In an earlier post (Combat System #1, Sep 03) that discussed the combat system, we admitted that we originally aimed for making a turn-based game. However, we also mentioned that other variants (esp. the RtwP combat of Dragon Age) were worth discussing and we spent some time doing so. We are grown-ups that make games in an industry that still mostly focuses on kids as customers. Most of us were still teenagers when turn-based RPGs vanished and made place for the new era of realtime. And even if the pros and cons sometimes come down to personal taste, we think that no one would argue one point: turn-based games tend to be less “action-packed”. It can grow annoying (especially in a less tight combat) to wait until all those goblins, kobolds, what-so-ever-minions have finally made their turn. Especially watching enemies moving is kinda boring and that’s why some TB games have sped up movement (e.g. animations) to the brink of sheer ugliness.
Players are eager to see their characters’ turns and they are also excited to see whether the enemy boss will kill their tank in his next turn. And while we all enjoy wiping out 20 goblins with a fireball, no one wants to see them all move and attack one after the other. In fact, some of us got often tempted to reload and see whether their wizard has a higher initiative this time to get rid of those little annoyances in the beginning of the combat.
ToEE tried to tackle this problem with a menu option that, once activated, would allow enemies within the same initiative group to move simultaneously. That turned out to create cool packs of hobbling and wobbling goblins but (as mentioned above) was not always beneficial: In a fight with a small number of semi-bosses that happened to be in the same initiative group (say, a giant, a werewolf and a demon) we would not only want to anticipate their attacks separatly but it also does look kinda unepic when these individuals make their moves together.
So we wanted to take care of the boring minions on the one hand without randomly grouping more epic enemies on the other. We straightfowardly decided to let our level designers choose which enemies should be grouped and which shouldn’t. The ‘minion mobs’ were born and we found them to provide additional advantages:
Rather than rolling the gobs initiative individually and grouping them up accordingly, we group them up beforehand and roll their initiative only once. This implies that a group of minions can not be ‘spread out’ over the initiative list and act individually (a case that the ToEE approach didn’t prevent). Also, we are going to try and give them some additional ‘identity’ exceeding the simple fact that they act simultaneously, by also tweaking their AI to stay together and attack the same target whenever possible. We think that might add to the strategic depth of our combat (and even if it won’t, it will still be more atmospheric). As an additional consequence, the player will be able to predict the a mob’s behavior to some extent. As far as we’ve implemented this (grouping and movement already looks good, but AI is still very basic) our idea feels great and we hope we’re well on the way to make turn-based combat a little more appealing regarding the pace.
We hope you enjoy our super-size-goblin-minion-mobs screenshot (more will follow soon) and we are, as always, looking forward to your comments!
I like the initiative tweak and attacking the same character sounds reasonable to me. Do the minions try to flank the chosen character?
@jimcrowley: you can’t enlarge this shot, but soon we will post full sized screens
@doug: yes, they will flank your characters and since CC has different attack hit chances from different angles (sideways, from behind) those mobs could become very challenging
This is a very clever idea! Though I already envision the party wizard being ripped to shreds by a pack of dire rats after a particularly unlucky string of initiative rolls in the first round
I guess it will be even more important to protect the weak party members. Will the game feature party formations?
Cool stuff!
I think a lot will depend on encounter design. But I still prefer each individual unit taking their turn and acting on their own accord. Knights of the Chalice never felt boring to me. The key is to cycle through the enemy action quickly. Turn-based combat is not meant to be action packed. It is supposed to be dramatic and tense.
However, everything shown and discussed so far looks to be quality design. So I have little doubt the combat will remain fun and engaging.
Nice screenshot, too.
Soooooo, any time line set up yet, or did I miss it?
Are we looking at 18 months, 2years, how far away is the approximate release?
@dorateen: the group behaviour is limited to simultaneous movement and attack actions are still processed individually for each group member.
@sirchet: Release is 2013
Sounds great.
Just one question: what happens when in a group of mob, some decide to use ranged weapons (when available), and others to enter closed combat?How will the IA handle that?
@Abount: Good question! Minion mobs will probably consist of units that have no ranged attack or at least not one they would prefer over their melee attack. (As sketched above, the idea is mainly to get rid of boring sequential movements for relatively unimportant units. Enemies that prefer their ranged attack tend to require by far less movement than melee enemies, so grouping them would not be beneficial.)
That being said, it will happen that a mob is too big to allow all its members to get to the player. In this case units in the back would fall back on their ranged attacks if available.
Whoa, this looks ultra juicy!
It’s so good that true games are being developed.
Can’t wait to get the release!
I agree with Dorateen regarding the turn-based combat. It is not meant to be “action-packed”, and I would rather not see anyone attempt to make turn-based play cater to the easily bored, who already have enough games to play.
If speeding up the animation makes it ugly, so what? I prefer solid gameplay over animation, and I’d be playing this for its gameplay. Animation itself tends to be the biggest slowdown in games like this — not the fact that it’s turn-based. I liked the option Arcanum had for instant enemy actions, skipping the animation entirely.
Knights of the chalice do not have this problem , i really didn’t mind at all at any time. However I play with accelerated animations. You should be able to do the same on chaos chronicles, otherwise the idea is fin i guess.
My first trick for this game is to use smaller beads. The first time I pleyad I used glass beads like you did, but the second and later games I used Go stones, (which were what the author had in mind from what I can tell) and it provides a lot more room to move around on the map, and you never need to worry about stacking them, as each stone/bead should have its own room.
There was nowhere to put this feel free to move or delete it as appropriate.
One of the things that annoys me about combat is some games is the way that parties can be faced by powerful opponents with no way to avoid the encounter and no way to run away.
Will you have skills that can allow characters to avoid combat e.g tracking or listen at doors skills to tell when a room is crowded with bad guys?
Or a skill that gives the ability to guess the power of opponents? – this could give level information or a color code, black for run away, red for hard, blue for balanced green for easy to kill.
This would also allow bluff skills so party members could pretend to be higher power and scare off would be attackers.
I also could not find a general comments box on this site. (although i can understand that you can have too much of a good thing when it comes to other peoples ideas when developing something)
That’s a very good idea that opens even more possibilities, like having different groups act like squads: the squad of archers use their ranged attacks, the lancers charge frontally and the light infantry tries to flank the group… You could even introduce morale for the groups, they fight together and flee together, and even more options that would improve the tactical aspect of combat and the behaviour of the ennemies… I think you should dig this idea even deeper!
while this approach appears to shorten tedious encounters, does not it create weaknesses in the enemy AI? for instance, if they all take turns, then they can take into account the result of the previous combatant’s actions while making their turn (e.g. a goblin will not approach a character, thus spending its movement, if that character was defeated by the previous goblin), while if they all act simultaneously some of the actions may be wasted (e.g. if 4 goblins shoot the same target, which would be killed by oly two of their attacks). additionally, consecutive turns create tactical opportunitites for each next combatant, like flanking etc.
I was wondering how all of the above would be taken care of? or is it to say that since only minor mobs would be grouped, their inefficiencies would not affect the battle at all? or maybe all the rolls and AI decisions would be made before renreding animations, so actually mobs will know what is going to happen during their group’s turn and it is just that their actions would be shown simultaneously, while actually being taken in turns?