Sylvan

I know I'm late to the thread, but yay, NCFC's started. For what it's worth, I've tried to implemented most of the negative things said about my game, for NCFC this year. (I'm the creator of the HTML game mentioned earlier). Also for what it's worth, I'd personally rate the other people's games ahead of my own. I've got no problems in saying my game is incomplete, especially last year where I had to gut most of the features at the last minute to make it run offline. Even this year, when it's back online, there's still so much I haven't been able to include in time. (it especially annoys me that I found a few bugs, literally as I was writing the submission, which obviously I don't have time to fix). From a technical standpoint, I'm quite happy with what I've achieved, writing a game from scratch isn't easy. Making it run in a browser is even harder. I personally didn't pay any attention to the awards last year. I know full-well most people have never heard of my game, I've done nothing to publicise it. I did have a thread over over in the creative section, but haven't updated it since the old site went offline in 2012 (prior NCFC 2012). I've been planning to make a new thread for the new site, but never got around to it. I didn't post it here in the ROM hacking section, since, well, it's not a ROM hack.

I did say promoting earns less exp. Internal level is an extension of this. Either way, the argument then shifts from being "do we allow lowmanrun" to "is less exp worth having stronger units". My gut feel (having done no formal analysis) is that the level lead is worth the exp drop, unless promoting early. Informally, I ran through twice, one keeping pace with the enemy, one with a level lead using fewer units. The level lead seemed to give more options. It made defend missions harder, but made taking chests & valuables easier. It certainly was more efficient, less items consumed, fewer turns, more gold. I don't see why we should neglect any analysis of the playstyle. At a minimum, we should weigh up the difference between the two, and actually judge the differences, rather than say "we didn't do it before, so we won't do it now" - ignoring the differences between this and previous games. Giving everyone equal amounts of exp still happens in a low man run. The only thing that's different is the number of units on a map. Saying one unit gets all the exp and reclass chains (at the cost of all other units) is favouritism, not a low man run. For instance, if you were to compare sully and chrom - based on join time, someone might be tempted to say "well I need chrom to survive, so he needs exp. Since I need to level him, I need to do it right now. Sully joins at a time when chrom is levelling, so she can't have exp, so she's bottom tier". Well, this is wrong. Join time does matter, but saying they can't get exp is blatant favourtisim (you have to at least say "what happens if they get exp"). This has nothing to do with how many units are on the map - and applies equally to a full-team run vs a low-man run. Like I said, 20/20 is not everything. Other games, hitting those caps requires 20/20, which means a long turn count in an unpromoted class. (which means, no promote benefits) That has an impact on the mid game. Additionally, pre-promotes with only 20 levels are usually writeoffs in a lowman run, thanks to the low number of levels to grow in and less exp. In this game, both promoting early and using pre-promtes are viable in a lowman run. They may not be optimal, but are still viable, and thus worth considering. (As an aside, most units will not be hitting their caps in other games. For example, even in shadow dragon and using re-classing, healers will only have a limited number of missions to level in as certain classes - hampering their options. Solo mages often will still have 40%+ chance of death in late-game hard modes, even trained to 20/20 - unless burning stat boosts. This hurts healing, hurts boost distribution and hurts item consumption. Additionally, thieves are impractical - even 20/20 have a high chance of death, making item gathering difficult - in awakening, pairing up or re-classing thieves makes it straightforward.)

Placements are impacted by the play style, so it's hard to do that. It is if you are doing a low man run properly. Note, the level cap doesn't have to be 20/20. Even the first 20 is a big impact. In other games, once you hit the first 20, that's it, you have to promote or you are not getting any more stats. (and promoting at 10 has serious ramifications). In this game, you can second seal, grid up as much as you want, then promote. (effectively 30/X is a viable alternative to 20/X present in other games). Conversely, promote at 10, and use seals to compensate for no remaining levels (this takes an exp hit though). But it's not possible to do this in other games. The other big impact (opposed to other games) is on pre-promotes. With only 20 levels to grow in other games, and low exp, their options are totally different when exposed to a second seal. Re-classing on top of this gives better growth alternatives, which are not apparent even in other games like Shadow Dragon, where re-classing is free.

Second Seals. They can dodge the level cap, which is the limiting factor in other games. The other is pairing up. If you are allowed to use 6 units on a map. Using just 3 and deploying the other 3 for nothing other than supports is viable. (you don't have to defend them). You will take a small hit to damage (since the paired-up unit won't be attacking for any damage) but the level lead on the main unit will more than make up for this.

Oh, right. Each village has a different class. So one village will allow you to class change to a thief, while another others have different ones. Same goes for armouries/weapons. Each one is different.

So, I've overhauled the site to make it look half-decent. Added 3 new classes, fixed the broken multiplayer. Added default weapons for new players. Added an axe user! (Brigand) Still only 1 chapter in the campaign mode, and levelling up hasn't been added yet. Same with mages and magic. With this, I'm announcing version 0.1.1! As a rough indication, version 1.0 is deemed to be the first "non-demo" release of the game. The site is now available through the main link: http://zoidscore.vlexo.net/ The other links will likely get you hitting a 404, or an old version of the site.

Ahhh, so that's why my bookmarks stopped working!

