Insane Difficulty: zombero - Viewing Profile - Insane Difficulty

Alright, I've officially completed and released my SMT: Nocturne hack and Ogre Battle is now my primary focus. For those interested in the Nocturne hack, it can be found here: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3299/ (I haven't been able to get it uploaded to this site yet)

So the first issue I'm looking at on returning to this hack is a potential revision to the current Morale system. Currently enemies deploy from their base and their map movement AI has been modified to essentially counter the player's liberation plans by fanning out their troops to key locations.

The new setup I'm considering is: having an initial round of enemy troops that begin on various towns. these enemies would generally sit on the town or patrol near it to fight off your liberation efforts. The upside of this approach is that it really ensures that battles will occur all over the map, and also starting from basically the beginning of the map. It also really gives you the feeling that you are fighting few enemy territory, rather than just snagging a few free enemy towns before you even run into any of their troops. The downside of this (at least to me) is that there is a certain amount of charm to the enemy sort of starting in the same position you do: with all of their troops popping out of their base around the same time that you pop out your own, and you both try to accomplish your own goals on the map. However, this whole idea is really better suited to a map where all the towns are neutral and you and the enemy are both vying for control over them. It doesn't really make sense that you and the enemy would both be entering the map from opposite ends in order to fight over control of the towns that... the enemy already controls.

So what do you think about these two potential systems?

Should I go for the some-enemies-starting-on-towns route, which I am leaning toward, I'll need to make some revisions to the Morale system. Basically, each enemy deployment needs to have their own "morale" (or whatever this winds up being renamed to) that is weighed against how many towns the player controls. After all, I'd have different expectations of how many towns the player controls when attacking the enemy sitting on a town that's right next to their base vs. when they're meeting enemy troops that were deployed all the way from the enemy's main base. Ideally, this stat would be visible on each enemy deployment, so that the player knows who is favored in a matchup against that squad. I will have to look into the viability of that.

In addition to this, I've learned a decent amount more about hacking since the last time I really worked on this, so I'll be making some updates to my development environment, as well.

I'd dropped hints in a couple comment sections that I'd like to be back to this project by New Years. Well, I didn't quite make that goal, but I should be finishing up my other project in the very near future. I'm about halfway through the final dungeon in that project, so if all goes well it should just be another week or two, and then it's OB all the way.

So...

SOON.