19 replies to this topic

[IkimashoZ]

THIS IS NOT A LEARNING GAME.
*hrmph*

You play Matt.  Matt is your typical 24-year-old living in Japan and teaching English at a junior high school in a rural area.  And Matt hates kanji with a passion.  Everything is going as normally as it can go in Japan, when one day Matt's life is turned upside down by the arrival of a being calling itself the Magic Cow, with news that evil kanji (called "akuji") are on the brink of invading the Earth, destroying the essence of meaning... unless Matt learns to use kanji to fight back, travelling across the countryside, hitting up cities such as Osaka, Kyoto, Nara and Nagoya in the world's first "kanji adventure".

Kanji Bouken, or "Kambou" for short, is, first and foremost, a tactical RPG, complete with character classes, combo attacks, skills, and items.  Of course... you fight battles with kanji, but the idea from the start has been to create a fun RPG with a... unique (read: demented) storyline and presentation.

There are no sprites or pixel art.  The game is narrated via still photos.  The majority of battles take place on still photos of real places in Japan.

For more info on how Kambou is not a learning game, please see my site at http://kambou.ikimashoz.com/.  You can also download the newly released version 1.0.  I'm looking for playtesters to work out any remaining kinks.  If you play the game, please let me know.  I appreciate all forms of feedback, positive and negative alike.

Gambatte, ne!

[Juni Ori]

Looks interesting, I bet Tai will love it! Anyways, I'll download it tomorrow or perhaps monday and I'll check it out.

Welcome to our forums, hope you enjoy your stay!

[DeathDude]

Looks pretty intriguing. Might have to check it out, if I get the chance, and welcome to AR, enjoy your stay.

[Frodo]

That's a really interesting story, Ikimashoz.  A very nice game.

Welcome to AR, hope you have lots of fun here.  

[A. J. Raffles]

Heh, a friend of mine just applied for the same exchange programme, was invited for an interview and then decided at the last minute she didn't want to go to Japan for two years after all.

[Flop]

It looks interesting. I think I'll try it out when I have time.

[greywolf]

Gasp! I love tactical RPGs!

[A. J. Raffles]

So would it be a bit like ADOM, just with kanji instead of ASCII?

[greywolf]

@AJ: No, it's more along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics.

@IkimashoZ:

I like it. The music is fantastic, the tutorial covers just about everything, and you've made clever use of kanji, something I thought would be boring and horribly complex to even get a grip of the basics. That being said, I must say that while this doesn't exactly scream "edutainment," the fact that in order to execute devastating combos, you must figure out the answer to a riddle, and spell that out with your ji isn't exactly all fun, either. Not that it wouldn't be fun to spell 20 in kanji, it's just that you have to learn (at least to some extent) the meanings of the ji and what the syntax of the language is. Then again, I guess it really doesn't matter, unless you think that having it being branded a "learning game" will deem it not fun somehow (I've played plenty of edutainment games, and they were fairly decent, although being no Starcraft or Fallout, of course).

Anyway, I think you've done a great job so far, and it's pretty amazing that you're at a solid battle engine only 3 months into this. I only have a few gripes that are more about the interface and ease of use/visibility than anything else. The red X's don't really show up very well against the backgrounds (currently I'm still in the apartment, so I don't know if visibility gets better later), so perhaps you could either shade the whole block a dark gray (so it's still somewhat transparent) to better show which blocks are unmovable. At first, the transition between sides is nice to watch, what with the fading kanji and stuff, but it honestly takes a bit too long, as with the increase of AP. Perhaps you could add an option to skip it with enter or something? One last thing - I'm not entirely sure how the resistance stuff works; I assume that when a ji's resistance is -20 to fire, then it'll take extra damage from fire, and when it's 30 to earth, it'll take less damage from earth attacks, but I haven't really noticed any difference. Is it because my jis aren't very powerful yet? It would also be nice if you included the element info in the little screen that pops up when you hover over it before you place them on the field, that way you don't have to constantly remember which ji does which elemental attack (this would probably become very tedious when your army gets larger). I realize this would increase the clutter of the menu a bit, but I think it's worth it. Finally, when you look at the ji's stats after/before battles in the menu, the stats take too long to scroll across. I know the effect is really cool, but if I'm comparing xp of units (with numbers - the color bar just cut it sometimes), I don't want to have to wait 2-3 seconds for each ji.

Everything looks great and keep up the excellent work! I'm impressed with how fast your progress has been.

[taikara]

sugoi desu neeee!!



Thanks for letting us know about the game

[IkimashoZ]

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

I like it. The music is fantastic, the tutorial covers just about everything, and you've made clever use of kanji, something I thought would be boring and horribly complex to even get a grip of the basics.

Thanks!  And I'll be sure to mention to Olivier that you like the music.

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

That being said, I must say that while this doesn't exactly scream "edutainment," the fact that in order to execute devastating combos, you must figure out the answer to a riddle, and spell that out with your ji isn't exactly all fun, either.  Not that it wouldn't be fun to spell 20 in kanji, it's just that you have to learn (at least to some extent) the meanings of the ji and what the syntax of the language is. Then again, I guess it really doesn't matter, unless you think that having it being branded a "learning game" will deem it not fun somehow (I've played plenty of edutainment games, and they were fairly decent, although being no Starcraft or Fallout, of course).

