Turn Based Battles

[Meowskivich]

One thing I've gotta note is that in the enemy formations menus you can't press enter to hear the music when hovering over the "Battle Music" selection.

Was this intentional or a mistake? Sure, this is a bug notification and not related to turnbased battles, but still. I sorta like sampling my music while editing formations.

edit: I just now figured out that clicking the formation number itself that it will play the music. This is weird.

[Meowskivich]

Well, isn't this freakin' great, youtube decided to remove the option to use the old embedding powers... actually one of the only things I actually hold against the new youtube layout.

However, until I can find a way to edit the coding for videos, here's a link:
http://youtu.be/X_9y4RRFIYQ

Edit: Forgot to say what the video was.
Basically it's showing off the battle background template I'm going to be using to craft the other battle backgrounds. There's about 3 or 4 I've gotta make, not too many areas in the game.
I've gotta ask, is there some way to turn down battle speed a tad? it's a tad hyperactive for me.

further edit: Code successfully manipulated. I'm sure my Web authoring and programming classes were meant for this precise moment.
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[KF Harlock]

Usually, you can kind of control the "feel" and pace of combat by messing with the delays on attacks. Sometimes even just a buffer of 1 second or less between attacks can make combat feel a lot better, easier to understand, and more controlled.

[Bob the Hamster]

Of course turn-mode makes such delays completely useless. What should I do about this?

[Meowskivich]

I don't know. I just know that battle speed feels a little too fast. like things are just like BINGBANGBOOM! When I want them to be "bing, bang, boom".

If you know what I mean.

[The Wobbler]

Of course turn-mode makes such delays completely useless. What should I do about this?

Would adjustable animation speed be feasible? Like, the time it takes an attack to cross the screen.

[KF Harlock]

Is there any reason that "delay before action" shouldn't work in turn-based just the same as it does in ATB? In ATB, it obviously has a role to play in terms of balancing the rhythm of a battle, but if you were to put 10 second delays before a person's attack in turn-based, it would just bring everything to a stand-still; I understand this. However, if a person is consciously developing a game for turn-based, they wouldn't do this, and delays could be used in lengths of 1-2 seconds or less to help control the pacing and give a better sense of rhythm. Maybe include a "warning" on the help screen or something, about how delay will behave in turn-based and then just make it function as it always has?

Either way, I am definitely in favor of having some way to regulate pacing in battles; by default, combat in the OHR definitely does move at a disorienting pace.

[msw188]

Can there be a general game setting where the author can choose a number of ticks to pass between each action taken during turn-based battles? Actually, this doesn't seem like something for custom. This should be a built-in menu within game, "battle speed control", much like the built-in volume control. Then the author can have per-attack options to override this setting. Also perhaps the author is given the choice as to whether or not captions persist through this delay or not.

[Spoonweaver]

Just do battle scripting!

[Bob the Hamster]

Would adjustable animation speed be feasible? Like, the time it takes an attack to cross the screen.

Yes, that is something we need eventually, but it is pretty challenging to implement. The battle animation code is still quite messy.

Is there any reason that "delay before action" shouldn't work in turn-based just the same as it does in ATB? In ATB, it obviously has a role to play in terms of balancing the rhythm of a battle, but if you were to put 10 second delays before a person's attack in turn-based, it would just bring everything to a stand-still; I understand this. However, if a person is consciously developing a game for turn-based, they wouldn't do this, and delays could be used in lengths of 1-2 seconds or less to help control the pacing and give a better sense of rhythm. Maybe include a "warning" on the help screen or something, about how delay will behave in turn-based and then just make it function as it always has?

Either way, I am definitely in favor of having some way to regulate pacing in battles; by default, combat in the OHR definitely does move at a disorienting pace.

tick delays on attacks already have an effect in turn-based mode.

Here is how delays work in turn-based mode. First, it calculates the order of the heroes and enemies based on their speed.

