Additions?

Arctic Pulse?

..Seems good enough!

What about the various melee attacks? Will they work on a replace basis - you can only have one?

Morph and Heal are pretty difficult from Mines and the Hammer Shot.. But I guess that it kind of gives versatility in the styles of complete builds. (versatility by being limited?) I suppose that Heal and Morph would count more as Support spells, whereas the attack utility spells would be something else. But eh, it would make things more complicated for now - needlessly so.

I was also thinking about when to use Arctic Blast.. In my eyes, it has always been a very mediocre spell (mostly I've used it in Evolution, though, and there things get really hectic). Are there good reasons to want to prefer it over the normal energy blast? I guess that the same could be asked about the C energy blast, but then again charging the whole screen full is just cool I guess.

Arctic pulse is similar to energy pulse, but it slowly shoots off large chunks of ice, which freeze/damage enemies.

its currently way OP and needs some nerfing, but its really fun to use. i guess arctic blast needs the opposite. (You could probably beat most evo maps with just arctic pulse, no gmg required... it might even be weaker with the gmg)

I guess the melee attacks could replace each other. Maybe then add a button to switch them in? Most of the time none of them are particularly useful though.

Ah, I see. What about the "dark energy blast"? Well, it'd obviously be a blast, but I guess it would be pretty cool to actually obtain that spell :P

The GMG in itself is pretty powerful.. Either it needs some serious guardians and a huge maze in the next game, or it should be nerfed a bit overall..

As for melee attacks.. I suppose that once the Q button is rendered obsolete through this, it could be used to "unequip" your spells and use whatever melee weapon you have! If you already have a sword and pick the energy punch, you would drop the sword, and vice versa.

Unrelated, but I found it really funny when this old game called "dungeon explorer" uses one button to cast the spell you have selected, and another one to cycle the spell you are using. It otherwise seems alright, but all characters have only two spells. ... ...Which means, that they could have used one button to cast one of the spells, and the other to cast the another one!

Figuring out things like that in order to increase the simplicity with the controls would be really vital for this game, I think. What we have been doing for a while has been to add more enemies, allies, weapons and spells, but the system has gotten pretty bulky to remember completely.

I was thinking "q" could replace "c" nicely.

maybe unequip could be shift or something? or space bar?


Or hows about:

Shift - Toggle GMG
Q - Equip melee/morphed
E - Quick summon
R - Summon wizard

There's still a matter of selecting which wizard to summon though; the current one sucks. I'm partial to changing it from "Summon wizard" to "Summon Selected" where you select a unit type in the sidebar, and when you hit the summon, the most experienced one of that type is summoned. It would be controlled by clicking, I guess.

There would likely still need to be some method of limiting how many wizards are on screen. I'd kinda like it to be 2, so you could have both Ulin for healing, and another to help you attack. Alternatively, have the limit be something set by the map...

I'm against having GMG on shift. I think that keeping the keys close to the movement buttons, but so that we don't have to reach across four rows, is the best solution. Sure, shift is quite accessible by the leftmost finger (pinky?), but it's quite a bit away from the number buttons. Since it seems that F is free, I'd much prefer it.

How about being able to summon all wizards, but not being able to unsummon them? (and thereby heal them at will) Perhaps debuff their stats by a bit to compensate.. There also are situations when the sidebar is insufficient in displaying all of your army. How about grouping the wizards to one slot, rendering their images on top of each other in a sheet style (so that the others are diagonally down-rightwards from the first one, so that you only partially see them)? This would enable the player to see who's the first wizard (assuming the current system is kept), as well as not clog up the interface.

Since you can only have one summon spell at a time in the new system, what about making it so that when you hit "2" to switch to army summon, instead of switching your spell, it works like pressing "C" does now? It would result in the spell not actually being charged, and it also would disable unsummoning. Both of which seem to be good things, considering that I never ever use the spell anyway (since hitting C is so much more convenient). It also would free up the key used for quick summoning, allowing us to use E for summon wizard and R to cycle wizard (if we can't summon all at once).

Being able to use the morph creature's attack by hitting Q would be awesome, too. If they all were ranged units (gob archer, skel archer, orc, golem, ??), it should prove to be interesting. I guess that movement should be stopped for the duration of their attack animation, making it fair but difficult on the player. Of course, spells would be available normally. (or maybe you would have to morph into a spellcaster..? I dunno)

I really like this drive to try to simplify the game. My brother still maintains that MR1 is his favorite because it's "just simple".

Another way to do this is in the map designs. We could have a series of maps that just have one spell each in them.

What about the spacebar? I don't think my thumb is ever *not* on it.

I'm not sure about making 2 into quick summon; it would seem kinda strange as a spell/would feel inconsistent vis a vis what other spells look like.

Having the player stop during attacks makes it crazy difficult, btw. I've had that happen while making the sword, and it was quite painful.

Other thought: What about making a wizard summon spell. We can rank the wizards by their strength/usefulness, and then there's a balance to keep you from getting too strong. Maybe start the game with either berlin or ulin, and let you summon one of them with f? ->That could also be set by the map maker.

