Revamped Projects [Preliminary Round 1]

[eplipswich]

Here is my entry:http://www.mediafire.com/download/f68cw8...rshall.zip
id: 60  type: 0  file: sprite\marshall\marshall.dat
id: 61  type: 3  file: sprite\marshall\marshall_ball.dat

demo video (Click to View)

The new sounds were created using the explosion sound of Notrium by Ville Mönkkönen.
Everything else only uses Gads and LF2 resources.

Well, I've recently tried Marshall, and there appears to be some bugs/issues for him:

1) Taking just the original LF2 hero characters into consideration, the Sky Buster (D^J) can only hit Henry at close range (by that, I mean within punching range) but not the rest despite the blasts activating. So I was wondering whether or not the Sky Buster is designed to hit an enemy from within punching range. If not, why is it that I can hit Henry from that range? (If you include custom characters, the Sky Buster can also hit Silva and Frozen from that range.)

EDIT: It looks like I figured out the reason for that. Silva, Frozen and Henry' bdys have y-coordinate at y: 10 or less, and Sky Buster works on them within punching range. On the other hand, Sky Buster doesn't work on bdys with y: 18 (most original LF2 characters) within punching range. So it probably has to do with the itr of the Sky Buster not being able to interact with bdys with y: 18.

EDIT2: Okay, I manage to resolve this by changing the y-value of the itr. But still, I would like to know whether or not Sky Buster is supposed to be able to hit enemies within punching range.

EDIT3: Well, though when I change it to a different y-value, the attack suddenly becomes too overpowered (deals a heck load of damage). Oh well.

2) The balance between Sky Buster and Selective Gaze (D>J) seems to be a tad off. I would think that the latter is the basic version of the former, so for Selective Gaze, it ought to be easier than or at least as easy to hit an enemy as Sky Buster. But Selective Gaze is actually hard to hit an enemy as opposed to Sky Buster which can easily hit multiple enemies. And their MP costs don't justify each other either. So it's either Sky Buster could cost more MP or perhaps the aiming difficulty of Selective Gaze could be relaxed just a little (my suggestion is to change from zwidth: 2 to zwidth: 5).

3) I notice that it actually costs slightly more MP to cast Selective Gaze and Sky Buster immediately after blocking than normally. That is fine and all, but for Selective Gaze, since you can't really hit an enemy within punching range with it, the slightly more MP cost for Selective Gaze immediately after blocking doesn't seem justifiable. Unless it's designed to be used immediately after blocking an energy blast?

[YinYin]

I gotta admit I'm not completely satisfied with how sky buster and selective gaze turned out (and I already know I have to revisit them at some point). So while I'm currently not quite sure how well they meet my initial goals I can tell you what their functions are:

Sky buster is a defensive crowd control move. It is indeed not supposed to work dead on as it will scatter over the head of a close opponent. It's main purpose is to ward of larger groups at a distance, repel opponents jumping at you and taming the Firzen disaster/arctic volcano/Jans devlis.

Selective gaze is, as the name implies, a sniping attack. It's meant to pick on a single distant target that would otherwise be impossible to hit if obstructed by enemy groups/other objects. For example if you have a boss or Jan trailing a soldier army you can scatter them by walking speed along z axis and try to snipe and separate the target from the group with this move. It's also great to take out soul bombs early without worrying about distance or obstructions (palms do loose momentum upon hitting crowds).

So, both moves aren't exactly close combat material. But their uses are very distinct. If you don't wanna aim, use the sky buster. That's a scatter shot. If you want to hit something farther away or single out a target, use the selective gaze. That's a sniper shot. The zwidth is a trade off between being able to selectively hit a target within a crowd (not the first one as most projectiles would) and still being able to actually hit something.

Both moves are a bit faster out of defense and thus cost more mp (or less straight from standing for longer wind up). The difference is larger on the sky buster, maybe I should adjust the mp difference to reflect that.