I’ve had to get a little mathematical here. With the majority of the story behind us (just a few tweaks on ACT III: Hershima Province needed) my focus is now on balance, mechanics and how the game is actually going to progress.
Fray and Leida in one of the many sky gardens spread across Caldea City. They encourage a healthy, green lifestyle.
Whilst I will leave controls and combos to my next post, I will begin to discuss the mechanics of Fray’s levelling and game difficulty in this post. I say “begin” as I foresee that this is going to be a lengthy topic that will require several more posts.
My objective here, to recap, is that I want to make a game where the main character’s level decreases. In tandem, the game difficulty increases. It sounds a lot more complex than it is, I believe, as Fray’s trajectory simply is turned upside down to a normal game protagonist’s levelling on only one plane: time.
Fray’s Level 50 damage is 500. This is his maximum and is not out of the ordinary at all relative to video games. It is only the timeframe that is bizarre: Fray is level 50 right at the beginning of the game, and that’s where it gets fun.
I worked out my calculations with a few key numbers in mind:
- Fray’s highest level is 50, lowest is 1
- All standard enemies have 1000HP
Therefore, Fray, at his highest level taking 2 standard hits to defeat one enemy is reasonable. Thus, that gave me 500DMG for Level 50.
From there, I had to work out how many hits Fray would need to defeat an enemy (that was the same level with 1000HP) at his lowest workout. I worked out around high 20s/early 30s would be reasonable (I “worked” this out by getting out my controller and emulating hitting an invisible enemy 30 times. I based a lot of these times on difficult bosses in similar action games, such as Zelda or Kingdom Hearts. ) and played with numbers until they all looked reasonable.
I plotted a chart with levels 50 – 1 in 10s (excluding the 1, as Fray can’t be level 0) and from there, we would be able to work out say, what Fray’s damage would be at level 23.
Therefore, the graph above indicates the obvious: the lower level Fray is, the less damage he does. The X axis of level can also be a substitute for time spent playing the game.
Whilst the graph does not look like it, the game will increase exponentially with difficulty.
If we again, look at the X Axis as ‘time spent playing the game’ this shows how the game gets more difficult for the player the more time they spent playing (as any good game should.)
Whilst these are first ‘drafts’ of the levelling and numbers, I at least know I am on the right track with difficulty. These numbers I can then use when working out the level-down and EXP systems, which are next on my list!
The Hero's Fall 