Just looking for general feedback and whether or not you've ever seen anything like this done... I was thinking about whether or not it's possible to both simultaneously abstract tactical combat (between say a party of adventurers and opponents in a single-player cRPG) and add a totally different graphical style to it. My current thought is kind of chess meets comic book panels to represent gun battles and layered tactical states. Combat would be turn based, of course, with pieces visually identifying important stances and equipment. The "board" would be a simple 2d abstraction of where the fight was taking place, varying in shape and size and (possible) cover / obstructions. The motif would be adventurers in a sci-fi environment. Actual combat would be represented by clashing comic book panels and sound FX. These could flip, zip onto the screen or crash together (like the somewhat cheesy effects in old school standup arcade games). While if done right they might have their own flair, there'd also be the benefit of possibly depicting states that would otherwise require cumbersome, precisely placed two-party animation (I'll leave that for the AAA title boys, this would be old school indie all the way). So you could depict hostage situations, clever holds, breakneck dives and just in time getaways as stills that barge onto the screen, gleam, acquire bullet holes, etc. and ultimately affect tactical states (ambushed, injured, pinned, etc.) and stats. OTOH, the idea may just be too dated to have any charm. It would still be a lot of work to come up with all the stills, and seeing duplicates might be worse than seeing the same generic combat animation again and again using a normally depicted tactical view. Any thoughts?

I'm still trying to envision what your trying to do. I see tactical pieces in this design like...an abstract sense of different components of combat, such as positioning, surrounding, weapons, and techniques/abilities on this "board" in a tactile (as in feeling, not tactical) sense. Not that you can "move" your kung fu training diagonally, and your sword along the horizontal and vertical, but...I dunno theres something there. Thats what first came to mind when I read your post. Its sort of surreal and fuzzy still, maybe you could elaborate a bit more? Definitely sounds like something to be discussed though. I don't think anything is really ever outdated. Anything can evolve and be new again. Hell, I still play MUDs once in a while and roguelikes will never get old. I guarantee you I'm not the only one to have played the original Quake or mario games in the last 6 months.

For you're idea I'm picturing an Advanced Wars like game (please correct me if I'm wrong). The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels. In advanced wars there is a simple animation for each type of unit attacking or defending, but you can skip them (they can even be turned off). This is because the combat is the focus, not the animation. It seems like you want to make animation the focus, and I'm not convinced it will work.

I can picture it though, and I think it would be charming. If the underlying system was good enough, and the stills could be skipped in cases where you've seen the same "good guy attacks goon" comic a million times, then it has potential to be a good game. Just keep in mind that eventually, repeated animations will start to get old.

Is this different than Dofus and BattleChess?

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Original post by Nich For you're idea I'm picturing an Advanced Wars like game (please correct me if I'm wrong). The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels. In advanced wars there is a simple animation for each type of unit attacking or defending, but you can skip them (they can even be turned off). This is because the combat is the focus, not the animation. It seems like you want to make animation the focus, and I'm not convinced it will work.

I'm still not quite sure where he was going with this, but in one scenario, I could see it as "playing" a graphic novel. In a case like this, it would almost be like interactive fiction where the focus is on story and the artistic way of telling the story, so you would need a lot of unique panels for that purpose, which, again if its your intent isn't a big deal. I'm not a big fan of interactive fiction (heh...or story lines I guess for that matter) but I know a lot of people who are, and I could see something like this working, at least for an indie crowd.

I'm imagining something like the fate/stay night games. which is a visual novel type of game. A sample video is

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(It's in japanese)

Notice that they are using stills of the characters then just zoom, pan, add overlays, etc to give the effect of fighting. Is this somewhat close to what you are imagining?

It's fun to look at first but seeing the same things over and over gets old pretty fast, unless you make a lot of stills.

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Original post by Nich The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels.

Actually, what you could do is use a cell shaded renderer and render the frames like that.

This way you can vary the positions of the characters, change the terrain and so forth and still get the comic book frame feel.

Most video cards can easily render hundreds of frames per second in near photo realism, so such a system could do virtually instant frame rendering for cell shading, especially as the models don't need to be as detailed as photo realistic rendering.

If you are suing a 3D environment (despite the map being only 2D like chess board), you could actually use the details on the board to determine the objects in the cell shaded frame.

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Original post by Wavinator I was thinking about whether or not it's possible to both simultaneously abstract tactical combat (between say a party of adventurers and opponents in a single-player cRPG) and add a totally different graphical style to it.

I like the idea of the graphical style. It would add a very unique and recognisable element to the game. If you have a well developed and interesting combat system (and even abstract ones can be this way), then you could have a real success on your hand with a game like this.

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Original post by themime I see tactical pieces in this design like...an abstract sense of different components of combat, such as positioning, surrounding, weapons, and techniques/abilities on this "board" in a tactile (as in feeling, not tactical) sense.

I did a mockup of this but unfortunately cribbed artwork from other sites so I'm not comfortable posting the pics I have. What I have is a nighttime city block that acts as a stylistic backdrop (the fight doesn't happen on that graphic). A kind of chess board expands from that scene showing six combatants. Some have swords, some have guns.
When one attacks another, comic book panels fly onto the screen, the panels flash and damage bars are shown.

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I don't think anything is really ever outdated. Anything can evolve and be new again. Hell, I still play MUDs once in a while and roguelikes will never get old. I guarantee you I'm not the only one to have played the original Quake or mario games in the last 6 months.

Thanks, that's good to know. I got the idea and thought it would be a great way to show a different style as well as allow interactions (like grabs and holds) that would otherwise be very tough to do. But the presentation may be too weak to support the idea.

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Original post by Nich For you're idea I'm picturing an Advanced Wars like game (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Haven't played this, but I checked out screen shots and I think I see what you mean. I was thinking smaller scale (individual characters) but the idea still holds.

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The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels. In advanced wars there is a simple animation for each type of unit attacking or defending, but you can skip them (they can even be turned off). This is because the combat is the focus, not the animation. It seems like you want to make animation the focus, and I'm not convinced it will work.

The panel reuse issue as well as how jazzy/effective they could be is my main reservation. The panels are representing something that you can't readily see on the abstract tactical board. If you turn them off, there's no real point in having them because you now don't know why/how you're winning or losing.

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Just keep in mind that eventually, repeated animations will start to get old.

I agree with you. Art fatigue. But why doesn't this affect a game like Diablo, though? Is there something about the view that alters how much of the same attack animations we can stand to see?

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Original post by sunandshadow Is this different than Dofus and BattleChess?

I think so. I haven't played Dofus but by the screen shots it looks to me like your typical isometric combat game. BattleChess might be a little closer in spirit in that when units interacted on each square on the board there was a specific combat animation.

One big question is why not simply stick to some sort of isometric view and just animate attacks and responses on that. It would work because it would be conventional and readily understood. Honestly, that may be the way to go.