Battle System: Planning
Posted by DanielLike the menu system, the battle system is something that I always wanted to change while making Dawn’s Light. The Dawn’s Light battle was made up of a few different parts made by different people. Then I made many changes to make the battle system more interesting.
But it got too wild!
Things like the combos, the threat system and some of the trinkets wouldn’t have been possible without the changes I made. The problem was that I had to work around other people’s code which was not very fun. The built in RPG maker code was the worst. I just found it very awkward and I wished I could just do things my way.
Of course being a self taught programmer, my code is probably pretty awful to other people but it’s my code and it makes sense to me. When I started coding the battle system I quickly came to realize that even though the battle system was my code, there were many other bits and pieces that I needed that were not my code, so I changed them too.
Too much code
I ended up changing so much code that the only default code we’re using is the mapping and basic graphic and audio systems. It was probably not a smart move because it made Lilly and Sasha take longer to develop but at least we’ve got it for our future games. Although I’ll probably just write a new battle system for those because I have so many things I want to try.
I’m gonna break the chains!
For this battle system I wanted to break free of the chains that held us back on Dawn’s Light. Our new battle system has no such limits. It’s very different from Dawn’s Light and all other similar games for that matter. So it’s a bit of a risk. The goal is to make a battle system that is more streamlined for those who don’t like battles and more interesting for those who do.
Coming up next: I’ll say a little bit about the skills we’re going to have in the game.
You have a very good sense in game designing. I salute you.
I never did “get” the strategy behind the threat system in Dawn’s Light. And It didn’t play at all into how I conducted the battles. I just used whatever technique was working, threat risk or not, because the consequences of doing so didn’t have any real effect on my party. I liked the combos… but overall, I found each player was doing the exact same set of moves EVERY battle. Which got a little monotonous (cough… slime island). You say this new game is coming out in Feb? yikes.
The big problem with the threat was that defense didn’t make enough difference. If Harvey’s higher defense levels mattered more it might have worked better.
At the same time, the other characters would have been very fragile and died in only one or two hits.
It also doesn’t help that most battles were over in a single round so it didn’t really matter who hated who.
I do wish I didn’t spend so much time making so many skills for enemies. They rarely even got to attack.
So have I learned from my mistakes and improved the battle system for this game? We’ll have to wait and see.