The following is a brief description of my RPG-in-progress''s real-time battle system: All combatants start off with a number of Action Points (AP), displayed in their AP gauge in the lower left hand side of the screen if they are an active character. (which means that they are being directly controlled by keyboard or joystick) The number you start with depends on a random factor modified by your Reaction stat. AP goes up slowly for all combatants. All actions (Attacking, running, casting spells, etc.) other than standard movement have an AP cost. If you let your AP gauge max out and then attack, cast a spell, etc., you will perform a special limit break-like move unique to each character. Opinions, anyone?

Nice idea I''m envisioning something like SOM/SD3,some questions though.

1)How are the enemies starting APs calculated? Are they randomly chosen or some pre-defined value for each class of monster?

2)If moving doesn''t cost AP couldn''t the player just keep moving put of the range of the enemy''s attack and then release their super move when there AP is full?

One way out of this is to have magic and some attacks undodgeable like Secret of Mana, another somewhat simpler method is to have most monsters move faster than the character''s ordinary move speed making it so the character has to keep running if he wants to hang back.

That''s all I can think of at the moment.

- DarkIce

Sounds a lot like Skies of Arcadia on Dreamcast to me.
I''m not sure that AP should be random though, but basing it on Reaction/Speed is a good idea.
That system worked well though, although the 3 complaints I have about Skies is that
1. You could attack/be attacked by anyone (even if your character was in the back of the group)
2. You couldn''t move / make formations.
3. Magic was WAAAY too weak.

Now Shining Force... there was a game! Excellent combat system, perfectly balanced magic, squads of 12 characters. I recommend a download of the ROM. You can play it on Megadrive/Genesis emulators.

''Your theory of a donut shaped universe is intriguing Homer'' - Stephen Hawking

YES! SD3 is my primary inspiration for how combat should feel in this game. I''m incredibly pleased that someone else could get that just from an incredibly brief outline of my combat system. However, combat will involve more characters at once,(as much as 20 or so allies in extreme circumstances) and automatic zooming is a MUST for such battles.

Monsters and enemies have all of the attributes that characters do, including Speed and Reaction, an adjusted stat based on Speed. All participants in a battle are assigned a random priority order that represents how firm a grasp of the situation each participant in the battle has and are assigned AP accordingly. A character (or monster, or whatever) with an average Speed gets 15 AP at the start of the battle. The random factor could modify this number anywhere from 2 to 30, but this would quickly become less significant, since an average character charges AP at a rate of 5 per second.

Compare all of this to a character with an impossibly poor Speed and one with an insanely good one to get an idea of it:

Character model : Average start : Start range : AP charge rate
Slow (Spd1) : 1 : 1-2 : 1/sec.
Average (Spd20) : 15 : 2-30 : 5/sec.
FAST (Spd40) : 45 : 18-75 : 10/sec.

The random factor ensures that two characters with equal Speeds will probably not start off on entirely even footing, but it may be too great of a variation.

As for the tactic of moving out of an enemy''s range: No, it shouldn''t work, not unless your character has an incredibly high speed value. AP is not expended for standard movement, but running or any movement that is performed less than sluggishly expends a set amount of AP per fraction of a second that the action is taking place. Your enemy could keep pace with you easily, and would charge you (attacking while running results in an accuracy loss, but also a damage increase) as soon as they had enough AP accumulated to both close the distance and attack. In order to charge up AP in peace, you need to either command your allies to shield you while you prepare a lethal blow or simply take the damage while your enemies slice you up a bit.

More opinions, please! I find the incredible number of problems raised by trying to make an action-RPG fascinating, but I can''t think of all of them on my own!


Duran Strife: Brainless, but deep