Hi all,
I was wondering if any of you awsome people had any wishes/ideas with regards to a final fantasy 8 type fight system? At the moment, im leveling up according to XP points then on each level im increasing attack/defence/the usual + adding some newer powers once you reach a certain level…
But the problem is that its a bit linear and its not really the type of game where magic spells are approperiate.
So, any ideas?
DP 
Me me me! I’m working on something like this too.
Hmmm, now I come to think of it I don’t have any good ideas. My idea of having everyone pick a few moves per turn worked out stupidly complex although it had potential for very cool fight sequences it also had potential for endless, pointless battles…
I’m whipping up a prototype of my system in Flash, while I work out how exactly it will work. That should let me allow a bunch of people to try it and give feedback on what is and isn’t fun so I can have something well tuned before I have to actually write it for real.
If spells aren’t appropriate then I would use equipment and character classes to add variety and strategic depth. What type of setting is it? Sci-fi? Contemporary? Historical?
Alot of people would just use “battle techniques” or “skills” instead of “spells” and just make them show an animation of some kind of special attack. The effects themselves would be just like spells but would be from things like crippling someone’s arm instead of from some kind of bad mojo.
Its more of a strategy game meets final fantasy. But the emphasis is on the strategy because there is going to be quite alot of quick rounds of fights. The fighting system needs to be sharp and there really isn’t much of a spell or places to visit to get equipment…The only real advantage is terrain and how long you have occupied a square, any ideas what can be done with those two?
DP
In Civilization games, terrain gives a defense bonus. Units can also fortify their position (which requires not moving for at least a whole turn) to get a defense bonus, but they lose it when they move.
I would think that attacking from higher ground might give a bonus. Cavalry units could get a charging attack bonus when moving across flat land.
Some units (either wheeled units or cavalry units) might not be able to move on hills and mountains. There could be other kinds of terrain that only certain units can move over or that some units move faster on than others.
I managed to build a real quick mockup yesterday. The rules are similar to what you have described fletchergames. Height is and advantage which leads to to having two attacks at the start (surprise attacks sort of thing), you level up on each turn that you have not moved from a square and I added a few different units of each type…
It works okish, nothing special, which is what I think I need because I want to emphasis the strategy of moving the characters rather than the actual fights…But if someone does have a cool thing they would like to see implemented, please post it here
DP
One thing I’m thinking on having is some quite smart spellcasting, so that my heavyweight casters can create devastating spells of absolute doom, but it takes them several turns to do so and if a spell-caster is attacked during their cast they lose it. The outcome of that is that major fights become a game of defend the spellcaster where formation and defense become very important - single out enemies capable of ranged attack and stop them getting a direct line on the spell caster and take them down if necessary.
Defense is much underused in RPGs, it doesn’t tend to confer much in the way of benefits and in games like Final Fantasy you end up pretty much never using it, so the opportunity to offer good counterattacks might make that more worthwhile.
Lines of attack make things more strategic as well, because you can defend your ranged fighters with your heavies and generally make your attacks more co-ordinated.
All of which gives me an idea for what I’m going to do with my system…
Breakfast, you just gaev me an idea. Im now thinking of having a slot based system where you insert verbs into the slots, and each verb oncurrs a cost. The nice thing about verbs is that they can be mixed freely and easily. So like attack, drag and defend into 3 slots where attack costs you X units of time. Time is gained the longer you occupy a particular square…
Another combination is Attack Attack Defend, or Attack Attack Counterattack…where counterattack waits for an attack on the next go…
What do you guys think of this?
I think Breakfast’s idea for multi-turn spells is pretty good. Maybe have some kind of runes that you create each turn and then have a final rune that makes the whole spell happen. A game called Dungeon Master had runes, and it was sort of like multi-turn spell use because combat happened in real time. Multi-turn spells sound pretty cool.
Darkprophet’s idea is a little confusing in it’s current form. Maybe you can choose an attack type and a defense type each turn. It would only be 2 verbs instead of 3 with “All Out Attack” and “All Out Defense” (or some alternatives) for a double attack or double defend.