That could also be like a constant wizard, where if they get wasted, they'll be available again next room(maybe after losing all of their experience and what-have-you) to make sure the player doesn't become too weak. Then, a wizard could be summoned along with whoever else when you quick summon.

that leaves 1,2,3, and 4 for spells; q for melee/weapon, f for special summon(summon wizard in most cases); and a toss up between e and r for GMG and quick summon.

Ok...

I dislike the idea of having some "base" wizards - it should be entirely up to the map designer, and it might be unnecessary in MR4 as well. There isn't much difference between starting with Ulin by default (and by the way, he's a pretty tough ally), and placing him into the first room of a map.

Ranking the wizards and having a Wizard summon.. ..Actually sounds like a good idea! That way, you couldn't have both a wizard and the army all at once, making balancing of the map easier if both are present. That way, losing either isn't a huge deal anymore. I'm kind of not too keen on keeping the army summon spell and the quick summon.. Maybe the quick summon could be removed, and the army spell could be modified to summon a bunch of guys at once, depending on the charge level?

Oh, but if taking Army Summon overrides Wizard Summon, then.. What? Or perhaps Army Summon should be a special case altogether, allowinfg you to take it with you whenever and use it from whatever is assigned as the quick summon key? There's also the issue of ranking the wizards.. Some are handy in certain situations, while worse in others. Although I guess that it's not that difficult to do. Also the spell could cycle through wizards by the ranking, starting from the weakest, but skipping the wizards you don't yet have. ..or display them as greyed out, and summon the previous available wizard if you try to summon someone you don't have. ...I guess?

Do we want the army to be in as large part in MR4? I mean, it would be rather easy to remove the quick summon. We also could make it so that you have to choose between carrying army summon, wizard summon, monster summon or the others instead of designating special keys to half of the summon spells. The wizards only being available through using a spell to summon them, and being able to mass summon by charging Army Summon seem like great ideas, though. Although.. ..I guess that a Wizard Summon spell kind of defeats the idea of having to collect them. Unless it's fixed in the map design.

Well like the army summon, you wouldn't actually be able to summon wizards you haven't collected.

Making the player choose between summon spells is quite interesting too. It means you must choose which approach to take to the game. That's not a bad idea.

I think merlin should physically drop the spell that is being replaced btw, to make it very obvious to the player what is happening.

And here I thought that it was a given that your previous spell of the type would kind of pop off in a random direction when collecting a new one :D

Yeah, forcing to choose only one of the summon spells at once is a good idea, I think. The only downside with this system is that the player has to do a tedious backtrack if he/she wishes to change back, since you will be unlikely to come across an older spell further in the map.

There could be a "assign to hotkeys" function usable from the pause/"q" menu.. ..But I dunno, that would kind of make it more complicated as you would have to remember the different spells you currently have assigned, and it'll be just another layer of complexity to switching your spell.

I'm kind of unsure whether leaving the spell behind is a good or bad thing, although it will make it easier on the player to remember just one spell of each category.

I was thinking it would fly out in random direction as well.

Also, that there *would* be a plethora of older spells around.


Maybe such that the weaker/more basic spells are all over, and the stronger spells can only be gotten in one or two places. Then, there can be npcs that give you hints on where to find things.

Of course, when you drop something, its not going to move anywhere.



Silly idea: Let wizard friends pick up spells... and dropping their originals! A wizard spell inventory!

Wizard spell inventory, lol. I can see how far that could be taken.. Imagine having to manage the spells of two or three wizards at once! (Yeah, maybe not..)

I was kind of thinking that, you know, the stronger spells of each type would be guarded tightly, in order to reward the player for overcoming the challenge. Kind of like the fortress around summon monster and the gmg in MR2 - I always loved the way the map was structured. But I suppose that like potions or medikits, there is nothing wrong in coming across the weaker spells here and there later on. A few of the stronger ones could be more easily available closer to the end of game too, in order to not make beating the map dependant on being able to get a good spell early - although that depends a lot on how the overall map is structured.

Oh yeah, this isn't entirely relevant to the suggestion, but I thought about the invincibility given by potions, spells and medikits. Would the game be worse by removing or sharply reducing it?

Currently in Evo most rooms are fairly easy to beat by just collecting powerups one-by-one and using the long invincibility time from each to beat most of the spawns and enemies without having to worry about much. Regaining a bit of health or the current full invincibility only shielding from, say, half damage would be better in my opinion.

hmm quite like the idea that the other wizards can pick up the spells you drop - of course they would have to drop the spell they are carrying. Leaving it free for you to pick up...

^ Exactly.

Played MR4 alpha from the front page, died, reloaded map, game crahed. "Script runtime error Three parameters expected. Error in script"

It could be that I have an existing save game from a different version/map, or it might be something else.

Oh, and if punch will be pick-upable (replaced by sword and energy punch), I think that it should be removed from Merlin by default and leave it up to the map designer to give a means of attacking in the first screen. This is due to the possibility of ending up in a non-beatable screen due to not having any spells due to being able to punch your way through everything.

Of course, all current maps should have punch by default for compatibility, but it's something to consider for future builds.

Another MR4 alpha bug - GMG is not carried over from a save/load.

That's something that has since been fixed iirc.