Review: McDonald's Mighty Wings

Short Review: They're by all means cripsy and good, however its small size leaves a lot to be desired. KFC would be a better choice in this case, since they offer larger wings for a slighly cheaper price.

Its price is quite high (at least in Stockton anyways) at $10.99 for ten of them (15.49 w/two drinks + medium fries), making this by far the most expensive item on the menu.

Had some trouble getting most of it dipped due to the bone in the middle and the size of the dipping sauce, which seemed more suited to dipping Chicken McNuggets.

(Updated the city where the pricing was, since the prices varied between cities. Still expensive however)

Handling Diagonal Movement in Tactical RPGs

Ignore the Battle GUI - it is a mockup and therefore has incorrect information.

Normally Tactical RPGs do not allow diagonal movement, however I propose a system that handles this while factoring in obstacles.

While designing the war system in Americana Dawn, there were previously a few issues about the move range on a character; because the shoot distance is calculated by absolute distance from the character (instead of grid squares) it would create a disadvantage for some units. Also, it creates movement range more like a circle.

If a melee attacker was hit from a diagonal, it would normally take two turns for it to reach the target. The extra turn is a huge difference - the attacker that could otherwise defeat the enemy may not survive the second turn.

I had a few choices, either restrict attack range, or include diagonal movement. Moving based on absolute distance was considered, but it was ruled out since it can get messy at times and might not find the optimal route when tiles are weighted. So a diagonal is calculated as 1.5 movement points. (It might be 1.4 movement points later if the game requires more precision.)

But this is not factoring in the weights of the various tiles, so this is achieved by taking the weight of the diagonal square that you move to, plus the two adjacent squares that you cross getting there, and dividing by two. Thus the formula is:

Movement Cost = (Tile Weight for upper right tile + upper tile + right tile) / 2, relative to the character.

There's situations where a diagonal move takes up more move points than moving two spaces instead, but the game automatically calculates the shortest distance to a tile anyways so it isn't a real problem.

The drawback is being able to get to normally inaccessible tiles via a diagonal move. Consider it as an advantage - the 'creative designing' process should ensure this happens only when it needs to.

I think more of the creative designing should be the AI script for these battles, which is mostly based on the enemy commander's personality, although it usually looks ahead at least a turn and makes decisions only based on what it can see, and will find cover and ambush if possible.

Bubble Lady @ Troke Library

While working as a tutor for MathSmart, I knew from the intercoms that there was going to be a show at 6:30pm, but I didn't expect it to be so loud and so busy when I came out to look after my shift had ended.

It was quite a crowd there.

Americana Dawn: Shop GUI

The aforementioned shop from the previous post.

There was some progress in developing a shop GUI, but my team was not available at the moment, so I had to design one. Note the above screen is not final. But it has everything it needs to show right now: The buy/sell prices (note that not all vendors will sell at the same price and/or buy your stuff), shop names (person's name if it's a street vendor), item description, and your cash.

The same GUI might be used to purchase equipment using war funds to customize your team for large scale macrobattles, but that's to be approved.

The Buy/Sell Items switches between buying and selling items. The Shop Inventory and your inventory will eventually be merged into one box. I liked the left and right side comparison, but it leaves no room to put in the important 'Item Details' box (at least for equipment anyways). It might be a bit empty for things like crafting material, which are essentially two liners, but that will have to do for now.

If you sold something by accident, you can buyback your items from the store at the price you sold it, but it must be done before exiting the shop menu.

The Compare button, when you are buying items and have a piece of equipment selected, allows you to compare that with the weapons the party has equipped, displaying their weapon name, base damage, accuracy, cooldown, and the most prominent special attribute. If you are comparing accessories, your team's currently equipped accessories will be displayed instead.

Keep in mind the game will not suggest whether the accessory you are going to buy will benefit your team as there are many different ways you can build your character. For weapons, there will be a general indicator to tell you whether damage dealt/cooldown/accuracy is better or worse than what they're holding, but not for other attributes, which may or may not be important during a battle. Don't forget you can always switch weapons during a fight to take advantage of the enemy's status (and elemental) weaknesses.

Americana Dawn: Status Page

Don't tease Foster because he's carrying around a stuffed animal.

The Status page was somewhat of a direct opposition to Seltaire's thoughts of a rather minimalistic Status screen, containing a combination of stats, weapon mastery, and skills. (Art: finbeard with edits by bchantech)

Stats: Contains an overview of your various core stats, which each should be self-explanatory.

