I just had an idea and I encourage anyone to steal it!

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 8:22 am

i was actually throwing this idea around in my head a while back. i wanted to try something like deus ex where if your arms or legs were badly damaged you'd lose the ability to use them until healed. if your main weapon hand "died" you'd lose the ability to fight and would have to run, unless your legs were damaged in which case you're pretty much dead. this would allow for dual wielding/interchangeable swords/shields/magic items between hands.

the downside right now is you can't have the loss of one "hero" directly effect another "hero." if the head "died" i couldn't have that effect the hand's ability to hit, or the leg's ability to dodge.

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 1:47 pm

Jack wrote:i was actually throwing this idea around in my head a while back. i wanted to try something like deus ex where if your arms or legs were badly damaged you'd lose the ability to use them until healed. if your main weapon hand "died" you'd lose the ability to fight and would have to run, unless your legs were damaged in which case you're pretty much dead. this would allow for dual wielding/interchangeable swords/shields/magic items between hands.

the downside right now is you can't have the loss of one "hero" directly effect another "hero." if the head "died" i couldn't have that effect the hand's ability to hit, or the leg's ability to dodge.

It's unfortunate that hero death cannot trigger stuff like that. Your idea sounds like it would make for a really challenging game. Having death of heroes trigger events would be very useful. Another cool thing would be if each dead hero triggered a stat boost in the remaining heroes. That way I could make a battle system that emulates the concept of remaining characters going in to sort of a "desperation mode" in which they're defense lowers but they're attack or crit. attack goes way up.

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 1:50 pm

BMR wrote:Actually, I kinda like the HUD idea, seems that it'd be pretty cool. And you'd be able to use the hero ready meters as charging meters for the different parts or something.

Yeah and by using an animated battle background you could kind of make it look like lights, buttons, and radars in the cockpit are blinking and spinning. I'd love to see someone pull this off!

Gizmog · Post by **Gizmog** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 6:00 pm

It's actually possible, but complicated, to have attacks link together based on who is alive and who isn't, thanks to the "Attack always Targets Hero 0,1,2,3" bitsets. You could probably do some really, really crazy chaining stuff. I kind of did it in Human Centipede RPG, but I've always been terrible at default battles and got confused, someone else might have better luck.

Mystic · Post by **Mystic** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 6:00 pm

Hm... are "Hero is Alive" tags set in battle? You could use dummy enemies that rely on these tags to create the desperation conditions that you want. However, I imagine these tags aren't set.

Otherwise there are probably some other ways to do it... like a dummy enemy that only targets dead heroes with an empty attack that chains into the all-targeted boost attack...

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 6:12 pm

Mystic wrote:Hm... are "Hero is Alive" tags set in battle? You could use dummy enemies that rely on these tags to create the desperation conditions that you want. However, I imagine these tags aren't set.

Otherwise there are probably some other ways to do it... like a dummy enemy that only targets dead heroes with an empty attack that chains into the all-targeted boost attack...

That sounds worthy of a try, I'd love to have a desperation mode but would also want to prevent retriggering of stats-up if a hero was revived then killed again. I think more on it.

Post by **TMC** » Sat Nov 09, 2013 7:57 am

I've heard this suggested years ago; I think someone even created a mockup of the system, or even started working on a game (I have the vague idea that it was BlastedEarth). I'm not going to look for a screenshot as it must have been at least 5 years ago. In that version the projective was first person and the heroes were different subsystems, with the hero sprites being icons on a HUD I think.

Bob the Hamster wrote:Unfortunately the formation arranger does not allow heroes to be moved at all. Not one pixel :(

That could change in the future, but I have no estimates for when.

Clearly formation layouts should be given as slice collections! That way we can have 2.5D battle backdrops, with separate (non-targetable) props/scenery with fake Z-depth. (And whenever slice animation is added, you'd have animated scenery). Yet another reason to convert battles to slices :)

Hm... are "Hero is Alive" tags set in battle?

They are not, but I consider that a bug.