So, I realised that when I did some recent updates the source is now minified. Here is the repository I set up to view the non-compressed source. https://bitbucket.org/Spearson/sylvan-emblem

@Camtech: If you need anything specific, just ask and I can give some pointers. Other than that, when I do the edits to the source I usually only have the one file open. The source is in here (In case it becomes mixed up in iframes from the other link): http://zoidscore.vlexo.net/femmo/demo/game.html The yellow cursor is very hard to see against the grass Fixed! I replaced the yellow square with the GBA cursor image. - Item/Wait aren't highlighted, so I have to do a bit of guessing in regards to that Yeah, when I uploaded the fonts (which I only did on Tuesday) it broke the battle HP bars and menu selection highlighting. But that should be fixed now! I put in the floating finger thingie. - My inventory's still full of stuff I didn't ask for I haven't looked into this just yet.... - Enemy phase causes the browser to lag Try chrome. Right now that's the only fix I've got. Currently I'm only testing and developing in chrome, so I haven't done any optimisations or quirks checks for other browsers. I just tried comparing the performance in chrome vs firefox. Chrome finished moving all 5 units before Firefox had moved even 3. Optimisations I'll try and do after version 1, which who knows how long that'll take. I'm not sure if I'm even 10% the way there yet. - My archer healed the enemy?! Fixed! Well, it's fixed in the first campaign mission. The demo map still has buggy HP. (stats in general for the demo map a wonky) - The image accompanying "You Won" didn't load. Not sure if that's my browser's fault or not. That's still a placeholder. Thanks for reminding me though, because I haven't actually completed a level in ages, this wasn't on my to-do list XD I'll add it now. Other things that I just pushed out: The glowing movement squares from the GBA games. Trade menu fixes. HP bar/HP text in battles works. BTW, I love this kind of feedback!

Yeah, go ahead. The easiest way to see the source is to just go to the demo, right-click, view source. It's all there in plain text. That'll give you access to everything but the server side and the design doc. If you want either of these I can post them as well. That being said, it'll run just fine without the server side stuff.

Still no new classes. But better AI and something like a first single-player mission is up. Slow progress this time of year, mostly thanks to Chinese New Year. I'm honestly not too sure what else I've added since the last post, a lot of the engine has been rewritten to be much nicer. http://zoidscore.vlexo.net/femmo/demo/menu.html

Here is one with the hacker DC in it. I started recording as son as I found out they were a hacker. (18 move swordmaster) sorry about the low quality, I wasn't set up to record like I usually do (black out the lights to minimise reflections). This is probably the best I'll get. Although I haven't recorded the top screen, most of the necessary stuff is on the bottom. Commentary: The first enemy attack with abel comes at 1 space away from Tiki. You can hear, they use mercurius. This tells me on their screen, able is supposed to be next to Tiki. This is all the info needed to force a DC. In my turn, you can see I try and scout past the spot Tiki would have been attacked in on their screen. This forces my unit to ! against their unit on their screen, but on my screen I end up far away. You can see this in effect instantly. The next time their Abel attacks Nagi, the battle terminates without any damage being dealt. I imagine on their screen, Nagi has taken damage. I then zoom out to show the top screen, you can see all max stats, also you can see briefly, that their unit isn't actually attacking mine. I'm taking no damage. (I could force the DC now, but I waited to be sure) Again, they attack. I watch the direction my units face when being attacked. This tells me were to move though on my turn. On my turn I move though the space next to my units, since they were using 1 range weapons in their turn. NOTE: I have not attacked them at all up till now. This is important to stop my game from freezing. Back to their turn, they attack me again, it does nothing. (except for their Xane, which is negligible, I can force the DC at any time with Nagi) To be sure, I scout some more. Now, the important bit, they take the flag. This tells me both catria and nagi (who should be on their screen) are dead on their screen. They have stopped attacking. Also, neither of my sages are attacked, because the units next to my sages on my screen are next to the castle on their screen. I let it go a couple turns to be sure. Sure enough, none of their units even move in response to mine, and they re-take the castle without being on it. Here comes the DC. All I have to do is launch an attack with Nagi or Catria. Both those units are dead on their screen, but still alive on mine. Attacking with a dead unit will crash the game. Sure enough, they have disconnected! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Here is the general overview: Watch which weapons they use to attack. Anything that doesn't look right (eg 1 rage weapon from more than 1 range) gives you information to scout with. Move through those squares. Do not attack their units*. Repeat this until they stop attacking a particular unit. (this tells you they have 'killed' this unit) Attack them with the 'killed' unit, and they will disconnect. * you can, but it's more risky, since you can take damage this way, and if you take damage it greatly reduces the chances of staying alive on your screen, dead on theirs. If you launch an attack, chances are you can force yourself into a disconnect (rather than forcing them into one) Either way doesn't really matter, since you won't record a loss. But the hacker will record a win, which usually feeds their ego seeing a player rage quit against them (that's just what it looks like to them).

Yes, and that's the only reason I used RNG abuse at (all my other teams aren't RNG abused). The difference in supports is enough to allow the team to work without Dazzle as their card. They use flash cards, which aren't emulators. Here's an old vid about the first turn kill, I may as well post it here: I'd love to, but don't have time this morning.

On that team, max everything bar mag and res. I usually don't use it to fight people though. I'd need record an actual battle to do this, obviously I can't force a disconnect in practice mode, but I'll try on the weekend. I don't own FE12. I've played it on computer, which can't actually play WiFi. My guide was a prelim thing, to be updated once the game was released overseas... which never happend =/

These two are really basic. Probably don't even need to be videos. It just shows using some lateral thinking to avoid "unbeatable" tactics. Notably, map 3 and the "first turn kill" tactics. (even though in the map 3 vid I still end up on top, that's because the AI sucks) Basically, card choice isn't something to forget about. There are a LOT more things to consider here, I'd especially like to make more videos and player 2 (but I can't do it as easily, since practice mode is only player 1) Map 5 in particular has some very nice strategic value for player 2.