Battles too fast; suggestions?

A while back someone made the comment about battle information occuring too fast in game.exe, and there was a great deal of general agreement.

We now have the ability to make damage stay on-screen longer, but I still find that there are some instances when I can't tell exactly what just happened to my heroes or the enemies. So let's use this thread to discuss ways to improve this condition.

For starters, I just made this post at Bugzilla:
http://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=836
My idea there is for attack captions to pause the battle.

We can also use this thread to discuss existing methods we've found helpful for slowing things down in battles, or problems we've had. One of my main problems involves chains. If I want an attack to accomplish two things without the possibility of being interrupted by another attack, how can I make the first part of the attack show what it's doing without that information being replaced by the second part too quickly? This is a huge reason why I want bug 836. If you agree, GO VOTE!

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I am Srime

I totally agree with pausing on battle captions. As it is now, you have to set everything in the battle's speed to 0 to mimic that effect, which doesn't even work sometimes in my experience.

I would also LOVE to be able to copy the damage display speed feature for attack animations, perhaps by individual attack. Part of the problem with battle speed is that animations happen so fast you never get to see them. Another issue is that the player has to read the bottom of the screen AND pay attention to numbers on the right and left sides, and I'm really not sure how to combat this. Pausing on battle menus might fix it.

Yet another issue is that attack delays still count off when the system is "paused on menus." This is extremely annoying. You can't make a slower system when it doesn't even work the way it's supposed to, and right now I have to make a bunch of crazy tweaks to get it to almost play at an acceptable speed.

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

Voted. Battle pacing is a large issue in the OHR right now, especially because we favor complex battles where the player must know what is happening, and because of chains.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

I'm not sure what this is about. I have definitely seen when an attack occurs right after I get to a menu, but I'm also certain that if an attack has a delay, this delay does not count down while my menu is up. It just seems that if the attack was only 1 tick away when the menu appeared, it executes because it was set to occur 'at the same time', so to speak, as the menu was called up...?

I agree that it is annoying. Or do you mean something else?

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I am Srime

I think he means this:



This is preventing true turn based battles from being possible.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

Yup. If you want to see it in action, have an enemy use a jump attack that chains to a delayed land. It ignores the pausing bitset.

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

This definitely sounds like one thing needed is that if an attack and a menu are set to come up on the same tick, whichever one happens first, the other should be forced to wait for it. (or at least, this option should be available)

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I am Srime

^ That would definitely be the solution James should implement.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

Right. Bug 729

And as I think about bug 836, I am beginning to like the idea.

Making battle pause on attack captions would have absolutely no effect if the caption was set to "Full Duration of Attack", but it would be useful for specific tick counts.

It would also be great to add "Full Duration of attack +N ticks"

Also, would it be crazy to have a bitset where you have to press a key to advance an attack caption?

Not at all, I'd love to have that feature!

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My website, the home of Motrya:
http://www.jshgaming.com

Sounds good.

This would be excellent, as long as we can plotscript the option for the player to turn off this bitset if they don't like it.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

Sounds like real turn based battles might be possible soon.

I agree, a plotscriptably changeable option to use keypresses to advance battle captions would also be nice. But I'm still gonna really push for my original idea. I'm glad both JP and TMC sound like they are starting to approve!

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I am Srime

Well, I don't really have much to throw out there, but I think I a more linear equation for defining speed would be excellent, because of the imporved flexibility.

Or what about the option to add a delay after attacks?

I really like the idea of keypress captions.

Captions that last until a keypress would be set on an attack-by-attack basis by the game author.

I am baffled by the request for a player-override for that.

I am baffled by the request for a plotscript override for that.

We still won't be able to run scripts in battle. (that will come someday, but not soon)