Vortex00 
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I was thinking about replacing the aria combat system with this system eventually. I want to know thoughts on this.
the other one is good, however this seems a bit easier to learn and also would have less stuff flying everywhere. As you can see you would still capture nodes but I can make the battle a little more unique. similar to the boss battle battle at the end where you still need to figure out some kind of strategy to win.
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Hm… honestly it feels a bit sluggish the way it is now. Using the mouse and clicking would definitely help. The current combat system has been used in other games before, (I think there was one game where you played a disease?) so it wasn’t terribly difficult to pick up.
Why DOES Ari like Jeo so much? He’s essentially a psychopath, isn’t he? I haven’t really seen him show genuine care or concern for anyone and Bri said that he feels nothing when he looks at Ari.
From what I can tell, Jeo is a sociopath, not a psychopath. Someone who doesn’t share the same level of empathy for others as the average human. He seems to regard his colleagues and his subordinates as nothing more than slaves which he can do with as he pleases but strangely, has a strong sense of justice, which is uncommon for sociopaths.
I don’t know how to edit posts on this website so forgive the double post but Vortex can correct me if I am wrong.
I plan to use mouse eventually heh.
For Ari’s reasons I like to leave it up to interpretation. But I could name a few if you want. But the situation itself isn’t that far from real life. I know number of people that have been in these type relationships unfortunately. They finally realized it eventually but it took a while for them to detach from that life.
I like the combat in the original ARIA game. The first time I played it I as really confused but after a quick look at the tutorial I understood it just fine.
Combat in this is fine, it’s just a little hard to aim shots and not steer your ship directly into oncoming enemy fire or an enemy ship itself.
Keeping the games with 2 separate battle systems is fine. The guy in the suit says he’s gimping Ari’s ship so it makes sense she wouldn’t have the capability to take on multiple nodes and have a full out space battle until the group reorganizes at Jeo’s ship.
I don’t think I would have two different space battle systems in the main game. It would have to be one or the other.
The controls are like that intentionally for the difficulty. Imo it woul be too eady to aom without turning the ship a bit. Your suggestion on patreon was interesting but I would want to keep people from flying too far off the map. And I don’t want to use walls.
How about Asteroids? Shooting at them, hiding in them from other ship to reach to point B? The same game is still there. It doesn’t have walls, but you got to be careful with the asteroids too.
Yeah those are good ideas. I also wanted to some ships are indestructible and you have to trick them into crashing into asteroids. Lots of this can be done here that can’t be done in the other system.
Maybe some type of cloaking device so she doesn’t get notice or some EMP Droids to shut down some machines like auto guns, mini ships etc. Other items that will help her out since she is one little ship out in space.
she eventually gets her abilities like she has in ARIA. cloaking and EMP would be good for later perhaps after ARIA takes place. yeah it would be funny to just see them get disabled and fly off the screen from momentum lol.
But on her way to Jeo she has rough time getting there lol. She wouldn’t have all that stuff yet. or would have it then lose it by the time she gets to Jeo. then tons of possibilities open up for the other characters also.
Hey, Vortex, is ARIA sort of, like, your main project? You seem to have spent the most time and resources on it and it has become quite popular.
All of this stuff the same thing to me.
ARIA, Umichan, Daughter of eve, semitix, etc.
for example the characters Jeo, Luma, Riley, Lynn, Cain, Yui, Tony, Kim are all from Umichan stuff. Amp was conceptualized from Daughter of Eve and the sister a character named Tempo is getting revenge for. All of this stuff makes up one large story called Journey of the Legendary Cyrstal Khalei (JLCK).
But yes lot of time recently has been spent with ARIA while ttrop did the Umichan art. Now that he is done(ish) I need to allocate time for it again. There is a still a lot to draw thoguh.
