up some crosstalk from the CPU. This is a common design flaw in motherboards with integrated audio hardware, and unfortunately, the only way to resolve it is to buy a dedicated sound card.

51

Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Is normal mode really normal mode?(Versus)

« on: February 12, 2012, 07:33:12 AM »

The AI does pretty much react to a player's inputs instantly however. This is quite evident when you're using Stella and you use a basic ranged attack. Most enemies just hop over your attack with ease - even when they're the ones approaching you and you're standing still / waiting until they're at point blank range.

Stella telegraphs her basic ranged attack with a little gesture a moment before the attack's hit-box actually comes out, so that one doesn't bother me - a human opponent could see it coming just as easily.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Is normal mode really normal mode?(Versus)

« on: February 11, 2012, 04:56:36 PM »

I guess versus mode is kinda like fighting the AI in fighting games in that regard; They can execute moves instantly and read your inputs / instantly take advantage of your mistakes, so you pretty much have to cheese the AI to win.

I think there are a couple of key differences in play:

1. Arche has no charge moves, and very few roll moves. Most of her attacks are of the "tap direction + attack" variety, so the AI doesn't have any particular execution advantage over a human player.

2. The notion of "reading your inputs" requires some unpacking. The AI isn't a little man inside your computer watching the action on a screen - the game-state, including the state of the controller, is all it has to go on. The question isn't whether the AI "reads your inputs", but whether it reacts to those inputs more quickly than a human opponent plausibly could. Mostly, this means: does the AI start to react before your attack animation begins? As far as I can see, this isn't the case. Even at the hardest difficulty levels, the AI isn't pre-empting your attacks; mostly, it just parries or dodges in response to being approached. You can fairly easily fake it into dodging a nonexistent attack by approaching it as though you're going to attack, but not actually hitting the attack button - which is the sort of thing you'd expect to work against a human opponent, too.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Unable to get into the Wind Shrine.

« on: February 07, 2012, 07:51:56 AM »

Sana's shield spell seems to block it completely. Heck it seems to block about any status effect as long as it's up.
I believe she'll get a version of that spell that can target allies, but I'm not that far yet so I dunno what level you get it at.

I think the basic version can target allies - you just have to manually target it, because her AI will always cast it on herself.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Need help for day 8

« on: February 05, 2012, 10:09:53 PM »

If you were able to talk to the mayor without getting kicked out by his secretary, he already told you that he wrote the password to the sealed door down on a tourism pamphlet and accidentally gave it away to somebody. You need to find that somebody. Talk to the kids hanging around the inn - they'll point you in the right direction.

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General Discussion / Re: Jumping on the trend of topics gushing about Carpe Fulgur.

« on: February 05, 2012, 10:05:31 PM »

I'm sure trichromatic catgirl maids prancing to happy hardcore is symbolic of something or other, but for the life of me I can't think what.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: My Review of the Game

« on: February 01, 2012, 08:40:47 PM »

The AI in this game is borderline hilarious in how it blatantly reads your inputs and has pinpoint precision on how to dodge everything you throw at it and counter you, even on the easiest difficulty.

In most genres, what you're calling "reading your inputs" would be known as "responding to the player's actions". It's true that in most platformers, the enemies move in fixed patterns and don't react to anything the player does, but that'd probably make for a fairly boring time in a game as heavily combat-focused as this one.

That said, the AI doesn't appear to be reacting to actual button-presses. It just has reasonably competent predictive algorithms. I've found that it's possible to fake it out and get it to react to what it looks like you're about to do, once you have a feel for how it reads you - it's not hard to trick most types of enemies into dodging a nonexistent attack, setting themselves up for the actual swing.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Absolutely dreadful performance

« on: January 31, 2012, 09:29:32 PM »

I'm getting some moderate menu performance issues, too, and I'm running Windows XP. It's mostly when toggling between characters when viewing the "Status" screens.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Sana... messing up?

« on: January 31, 2012, 03:58:01 PM »

I've been able to reproduce the second one several times with mobile NPCs, too. Basically, it seems that if you ever trigger a conversation in such a way that there's no room for your NPC companions to line up behind you, the game's pathfinding goes off the rails. I actually managed to get Sana stuck inside a wall at one point, though it took a fair bit of doing.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Swordsmanship Basics

« on: January 31, 2012, 01:31:08 PM »

The tutorial text is incorrect, or at least premature. In Arche's basic move set, wide slash chains into slash, but not vice versa. Chaining slash into wide slash requires a move that you learn at higher levels.

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Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone / Re: Having Trouble Doing Sword Moves

« on: January 31, 2012, 10:25:03 AM »

Arche basically controls like a Street Fighter character. That's great if you already have your fighting-game reflexes, but it makes for a fairly steep learning curve if you don't. The only real thing for it is practice.

That said, once you get the hang of it, the fact that she controls like a fighting game character can actually work in your favour. Get buffering and pressure combos down and you can chainsaw through crowds of monsters in ways that have to be seen to be believed.

One helpful hint for beginners, though: the block button is your friend. Always hold down the "up" button when you've got nothing better to do. Certain attacks can be launched right out of your blocking stance with a very minimal window of vulnerability; learn what they are, because you'll be relying on them a lot in the second dungeon, where many enemies have superior reach.

(Freakin' polearms.)