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[vinheim3]

Thinking about some ideas for games I've had in the past, I dug up 2 battle system ideas that were interesting at the time, but the first one was apparently already used. In my opinion, it hasn't been done enough.

1) A mix between real-time and turn-based - Imagine fighting enemies in real-time like in Tales of Symphonia or Kingdom Hearts. Imagine the enemy is a giant dragon head sticking out of a hole in the wall. You're standing on the ground below it, facing its mouth, and BOOM, you switch to turn-based. In turn-based mode, you're attacking the bottom of its mouth so damage is minimal, your swords feel like paintbrushes to the dragon's face. You switch back to real-time, jump around platforms here and there and land on top of its nose. You switch back to turn-based and now you are damaging its eyes. Damage has been multiplied tenfold.

That's basically how the idea feels like. Depending on how you design it, you could have objects around you in real-time. Facing a heavily-armoured rock crab? Use the parts around you to build a cannon and shoot at its helmet. Facing ninjas who do multiple attacks in a turn? Throw one at the other and bash at it while it's dazed. So damage is only done while in turn-based, but you could have exceptions. Building a fire bomb could do percentage damage, but real-time is designed so that you never kill the enemy.

The main con of this system is if your game makes you encounter enemies A LOT. Think Dragon Quest. You'll get annoyed, so maybe this system should be reserved for special battles, boss battles, or rare enemies.

2) Grow-based system - this system is based around the "grow" games made by On of eyezmaze.com. You have a number of "pieces" you collect throughout the game and can use them in certain orders (3 to 8 per object) to create special objects like cannons or traps or minions or whatever (the order of objects can be collected throughout the world). To save time from having to recreate structures with pieces, you can give a "skip animation" option or have the player select previously successful combinations.

This might seem like the pieces aren't necessary, you might as well have these combinations in the form of items, but the idea is that you can only bring a limited number of pieces, say 10 or 12, while not in towns or in "rest" areas.



Anyone else have ideas for battle systems of their own?/ones already used that are interesting to them?

[ugriffin]

This reminds me of the Mario & Luigi series, albeit on a more interactive level.

[JasonPickering]

I am currently working on the above game. basically the attack bar with the sword slowly goes up, and that is your attack percentage. so waiting longer has a better chance of hitting, while attacking sooner would be better.

and then the bar below is your block bar and that slowly goes down as you battle because the enemies will just attack you and you must block them, but if you have no block bar left you cant block. so the object is to block for as little as possible.

also for your Grow idea. I had a similar idea for a quick 1 level roguelike. you were an alchemist and you found different elements to combine into potions all battle was potion based, all potions could be poured on the ground, thrown at bad guys, or drank. and the potions did everything from minions to heal to explosions.

[sublinimal]

I had a similar idea for a quick 1 level roguelike. you were an alchemist and you found different elements to combine into potions all battle was potion based, all potions could be poured on the ground, thrown at bad guys, or drank. and the potions did everything from minions to heal to explosions.

Woah, sounds familiar.



My idea involved farming herbs that have freely combinable attributes. You'd have calm periods of growing your herb plants and keeping up a little trade-based economy. After having cooked up a bunch of potions, you might want to venture into the dangerous areas in search of special ingredients, seeds, and types of soil for growing certain types of plants. As you'd disturb the monsters, they'd also start invading peaceful areas and you'd need to protect your farm, tower defense-style (hiring and arming villagers to throw potions at them).

Fund it?

[SundownKid]

I think that combining the Bushido Blade fighting system with an RPG would be interesting. (You can die in a few hits, so can the enemy, block all the attacks or you die). It might need many save points if it turns out to be too hard, but I figure the blocking could be telegraphed beforehand to make it easier.

[njm1992]

Are roguelike combat systems "simultaneous turn"-based? Say you're in a battle with a and you both swing your blades, is it possible for both of you to die? or will the player strike first?

Anyways, I have a simple idea for a "sorf-of-like-rock-paper-scissors" combat system, imagine the classic turn-based rpg structure, but make it simultaneous, so that each side pick their actions (attack, defend or magic) and then the actions are carried out.

• Attack is more powerful against magic, because it's hard to cast a spell when getting stabbed.
• Defend works against attack, for obvious reasons.
• Magic is more effective against a target defending, because you can't parry magic with a shield.