Journey of the Legendary Crystal Khalei? Is that another game idea or is it another game that you’ve created?
it is game idea for now. But all of this, ARIA, Umichan, etc. everything builds up to it where all of these character cross paths. You will already know much about all of the character and be able to understand what is going on.
this was a old wiki page we used to maintain for it. but I need to make a new one for here eventually when i get a chance.
http://jlck.wikia.com/wiki/Journey_of_the_Legendary_Crystal_Khalei_Wiki
are there any other weapons than the laser on ari ship
I like it it is interesting, yes the original Aria RTS you have is better. But people hear what I have to say. When Jeo the commander is doing it he have a crew of people and ships to do that. So the RTS will fit with this.
However Arielle is sneaking out of the base. And she is by herself. So one ship fits perfect for this type of mini game. If Vortex00 can fine a way to make different types of pattern like make it from point A to B with out getting detected by other ships radar. Also a cloaking device can work for this mini. Also EMP droids that explode taking out a ships radar, auto guns offline etc.
Yea this is what I meant, you just said it better than me lol.
the same thing in ARIA, can be done here plus much more from the other stuff you mentioned.
for example to match the stuff in ARIA with this, you can have a single node to defend, and need to capture like 10 other nodes. the same enemy ships can be preset in a hard configuration.
sit in the same spot and the ships will auto shoot at the lowest node.
in fact that could be a configuration of her ship. like “artillery mode” or something. where her assault cannon and giant laser cannon is operational but she becomes immobile.
to complete it spawn the other ships away from her or make their speed at zero and the prioritize the enemy shooting the 10 other nodes over the main node. actually they do that right now. if you take the node before all the shooting enemies are dead whey will shoot at the node instead.
I’m completely against replacing the combat in the original Aria game with this.
To be sure, that’s partly because I got used to the space combat system in Aria already.
But it’s also partly because I just like that system better.
This IS interesting though, and from a “plot-supporting-gameplay” perspective it makes perfect sense for her sidestory.
If you ever put in solo no-merc missions in Aria it’d make sense there as well.
I’d kinda like the ability to control the ship with keyboard keys, though.
It’s cool that you can use the cursor to aim your cannons where you’re not actually pointing, but it’s a bit of a pain that you always turn to follow the cursor when you do so.
why limit it to plot support when it can do everything in ARIA plus more. if wanted to make ships immovable and shoot nodes like they do in aria I could here also.
keyboard input would make it so easy idk if it would be even worth making. a lot of the difficulty is built around the control scheme because you have to be be mindful of how the ships maneuvers. Also I don’t want keyboard because you will need to use hotkeys for abilities with you other hand that is not on the mouse.
I like the ARIA combat better.
aria combat was created and refined over the course of a year but I think you might be missing the potential for this. Maybe I will use this for the game following Luma’s team. I’m not sure how much more I can do with the current ARIA system.
Maybe. 🙂 I’d probably like it more with different controls (WASD or arrows for movement and mouse for aiming).
It’s not bad, just different.
Looking forward to the full version of the story! 🙂
It seems like you might be forgetting abilities.
If I have wasd for moving, and mouse for aiming, clicking mouse for shooting, what would be to use abilities ?
you would have to stop/interrupt/alter moving to do a ability. and Ari here for example will have more than 2-3 abilities.
Number keys? Like how FPSs have ‘g’ for grenade, number keys for weapon switching. Maybe that will make it a bit too twitchy or Counterstrike for some people. 🙂 I’m sure you’ll work out a good scheme.
I’ll think about it man heh. I highly doubt I’ll have WASD movement thoguh to be honest.
No problem. 🙂
Just realised you could also put abilities on Ctrl, Shift, Spacebar maybe? Anyway, just a thought. Would be nice if you could move in one direction while shooting in another is all. 🙂 Allow me to say again that the Arielle recolor is tops!
i like the idea and the last levle is challenging in my oppinion
but do i have to cover the attacks from the main ship in order to gain the 10 ?
i also thik ari looks very nice and hot in her suit
yes intercepting the lasers is part of the strategy, so you have to make sure you don’t take too much damage before that part.
i think if you could increase the fire rate of aris ship a little bit , it would be helpful
it would be upgradable
I think this would be a great replacement. Why? Battles are generally the same because the combat is very stagnant. Numbers are the only thing that really change as you progress through the story. In this system each stat would be more meaningful. Max HP doesn’t mean too much when you’re sitting there clicking on nodes, but if you’re actually flying around you can see and feel the improvement. The same goes for upgrades.
