Katuko

So, yesterday I actually felt like programming games, but then I had to spend somewhere between 6 and 8 hours doing server configuration with two friends of mine for a school assignment. One that I already finished myself but I am too nice to say "you're on your own" on. We were up until 4 AM fixing tiny errors in stupid text files. Therefore I don't really have any programming news for you, but here are some more sprites I have been working on. As always, free to use for anyone who might need them. EDIT: Hi there, Denevol. I get a warm fuzzy feeling when someone makes their first post in my topic! I'm happy you like the game.

Pathfinder makes you start dying at 0 HP. You will bleed out by 1 HP every round after that, and if you reach a negative value equal to your Constitution score, you die. In D&D I believe they use -10 no matter your Constitution. Every round you also round the die to see if you stabilize. If you do, you stop bleeding out, but are still unconscious until healed. While someone is dying, you can opt to kill them. BIONICLE happens to have very sturdy characters, so I don't think I'd have a problem with "only" fainting after being tossed through a wall at 3 HP. But if I choose to get back up and then get tossed through the same wall once more, I think that would justify an injury. I think a BIONICLE RPG could do well with saying that any damage beyond that which puts you at 0 HP is ignored, but that additional damage can be inflicted after this point to critically injure or kill you. Perhaps there is a period of a few rounds after this first occur where you do not get this "saving grace", so that if you choose to heal yourself and keep fighting you can now go into negatives if you're not careful. Say, when you take damage that goes beyond your HP, you get 3 points of "fatigue", get put at 0 HP, and become unable to do much of anything. This would be very similar to D&D's "downed" state, except maybe BIONICLE characters can manage to stumble away from the fight without fainting. For every round after this, you roll to see if you may remove one of these fatigue points. For as long as you have any fatigue points, you are not protected from damage that would exceed your HP, which means that you can get more permanent injuries. Any hit that actually puts you into negative HP will cause a real injury and possibly unconsciousness. The type of injury can be somewhat directed by the attacker, allowing - as an example - a Toa to put his foe unconscious but not dead. If you are healed to regain HP, you may take normal actions in combat again, but the fatigue must be removed the slow way, and you are now at risk of getting downed instantly. D&D also has some rule about massive damage - if you take more than a certain amount of damage in one hit, you have to make a Fortitude save or else be instantly downed. Certain things also have an "instant kill" switch on them, when you could not realistically survive in any way. For elements, I kinda like the typical mana/power points approach. Each ability costs a certain amount of points, but like D&D Psionics you could possibly spend a few extra points to "charge" an ability to be stronger. This would work nicely for Toa, I think. When your points run out you must wait for them to recharge. It's simple to understand and fits well with the canon version of elemental energy in some form of battery. Having 3 point stats shouldn't be much of an issue - one for HP, one for your element, and one for your mask/equipment power.

I thought his spear could only shoot a stream of lava, not control it. And even if it could, Norik was magnetized to wall and could not move.

Another oversight on my part. I forgot to enable the item drops. Not in the foreseeable future, no. I need a Mac with the proper setup in order to export the game to that platform, and I'm not a Mac user. Linux could potentially happen, but I'd need another computer running Ubuntu for that. Currently I only have this laptop, and since I need to have both running at the same time for the export to work I don't think I can just dual-boot. Plus, the export modules for Mac and Linux cost quite a bit each, so I won't be getting them just for this game. Glad you like the gameplay in its current state, though!

