Shattered World: Beneath A Stone Sky

Tactics RPG; deep, long but unfinished. · By Yal

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FAQ/Walkthrough/Hints?

A topic by DaedalusMachina created Dec 30, 2018 Views: 280 Replies: 7

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DaedalusMachina5 years ago

Is there anything on this game? An FAQ, Walkthrough, HintBook, Guide of some kind?

All I'd want to see is just a listing of every item in the game and how it affects character stats so I can begin planning my characters prior to wasting my money on things. I have a few ideas but I've recently found out that I have to exit & reenter an area before the items available for sale will shuffle around. I personally find this a terrible system and prefer the systems of Final Fantasy style where an item being sold is going to either be there or not be there. None of this RNG crap.

DaedalusMachina5 years ago

I think I broke the game somehow. No clue how I randomly accessed this O_o

YalDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

I probably was lazy and just mapped "enter the attack debug room" to some random key and never expected people to press anything other than accept/cancel/start on the title screen, and then you hit it by mistake. I usually dummy out debug tools when a game is nearing completion, but Shattered World was made for a competition so I didn't have time to do a lot of my normal cleanup.

YalDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

You can see a list of the base stats of an item in the shop window (one of the screenshots shows this off with a fist weapon that gives ATK+15, COUNTER+1). These are read directly from the item's properties. The stats an item gives are then multiplied with a character's aptitudes for those stats (so a character with 70% ATK aptitude would get 10 ATK from equipping that fist).

The game isn't finished, so I don't see the point of writing a guide book (especially considering it's not particularly popular). I don't really believe that there's a single recommended strategy, either... I just try to provide different scenarios for each battle and then it's up to your own wits and strategy to figure out how to overcome them. Having a guide book recommend stuff would just make players improvise less.

The game essentially is a Disgaea clone, there are 30 tiers of each item type (ranging from wooden swords to divine relics that can cut a planet in two with a single slice) plus 10 additional tiers that aren't part of the loot tables, which are used for unique items like the Blood and Morlia swords. Most of the stuff that's actually in the game database currently ends at tier 15, silver weapons... so it seems like I've not finished added everything I planned.

Here's a sample of the database, in case you want an idea about what the ultimate achieveable stuff you can get in the game currently is:

//RANK 15
itemname[494]     = "Flamberge"
itemprice[494]    = 150000
itemattri[494]    = "ATK+995;HIT+100;RES_FIRE+30;POW_FIRE+30;"
itemlore[494]     = "This sword was made famous by the Frankian fencing schools who gave all their teachers one of these swords. They're made using layered steel of two different types."

Items are randomly generated both as loot drops and in shops because I like randomly generated items, I'm not going to change that. (The items available in a shop is generated when the room loads and aren't stored anywhere, so storing them until some other trigger happens would mean extra effort).

DaedalusMachina5 years ago (2 edits) (+1)

I ended up 'cheating' by maxing out my money and then just buying all the things. While I understand your reasoning for RNG loot (which is ok), I don't agree with the RNG generated shop items. A shop should either have items or not have items. This allows the game developer to plan difficulty of encounters by knowing what the player has access to in shops as well as the potential average range of loot they could get from monsters.

When both loot and shop items are completely RNG then it throws any semblence of difficulty out the window and it becomes a matter of 'enter and exit the shop repeatedly so that the thing you want for sale is up for sale and you can buy it to overpower any challenge in the way'.

Gamers tend to follow FOSS (first order optimal strategy) and the FOSS for this game involves repeatedly entering/exiting/reentering and grinding as much as possible to get the things. I do get that Pavlovian conditioning has some merits but I feel that the use of RNG shops in this case ends up being more of a Skinner box style of manipulation rather than anything that increases enjoyment of the play experience (aka what game devs USED to talk about before everything turned to focus on monetization).

If this game could ever be remade in Unity (or RPGMaker) then that would be pretty awesome to see. Perhaps consider a crowdfunding campaign for it if you would like to do so. The entire game so far reminds me heavily of really old-school stuff like Rings of Power for Sega Genesis as well as some really old-school retro games I used to play. There's a market for that and the very unique aesthetic and many unique mechanics are something I feel would succeed in the marketplace.

