Battle System Concept - Feedback Requested

I haven't been around here very much in the past year because I'm working on a game for Dream.Build.Play 2012. After writing the Eternity Fragment demo, I started thinking about what I could do with a scratch-built engine and proceeded messing around with XNA. You can see how that's progressed on my personal and team's YouTube channels, as well as my blog.

I'm at the point where I'm thinking about the combat, and I had an idea for a real-time queue-based system. On the "main screen," combat flows in real-time and maybe you can hold a button to speed it up. Another button brings up the "strategy screen," where you add actions to each character's queue by picking an action and a target. At set intervals, the top action in each character's queue is executed. It's sort of like how in an RTS, you tell a building to build a queue of units, and they're made one at a time. However, I have two ideas for specifying intervals, and I'd like some feedback from people who understand battle system mechanics.

The first method is to use an ATB gauge for each character, and fill it at a rate defined by their class and level. Different classes would have more attacks-per-minute. It's essentially the traditional ATB system, except you're scheduling attacks several rounds ahead. This was the original concept I had, and it actually came about as a way to avoid the excessive state management of a turn-based system.

The second method is to use a "battle clock" that counts up to 60 and tie different attacks to the "seconds" on the clock. A physical attack might execute three times per round, so a character attacks on 0, 20, and 40. A magic attack might only execute at 50. This means that attacks aren't single actions, but rather, behaviors or attitudes for an entire round.

Which method sounds more fun, strategic, balanced, etc.?

The strategy screen thing sounds interesting to me, honestly.

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The system of queuing attacks sounds similar to what happens in Final Fantasy XII (and probably other recent FF's, that is just the last one I have played)

The second concept doesn't seem very strategic to me. How would dishing certain attacks based on time progress the battle? How would the player plan his attacks? Maybe I'm missing a key factor here, but it seems like it would work slowly and would be slightly the definition of antifun.

The first concept is more interesting to me, enough, in fact, that it might entice me to play the game. I personally like RTS games and having an RTS/RPG hybrid would make for something entertaining and challenging. It would certainly increase the challenge more than the time system would do. What I would add to that, if the technology permits, is the ability to change queue order on the fly to adjust your strategy. The thing I hate about strategy games that use the queue system is that you sometimes have to delete an entire row of commands because the fifth action on the list is about to screw over your people because it comes too late and really should be the next thing to trigger. Adjust that and you'll probably have a fun game on your hands.

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First concept. There was a (surprise, surprise) well done online fantasy card game that used a mechanic like this. Can't remember the link.

Essentially, different cards/actions have a cool down time. Tactics involve putting down 'mana' (rts resource management) to build up to stronger actions. It's always a lot of fun. For rpgs, the fun in a battle system comes from large part acquiring/unlocking more actions in battle. The only issue here would be how to handle randoms.

edit: game looks awesome. Hope you do well in the dream.build.play challenge! REPRESENT

edit 2: whoa, I get an ENTIRE SLIMEBUCK for editing a post? Time to red mage this mutha

edit 3: cha-ching haha

I did not think of FFXII when I had the initial idea. FFXII had a "set it and forget it" approach to choosing combat actions, but I want to keep it moving. A character's action queue isn't going to be longer than five actions. FFXIII does something like this, but you build the queue after the ATB gauge fills and only for the lead character. I liked the pacing of FFXIII battles, but I want to extend control over the whole party and eliminate wasted time. If there is another game that uses a similar system to this, I'd really like to take a look at it before I get too deep in this.

The first method would be easier to implement and probably more fun to balance. I'm still trying to figure out how to make the second method work, but I don't think I'm going to use it for this project.

I might be able to reuse the battle clock idea to count rounds. I've been considering the idea of a bonus multiplier that decreases after so many rounds, which encourages the player to strive for quick battles. Rockman EXE did this, but not in a way that was immediately visible to the player, and the rewards weren't very good. If you can finish a battle in less than X rounds, you should gain more EXP and items.