• STR acts as a multiplier on a melee weapon's Base DMG.
• DEF determines how much damage is resisted. It has diminishing returns, so you can never get to 100% damage resist.
• ACC determines the chance to hit and crit, and critical damage for ranged weapons. It plays more of a factor for ranged weapons, where they rely on strong critical hits to deal most of the damage.
• EVA determines chance to evade an attack. Less effective against ranged attacks.

The Long Goodbye had no less than 11 stats on the status page, in which four seemed important for battle purposes, and the rest I had to consult a GameFAQs guide about what they do, only to find out that no guides were published on the game.

So as a Dragoon - which is better on the field, Agility, Dexterity, or Mettle? Or just go for a STR build?

Weapon Lv: The bonuses varied throughout development.

The first draft was that higher levels reduced the cooldown (time to act again) by 1% per level, up to mastery 15. But KY wanted to give incentives for characters to use a variety of weapons as well as having each weapon being distinct in some way, so their mastery bonuses for each weapon were changed accordingly, and a core stat is increased for every weapon level. Weapons still have a flat damage increase or a crit rate + dmg increase per level. Since it takes a long time to level up at higher masteries, I wanted it to make sure that doing so was worth it instead of mastering another weapon and taking a stat increase instead, so the damage bonus now scales up relative to Weapon XP.

There's now a mastery labeled Endurance, increased by eating food items. I decided to have this bonus simply because there needed to be some way to raise HP, and I didn't want armor to be the only way, other than character-dependent skills. It also makes eating (more costly) food a viable option than simply buying cheap potions to heal.

Weapon XP is independent for each weapon and gained from successful hits and damage done instead of winning battles, although there may be other ways to gain mastery levels instead of fighting.

Other Tabs: Two other tabs not in this image are skills, which tell you what skills were learned (maybe assign an SP cost later to prevent characters from spamming overpowered abilities), and Misc stats.

Gear Names: My rule with creating mockups: When it comes to items, never use them as placeholders. If there's an item showcased in a screenshot, it must appear in the game somewhere. There's like a hundred or so different shops in the game and anything is possible, so there's plenty of room to be creative (and possibly make references at the same time).

A good example above is Jelly Amigurumi, a unique item which is bought at Green Tea Grass for 2500 SH (which is a reference to the Etsy store of the same name). It's supposed to be a decorative item for Foster's house, but you get a minor boost in stats just by holding it.

The New Exploratorium

Multicolored lighting is not from spotlights, it's from the above windows.

Finally got a chance to see the new Exploratorium on Pier 15 since its reopening in April. It looks just as spacious, with more windows, and a lot more exhibits than I remember it having previously (I always thought it occupied the entire building at the Palace of Fine Arts, but it doesn't appear to be the case).

Even though some of this exhibits remains the same (as of almost ten years ago when I last visited), there's plenty of new stuff to see; even some of the benches outside are exhibits in its own right*.

Notable Exhibits here (in my opinion):

• A Pac-Man game, with a twist: Four players, and each person has one button corresponding to a certain direction. (The button may not always be responsive)
• Exhibit: The Changing Face of What is Normal
• A Smorgasbord of Signs and Symbols
• Museum of Wear and Tear
• A lot of the exhibits in the sight and sound section
• Rolling Through the Bay (it's temporarily over here)
• Transparent Pinball Machine (an analog one, prior to any led screens, etc.)

In the Forum: One Click at a Time: Was only on August 24th, and consisted of a variety of stop motion clips. Was playing the following:

• Western Spaghetti
• Dot
• MUTO
• Neighbors

Americana Dawn: Equip Page, Crafting, etc.

With a HP cap of 1000, this allows you to survive most situations.

The inventory screen has been revamped heavily from when it was known as "The Long Goodbye".

The current (and maybe) final version of the equip page. Enough information on this page in the Equip Details and the description on the bottom to know what you're equipping and how effective it will be without consulting a walkthrough. (Finding all the accessories and rare items, however, might be a different story, but it might include a bit of crafting/trading.)

Inventory: Inventory and Equip is handled Disgaea style - the first slot is a weapon and the rest accessories. All your items are shown in the inventory because you only have a finite space to put everything.

Crafting: The shops in major towns usually sell pretty standard stuff, however some trading posts out there are run by people who are specialists in their own right, and will be happy to produce unique accessories, weapon upgrades, or consumables for you - given the materials and the right price. So it's more like trading.