Archive for 'Blog'

The Auto Battle menu is a replacement for the “Macros” of Last Dream I and World Unknown. “Macros” referred to a specific set of actions that each character would perform automatically each round of battle. With the transition to a dynamic time battle system, rounds of combat no longer have any meaning.

In the Auto Battle menu, each row refers to a set of actions for each party member. In the screenshot, Tiberius has selected Smite, Crassus has selected Defender, and ...

As part of our series of posts on battle system upgrades, we wanted to share the new “Guard” action which has been implemented (both in terms of mechanics and animations). Currently, “Guard” will reduce any damage by 50%; however, we have plans to give unique abilities to each character class whenever taunt is used. An example of such a unique ability is the Knight getting a weak “Taunt” (e.g. increased enemy targeting) when guarding.

In our next post, we’ll discuss the ...

As part of our battle system upgrade series, we wanted to share an update to the core battle system menu. Previous menus included the “Status” option which has now been made accessible at any time via a button mapping (“M” in this example) when the player is either selecting an option or targeting an enemy. The status menu allows checking on the detailed status of all party members and enemies at enemy type during the battle.

The new replacement action is ...

As part of the battle system upgrades for the Knight’s prologue, we have implemented “unconscious” animations Tiberius (the Knight), Marcus, and Crassus. We sometimes refer to this animation as the “death” animation for simplicity, since the items to restore from this state are called Resurrection Elixirs.

In the battle screenshot, both Marcus and Crassus have been reduced to 0 HP and are “dead” and have switch to the “death” animation. We have also implemented and tested “Resurrection Elixirs” that will restore ...

As part of the battle system upgrades for the Knight’s prologue, the injured animations for Tiberius (the Knight), Marcus, and Crassus have all been created. This animation overrides the default “idle” animation whenever a party member is reduced below 25% of their Max HP. In the battle screenshot, both Marcus and Crassus are severely injured and are showing the injured animation.

We hope that the injured animation will be another helpful indicator to players to heal their injured party members.

As part of the battle system upgrade for the Knight’s prologue, the poison state animation (and appropriate mechanics for the slow loss of HP each turn) were implemented. The battle screenshot shows Crassus inflicted with poison due to the Black Slug’s Toxic Slime attack.

Like other status effects in Last Dream II, poison comes in multiple tiers that increase in severity as you delve deeper into the game. Poison now properly reduces HP in battle whenever a character gets their action ...

As part of the battle system upgrades for the Knight’s prologue, a new item – the Smoke Bomb – was introduced. Smoke Bombs are a new item in Last Dream II that guarantee escape from battle. 

The battle screenshot shows the Smoke Bomb animation. The addition of the Smoke Bomb required new animations, new mechanics to allow for activating the ‘escape’ mechanism, and a bonus to the escape chance.

We expect that careful balancing of the cost of Smoke Bombs – similar ...

As part of the battle system upgrades for the Knight’s prologue, enemies were updated so that they can have a “Normal Magical Attack” as their default attack rather than always using a physical attack which would be much weaker if they are a high INT / low ATK enemy. This will allow for better balancing in terms of the strength between physical and magical enemies, especially when magical enemies are out of MP or are silenced.

In additional, the animation embellishments ...

As part of our battle system upgrades for the Knight’s prologue, we developed the skills and corresponding battle animations for the Knight’s first three skills: Smite, Defender, and Frenzy. The battle screenshot shows the Knight using his defense skill, Defender, which protects against physical (but not magical) attacks.

These skills can also be learned by the Knight’s other two party members; Marcus and Crassus. Marcus and Crassus are part of a different class called “Soldier” which has access to only the ...

Two more upgrades to the battle system made for the Knight’s prologue are: i) ability to target all party members and ii) active character highlighting in both the menu (right-hand side) and for the battlers.

The battle screenshot shows a Tiny Ultra Potion (which is similar to to a Tiny Potion except that it targets the entire party) being used in battle and how the heads-up display (HUD) for each of the party members is shown.

In addition, the development for the ...