[Adonthell-devel] Re: Whee. Again.

[Ricardo Colon]

Sorry for the delay.

I would definitely be the first to agree that 2D console RPGs were the
best. But the reason I thought a semi-3D approach would be great would be
for the battle system.

This is going to be a long email.

Here is how Grandia II's(Sega Dreamcast game) battle system works.

The system is turn-based.
Your party consists of up to 5 people.

On the lower right of the screen is a meter. You can think of it as a sort
of "battle time".

Across this meter you see a bunch of icons, each representing one of your
party members or enemies, that slide from left to right.

There are 2 points in this meter labeled COM and ACT.
When a character's icon gets to the COM point, you enter a battle command.
When the icon reaches the ACT point, that character executes the command
you entered.

Here are the possible options each character has:

Combo: This is your basic 2-hit combo attack. It's take less time to
execute than a Critical, but does not cancel attacks. If you happen to
attack an enemy, when they are between the COM and ACT points, you
"Counter" they're attack, which means you hit them before they hit you.
Counter attack deal much greater damage than normal combo attacks.
How the enemy's position on the meter is not affected(i.e. it doesn't
cancel their attack). For more info on canceling attacks look at the next
section on Criticals.

Critical: Criticals are a 1-hit blow that are more powerful that a single
blow from a combo, but take slightly long to execute. The advantage of
using a critical is that is pushes your enemy further back on the meter. If you 
happen to use a critical
attack on an enemy when their icon is between the COM and ACT points(i.e.
after they enter in their attack, but before they actually execute it),
the attack is canceled. As a result,  the enemy's icon is moved to before the
COM point and thus are forced to entere another command. Keep in mind that
your enemies can cancel your attacks as well.

Evade: You can choose to evade and move your character to a set of 4,5, or
6 points on the battle field. If you happen to evade before an attack is
about to attack you, they'll miss completely.

Defend: You brace yourself for an attack and reduce the amount of damage
done. Unlike other options, this occurs instantly. In other words, if your
enemy is about to attack you and enter a Defend command, you'll block the
attack instantly.

Skills/Moves: each has innate skill attacks that do not consume MP.
Instead they consume SP(skill points). Skill points are replenished by
attacking enemies in battle.

Item: you can choose to use an item during battle.

There are many nuances that exist due to this battle system:

After you enemy choses there battle command. You can immediately see what
attack the enemy has chosen and to whom their attack is
directed(assuming that one of your characters reaches the COM point
before the enemy attacks).

This often chances strategy. You could be in a situation, where you can
attack the enemy closest to you, but one of the enemies a little further
away is about to execute an attack that you really dread. In that case,
you might want to go for the enemy a little further away.

Distance matters! As you moved around your icon moves along the meter.
This greatly impacts your choices. Often you have to judge if you can attack an
enemy in time before they attack someone. Also, if there is another person
between the enemy and the enemy's target, the enemy might need to walk
around that person. In this case, you can use this to your advantage and
evade to a location that the enemy can't reach in time.

Note than in Grandia, the path you take to the enemy is actually done
autonomously(i.e. AI). So sometimes my character moves in directions I
wouldn't have chosen, but I'm not sure how convenient entering paths
manually would be. For a Console RPG, it might be too much for most
normal people to handle. But having a choice would have been nice.

This is where I think a semi-3D(tilted 2D battle ground with 3D modeled
characters) works best. The whole percpetion of position and distance
seems more believable when you can see your character running around the
semi-3D battlefield.

Also note that how fast your character moves along the meter is an
attribute and so different characters moves faster along the meter. The
more you master a skills and magic(which have 5 levels of master), the
less time they take to execute. At the highest level of mastery skill
attacks and magic occur almost instantly.

Lastly, how far your character can move is an attribute as well.

Although I wouldn't necessarily want Adonthell to copy this system
exactly, I just wanted to point out some key features of this system. I
especially like the sense of time and distance that I get. It makes battle
much more complex, but intuitive and fun at the same time. This is a must
for console RPGs, since you're only limited to a few buttons on the
gamepad.Given that much of your time playing RPGs is spent killing monsters,
a good battle system is a key feature.

OK. I hope this helps. If anything, I hope that I've given you guys some
issues to think about when constructing a battle system. I'm familiar with
C and Java. If there's anything I can do to help, I'd definitely be
interested...well, as long as it doesn't interfere with school too
much..... :-)

Later.


                                                        -- Ricardo



On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, cirrus wrote:

> Ricardo Colon wrote:
> >
> > For an example of a good RPG battle system, you guys should play
> > "Grandia 2" for Dreamcast. I've never played an RPG with such an intuitive
> > and deep fighting system.
> >
> > Although the game is 3D, I think there's a lot to be learned from the
> > battle system. I especially appreciated the importance timing and
> > position on the battlefield. If you want me to explain the battle system
> > to you, please tell me to do so.
>
> Please do. I think before we start real work on 0.4 we've got to spend
> some time discussing how we want the final game to behave - we should
> have  fairly good idea of how we plan to do things like item
> functionality, game mechanics and the fighting system IMO because they
> all influence each other.
>
> >
> > But first I need to finish my homework...... :-)
> >
> > Also, I think adonthell needs better graphics. I would love to see the
> > characters be 3D models rather than sprites. Also, It'd cool to have
> > buttons for rotating the screen left and right, like most Dreamcast RPGs.
>
> I have to agree with JT there.
> First of all the aim of Adonthell has always been to create a 16-bit
> style 2D RPG like some of the old SNES classics.
> Secondly as far as 3D gfx have come in recent years I feel they still
> mostly lack detail and definable style. By that I mean they're cool if
> you actally want to go for that generic
> trying-to-look-realistic-but-not-quite-making-it-coz-it-still-looks-like-plastic
> 3D style but that's about all you can do with them. Sure, in some cases
> this is probably what you want but it is quite limiting IMO. No doubt
> this will chnge in the future (I'm pleased to see games like "Jet Set
> Radio" or the new Zelda on the GameCube experimenting with new styles in
> 3D) but it's still early days yet.
>
> >
> > Hmm...I don't know how hard this would be, but it'd be cool if it there
> > was an option to play adonthell with a gamepad. Mouse and keyboard
> > aren't necessarily the best input devices, but it's always good to have
> > a wide range of choices.
>
> Definitely! I hve quite a few ideas for the controls that I'll be
> posting soon!
>
>               -James
>
> --
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