Being able to change your queue after you've made it was one of the first considerations I thought of, so I'm setting out to design it knowing that one button on the strategy screen will remove the last entry in the queue. However, this creates an exploit possibility where the player can clear a character's queue just before they get attacked and put Defend in slot 0. Unless slot 0 can only be cleared by letting its action execute, the player can defend against every single attack. On the other hand, why punish the player? It might be helpful to change an attack on the very last tick. I'm undecided on that issue.

Have you heard of Legends of Grimrock?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HnTeQFBIq0

When I saw the combat (and especially the button interface) I thought of this thread.

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I've seen that one, but that's not synchronous for the four party members. I've tried to play Eye of the Beholder and those sorts of games, but it's hard to command four characters in real-time.

Since Square Enix owns a patent on the ATB system and this is a commercial project, I'd prefer not to straight up copy the ATB gauge and its function. In its place, I'd have to assign charge times to individual attacks, sort of the reverse of how skills in most MMOs have cool-down timers. A physical attack might take 15 ticks, so a queue full of physical attacks would take 75 ticks to empty. That number could be variable depending on class and equipment, so a mage with a staff would have a considerably longer charge time compared to a swordsman with the same weapon. The formula might be something like SkillBase + WeaponDelay - CharacterSpeed.

I'm still thinking about the battle clock idea from the second method I described, and I'd like to use it to show a visual timeline of your and your enemy's queues. There could be a strategic element in seeing when attacks will happen, and you can schedule a defense action if you know when the enemy is going to attack. Unless you have an enemy "scanned," it's future attacks would show up as "?" blocks on the timeline, so it's somewhat balanced.You wouldn't interact with it, it would just show what's going to happen in the next 90 ticks or so.

Writing it out here is really helping me organize my thoughts, so please excuse me if I'm rambling at all.

That actually sounds rather similar to the creature combat system used in Black & White 1. I've also seen some Flash games that pull off something similar, if I could just remember the name...

To the Newgrounds Cave!

*nanananananananaNANA!*

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I think the ATB system is overrated. It's neat, but easy to improve it into something different.

The action queuing has me visualizing The Sim's. In theory it can work, but in practice... it will be a desperate struggle.

I've tried a variation where you queue actions of like 12+ individual characters, I've seen it in FF12's gambit system, and they both have the problem of it becoming boring and distancing the player from feeling like they're a part of the game. You tend to wait around, the game feels like it's just playing itself, and the action crawls.

So the solution would be something along the lines of: make sure you speed it up and/or make the visuals super awesome so they don't mind waiting around and watching it all.

I've got a basic prototype of the system working, minus user interaction. After a command executes, a new command is added. Each character gets commands with intervals of 15 + their ID. Character 0's commands have a delay of 15, character 1's commands have a delay of 16...

http://youtu.be/diyluqm-rE0

What I like about the game from these Youtube videos is that everything seems to run just a touch better than the OHR does. It's very subtle, and almost unnoticeable, but I'm pretty sure the screen scrolls at a smoother frame rate. The map fading also looks a little nicer. Or maybe it fades a little slower. Or maybe I'm so used to seeing the OHR handle display in a certain way that any miniscule difference pops out. But whatever it is, I like the aesthetic it gives.

Watching it also got me thinking about how nice it would be if we had a selection of fade filters to choose from. Like, instead of just having fade-to-black as our only option, I think it would be nice to have other cinematic techniques at our disposal, like cross-fades, wipes, circular fades, and so on. Basically anything that Windows Movie Maker can do, the OHR should also do. That's my thinking here. Something else to put on the long list of demands.

The battle sequence you showed off will make a little more sense when you turn it into an actual battle. Right now it just looks like heroes are stepping forth to attack just as they would do in the OHR.

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It's getting there: http://youtu.be/v2oQjUelnHA

Edit: Actually, I just put together a demo of the timeline visualization. It's a lot easier to understand. A unit on the scrolling timeline denotes attack type and target. Enemy target indicators will eventually be a different color Roman numeral to differentiate them from allies.

http://youtu.be/LlbH4u-Dl68