Then it gives the first attacker +0 delay, the second attacker +1 delay, the third attacker +2 delay, and so-on, up to +11 delay

This is added to the attack delay. So suppose your fastest hero does an attack with a 2-tick delay. That means that instead of going first, the fastests hero will attack after the second and third fastest heroes. Does that make any sense?

To further clarify, attack delays are measured from the time when the attack is chosen -- the beginning of the turn-- not from the end of the animation of the previous attack.

I could add a completely separate "cooldown" delay for after an attack, however I need to take care to apply it in the right situations. For example, if I applied it to ever attack, it would make all chains awful, so I would have to make sure it only happens after non-chaining attacks, or after the last attack in a chain -- still that shouldn't be too hard.

Can there be a general game setting where the author can choose a number of ticks to pass between each action taken during turn-based battles? Actually, this doesn't seem like something for custom. This should be a built-in menu within game, "battle speed control", much like the built-in volume control. Then the author can have per-attack options to override this setting. Also perhaps the author is given the choice as to whether or not captions persist through this delay or not.

Hmmm. Now that is an interesting idea. I had not thought of it as a player-preference, but that is indeed a possibility. The game author could choose a default, and decide whether or not the battle speed adjuster should appear in the menu.

Also, persisting captions through the delay would be great. I notice that the default value for caption duration "Full Duration Of Attack" is almost useless because most attack animations are over too fast to read anything.

Just do battle scripting!

All this battle-system clean up does indeed move us slowly in that direction :)

[Meowskivich]

question: do chained attacks work the same turn if no delays have been added? and if delays have been added, would it delay until the next turn?

I'm curious how chains work in turnbased since I haven't gotten to messing with it yet. I sorta want some characters like a boss named Phayljor to spawn 4 different enemies all at once.

[Bob the Hamster]

question: do chained attacks work the same turn if no delays have been added? and if delays have been added, would it delay until the next turn?

I'm curious how chains work in turnbased since I haven't gotten to messing with it yet. I sorta want some characters like a boss named Phayljor to spawn 4 different enemies all at once.

A delay will not cause a chain to go into the next turn. Chains act as a single attack for the purpose of turn-based battles.

UNLESS you turn on the bitset "delay doesn't block futher actions". When that bit is on, the chain is no longer considered part of the same attack, so it could happen in the following turn.

And also, of course, if an attack in the chain has a "Turn Delay" set then it will happen in the next turn (and in this case the "delay doesn't block futher actions" determines whether or not the attacker is allowed to do another attack on the next turn)

If you want an example of this, check out Hilda's "Delay" and "Charge" attacks in turntest.rpg

[KF Harlock]

That makes perfect sense about delays being used to determine order of action, and so on -- I can see how this would be useful for some attacks, so changing that to allow for the "buffers" between actions to control rhythm would be a bad idea, yeah. That being said, I also think msw188's suggestion is a good one; even a difference of 0s -> 0.5s delay between actions goes a long way towards making battles "feel" better ((sorry to use such abstract terms)).

Since you brought up how tick delays currently work in turn-based, it inspires a question. Would it be possible to have some bitset (or maybe even NEGATIVE delay settings??) that causes certain attacks to always go first in a queue? Would be useful for your traditional ninja/thief-type skill sets.

[Mystic]

Just do battle scripting!

And you wondered why I've been doing my own battle system

[Bob the Hamster]

Since you brought up how tick delays currently work in turn-based, it inspires a question. Would it be possible to have some bitset (or maybe even NEGATIVE delay settings??) that causes certain attacks to always go first in a queue? Would be useful for your traditional ninja/thief-type skill sets.

Yeah, negative delays might be a good idea. Obviously real delay can never be less than zero, but since attack delay and turn-based-initiative delay get added together, a negative attack delay could be perfectly logical.

You can get the effect already, if you give *all* attacks the same delay. For example if all attacks have delay 5, then turn-based initiative-order will be undisturbed, but you can still provide a shorter delay to make a special attack go first.

Still, negative delay is better. I always feel slightly queasy whenever I tell someone they can accomplish a feature by changing a value on every single other attack in their game. I have 189 attacks in Wandering Hamster