Attack, defend and magic would still work like they would in a traditional turn-based rpg, but the key differences are: More unpredictable results, Chances to cancel the opponents actions/improve the effect of your actions by chosing the appropriate actions.

This idea is kinda half-baked, but I'd like to think that it has potential to be interesting, given more complexity of course.

[JasonPickering]

I had an idea for a multiplayer game, where one was the hero and the other controlled 5 monsters for him to defeat in order. each one had three actions.

- Attack
- Charge
- Defend

hitting attacked made you attack, defend would stop an attack, and charge increased your damage by 1. so if you hit attack you do 1 damage, but if you charge 3 times, you now do 4 damage. so you had to think whether the enemy would attack, you should attack, or you should defend. oh and attack vs attack reversed the damage, so if your player had 10 and you had 2 instead of defending you could attack and have the damages reversed, you would take 2 but hit the enemy for 10. and attack or being hit reverts your attack back to 1.

[Ranordine]

Are roguelike combat systems "simultaneous turn"-based? Say you're in a battle with a and you both swing your blades, is it possible for both of you to die? or will the player strike first?

Most people describe roguelikes as "step-based."  In more advanced roguelikes, every turn a player takes takes a certain amount of time (usually dependent on what they are doing, e.g. fighting, casting a spell, running with boots of speed on). After the player's turn, everything else in the world advances the amount of time the player took (enemies with the player's movement speed or higher move, slower enemies wait until next turn to move). Attacks usually don't happen simultaneously--whoever is fastest gets to attack first.

[leonelc29]

Anyways, I have a simple idea for a "sorf-of-like-rock-paper-scissors" combat system, imagine the classic turn-based rpg structure, but make it simultaneous, so that each side pick their actions (attack, defend or magic) and then the actions are carried out.

• Attack is more powerful against magic, because it's hard to cast a spell when getting stabbed.
• Defend works against attack, for obvious reasons.
• Magic is more effective against a target defending, because you can't parry magic with a shield.

Attack, defend and magic would still work like they would in a traditional turn-based rpg, but the key differences are: More unpredictable results, Chances to cancel the opponents actions/improve the effect of your actions by chosing the appropriate actions.

This idea is kinda half-baked, but I'd like to think that it has potential to be interesting, given more complexity of course.

no, it's not half-baked, but it's rather occupied.
look at digimon card battle.


notice that each card has 3 move; circle, triangle, and square. something like rock scissor paper game.(but with different attack and damage, of course.)

[baconman]

I thought of a RPS-style battle system once too, on a dice-armada game. Each player starts with a flock of dice with blank sides and (at least) one "star." On the blank sides, you can equip your crew with swords, shields, or shots. So star players are invincible, and can auto-KO any non-star opponent, regardless of rank, and damage worked like:

Shield > Shot > Sword > Shield

Dice determined the HP/rank of your team, which can be anything that adds up to a reasonably fair margin, like +/- 2 HP:

12-siders = Generals = 3 HP (they also have 2 stars)
 8-siders = Commanders = 2 HP
 6-siders = Grunts = 1 HP

So beating an opponent's General would require 3 RPS wins, or 1 star-KO. Players roll, each "star" chooses a non-star KO, then whoever has the least dice left makes the first "attack." You declare your attack (which does damage), or "retreats" that die (it's out of play/safe). From there, you simply take turns until one player has played each of their dice once, reroll and repeat. Any "retreated" dice recovers it's HP for next turn.

I suppose if you want to offer a handicap, you *could* choose to leave a space blank, or replace a "star" with something lesser, although that's tactically unsound to do.

[Kegluneq]

I am currently working on the above game. basically the attack bar with the sword slowly goes up, and that is your attack percentage. so waiting longer has a better chance of hitting, while attacking sooner would be better.

This reminds me A LOT of the Mana series, specifically the 2D ones.
The battle system in those games was a response to Final Fantasy's ATB battle gauge system. Instead of needing to wait for the gauge to fill, you could choose to strike earlier, but it would only do a percentage of full damage depending on how empty the gauge was.

It really was a fun battle system, even though it was real-time, the refilling gauge added a layer of turn-basedness on top.

[s0]

King's Field has the exact same system.

[Hangedman]

My favourite battle system in a long time is Paper Mario 64.
I'm surprised no one else has riffed on it, but maybe it's because it's so simple.