So it seems I do in fact have some faithful followers. I love you guys. ;_; If it weren't for you I wouldn't still be working on this. I have taken a break for a while due to schoolwork and other things taking up my time, but I hope to get back in the groove soon. I really need to fix those glitches from the last version, and get some serious work in on the new engine. I've started a small, original project (that is, not BIONICLE-related) which I'm using to test out some new platform physics. I already got jump-through platforms working 85%, so you'll definitely be seeing those in the future. With this game I aim to capture the Matoran Universe as we knew it from 2001 to 2008, so anything beyond that will not be implemented. I've used a few graphics for weapons from Bara Magna (and made some custom ones), but I'll have to devote my time to use what I have already. A few of you have even helped me out with sprites which I still haven't implemented, so I think it's best to keep things slow as far as new things go. Sprite work: I am currently working on a new and improved Proto Piton. I tried my hand at Matau's Aero Slicer, but got a bit annoyed and gave up for the time being. Earlier in this topic JacobLazer sent me some Inika and Hagah armor that had been ported to Toa Mata sprites. I will try to do the same for Nuva Armor to Toa Metru bodies, then we'll see how that works in-game. I'll also grab Norik's armor and stick it on some Rahkshi sprites, so that maybe they'll finally get visible armor too.

But aren't we talking about what happens when it is stolen involuntarily? Draining it outside of the normal procedure doesn't induce a transformation, so in my mind the only real question is: do you need Toa power to fuel the transformation? I would say no, as it is a one-time deal that reduces mass, and therefore should not need much more than a custom version of a standard transformative power.

Why would it work any other way? You can give up Toa energy on its own, and that process might include a subroutine for triggering a transformation once the supply is depleted, but the reverse - choosing to turn into a Turaga - should just as easily be able to give up the rest of the energy as part of the process. From an engineering standpoint, the system would contain a routine for both of those actions, but not necessarily require them both to be activated in any specific order.

In short: No. You make a choice to turn into a Turaga, with the prerequisite being that you have fulfilled your destiny. You must also give up your power, but as far as making the system work it should be as simple as possible. The destiny check is the only one that really matters. The rest is just a method of disposing of any leftover Toa energy, which may or may not require a valid target to drain it to, but should not in and of itself have any effect on the ability to initiate the transformation.

You choose to give up your power and become a Turaga, but if there is no Toa energy left you just become a Turaga without having to spend the remaining energy right there and then. There isn't really anything else to it.

BIONICLE hasn't exactly been all that big on the conservation of energy when it comes to transformations. But I guess a more prudent question would be what happened to Lhikan, who made Toa Stones from all his energy and then turned into a Turaga pretty much immediately once they were used. Did the existence of his stones prevent his trigger from activating because it was still "his" energy until the Toa Metru received it? Or was his destiny perhaps to bring more Toa into being, so that he was just sitting there going "ah, finally" when he felt the stones activate?

It would act on a mental trigger. Whether or not the energy is gone wouldn't matter much, only whether or not the Toa's destiny was complete. If yes, vent all remaining Toa energy and transform. If there is no energy, it doesn't factor in.

I am a programmer. As a programmer, I see this as a very simple logic operation, especially when dealing with mostly robotic characters. The Toa activates the "turn into a Turaga" routine by mental command. In order for the Toa to actually run this program to its conclusion, it needs to fulfill two simple criteria: The Toa's destiny must be completed, and its Toa energy must be drained to zero. I personally believe this last part is simply a by-process meant to eliminate any quirks that might occur in the MU from having a Turaga retain Toa energy. So the program would look like this (in pseudo-code): //Script run upon mental trigger at any time If Toa.destiny_complete == False Exit If Toa.energy_amount > 0 //Run script for venting energy. This script checks for a target (such as a Toa Stone or Matoran Sphere), if it can't find one it just vents into the air. If Toa.energy_amount <= 0 //Run script for transforming the Toa into a Turaga That is: If you had completed your destiny and given up your energy, you could turn into a Turaga. If you have Toa energy left, it is first drained as part of the process. If you have not completed your destiny, the rest does not matter. You can have a full tank of Toa energy or you can have zero, but the "transform into Turaga" command simply won't work. The command for "transfer Toa energy" would still be available as a separate program, and possibly it'd have a reverse check to auto-trigger the transformation. But I do not think that forcefully draining all of a Toa's energy will have any impact on whatever function makes the transformation work. As far as we know it is not fueled by Toa Energy, it's simply a pre-programmed shapeshifting power that removes any remaining Toa energy as it happens.