I have an extensive bit in my FAQ about this... at some point I plan on putting a gameplay FAQ on my website that would include all the combos in the game and their readings.  Why?  Because someone else would right it eventually anyway, and at least I'll do it right.  I also don't think that everyone must necessarily be interested in Japanese language learning in order to play my game.  A bit of my goal is also to show people who have never been there a little bit of Japan.  So, I imagine that there are people who will just want to skip through the leveling up part of the game and get right on the story and battles.  Which I think is okay.  The thing I'm worried about with being branded "edutainment" is that people will think that I'm using the game to force the learning of information on them that they feel is not valuable.  Even if I do think it's very valuable, I don't really care if they learn the words or not.  I just want everyone to be able to say it's fun to play my game.

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

Anyway, I think you've done a great job so far, and it's pretty amazing that you're at a solid battle engine only 3 months into this.

Really?  Thanks.  I work on this inbetween teaching classes, so it's not like I've had all that much freetime to be working on it.

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

I only have a few gripes that are more about the interface and ease of use/visibility than anything else. The red X's don't really show up very well against the backgrounds (currently I'm still in the apartment, so I don't know if visibility gets better later), so perhaps you could either shade the whole block a dark gray (so it's still somewhat transparent) to better show which blocks are unmovable.

What you suggest about the squares would be a good idea, I think.  Also tough to impliment.  I'm also worried about slowing the game down, b/c the kanji section, item section, info bar, AP bars and red x's are already lucent blits.  But I do realize this is a bit of a problem.  Maybe I could increase the opacity of the blit??  I can't switch off of red x's completely, because later maps in the game make use of different colors of x's for different types of squares.  I'll see what I can come up with though.

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

At first, the transition between sides is nice to watch, what with the fading kanji and stuff, but it honestly takes a bit too long, as with the increase of AP. Perhaps you could add an option to skip it with enter or something?

That's interesting... I never expected this comment.  I've played lots of Square games over the years and one thing I've grown to despise is long skill effects and transition sequences.  As a result, nothing in Kambou takes more than 2 seconds to execute, and if it does (story scene, the battle results screen, etc.), it's skipable.

The battle turn change takes approximately 1.3 seconds according to my code.  Now, I realize that the enemy turn can be kind of lagging especially if there are 4 akuji on the board that are far away from all of your characters.  They will probably take, at most, five seconds to build up paths to thier targets.  But this is a necessary evil, b/c the other option is for the ji to be morons.  Other tactical RPGs get around this by having enemies take thier turns one unit at a time, but I wanted to do something different.

Is 1.3 seconds really too much time??

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

One last thing - I'm not entirely sure how the resistance stuff works; I assume that when a ji's resistance is -20 to fire, then it'll take extra damage from fire, and when it's 30 to earth, it'll take less damage from earth attacks, but I haven't really noticed any difference. Is it because my jis aren't very powerful yet? It would also be nice if you included the element info in the little screen that pops up when you hover over it before you place them on the field, that way you don't have to constantly remember which ji does which elemental attack (this would probably become very tedious when your army gets larger). I realize this would increase the clutter of the menu a bit, but I think it's worth it.

Yeah, I can't put elemental data in the sidebar b/c it doesn't exists until you drop a character into battle.  A ji's attack element and all resistances are determined randomly when they are substantiated on the board.  As you've noticed, at the very beginning of the game, there's not a very big difference in how much damage you do, though it should be noticable.  For example, the first akuji on Matt's Desk has 50% res to wind.  If you attack him with wind, you should be able to do only 2 damage, while kanji with ice or fire would do 4 or 5.  Later in the game, there will be items that allow you to change a characters attack element... there will also be enemies and battle squares that can change attack element.  Same with elemental res.

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

Finally, when you look at the ji's stats after/before battles in the menu, the stats take too long to scroll across. I know the effect is really cool, but if I'm comparing xp of units (with numbers - the color bar just cut it sometimes), I don't want to have to wait 2-3 seconds for each ji.

You can skip it.  Click the mouse or hit enter.

greywolf, on Feb 11 2007, 06:59 AM, said:

Everything looks great and keep up the excellent work! I'm impressed with how fast your progress has been.

Really??  Thanks.   I'm glad you're enjoying the game.

[greywolf]

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

What you suggest about the squares would be a good idea, I think.  Also tough to impliment.  I'm also worried about slowing the game down, b/c the kanji section, item section, info bar, AP bars and red x's are already lucent blits.  But I do realize this is a bit of a problem.  Maybe I could increase the opacity of the blit??  I can't switch off of red x's completely, because later maps in the game make use of different colors of x's for different types of squares.  I'll see what I can come up with though.

Yeah, I think increasing the opacity of the X's would work, so they'll show up better against the background. In fact, you could probably make them 100% opaque, if that looks ok.