Second, I believe this has way more potential difficulty options. Like I mentioned before, the hardest battles in ARIA aren’t exactly hard, just time consuming. You have to wait and conserve your troops but given enough time you will definitely win. With this system the difficulty will be more dynamic. Different laser types, different movement patterns, etc. You already have drones which are so simple yet make you have to completely change up your strategy.
I can also use it for a game following Luma’s team so I might do that instead.
Seems to be good for extra missions like undercover action, free a hostage or else.
it seems nice for undercover because I have tailored it that way for Ari’s story. for a big space battle I would tailor it for a big space battle.
Hi. I like the new system but maybe the two system can co-exist in the main game? like a special type of battle or a boss battle after the big one, right?
I really like the new system and want more of Ari story 😀
seems very limiting
I don’t get the vehement disapproval of the new system. It’s a lot different and brand new so there’s a couple issues for sure but in concept it looks to be fine. A few issues listed.
1. (Storywise) Not really an issue per say but I don’t think this type of gameplay fits the main Aria game as much as the existing system, Jeo’s supposed to be commanding a whole slew of mooks in these space battles against huge groups of forces, so controlling one ship against these guys doesnt feel as fitting as the RTS style. HOWEVER, going alone does make it feel more imposing and makes you feel like you’re really going against something big, which is a good thing. But it doesnt feel quite right the way it works here.
2. It doesnt feel like there’s much you can do.
Without abilities, skills and a limited laser your ship feels really weak compared to everyone else. I know it’s a demo so stuff like unique skills won’t be in here yet. But I thought to mention it anyway. Your ship also feels super slow, which may be intentional since Phia and maybe Bri? would be faster than Ari’s flying.
The disapproval probably comes from the way I used it in these tutorial levels for the story.
the RTS in ARIA the exact same thing, I don’t understand your argument of going in alone. you have one ship vs many in ARIA also. support is only a recent addition. and actually would work better here imo. something as simple as dropping in ally attack ships around Arielle would be more of a space battle feel. and you can shoot at what you want. if you want to anchor in place and shoot you could. the context here is designed to fit the story of Ari reaching Jeo.
so for #2 yes not much you can do in this case, is because of events in the story, and yes also in addition to it being a wip.
I was under the impression that seizing nodes in the original Aria involved sending smaller ships piloted by mooks you convert or capture along the way of the story. (Represented by the mercenary count I believe?)
Like the idea was that lasers and stuff could damage nodes but in order to take control of one yourself you needed to send mooks over to do that manually.
Here you don’t really do that, so it doesnt feel like your commanding an army. And more like you’re running in solo.
it seems like we are looking at this differently, you are looking at it exactly as it is presented. perhaps only seeing it in other similar uses. while I’m looking at what it has the capability of doing. everything you mentioned can be done with this. and be flexible to the point where it can do more or less.
http://spiralvortexplay.com/svp/2015/07/23/aria-arielle-story-demo/#comment-6748
also my original intention was not for the ARIA girl ships to hold hundreds of smaller attack ships. You can see the size comparison of their ships to a person I had in mind by the intro animation scene where Ari and Phia exit their ships and fly through space to Jeo’s Flagship.
