Hi,

Wow, yeah its crazy how that was almost a year ago now. I’m pleased with how Sable has come on since that Alpha release last year, it feels much more like a finished product  now, a lot of the changes and additions which have gone in since then have been as a direct result of feedback  from either the private testing team or from the public testers. Even though the public release wasn’t something that was planned, as Sable was only in its Alpha phase and not really ready for public release, it was a really productive testing phase which ended up giving us lots of really great feedback, plus it was just really great to see people getting their hands on and actually having fun with Sable. As mentioned earlier in this topic,  I’m still working through my final playthrough of Sable, making fine tuning adjustments and alterations, and fixing bugs. As previously mentioned I’m working through it section by section, I’m still working through abilities and status affects fixing bugs and adding polish (which is a pretty big job),  I’ve done my initial pass and am just going back through now. Hopefully I’ll have the section finished by the end of next week, at that stage I’ll put the change log up on our sight , I’ll be  moving over to checking enemies and class’s after that, which will complete the RPG testing phase of Sable (which is probably the most complex part to test, since not only does it mean like with any RPG game testing all the various RPG mechanics and calculations, but due to the very nature of Sable and the ability for creators  to shape the various enemies, equipment, abilities and status affects, that I need to try and account for each weird and wonderful combination/way in which people might try to create stuff in Sable I’m expecting the second and final phase of testing which is maps to go a lot quicker, it’s also had more stress testing than abilities and affects, so shouldn’t need as much fine tuning. Since I know people will ask, but no we still don’t have any release dates for Crimson Eclipse, and obviously Sable won’t be released until after Crimson, but from a coding standpoint it’s nice that I’m reaching the end of my final test play through  of Sable and can finally see the light at the end of that  tunnel  as ever thanks everyone for the continued support.

Paul Lemm

@ Dan, good question, regarding crimson  Eclipse directly, nope you won’t need  Sable to play the game, it will effectively be a stand alone game. I’ve written Sable in a way so I can remove the creating/editing  code from Sable, so it runs as just a game. So effectively it’s a stripped down version of Sable, I guess its sable without the sable hahaha. so when people get a copy of crimson eclipse it will be just Crimson Eclipse. I can’t say definitively how this is going to work for when we release Sable publicly, since we have a couple of potential business models for  how we might choose to do this, there are lots of factors which might influence this, not least of all how smoothly the Crimson eclipse release goes and how well received the game is. Once we’ve released Crimson and are ready to launch Sable we’ll be able to give more concrete details on exactly how this will work. We’ve got a pretty good idea of which avenue we’ll take, but I just want to avoid committing ourselves at this stage, especially before we’ve even launched our first game title. hope that’s  not too vague and kind of answers your question.

Paul Lemm

One thing I might like to do with my game is to create enemies with specific counters to specific types of attacks. Final Fantasy games would sometimes do this, where certain enemies, often bosses though not always, would always counter physical attacks with physical attacks of their own and would counter magic with magic of their own, sometimes even very specifically. So if you had an enemy weak to fire and you hit them with a fire spell, they might counter with whatever their most powerful spell was. There's a particularly infamous enemy from Final Fantasy IV, called either the Trickster or Little Murderer depending on which translation you were playing. They would constantly cast the Libra spell on themselves, which would display their weakness to lightning. If you hit them with a lightning spell, they would counter by first casting the Haste spell on themselves, then unleashing their most powerful spells on you. So you didn't necessarily want to exploit their weakness until they were already close to death.

Hi,

@Brian, as Threeblacknoises said its not something we have planned for the current prototype version  of Sable. I think Jayde brought up a similar idea a couple of posts back. I’d definitely like to add a customisable enemy AI system  into the next generation of sable, which would allow for these kind of enemy battles, although it’s doable,  it’s definitely something more suited to the second generation of Sable. I think it’s a fine balance, as I could continually add new features to the prototype to keep adding further options, but I have to remember it is just a prototype and that I want to be sure I don’t get so caught up in continually adding features to the prototype that it either never gets released, or that I never get round to actually building the second generation. We’ve discussed various ways we might add more advanced systems like this into sable and have lots of ideas  as to how we could make the second generation a lot more flexible , giving the end users more choice and freedom to create games which feel more unique , also more flexibility would help future proof a second generation of sable. but that’s a way off yet, I want to try and focus on the current version of Sable,  see if the concept is well received and something the community actually wants to see developed further into a second generation. Again, this feature won’t make it into the prototype,but Just as a follow on question though Brian, with the specific Final Fantasy scenario you gave, are you meaning the enemy automatically countered with this as soon as attacked with lightning, or that on that enemies next turn they then retaliated with those specific attacks? Just asking out of curiosity ?

