Now, i nkow a lot of people will hate me for this descision, but i have decided to take an awful route in my RPG. Real Time Battles. This option was kept in the game just because it was so tied in with the rest of the game engine that it couldn''t be removed. Fortunatley, removing the horrible turn based combat system was easy. What happened was, we disabled this option in all of the menu, options, and other aspects, and kept in hidden away in the code. Then, a week ago, i was rummaging through the code, seeing if i could increase performance on slower machines, and came across thr real time battle stuff. So i added it all back in in a painstaking process, and realized how much fun it was just hacking away at enemas... i mean enemies. Now, dont get mad yet, the option for active time batles is still there, but the primary system will be turn based. Now, i want your opinions on the real time system, because pissing off a target audience is a bad idea. Real Time Battles: First, this system allows the player to move around freely and operate 1 character instead of a maximum of 4. This also lets us show off the awsome team AI we added in. If the player wants, he can issue commands to his comrades, incase he likes the whole Control Everyone thing. Movement is a big part of this because it allows you more freedom to evade attacks, and use ranged attacks like magic, or croosbow/rifle/gun based attacks more effectivley. Dont fret, we balanced it so that you cant be like 10 miles away and kill an enemy with a handgun. We also added the stamina and magic charge option. This was so that players attacks could be regulated to prevent a thoughough womping of a boss character in 10 seconds. Depending on where the stamina meter is, your attack power will change. At full, you get the max attack power, with a chance of a critical hit, but at the minumum, you get no critical hits, and a weakened attack power. You can only achieve a critical hit at max power. The magic charge option works the same way as well, only there is no critical magic attacks. So... questions? Comments? Death Threats?

Who is your target audience and why would they get pissed off at realtime combat? Most PC RPGs have completely realtime (or realtime with pause) combat, some of the better console action RPGs (Zelda, SOM, etc.) have realtime combat. In fact, your system sounds very similar to Secret of Mana. If your game plays better in realtime, just scrap the turnbased option and go completely realtime.

heh, about that...
This post was originally placed in the ffonline forums, and these people are more accustomed to turn based/active time battles.

The turn based system i had was awful. Think chrono cross. With extra crapage. It was god awful. Along with that, we had the active time, and real time battle systems, which the player could switch between them, according to his preference. I couldn''t completely remove either of these without trashing the code. As for PC RPGS, i haved a lot of their real time combat. Remember diablo? I practically bored myself to death with that.

Since i had more experience with console rpgs, i aimed the game for people who played them

Yeah, Diablo has a pretty boring RT combat system (click... click... click...click...), but Baldur''s Gate is pretty interesting. A lot of the Final Fantasy\oldschool console folks are kind of close minded. They think everything should play like FF4/FF6 and changing the magic system around a little bit is considered innovative gameplay. Like I said, go with whatever works, if you really have an urge to create a FF clone, make turn based the default (or the only option), if you want your game to be as fun as possible go with realtime.

Well, the similarities between my system and FF''s were simaler enough to be considered simaler, but mine had enough ideas to be considered different.

The only real simalarity between mine and FF''s is that there is a pause between actions. Thats it.

In mine, the players start off with a certain amount of wait time filled up. When the wait time meter is full, the player can perform an action. A certain amount of wait time is deducted for each action. So, a basic sword attack would reduce the wait time, but a huge magic attack could take it all the way down.

As for magic, it is pretty close to ff''s, but with the subtracted wait time system added. Mind you, the spells names aren''t as generic as "Fire 1" "Fire 2", but more like "Burn" and "Flamethrower". Also, we have a magic level system. So, if a player has a magic level of 3, they can use any magic with a max level of 3, but if they get an item that lets them learn a level 5 spell, that spell will be put in a holding area until it can be learned. At that point it is automatically learned. If the character cant reach that level of magic use, the magic item cant be used on them.

So, you can sort of see the appeal to a console rpg player. I wont get into my summoning system right now, its way to complex

quote: The turn based system i had was awful. Think chrono cross. With extra crapage.

Hey, hey, hey. I liked Chrono Cross. Thought the system gave more depth, because you had to control your character's stamina by giving out commands in more clever ways.

It sounds like your system is very ATB, with each command just taking a different amount of time. Or maybe I'm just not getting something.

How's the control? Is it menu based?

[edited by - bob_91321 on August 3, 2002 12:29:37 AM]

menu based, with both keyboard and mouse, or you can use the f5 - f11 keys to issue preprogrammed commands