If a person is that big, there is no way the ship has some hangar to hold hundreds of smaller ships and stuff. That main flagship was the thing I wanted to have hold the smaller ships. which would escort Ari into battle and she can call for more ships and different types of ships during the battle.
had have other abilities like place auto turrets, use the environment like push meteors in to enemy ships, all kinds of stuff.
and the node were supposed to be little space space stations of ships or something. it is why the can shoot for characters like Ari and Luma
ARIAs current combat system is supported from being monotonous by several other minigames. That would not be needed as much.
again, think you are seeing this because Ari is the only ship for this story. but in the case of multiple enemy and ally ships on screen. you may or may not see it differently. I’m looking at the system itself, not it’s current use here.
seems to me like it would be cool for example on the boss level in the demo, when that last big ship is left you fly Ari’s ship manually inside of it to begin the raid minigame to finally blow it up.
but I’m past trying to explain it further. I can use it for something else if needed, or just use it anyway. Thanks for the feedback. Based on the feedback thoguh I just feel like the scope, or range of possibilities that people seem to have in mind for this is severely less that the range I have myself.
If I had to choose one or the other, I’d prefer the original. I think the newer system is an excellent diversion from the other one and would be perfect to include to break up the monotony of the original, but to replace it entirely? Can’t say I care for that particular idea. Don’t get me wrong, the newer system has a lot of potential, one with the versatility of scenarios, and two, a solid upgrade system could really make it go a long way. But the original system is fun and already works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Another game based on this system would probably suit it better, but despite the comments I’ve already read, I do want to urge you to see if you can work both systems in together. Aria is already an incredible H game, but adding that level of versatility to the gameplay to include both options could culminate in something truly spectacular.
you seem limited to only seeing it used in the scope I used it for in the Arielle demo. If I added this to Aria, there is no point in having the old system.
That’s entirely possible. But I can only give you my opinion based on what I’ve seen, and not the many ways the system could be taken. It has potential, as I said, enough so that I can’t be sure exactly what you intend to do with it that could make the old system redundant. All I can say is you’ve made a hell of a game, so far. If you know a way to turn what I’ve seen into a combat system that renders the original system obsolete, then I have every confidence that you can pull it off.
You asked for our thoughts, so I simply gave you what I’ve got based on what I’ve currently played. If you can take it a lot further, then I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve got planned.
Ok, just read some more of your other comments and I think I’ve got a better understanding of what you’re shooting for. You’re looking for opinions about the basic system and not about the scenario in which it’s being used. So, with that in mind, I’ll give you my thoughts.
I like it. The system works. In some of the other scenarios, I think it’ll be awesome to play through as a replacement to the current system. It’ll add far more depth and versatility to how we play the game. My only consideration is that I’d like to see upgrades available for this particular scenario at least. Stuff that could be purchased with resources that let the player hit harder or control their ship with more speed and accuracy. I suspect you’ve already got that planned, but if not, there you go. That’s what I’ve got. Hope that helps, and please disregard my other responses.
I will try to make a version of this with more ideas I had later. for now I will stick to making it revolve around Ari’s storyline.
I changed the site BG to a ARIA theme for a while with a Arielle recolor I did today.
Nice!
no black eyebrows? hehe. But I like, because the Ari with white(not so much white) hair and the eyebrows black, it seems she paints the hair. But this is not the case, the case is I liked hehe.
Tested the demo and the new gameplay is good, just one think I don’t like, the movement, I think W A S D is better than the mouse for move, and the history is with you I have no ideas for conversation haha.
And the I saw you again talking about luma team, what you have in mind ? (if you don’t want to say about I will understand).
And Congrats man!, more 500 and you can work full time AND MORE UPDATES FOR ALL OF YOUR GAME YEAH!!
Not quite heh. I don’t get anywhere near that amount. Patreon mentioned in e-mail that will work to show more accurately what you actually get.
Think the reasons posted here for wanting WASD is exactly why I don’t want it.
I’ll post more on Luma team stuff in a different post later on
You really don’t disappoint when it comes to gameplay. The new more proactive combat style is very engaging and having to balance aim and movement is a good challenge. As well as combining all that with the pre-established node and enemy ship system is really interesting. Great work, man!
I will admit that I probably won’t ever be a patreon sponsor so take my idea with a grain of salt, but I think the game would be better if it controlled like asteroids. Arrow keys to move, you can only aim where you are pointed, and you have to manage how fast you are going. (and you can even fly sideways and shoot, but you can only accelerate forwards of course)
I personally don’t like turning and going forwards being the same command in a games, at least not without a “hold to not go forwards” button.