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

The battle turn change takes approximately 1.3 seconds according to my code.  Now, I realize that the enemy turn can be kind of lagging especially if there are 4 akuji on the board that are far away from all of your characters.  They will probably take, at most, five seconds to build up paths to thier targets.  But this is a necessary evil, b/c the other option is for the ji to be morons.  Other tactical RPGs get around this by having enemies take thier turns one unit at a time, but I wanted to do something different.

Well, I didn't mean speeding up the AI's turn; it can take as long as it needs (well, within reason ). Does the AI plot its actions during this time? If yes, then I think the slowdown is fine; otherwise, I think it would be nice to have an option to have the battle side change animation to be skippable.

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

Is 1.3 seconds really too much time??

I guess I must be impatient because I can't wait to actually *play* the game!

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

Yeah, I can't put elemental data in the sidebar b/c it doesn't exists until you drop a character into battle.  A ji's attack element and all resistances are determined randomly when they are substantiated on the board.  As you've noticed, at the very beginning of the game, there's not a very big difference in how much damage you do, though it should be noticable.  For example, the first akuji on Matt's Desk has 50% res to wind.  If you attack him with wind, you should be able to do only 2 damage, while kanji with ice or fire would do 4 or 5.  Later in the game, there will be items that allow you to change a characters attack element... there will also be enemies and battle squares that can change attack element.  Same with elemental res.

Ah, I see. That makes sense. I hadn't noticed they were randomized.

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

You can skip it.  Click the mouse or hit enter.

Aha, I didn't know that. Thanks.

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

Thanks!  And I'll be sure to mention to Olivier that you like the music.

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

Really?  Thanks.  I work on this inbetween teaching classes, so it's not like I've had all that much freetime to be working on it.

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 06:21 PM, said:

Really??  Thanks.   I'm glad you're enjoying the game.

Really. You are very welcome. Trust me, I've seen a LOT of freeware games that take years and years to make, and sometimes never get made at all (case in point being Fenix Blade - that game has been in development upwards of 5 years). Yours is probably one of the first projects I've seen to have a significant amount of progress in such a short amount of time (besides Dwarf Fortress). I guess motivation is the biggest enemy of a game maker (not their ability to draw or code, because that can be learned with sufficient motivation). Grats on being motivated so far, and I hope the interest here will help you keep plugging away at it. When you finish, be sure to let us know, and one of the members (or probably myself ) will review it.

Keep it up!

[IkimashoZ]

Thanks for the quick feedback!  I really appreciate it.  I seem to get many downloads, but not a whole lot of feedback.  It's really nice to hear people talk about your game, especially when the feedback is positive.

BTW, I've released a v1.0.1, which has a fix for a nasty bug that crashes the game if you try to enter a training error at level 3.  I also, while I was added, increased the opacity of the x's by 20%.  I feel this takes care of the visibility issue.  What do you think??

[edit]
Oh, also, I forgot to answer your question about the enemy AI.  When the enemy AI turn starts, here's basically how the loop works:

(player hits spacebar or the end turn graphic)
(turn change gfx)

pre-loop:
(determine, through various algorithms, which player kanji is the best attack target)
(build a path to the target)

loop:
(if the kanji has a skill, check to see if using it is a good idea)
(if the kanji has a target in attack range, hit it)
(if the kanji can move towards the target, do so)
(enemy turn timer has run out? end loop)

post-loop:
(give player any ap he's got coming)
(swith to player's turn)
(do player's turn graphic)

building a path can take quite awhile.  The main loop doesn't seem to take too long.

[greywolf]

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 09:53 PM, said:

Thanks for the quick feedback!  I really appreciate it.  I seem to get many downloads, but not a whole lot of feedback.  It's really nice to hear people talk about your game, especially when the feedback is positive.

My pleasure.

IkimashoZ, on Feb 10 2007, 09:53 PM, said:

BTW, I've released a v1.0.1, which has a fix for a nasty bug that crashes the game if you try to enter a training error at level 3.  I also, while I was added, increased the opacity of the x's by 20%.  I feel this takes care of the visibility issue.  What do you think??

I'll get to this tomorrow - it's getting a bit late, but I'll be sure to let you know what I think after I check it out. And thanks for getting around to that so quickly! (I'm impressed again. )

[IkimashoZ]

Hey, I wanted to let you know that in the next update of version 1 (Olivier's got more music to send me) there's going to be a change the makes the AP bars and post-battle experience increment more quickly.  It was pretty simple fix.  The step amount before was fixed at 1.  I just made it so that the step is equal to one tenth of the total change with a min. cap at 1.

I've also wondering what to do about between turn animations.  Since I like them just as is, I'm wondering what your opinion is.  I'm considering reducing the time of the animation to 4/5 of a second, or adding the option to turn them off completely... or both.  What do you think?

[edit]
I stand corrected!  I was mistaken in telling you that the turn change animation is 1.3 seconds.  The beginning of battle "sentou kaishi" display is 1.3 seconds.  The turn change animations are .8 seconds.  Let me see what they look like at half a second.

[another edit]
Okay, so I dropped the timing to half a second and I absolutely hate it.  So, you're getting the option to turn them off completely.  If there's some other option you can think of that you'd like me to explore though, I'm all ears.