(Caution: long post ahead!)
I am trying to create a side-view CBS in RPGM1. Or at least I'm going to after I get the graphics done for it. I do have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to make it, but creating it I'm sure is going to be plenty difficult, and I'm wondering if it'll be worth the trouble. So I'm asking you guys if you'd play through a 10-hour game with this CBS. I know giving a description probably doesn't compare to having a playable demo, but considering how much work it would take to make one, I wouldn't want to make it only to find out I won't be using it. Though if it is required that a demo be made, I'll go ahead and make it. So, here's a description of my battle system.
As said, it will be a side-view battle system. Up to four party members will be on the right, up to four enemies on the left. There are more than four possible party members, but who is in your party will depend on where you're at in the story; there will not be any point where all the party members will be available at the same time. At the bottom of the screen will be the health guages, represented as hearts. Each party member will ALWAYS have a max health of 3 hearts (2HP each for 6HP total). The monsters' health will be a bit more varied, and bosses in particular will of course have a lot more HP.
Obviously, there won't be an ATB guage, nor will there be a speed rating. All your party members will take their turns first, followed by all the monsters. When it's your turn, a cross menu will appear at the center of the screen. Pressing left will have you do a regular attack, pressing up will have you use a special skill, pressing down will have you heal, and pressing right will have you flee. You have a 100% chance of fleeing, except you can't flee boss fights of course.
Choosing to attack is simple. Just choose which monster to attack. You'll cause exactly 1 damage to your target. Enemies will do the same. Obviously, the game would either be too easy or too hard if you could only cause that damage. That's where the skills come in.
Each character in the game has two skills (some skills are used by more than one character). Each character can only "hold" one of these skills. To switch between skills, you'll have to do so at a special location (maybe at save points; undecided still). Skills do not have any sort of cost, other than the turn that's taken to use them, and they can be used any amount of times in battle. Their purpose in general is to boost your stats in some way (and I use "stats" loosely, as there are only two or three). For example, the most basic skill increases the amount of times the effected character can attack in one turn. So now if you cast that, the effected character will be able to cause either 2 damage to one enemy, or 1 damage to two enemies. The effect lasts two, maybe three rounds, making up for the time you didn't attack. Casting the skill again won't boost the amount of rounds it'll be in effect, but reset it back to 2 turns. So you see, unless you want the battle to last longer than necessary, you're going to have to do more than attack, attack, attack, heal, rinse, repeat. Oh yeah, and enemies are able to use skills like this as well, so be careful.
Healing is just that; the character takes his turn to heal himself. Aside from key items, the only items in the game are Potions. That probably doesn't sound good, but it's necessary, as it would've either taken too much memory or be flat out impossible had I tried throwing in other items (which would probably require bad status effects). At first potions will only heal a small amount, but as you get furthur in the game, potions will become more potent and heal larger amounts. It will be possible to use a Potion on a downed character, though of course that's hardly useful if your whole party is defeated. Potions will probably be unusable outside of battle.
After all your party members take their turns, the monsters take theirs. Before a monster does anything, you are given the choice to block or dodge an attack. Note that you won't know who the monster is going to strike, or even if the monster will do so at all. If you choose to block the attack, the targeted character will only take 1 damage, no matter if the monster had boosted stats. If you choose to dodge, you will completely evade the attack. Blocking has a higher chance of working than dodging, though neither are guarenteed. How frequently they work, I'm not sure, as that would take some playtesting to get it balanced out. I'm also undecided whether monsters will be able to do the same.
After all monsters are defeated, you get money and experience. Money is used to buy potions and rest at inns. You get 1XP per battle. (It's unneccessary to waste memory to give out more XP.) Unlike most RPGs, your attack/defense/health/etc. don't go up any, aside from with skills. Instead, XP goes towards powering up your skills. Currently, I'm planning that only the currently "held" skills gain XP. When skills level up, they either become more powerful or can be used more than once per turn. Each skill has three levels, meaning a skill will only level up twice. Since I don't want the player to reach a "max level" too soon before the end, this means that it takes some time for a skill to level up. The first level up might not happen until the third or fourth dungeon. It will be possible to get to the "max level" before the end, though you probably won't get each character's other skill to L3. So you'll have to make a choice which skills you think will be more important as you go along.
Should you lose in battle, you will be warped back to the last save point reached with full health. You don't need to save at it to warp back to it, since there is no way to check if you saved or not; the closest I could come is to note if you selected "yes" when asked to save. A treasure chest will also appear next to the save point, where you'll be able to re-obtain all the potions you used since you last reached the save point. Along with that, should the player lose a boss fight, I'm hoping to include an option to skip right back into the battle instead of watching the scene before it again (especially if it was a long scene).
That's pretty much it for the gameplay. As for looks, I don't have time to describe it. Some of it will look nice (the characters have an animation when they do a regular attack), some of it won't (the enemies simply flash when attacking). I will have a few custom monsters, but of course don't expect any monster in the game to be bigger than the party members. And speaking of which, I'm very restricted with the battle variations in the game, due to both a lack of enough monsters for use outside the DBS and because it would take up so much more memory if I had more variations. Right now, there will be only two or three variations in each place, besides the boss. So in one place for example, you'd constantly be fighting the same set of goblin/goblin/gobin and slime/goblin/slime.
And, there's probably more I could describe, but that's all I have time to post. Any questions and/or comments would be very much appreciated.
