Invalid characterset or character set not supported HG Wars - Progress Update





HG Wars - Progress Update
March 13, 2009

Well, it's almost 5AM and I've stayed up the whole freaking night tweaking the battle system and a few other things. Here's a rundown of the updates:

* Attack damage now fluxuates, meaning a level 35 mage with 50 WIS won't always hit for 73 damage if he keeps attacking. Sometimes it might be more like 67 or 75 or whatever. Just random numbers, but you get the idea.

* Critical hits are now possible, both from the offensive and defensive sides of a fight. You have a better chance of getting critical hits if your luck rating is high, though you stand a chance of getting them even when that's not the case (your odds are just lower). Critical hits still shouldn't be terribly common, but you should start seeing them often enough that they should be factored into any strategy.

* Attacks can now be dodged. This is affected by your agility compared to that of the individual you are fighting. Anyone has the capacity to dodge attacks, but high agility greatly increases your odds. Even so, dodges should be relatively rare, showing up only on occasion... just often enough that you can't ignore the possibility.

* Battle messages have been changed so that everything should be in the past tense. Messages are now formatted more cleanly and you should be seeing more of the messages that I coded in behind the scenes. Some of them hadn't been shownig up properly.

* Battles now yield experience points. You'll gain more points if you defeat characters at higher levels, particularly those who have built levels quickly by focusing on energy and ignoring other stats. This should prevent people from adopting that strategy as frequently in the future, though it still may be a viable strategy in some instances... which is okay. I'm interested to see what different strategies people use.

* You also gain experience if someone attacks you. Whoever wins the fight gets the experience. It's looking like skill points and automatic attributes are automatically appearing where they should, which took several hours all by itself.

* Battles can only be started with people who have 10% or more of their HP in place, rather than the old 5HP minimum. Entering the URL of a favorite target to try and sneak in an attack will no longer work if the individual's HP is below that mark.

Those are the main changes relating to the combat system. I made one other change, as well, which you're all bound to notice almost immediately: level progression has been updated. It now takes longer to advance between levels.

Because of the many, many changes I made tonight, there may be a character wipe soon so that we can start fresh and see how the updated systems affect early level progression and strategy. Progression should at this point be much different than it was even a few days ago. I'm not sure when the wipe will occur. Probably soon.

I have a lot more tweaks I'm looking forward to adding, including some that will affect the battle system. This is most likely the last big update for another 2 weeks or so, though. Keep comments coming, as well as specific bug reports so that I can fix any issues you encounter... though my timeliness may not be exemplary now with other projects competing for my time.

Thanks, and enjoy the pre-beta version of HG Wars. Your participation is making it better already!

Most recent blog posts from Jason Venter...

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Suskie Suskie - March 13, 2009 (11:14 AM)
Good updates. And apparently you and Espiga figured out a way to withstand thousands of points of damage, because last night I was hammering away at both of you for quite a while to no avail.
honestgamer honestgamer - March 13, 2009 (12:34 PM)
Sorry, that was me doing testing. It took quite a bit of testing to get the battle system straightened out, so I updated my HP and espiga's HP (during the duration of the tests) to 1,000,000 apiece. We're now back to the HP we have as a natural result of our current levels, so feel free to attack us... if you dare!
wolfqueen001 wolfqueen001 - March 13, 2009 (12:55 PM)
I haven't gotten a chance to fight or anything yet, but I will say the changes in the level system do make leveling more difficult, so that's definitely a good thing and adds to the strategy. Makes me wish I'd been more careful earlier...

Anyway, I just had the money glitch again while working... It seems to happen more often with less gold, but I'm not sure (since the second to last time it happened, I had millions). Next time I'll take a screenshot or something when it happens because text doesn't seem to appear when it does either now.
honestgamer honestgamer - March 13, 2009 (01:34 PM)
Anyone: please let me know the next time you are able to attack someone, or the next time someone attacks you. I want to make sure that potential battles are being listed properly as they become available.
zigfried zigfried - March 13, 2009 (03:08 PM)
Wolfqueen, you've been in battles because I attacked you several times. It wasn't just you by the way, I attacked pretty much everyone. Everyone lower level than me, that is. I'm just not sure that targets knew I was attacking them or not.