Disgaea was not the first-ever game to have a lift/throw/stack mechanic for the battlefield. If we want to be TECHNICAL we could say that NIS games were the first to put them in an RPG (to my knowledge) but the first game with 'lift/throw enemies' mechanic that was actually popular would be Doki Doki Panic (aka Super Mario Bros 2 USA). So the Disgaea system is just a modified version of that. Maybe even going back to the arcade Mario Bros game of lifting/throwing enemies at each other.

Please do strongly consider not letting this game fade into obscurity. The story is intriguing and the gameplay/combat mechanics are nicely done! ^_^

EDIT: And don't worry; I'm making my own 'best items' lists for shop stuff and then I'll play without cheating. Since you have database access, if you could compile the info into a Google Docs or something and link it then that would be awesome. If not, then I can always do it myself (though slower) in a more manual method.

YalDeveloper5 years ago(+1)

Thanks for the input!

I guess one way to fix the shop issue would be to have shops have two categories of items: "vanilla" which are every item of every category of things the shop is selling from the appropriate tier range, and "special deals" which are randomly generated items with random special effects. (Right now every item is fully defined by its tier and category, I think it'd be fun if items could have random affixes and stat changes to make them a bit more unique). If you want a good sword you know you can find the highest-tier one from the store's ordinary selection, but if you're lucky it might have a special one in right now that has some unique flavor.

Disgaea had pretty in-depth item mechanics, and one of my biggest regrets with Shattered World is that I didn't have time to copy those as well... for the remake I'd definitely get some system in to have more item variety (maybe even a system that lets you upgrade items so they don't get obsolete once you get access to higher tiers, so you can bring along that Lv.1 sword with an awesome ability through the entire game if you want to)

Another idea could be to have some sort of crafting system that lets you make any item you want using the same materials... then you would have even more control over what items you get. I can see how I could make this work with the "more personal items" thing technically, too... items could provide skills the same way as Essences do, and you'd craft equipment using Essence and some special crafting materials... they could all use the same system, and every effect I could think of could be implemented as a passive or active skill. Maybe the reverse could also be a thing, dismantling an item to get crafting materials and the Essence of any skills it provides when equipped, so you can learn them permanently or put them into new items with higher power?

Speaking of RNG, by the way, you're guaranteed to get an item drop every 10 items and a rare item drop (an item of higher tier than the battle rank) every 100 items. I figured it was a more fair way to distribute loot than having 10% / 100% chances since it's fair both in the short and long run, and since battles against 10 enemies at once or more isn't uncommon you don't need to sit through too many battles to get those drops (every enemy you defeat adds 1 item to the battle loot table).

DaedalusMachina5 years ago

I greatly enjoy the way you've implemented the 'fair' RNG in this game. Much better than Pavlovian conditioning via Skinner-box RNG. There is enough randomness to make it enjoyable without the absurd 0.0001% droprates of many asian-developed RPG games.

Please feel free to join my FreshGaming Discord server. I'd love to discuss game design and gaming with you if you'd like to do so. If you do have any plans to resurrect this project in a new (complete) crowdfunded remake then please do let me know. I'm not a super-huge YT/Twitch person at the moment but I've got quite a few plans that I hope to initiate by Feb 2019.

DaedalusMachina5 years ago

I'm still looking for a detailed in-depth explanation to how certain things work; the tutorial is nice but doesn't explain things in the detail that I desire. I'm learning a lot about game design just from playing this game so it is super-helpful for me ^_^. So here are my questions:

How does 'merging' two characters work? What is gained from the character that is lost/sacrificed?
The 'bat' battle in the Level Woods seems to have enemies several levels higher than I am already (around 10ish). Is this normal? Is the player meant to grind earlier in the game during the nighttime beginning/tutorial scenario in order to obtain the 'minions' and money that are needed to survive?
What items/equipment are recommended to get through the game? I start off with 'Bogey' stuff but am uncertain if I should grind for better gear or just upgrade as I go along.

So there are a TON of items. Several types of weapons (with a helpful NPC at the Armory to explain them which is really nice). Then there's stuff that gives stat boosts, essences which grant skills/stats, and some other bits and bobs. I see some armor, accessories, and other seemingly-random things thrown in there like the heart of a young schoolgirl. Gruesome, lol. I love the macabre humor ^_^

I would greatly sincerely appreciate a simple text-based copy and paste from the database of the available types of items (up to tier 15) for each type. I can format it myself later and I don't have the capability to access the database myself. Would you be willing to do this? Maybe stick it in a Google Docs file and link it :)

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Shattered World: Beneath A Stone Sky

FAQ/Walkthrough/Hints?