Feature request: Time Hit/Timed Attack ala Mario RPG

I noticed one really cool battle feature, which exists in many RPG games, does not exist in OHRRPGCE.

You know the gratifying timed hit in the Mario RPG series(Paper Mario, Mario&Luigi)? When you perform an attack or defence, pressing the button at the right time either increases the attack or defence. It's also very gratifying when it is performed, and seems to make battles more enjoyable and not last forever.

If this feature is already in the engine, please let me know where I can enable it's bitset.

Would anybody else use this feature if it were available? A bitset for all attacks and one for individual attacks would be preferable. This way, if you only want one attack to have a timed button, it can be done. Also a bitset to enable multiple hits if done successfully. This is used with Mario's "Super Jump" ability in Mario RPG.

Reference for implementation: http://www.mariowiki.com/Action_Command

This would make the battles more interactive until BattleScripting is finally added.

I'd use it. In fact, I'd probably replace accuracy and evasion stats completely if it were implemented.

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Custom battle script -- the future is now!!

If TMC can walk on in and add features, what's to stop anyone else? Is TMC the only cacti mad enough to do it?!

Yup. Have you ever seen the source code? It's scarier than silent hill, and just as bad as evil dead. No coder that wants to keep their sanity would touch the source code with a ten foot pole. The source code is what made cacti mad, just like wonderland made the mad hatter mad.

I would love to have timed attacks like Super Mario RPG, or maybe a system like in the Shadow Hearts series.

The main reason I haven't attempted anything like that yet (okay, the second main reason, right after the fact that the code is as tangled as the tentacles of an Eldar One's beard) is that there are currently no controls at all for the timing of an attack animation.

I would like to clean up the attack animation cod enough that we could easily add keypress-checks or timing meters to it, but I haven't written up any plan for it and can't guess yet how much work it will be.

Haha.

I won't complain, but I would just make such a feature battle-scriptable rather than built-in. I wasn't expectign so much demand for it.

Yeah, that is more or less what I meant. But I would like to clean up the existing attack animation system so that they don't have to be completely and totally separate from the battlescripted attacks.

Good to hear!


Hmm, well I was thinking of making it sort of a chain attack. You can expand the chaining attack, to say if the player presses a key at the right moment, the chain attack is 100% successful. If the designer wants a multi-timed attack, chain the next attack to itself.

Eg:

Main Attack:
- Chain to "Timed Attack"
- If attack key is pressed on attack animation frame 2.

Timed Attack:
- Animations and damage, etc... if timed attack was successful.

This is just an example conditional, as it's very simple. I'd recommend that each attacker animation has it's own specific timed attack "moment", where the player has a second to react and press the attack key a second time to make a successful chain. In most timed attack enabled games, it just before the attack is dealt. It forces the player to pay more attention to the battle, and provides a sense of gratification during the battle, which can also speed up the battle.

There should also be a bitset for specific monsters a timed attack might fail for.