So basically a hold to not go forwards button would basically be:
You still steer with the mouse, but you can hold “s” and you either:
A) Break and stop moving entirely, and now you can aim freely, but you are a sitting duck.
B) You keep traveling in the same direction as you were, at the same speed as you were, but you can aim freely until you let go of the button.
In case A, I gave the obvious downside, and in case B the downside is you can’t change your movement direction while you are holding the button. Both methods could be worked in to cause difficulties for the player, and I personally would prefer to have the option for one or the other.
I believe it is written in the game that the current controls are only temporary and that it would not be that way in the final game. Who knows, waybe he has a surprise for us.
I think you are saying make the controls different so I don’t bump into a lot of lasers, but that’s why I have it that way in the first place heh.
the control scheme is part of the difficulty of the game.
also your ship speed and turn speed will improve.
also I don’t want to create walls to keep the player in the play area with keyboard movement.
Honestly I like the controls asthey are, they make the game challeging. But when you say they will change in the final version do you only mean how we shoot lasers?
Yea shoot will be mouse click instead of pressing 1
You got me, it took me a whole two tries to beat the demo. The first time I lost because well I didn’t care too much about getting hit, but the boss kept on shooting the capture point. So I couldn’t win, and I tried to block the lasers and died. Next time around I had enough health to block the lasers.
Sorry for sounding like an asshole by saying that.
Though it isn’t the difficult that comes with the controls that annoy me. It is simply I hate it when games accelerate in a direction with aim. (2d sidescrollers get a free pass and racing games get a free pass, from me at least)
And for space fighter games, the ones I have played usually allow you to rotate the ship without accelerating the main body of the ship in that direction. And I personally prefer that. Sorry if I am sounding like an asshole. But that’s simply what I prefer.
That being said you made a good point about if keyboard steering was implemented you would have to have some sort of edge to the screen. And walls in space don’t really make sense… Also your game wouldn’t be suited for the asteroids styled screen looping. So… there are no real good options. Thanks for pointing that out.
Though the best alternative to those two options I can think of for keyboard controls would be something that would take a lot more programming, and could simply be frustrating.
There could be a system where if you go past the edge, your ship disappears and you get an arrow pointing towards where your ship is. And then if you stay off screen for 3 seconds you retreat. You can’t shoot when off screen, and you could be hit. Then players would naturally avoid the edges of the map to avoid retreating and to help keep an eye on their ship to dodge.
Though the simple annoying bit of accidentally retreating could potentially piss off a lot of people. Another similar option would make the off screen region “filled with cosmic rays” (claim boss and mother ships have fields around them keeping the rays away) so you take persistent damage when off screen. Again something that could be quite annoying.
So you are right. The only options for keyboard steering are either not fitting or annoying if you aren’t good at avoiding the edges.
But I do see that you mostly just gave the barebones of this battle system. And it has plenty of ways it can improve with how you set it up. And I am sorry if I made it sound like “THIS BATTLE SYSTEM SUCKS, I CAN’T POSSIBLY PLAY IT!”
Though I do have the question. Will you ever implement a bar like you do in the shooter to show when you can shoot? (or would that just be cluttering the screen)
hate theses controls! why using 1 instead of clicking (left).?
it is 1 for only this specific demo because I was in a hurry. it is left click in the actual game.
because of the gameplay, I couldn’t beat the boss
Hit R1 to activate your gunblade. Seriously though, this a demo. The actual game is scheduled to be released this month and will probably be easier for you.
Can I recommend left-CTRL, for the same thing every VR in existence uses it for: speed through the text. The monotony of clicking through the same convo after each fail doesn’t do much to keep me stimulated in preparation for another try.
This. Definitely. It’s a staple for any VN-like text progression.
Consider it incentive not to fail. :p
Thanks for the feedback, tbh it is unlikely I will change it.