I am trying to create a side-view CBS in RPGM1. Or at least I'm going to after I get the graphics done for it. I do have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to make it, but creating it I'm sure is going to be plenty difficult, and I'm wondering if it'll be worth the trouble. So I'm asking you guys if you'd play through a 10-hour game with this CBS. I know giving a description probably doesn't compare to having a playable demo, but considering how much work it would take to make one, I wouldn't want to make it only to find out I won't be using it. Though if it is required that a demo be made, I'll go ahead and make it. So, here's a description of my battle system.
As said, it will be a side-view battle system. Up to four party members will be on the right, up to four enemies on the left. There are more than four possible party members, but who is in your party will depend on where you're at in the story; there will not be any point where all the party members will be available at the same time. At the bottom of the screen will be the health guages, represented as hearts. Each party member will ALWAYS have a max health of 3 hearts (2HP each for 6HP total). The monsters' health will be a bit more varied, and bosses in particular will of course have a lot more HP.
Obviously, there won't be an ATB guage, nor will there be a speed rating. All your party members will take their turns first, followed by all the monsters. When it's your turn, a cross menu will appear at the center of the screen. Pressing left will have you do a regular attack, pressing up will have you use a special skill, pressing down will have you heal, and pressing right will have you flee. You have a 100% chance of fleeing, except you can't flee boss fights of course.
Choosing to attack is simple. Just choose which monster to attack. You'll cause exactly 1 damage to your target. Enemies will do the same. Obviously, the game would either be too easy or too hard if you could only cause that damage. That's where the skills come in.
Each character in the game has two skills (some skills are used by more than one character). Each character can only "hold" one of these skills. To switch between skills, you'll have to do so at a special location (maybe at save points; undecided still). Skills do not have any sort of cost, other than the turn that's taken to use them, and they can be used any amount of times in battle. Their purpose in general is to boost your stats in some way (and I use "stats" loosely, as there are only two or three). For example, the most basic skill increases the amount of times the effected character can attack in one turn. So now if you cast that, the effected character will be able to cause either 2 damage to one enemy, or 1 damage to two enemies. The effect lasts two, maybe three rounds, making up for the time you didn't attack. Casting the skill again won't boost the amount of rounds it'll be in effect, but reset it back to 2 turns. So you see, unless you want the battle to last longer than necessary, you're going to have to do more than attack, attack, attack, heal, rinse, repeat. Oh yeah, and enemies are able to use skills like this as well, so be careful.
Healing is just that; the character takes his turn to heal himself. Aside from key items, the only items in the game are Potions. That probably doesn't sound good, but it's necessary, as it would've either taken too much memory or be flat out impossible had I tried throwing in other items (which would probably require bad status effects). At first potions will only heal a small amount, but as you get furthur in the game, potions will become more potent and heal larger amounts. It will be possible to use a Potion on a downed character, though of course that's hardly useful if your whole party is defeated. Potions will probably be unusable outside of battle.
After all your party members take their turns, the monsters take theirs. Before a monster does anything, you are given the choice to block or dodge an attack. Note that you won't know who the monster is going to strike, or even if the monster will do so at all. If you choose to block the attack, the targeted character will only take 1 damage, no matter if the monster had boosted stats. If you choose to dodge, you will completely evade the attack. Blocking has a higher chance of working than dodging, though neither are guarenteed. How frequently they work, I'm not sure, as that would take some playtesting to get it balanced out. I'm also undecided whether monsters will be able to do the same.
After all monsters are defeated, you get money and experience. Money is used to buy potions and rest at inns. You get 1XP per battle. (It's unneccessary to waste memory to give out more XP.) Unlike most RPGs, your attack/defense/health/etc. don't go up any, aside from with skills. Instead, XP goes towards powering up your skills. Currently, I'm planning that only the currently "held" skills gain XP. When skills level up, they either become more powerful or can be used more than once per turn. Each skill has three levels, meaning a skill will only level up twice. Since I don't want the player to reach a "max level" too soon before the end, this means that it takes some time for a skill to level up. The first level up might not happen until the third or fourth dungeon. It will be possible to get to the "max level" before the end, though you probably won't get each character's other skill to L3. So you'll have to make a choice which skills you think will be more important as you go along.
Should you lose in battle, you will be warped back to the last save point reached with full health. You don't need to save at it to warp back to it, since there is no way to check if you saved or not; the closest I could come is to note if you selected "yes" when asked to save. A treasure chest will also appear next to the save point, where you'll be able to re-obtain all the potions you used since you last reached the save point. Along with that, should the player lose a boss fight, I'm hoping to include an option to skip right back into the battle instead of watching the scene before it again (especially if it was a long scene).
That's pretty much it for the gameplay. As for looks, I don't have time to describe it. Some of it will look nice (the characters have an animation when they do a regular attack), some of it won't (the enemies simply flash when attacking). I will have a few custom monsters, but of course don't expect any monster in the game to be bigger than the party members. And speaking of which, I'm very restricted with the battle variations in the game, due to both a lack of enough monsters for use outside the DBS and because it would take up so much more memory if I had more variations. Right now, there will be only two or three variations in each place, besides the boss. So in one place for example, you'd constantly be fighting the same set of goblin/goblin/gobin and slime/goblin/slime.
And, there's probably more I could describe, but that's all I have time to post. Any questions and/or comments would be very much appreciated.
). Is this for Slayers' Reign? I think this'd be easier to make on rpgm2, and more customizable, and you could probably make more enemy sets(?). I'm interested to see what you decide. I think 6 hp may be a little too low, perhaps 8 or 10'd be better. It's good it'll be quick (and easy to calculate) though.
) I'm pretty sure people won't mind.
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