It's an excellent deconstruction of the standard RPG system, favouring small numbers and simple choices. Health of most enemies is roughly equivalent to two to four regular attacks or one to three timed attacks, and there is no damage spread or variance, so you always can game out your attacks properly without being crippled by damage variance or number fluff beyond your control.

Start with 5 HP, all enemies at the start do 1, unless they have a special ability to do 2. Starting enemies have 2-4, your basic attacks do 1, unless you time them properly and do 2.
You always have a slight advantage over ordinary enemies preventing you from taking too much damage, and bosses overload you just enough for you to have to turn to items or tactics.

Simple, smooth, straightforward, and your abilities are all about incremental increases of power that have to be used sparingly, eg. do 2 damage (3 timed) at the cost of a couple MP, an attack that can only be used sparingly at the start but can become a core part of strategy that lasts the whole game, thanks to the low numbers.

[DavidCaruso]

Yeah, Paper Mario has a great battle system for a JRPG (though the second one improved on it a bit with counterattacks, Stylish Moves, and giving partners their own HP). There's also a bit of customization gained with the badge system, which lets you equip new attacks, elemental powers (e.g. ice jump for fire enemies), etc. The main things that made the system work so well, other than the diminished focus on numbers fetishism and the complete lack of bloat you already mentioned, were that a) on level up you'd choose to upgrade one of three individual stats (HP, FP, BP) exactly 5 points, no RNG involved, b) the EXP needed to upgrade to next level was fixed at 100, and instead the number of Star Points enemies gave decreased until it hit 0, limiting grinding, and c) the Action Commands were extremely fun to carry out.

Not my favorite battle system ever, though. The Action Commands certainly make it much more entertaining than most JRPGs (as well as the platforming/puzzle segments in the overworld -- why hasn't that become standard yet?), and I haven't come across a non-Mario game that's executed the concept nearly as well, but the end of the day it's still a relatively simple system, and the battles presented in the game are really easy unless you self-impose hard mode challenges like no HP upgrades or something (see, this is another advantage of upgrading stats individually =P). I'd prefer a more SRPG-style system like the Fire Emblem series in this type of game, with preset battle scenarios taking place on a grid and a very limited focus on random battles and/or grinding -- I think with a bit of experimentation a system like this could work well with even a 3-party-member JRPG (which is what me and a few other people are attempting to do in our current game).

[Contrary]

The World Ends With You had an interesting battle system for the fact that you were fighting two battles at once. Attention became an important resource. Not really a turnbased RPG though.

I also had the idea for an RPG where it was built around doing combos. Like, each character would have a pool of moves (uppercut, kick, jumping smash) and doing certain orders (maybe with specific timing) would let you execute cool combos. Maybe toss in some yomi where jumping attack > normal attack > anti air attack > jumping attack. But I dunno yomi doesn't really work against AI so have a small change in the enemy sprites to hint at their next move?

[Bree]

I know that the Legaia games had some sort of funky combat system based off of combos, as did Hybrid Heaven. Never got to play either of those, though.

[njm1992]

Oh, there's also the Tales JRPG series

They had 2d real time fighting with multiple A.I. (or human controlled) allies and enemies.

I haven't seen anything like it in other games that were not fighting games.

[JasonPickering]

so I am thinking about switching up my idea a little bit for this



basically the player waits until the bar fills to a decent percentage then attacks, well this just didn't feel right to me so I am possibly changing it to a bidding mechanic. basically the player will get 6 tiles down bottom, these belong to the enemy. they can spend one action point to switch a tile from the enemy to theirs. once they have everything ready they press the go button, and one tile is randomly chosen. the player will still have to fight more and more monsters, but their action points will be limited, so although switching over more tiles, is a better idea you don't want to end up with no points left on the last guy.

so what do you think?

[Player 3]

Oh, there's also the Tales JRPG series

They had 2d real time fighting with multiple A.I. (or human controlled) allies and enemies.

I haven't seen anything like it in other games that were not fighting games.

Hence one reason why they were pretty good. Except for the AI. Once you're paralyzed and surrounded, the only thing you can do is bide the time with HEAL and some espers to destroy them.

[blurr]

so I am thinking about switching up my idea a little bit for this

Do you mind sharing which game engine/application and language you are using to make that game? An amateur here, asking out of curiosity.