The actual Maori words do indeed mean "fire" etc. Taken from here. kōpaka 1. (noun) ice, frost, hail, glacier. pōhatu 1. (noun) stone. ōnewa 1. (noun) dark grey stone, granite. kakama 1. (stative) be quick, nimble, alert, active, capable. Can't find all the names in that online dictionary, but from the ones we do find it's easy to tell that BIONICLE took a lot of words from Maori. Hence the hacking and lawsuit and name changing and all. In-universe, it might be opposite, so that the Toa Mata are named after the village prefixes or similar-sounding words, but I honestly think their names might just be the Matoran words for their elements as well.

Eventually kinda floats in and out. I'm not even sure where this is going anymore, heh.

Let's try to narrow down the issue. Does the changing of the keys happen while in the middle of playing, or only between each startup of the game itself? When you say they don't work, do you mean that they have no effect at all, or that they produce glitches? Does other settings change/revert themselves?

Have you unzipped the game?

I don't mind the current genders of each character that we know. I do mind that the numbers were heavily unbalanced in the Matoran Universe at large, which is something I'd personally have changed if I were in charge.

I'm certain that if there was a super-secret meeting where Nuju couldn't afford to have Matoro present, he'd just speak normal Matoran. Otherwise Matoro could possibly know about Metru Nui, the Bohrok, and of Makuta's true form, the Kraata cave in Po-Wahi, and a whole slew of other things. For what it's worth, Nuju speaks Matoran/English when he first meets Kopaka in the comics, despite Matoro being right there. In another comic I believe we see him alone with the rest of the Turaga, though I can't remember if he speaks there.

Any of the Mata. Nui-Jaga. Boxor. Kopaka Nuva. Any of the Rahkshi. Thok. Jaller Mahri. That's pretty much it.

I love it. Most of the time when people humanize BIONICLE characters, it looks a bit strange. In this case you've made the Toa into some kind of power armor suit, and that is awesome. It looks sleek and deadly at the same time, and the somewhat sketchy style brings to mind gritty sci-fi settings. Very nice work.

While the Mask of Night Vision may not be all that useful, I didn't really like having two or even three powers overlap in one mask like that. I'd have preferred the plot to take them into more dark areas rather than the Ruru suddenly gaining limited x-ray vision.

The Kaita looked like silly mashups of the characters they were made from... which they were. Their characterization was next to none, and I've never been a fan of mind-merging/fusions in fiction. The one species I felt it could have worked for - the regular Bohrok, which were fully mechanical and with no individual personalities - never used it. Although they showed up now and again in the story to scale the fights up a notch, Kaita could be completely omitted and I don't think we'd really lose anything that could have been replaced by a Mask of Growth or some form of co-op tactic.

Teleportation is actually much simpler than regular movement, because you don't have to think of all the stuff that happens in-between. No gradual motion, no animation, no slowing down at the end. Just a plain manipulation of the coordinates: x = whatever, y = whatever. Play a sound effect. Done. I was going to add a pillar of light after Makuta is defeated, so that you can warp up to the surface again. Time constraints made me skip it, and I haven't gotten around to uploading a new version yet. I have taken notes of the things you guys have mentioned already, and will be fixing them soon-ish. That is even weirder, considering that code-wise there is no difference between flying straight or at an angle - the vertical speed should be the same.

The gravity well is only set to slow you if you are moving downwards. It also sets your personal gravity to a low level for a few seconds, to prevent people from dying to fall damage. it appears to mess with flight powers (which work by temporarily setting personal gravity to 0) by making gravity have a positive value again. I intended it to take the minimum value - either your current gravity, or the gravity well's - but I've messed up there as well.

Here's a new sprite I made, the Ta-Koro Guard shield: I was more satisfied with the Rhotuka Shield I made, but I guess that's because this one is just round and not very complex.