It doesn’t seem like it should depend upon how long you’ve been in the same square though. That seems a little arbitrary to me.
Also, keep in mind that Defense options are usually useless in games (especially if you only have one character). Having an attack and a defense every turn makes them actually useful.
The idea of the verbs was to make the action more real time but keep some sort of turn based efforts in there. The idea of the verb costing time units is so that if you have only been on this square for 2 seconds, you can’t come in and fire an attack that overpowers the square next to you that has been there for 10 minutes. But there needs to be some sort of balance there so that 1 square can’t dominate everything, and hence taking away some of his currency on each verb.
So what would happen is that you put in 3 commands and carry them out independently of the enemy, so you put attack attack defend, he might be attacking while you are attacking too which would lead to a miss, similar with defend VS defend. You wouldn’t want that to happen since verbs cost time units and attack verbs cost more than defense verbs so you are encouraged to use defense verbs. That round finishes and you choose another 3 rather quickly until their health goes down, or they loose all the time on that square. In both cases, they lose.
It brings a more strategical approach to fight systems, so you would ideally leave your best attacks till you are weak on health, but have enough time units to fire a very big attack. Does that make more sense ?
DP
It sounds almost like Rock-Paper-Scissors, but it could be entertaining if implemented properly.
The verbs thing is a bit like what I was trying offering multiple command slots per turn. Basically the problem I was running into even as I started to prototype was that because I’m also including movement in my combat, so most hand to hand weapons only work from a neighbouring square for example - increasingly I realize I may need to use a hex grid, much as they are more annoying to conceptualize - the problem becomes that you can easily just have characters and monsters chasing around and swinging at nothing, which works out as fun for no-one.
If you used a more Final Fantasy or Grandia kind of system where characters just charge up and attack their target then run back it would probably work ok, but I worry about losing strategic options that movement and positioning on the board enable.
Pretty much any strategy game comes down to rock paper scissors at the end of the day even the huge and deep battles of the Total War series can be boiled down to cavalry/archers/spears…
I would edit that to: “any uninventive strategy game…”
There are plenty of excellent strategy games that are not rock-paper-scissors games. How about Go, Awari, Cribbage, Scrabble, Roulette? Each of these games have strategy, but no pieces are inherently better than any other pieces (and cutting a Jack in cribbage is dumb luck, not strategy ;). Since we’re on the gameplay/design forum, I’ll post my opinion that the problem with most CRPGs is that they assume that good strategy means lots of stats that boil down to rock-paper-scissors. Let’s do something more clever. It’s not that I don’t like a Final Fantasy romp as much as the next gaming geek, but I prefer the likes of Carcassone or Settlers of Catan (to borrow from board games). I think Oasis did a great job of bringing the wisdom of good board game design into computer games.
So how would you convert those strategic approaches into gameplay that works for a computer game, in the context of your turn-based combat type setting?
I don’t mean that as a criticism, I am intrigued to see how the ideas could be transferred.
I wish I knew! I don’t mean to criticize either; I only meant to point out my disagreement with the RPS=strategy statement. There’s nothing wrong with yet another variation on the “Fighers beat wizards, wizards beat priests, priests beat fighters” system, and goodness knows it sells. Maybe we can get some creative juices flowing to make a design that’s as fun and critically acclaimed as, say, Carcassonne or Settlers… without just being a computer implementation of these. It’s probably a wider discussion then is appropriate for this thread. Again, I’ll recommend Oasis: http://www.oasisgame.com/
Stuff like using formations might work in that direction. Perhaps if the objective is to get across the combat zone rather than just to kill all the enemies that might make for a different approach. While the objective remains the same I think maybe the method ends up remaining the same. Maybe something like the “Control Point” approach would work as well- there are certain squares on the battlefield that you need to hold in order to win. Whether that could be incorporated logically into the gameplay.
Perhaps this isn’t the correct thread for this question… but how would you design the code to display all that?
E.G. would you need more than one thread so that your enemies/players/spells/actions have animations?
etc.
Thanks 8)
No, you would have something like:
for each animation, A
display A
Updating the animations might vary for different objects, but it would still be something like:
for each animation, A
update A