Re: [Adonthell-devel] Battle System

[Alexandre Courbot]

The most trollish discussion (the Battle System) is back! The discussion
will be veeeeery long! ;)

Well, we already talked a lot about it before, but the way the game
evolved (and will continue to evolve) we can start it from scratch
again, I think.

Last time we all more or less agreed that the battle would take place on
another 'view', which would be a side-viewed arena with much taller and
detailed characters. The arena would be generated from the map tiles
around the player. This was the dominant idea because of the limitations
of the map engine. As with the new one you'll have another dimension of
freedom for the character movments, rediscussing about this is sensible.
There are some pros and cons in doing the battles on the map:

pros:
-There is no need to rewrite another land management system (moves,
actions, etc...) as we would use the map's one to animate the
characters. On the other hand, the map system will have to handle that.
But with our future plans, this shouldn't be a problem.
-That would mean much less graphics for the characters. Doing the
fighting actions for large side-viewed characters would be a lot of
work, and I don't know whether we would have enough hands to do it
properly.
-The movment freedom will be positively affected: you could decide to
hit a door, or a character. Maybe the guy would then defend himself, or
immediatly die (depending on the power of your attack)

cons:
-The game would be more linear. Having a "separate" fighting system
would bring like a "second game in the game".
-The graphic effects would be less impressive - a far-seen top down view
just can't be as impressive as a close side-viewed arena.

Don't forget also that we have powerfull scripting capabilities
embedded. I launched the idea once (I think it was appreciated) to give
that characters the ability to "learn" basic movments, that they could
combine during training sessions (when you enter a training room, for
example) and save to use them back in real combat. This way to do would
be much more realistic, I think. The player could spend hours trying the
different combos, and select the ones he find the most adapted to his
upcoming fights (the number of moves you can save would be limited and
would increase with your experience). This can be achived very easily in
Python and would allow any player to adapt his characters to his style.

Alex.
-- 
http://www.gnurou.org