My friends and I are working on a game. This game is an RPG which is set in a rennasaince type era, but thats unimportant right now. We are currently working on the Battle System for the game, and we''re looking for suggestions to make it better and to be more realistic. So here goes... There are several important characteristics of combat. They are... Strength Constitution Dexterity Initiative all of them are integral in the aspects of the battle system. -Order of Turns There is a bar that keeps track of all the combatants position in "initiative". The combatants position is updated by their own Initiative value. When they reach the end of the bar, they are asked to choose an action, they perform that action and then are reset to the position 0 in "initiative". Actions range from using items, casting spells, performing special attacks or doing basic attacks. -Attacking Whether it be using an attack or performing a special move or an offensive spell, attacking is very similar. When attacking, there is first a "to hit" check. The attacker generates a random number between 1 and 50 and adds his Dexterity stat to it. This value is compared to the the defenders dexterity plus 25, which represents a constantly average roll for defense. If the attacker''s value is greater than or equal to the defenders value the attack is succesful. If the attack is not succesful, then the defender will perform a dodge animation. After checking that, it is time to check the damage. The defender will take damge equal to the attacker''s Strength divided by the defender''s constiution whole multiplied by the weapon strength. This number will be added onto a random number generated between 1 and the attackers strength. I know that this sounds wierd, but in testing it proved to be very balanced. so as an example say we have two avg humans with stats hp: 12 ;str: 5 ;con: 5; dex: 5 they have a 50% chance of hitting each other a succesful attack will deal 2-6 damage -Special Attacks Special attacks are worked out similarly to normal attacks, but they cost SP(special points) and have greater strength than the character performing the attack. Special attacks include magic spells. -Items Each character has their own inventory. They are allowed to use only items that are in their own inventory. -Special Cases There will be the inclusion of the ability to climb up trees and cliffs and hide behind bushes and make use of cover and such.

C''mon people, I bothered to write it for you

plz make suggestions

For determining the damage we have chosen to change it to...

((str/con)*weapon power) + (random number between (.75 * str) to (str))

I will help you with it (as long as its not in C or C++ - if i try again it would be my 32nd attempt to learn it)
Is it in VB6?
if it is then try this rand function
function rand(byval lbound as integer, ubound as integer) as integer
randomize
rand = int(rnd(20) * (ubound - lbound)) + lbound
end function

Works verry well for random numbers
eg for 4 to 12 you would go rand(4,12)
If you need any help contact me: nosuchadress12@hotmail.com
(it exists and i do not care about SPAM)

Humans are Human oriented, it is because of there nature: a design flaw-greed, jelosy the solution: AI- never greedy, and they stick to there ethics no matter what.

We don''t need help coding, and it is in Java.

I was hoping to get opinions on the battle system, but thanks for offering anyway.

It sounds like you''ve put a little thought into it, how complex are you willing to go? Do you want any form of advanced AI, or are you just looking for the "typical" (FF,BoF,DW) battle systems..?

Basicly, in the end, whats the one thing that your battles will have that will set it apart from the typical RPG battle system. you need to focus on that, and then evolve from there. otherwise your just going to have another (FF,BoF,DW) clone..

quote: Original post by Saiyanofliberty
C''mon people, I bothered to write it for you

plz make suggestions

Oh my aren''t you impatient.. you waited for a response for less than two hours and got tired of waiting?

I see you haven''t done many posts, so as an advice, wait at the very least for 1 day. Complain if after 2-3 days nobody has made a response

I was just gonna flame but since I don''t want to be an asshole I''ll try to give you contructve critic

I don''t know if you have done some game before as complex as the one you want this one to be, if you haven''t your battle system is ok. Otherwise you should improve it a bit, and about that i''m just gonna to copy and paste your post here and make comments about it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-Attacking
Whether it be using an attack or performing a special move or an offensive spell, attacking is very similar. When attacking, there is first a "to hit" check. The attacker generates a random number between 1 and 50 and adds his Dexterity stat to it. This value is compared to the the defenders dexterity plus 25, which represents a constantly average roll for defense. If the attacker''s value is greater than or equal to the defenders value the attack is succesful. If the attack is not succesful, then the defender will perform a dodge animation. After checking that, it is time to check the damage. The defender will take damge equal to the attacker''s Strength divided by the defender''s constiution whole multiplied by the weapon strength. This number will be added onto a random number generated between 1 and the attackers strength. I know that this sounds wierd, but in testing it proved to be very balanced.

**Comment:You probably noticed the formula makes the attacker''s streght more important than the weapon, I mean, having streght = 2 and weapon = 1 is better than streght = 1 and weapon = 2

-Special Attacks
Special attacks are worked out similarly to normal attacks, but they cost SP(special points) and have greater strength than the character performing the attack. Special attacks include magic spells.

**Comment: So you say that the magic spells won''t have any difference between others just the animation? and of course that they would do different damage. But then if for example if you fight against a boss(if you want to have bosses), you are just going to attack with the strongest Special Attack you have over and over until you have to heal or drink a potion for Sp or are out of them for the battle. I think more variety is needed here.