The sad part is, everyone kicked my butt.

//Zig
wolfqueen001 wolfqueen001 - March 13, 2009 (04:30 PM)
You've attacked me since the updates, Zig? Well, it must've been when I wasn't around, then, because I never received any news or anything in regards to it.

Unless you never actually killed me and those posts only apply to deaths.
WilltheGreat WilltheGreat - March 13, 2009 (06:07 PM)
Espy's hit me a few times since I went out for dinner. When I left my XP total was about halfway to a level up. Now it's back at the bottom of the bar.

Do we actually lose XP when other people trounce us? o_O
woodhouse woodhouse - March 13, 2009 (06:17 PM)
My EXP has gone back to zero after every death, too. So, yeah, looks like it's a tough road to leveling up.
espiga espiga - March 13, 2009 (06:18 PM)
I think it's a bug that will probably be fixed upon Venter's return from work. Until then, it's probably not a good idea to kill each other or nobody will get anywhere, lol
wolfqueen001 wolfqueen001 - March 13, 2009 (06:31 PM)
Yeah. It seems that whenever you lose a fight, you lose all your XP. I had 50k exp and fought Jason, then it was all gone.

Likewise, in this image, I attack woodhouse and lose the fight, but I don't die, and I still lost all my XP.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

I apologize that the notation bar thing is there... right over my important stats... I guess I didn't see it when I took the shot. My health was at like 50 (of 70) anyway. I had about 500 xp when I initiated that attack, and now it's pretty much zero again.

Also, I noticed that when I get attacked, whether I'm killed or not, I get like 200 xp each time. And only 1 xp when I kill/attack someone myself. Also, I think I get XP for attacking people and dying... Jason gave me 1 XP... which should either be more or nothing at all, since I lost and he was a higher level than me.

Oh, yeah. And experience doesn't display on the main battlescreen, but it does in the details for the notes on the home page.

EDIT: Yeah, and sorry about killing you guys - especially the low levellers like DE, Zig and woodhouse. I was just experimenting with the battle system to test my theories on the bugs (which everyone reported on while I was uploading the screenshot, it seems)
honestgamer honestgamer - March 13, 2009 (10:57 PM)
Okay, battles should no longer reset your EXP. You should also receive proper credit for wins, whether you initiated the attack or were just defending. I say "should" because there's no one online for me to check that against. Start playing again, folks!

Edit: Thanks, overdrive... and it clearly still wasn't fixed (your experience reset to 0). Try again when it's convenient, though. Anyone! I made another tweak and I think this time... well, sometimes it takes a few attempts. Hopefully I have it now, though. Testers! I need testers!
espiga espiga - March 14, 2009 (03:06 AM)
I just lost all my Exp from the following battle:

espiga mounted a vicious attack and dealt 0 damage to honestgamer. honestgamer survived and was able to counter-attack. honestgamer tried to strike back with the rage of a thousand fiersome beasts, but espiga nimbly stepped out of the path of destruction and no damage was dealt. honestgamer was able to hold off the attack and chased espiga away. During the escape, espiga dropped 726111 gold!

Normally this would be a good thing, naturally, but luck was not on honestgamer's side. At the precise moment that everyone was celebrating the new-found gold, a tax collector came and demanded half of it as a sort of Victory for the Unfortunate tax. Darn it!

honestgamer received 1 experience point(s) for winning this battle.

Also, I just noticed that you randomly capitalized "victory."
wolfqueen001 wolfqueen001 - March 14, 2009 (09:55 AM)
No - Victory for the Unfortunate struck me as a title. He did misspell fearsome, though.

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