So, I am a fan of good RPGs, even ones with *dreaded* menu based combat. So many classic games, even great ones like Pokemon use menu based combat. It's an occasional complaint that "They have such great gameplay or story outside of fights, but the combat is kinda boring..."
Well, I, myself, am actually a fan of menu based combat... when it's done right!
There is a sort of... art, for lack of a better word, to a good menu based combat system. It allows a wide variety of actions that don't feel restrictive and feel like it progresses upon itself over time; even if you don't have more options, you have more availability.
For example, let's take the Final Fantasy games. It's systems often allow for a simple attack, sometimes a defence, a special or skill or magic move (which are kinda just the same thing using different charge meters), and items. Now, the attack is the bread and butter of the combat, a simple strike that is valued by your equipment, something that you progress outside of the combat. This adds a sense of of both progression and variety through a use of various gear load outs you can have before fighting. Second is the defence; not all games have this added bit, but it basically forfeits your attack for decreased damage when you're attacked next, and is mainly used because it will charge up your power moves. Power moves are the third part, the special or skill or magic or whatever sort of label you have in front of it. The main part of this is that they add a strong variety to the combat, where each move has its own special effect on the fight. This primarily helps with a menu based combat system's strongest feature: strategy. The special moves frequently unlock more and more as you progress through a game and are often different with each specific character, adding a quality of progression and uniqueness to each character you fight with. Last is items; these are the ultimate part to having a sense of progression in your fights. While they may not be linearly progressive like gear loadouts and special move unlocks, they allow for the player to feel a sense of forward movement and grounding of each fight in a game. I'm certain everyone who has played a game with menu based combat has at one point hesitated to use an item because they know whether or not they keep that item will affect future fights.
These four features, attack, defend, special move, and use item, or a similar set up, are a solid combination, and it is not surprising that it has endured from the old RPGs of the past all the way to recent, modern games like Deltarune.
Now let's take the above mentioned Pokemon games as an example. They offer an extremely similar system, though with some major tweaks. It pretty much does away with the idea a regular attack or defence, merging those with it's special move system. Each creature you have can have up to four moves, and while these are from a massive move database, allowing for the possibility of overlap, you're not going to end up with two different Pokemon with the same move set. Actually, because of progression and the chance of Pokemon learning moves, you can often end up with multiple Pokemon of the same type having very different move sets. The effects of the moves differ wildly, allowing for a good deal of strategy to be employed. Also, as a sort of opposite to the charge meter traditional to regular special moves, Pokemon reverses the idea, causing each move to have a limited number of uses, and once it has reached zero, must be recharged back up to max.
Additionally, the combat also allows for the use of items, so that also carries with it the feeling of variety and progression explained above.
And so, with these key ideas in mind, variety, progression, and strategy, I started to design my own system. I had always been intrigued by the idea of games where you have shout out your move ("In Verbis Virtus" was quite fun, but I found the combat to be not exactly what I was looking for; would love a PvP version of that game with more combat though) or wave your hand or something to cast a spell. I decided to go with the second option. Inspired by the Samsung lock screen on my father's cell phone, I modeled my system with a 3x3 grid design where the player could draw in the rune (symbol) of the spell they wanted to execute and the system used that to search for the spell and check for it to be execute it.
Additionally, I decided to add an element to each of the nine buttons, creating the nine different elements that the game now has. It originally existed just as a way to cut processing time to a ninth for searching, but evolved into each element having its own characteristics and style. It also allowed for two spells of different elements to actually share the same rune, just so long as they start on different buttons.
As a technical note, originally the system read the spell by how the player traced it, from start to finish. Even with a few functions to remove loops and simplify the input, there were just far too many possibilities/permutations for the larger runes and all I reliably had was small, simple runes. This was not a great system. Currently, the system now compiles a list of all traced edges between two points, sorts them, eliminates all doubles, and sends that data with the first button pressed off to search with for a spell. This new system means that any way that you trace a spell's rune, as long as all of the lines are in place and there aren't any extra, and you start on the correct button, it will match with a spell.
After designing my system to that point, with nine different elements, and the element of the spell dictated by the element used at the start, I decided to expand the spell tree to branch into other specialized types (ex. ice is a specialization of water, metal from earth, plasma from lightning), and merge into new types (ex. fire and earth can merge into lava, life and shield into absorption, death and water into poison).
Probably my biggest worry with the system would be the time spells, which at this point I have fully planned out, both mechanically and how to implement them into the code, but have yet to do so. I'm uncertain if they will make it into the first free-roam demo planned for early 2019 as I have other things that need to be seen to first. But if you're reading this, and they aren't implemented yet, unless I say otherwise, they're coming!
One last thing will be the 'basic' spells, which all come from the centre button, the 'basic' element button. All of these spells take no mana, and I feel like I may have to explain this briefly. Simply, they aren't truly spells. These are attacks done by the main character in a physical capacity, and as such do not rely on power from Lotus (mana).
So, as I said, I've made a lot of progress on the fight system, but it is quite complex, so I've been taking a short break to fully build the spell book system (which I've pretty much finished at this point); more about that in the next post.
Well, that's all for now. See you in two weeks!
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