Paul Lemm

Manamon 2 dose something exactly like this in a sirtain boss battle I won't spoil.
If you attack the boss, it's scripted to counter your attacking manamon with a set attack that targets the weekness of of the move you used.
this happens directly after the attack is used on it, and negates anything that could block or reduce the attack.
After this, the boss still gets it's regular turn.
The trick with this boss is to use attacks who's weekness counter is something your manamon can actually withstand, as acting foolishly will cause the boss to one-shot your entire team; only using it's counter attacks.

Later!

Hey Paul. Sorry for asking so many questions. This one is a curiosity question just like the last one. When Generation 2 of Sable is out, are you worried about having to port Crimson Eclipse over to the new version of the engine, or will you just leave it how it is, or is it even a concern at all?

Hi, I have some small ideas.
1. Status effects with random turns. I mean this. We must write minimal and maximal turns for status effects, and sable will select randomly value betwin these variables.
2. Disposable keys. We can use the key, but only first time.
3. One key for some doors. This can give me this door block feature for example.
4. Quest item as an equipment, armour, key, etc.
5. Player can set name, but he's class is selected automatically.
6. Player can insert a name and select one from few, selected class. This classes will be selected with autor.

I'd love the support of gamepads and mice.

I just had an interesting idea which might take work to implement, but would it be possible to implement a feature in Sable where you can export your character's statistics and abilities, and import them in the next game, similar to Eamon or the Wizardry series of CRPG's?
(Ultima and Bard's Tale might've done this as well, can't recall at the moment.)

Rumbles are similar to game pads.

Hi everyone,

@ Zenothrax,  I’m not sure I’m following exactly what you are after, but it may just be as I’ve also not played any of the games you mentioned. So are you suggesting allowing a player to transfer their character stats from one saved game to another? using an existing audio game as an example:: if I started a  game of entombed, saving that game and then transferring all those character stats into a new game (providing class’s matched obviously),is that what you are after? If I’m understanding this correctly it seems like from a balance standpoint it would break a game, since you could simply take higher level character stats from a game you have almost completed and transfer them into a new game with characters just starting out with really low stats. Again, sorry if I’ve misunderstood what you are after.
@ SLJ, I’m a big fan of gamepad support, before I lost my sight I never did much PC gaming, it was always on consoles, so a gamepad just feels more natural to me when gaming. When you say rumbles, did you  mean vibration/force feedback? I assumed you did at first, but then looking at pates post, maybe I’m misunderstanding  and you are talking about a brand of controller called rumbles, which I haven’t heard of before. If it is just vibration you are asking about,  it’s not something I’ve added to Sable, sadly BGT doesn’t support this feature. It might be something I could look into with the second generation, but it’s not something I’ve ever looked into, so no idea how easy it is to add something like that. so can’t make any promises at this stage.
@Brian, this idea is already on my list of suggestions, I think it’s a good idea, not sure whether it will make it into this version or not. whichever version it goes into though I’d like to add an option to allow you to set a battle not to game over the party if they die, I’d also like to set an option so the battle can continually be revisited until the enemy is defeated. I’ve seen these types of mechanics in Final Fantasy games I’ve previously played and enjoyed, there are a couple of other options/possibilities  with battles which I think could be good, so it’s definitely an area I’d like to expand, just not sure like I said whether it will make it into the prototype, or wait until a second generation.

Paul Lemm

Hi @Lemm.
Yeah I ment vibration. that's a shame, but fully understandable since it's not supported in BGT.
I'm so excited about the gamepad support. Do you have control over the movement speed, like if you push the left analog stick a bit forward, the character will walk slowly? What is the right analog stick used for since the navigation is topdown, and you can't turn the character?