-Items
Each character has their own inventory. They are allowed to use only items that are in their own inventory.

**Comment: I like the part where each character can only use their own inventory, adds some thinking about who should have what

-Special Cases
There will be the inclusion of the ability to climb up trees and cliffs and hide behind bushes and make use of cover and such.

**Comment: I didn''t quite understood this part. I mean, in the battlefield, are there trees ,cliffs or bushes? If so, which advantage or disadvantage would them give? If you can act based on what is around you, what advantages and disadvantages would that give? For example I could cover behind a bush but I would have to get out for some or all attacks to work, because you can''t just attack as if the bush wasn''t in the middle!
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Also there are other things I could talk about but I would need to know things like:

-are you going to be able to control more than one character? How many? How many characters do you have at the start of the game?

-How much hard do you want the game to be from 0 to 10(1 being you do nothing right and you still beat the game and 10 you have to do EVERYTHING right)?

-Which kind of items are you planning to have in the game? How would you get them? How big is the inventory?

-Are you going to fight inside a different place that the one you walk?(You know, like final fantasy or Breath of Fire does that when you fight there comes a battle transition and you are in a battlefield now)

Hopefully the post isn''t too hard to read so you won''t get dizzy just by trying @_@

My suggestion: I think the numbers are too small but I like Final Fantasy games so I guess I''m used to large numbers. If you do want bigger numbers it isn''t too difficult: just take the appropriate values (HP and damage for example) and multiply them by a power of ten (maybe 100?).

In pencil and paper RPGs it seems like it is important to keep the math simple to do and using larger numbers is more difficult but with a computer large numbers are as easy to work with as smaller ones. It is just a matter of personal taste.

Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil...prayer,
fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the
double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...
-- Terry Pratchett

As Kentaro said, numbers don''t have to be small, and neither does the number and specificity of variables. If you''re building a combat system from scratch, and two evenly matched fighters can dispatch one another with two to six blows, then perhaps HP is not the way to go.

I''ve complained about HP often enough that I will spare you that torment here, but try to get at what HP is trying to represent, and then try to represent that a little better.

In contrast to what Kentaro said, multiplying everything by 100 is a waste of your time. Adding zeroes will never improve the system. Whether 30 or 3000 is a huge hit, you''ll be playing the same game. I have always kind of hated the "9999" damage thing. That kind of resolution in damage reckoning is unnecessary, and capping the maximum possible damage is silly.

Give the guy 2000 HP and have a good hit be for about 150 if you want the fight to last forever. Or better yet, give him 100 HP, like everyone else has, and make it hard to hurt him. 0, 0, 0, 0, 12! Yes! No number of 9mm rounds will penetrate an Abrahms tank, and no number of arrows should penetrate the shell of a forty-foot tortoise. Better to have to somehow earn hits, instead of making it a marathon of healing potions and attrition.

quote: Oh my aren''t you impatient.. you waited for a response for less than two hours and got tired of waiting?

sorry, im used to faster forums, i''ll get used to this forum eventually

quote: **Comment:You probably noticed the formula makes the attacker''s streght more important than the weapon, I mean, having streght = 2 and weapon = 1 is better than streght = 1 and weapon = 2

Actually, i just realized that it makes them equal, because both strength and weapon are being multiplied and then divided by constitution, the way my friend described it made it confusing and I just used his words, but in the eqn, strength and weapon are equal, which still doesn''t make sense, the weapon is more important than the wielder, it seems, and we are trying to fix it, what would you suggest?

quote: **Comment: I didn''t quite understood this part. I mean, in the battlefield, are there trees ,cliffs or bushes? If so, which advantage or disadvantage would them give? If you can act based on what is around you, what advantages and disadvantages would that give? For example I could cover behind a bush but I would have to get out for some or all attacks to work, because you can''t just attack as if the bush wasn''t in the middle!

While climbing up trees and hiding behind bushes won''t do much for melee combat, it will give an advantage to ranged combat, also, climbing up trees will give an advantage to melee, for jumping attacks, a strike from the air of sorts. You can take advantage of the environment in this game, but prolly the most the environment will have is cornering an oppenent. When cornered, the opponent will lose some dexterity bonus, because its harder to dodge with in enclosed areas.


-are you going to be able to control more than one character? How many? How many characters do you have at the start of the game?
**You will have access to multiple characters

-How much hard do you want the game to be from 0 to 10(1 being you do nothing right and you still beat the game and 10 you have to do EVERYTHING right)?
**aiming for a 7-8ish

-Which kind of items are you planning to have in the game? How would you get them? How big is the inventory?
**healing items, probably some kind of special ammunition for ranged characters, status improvments, etc

-Are you going to fight inside a different place that the one you walk?(You know, like final fantasy or Breath of Fire does that when you fight there comes a battle transition and you are in a battlefield now)
**the map in which you walk will become the battlefield when a battle sequence ensues. so ur walking along and enemy ambushes you and instead of going to a separate map, like most rpgs, you stay on the field, kinda like chrono trigger