Bringing TB into the 21st Century

[Revolver]

I tried to ask this on another thread, but it was buried in too many different discussions.

 

I want to get people's ideas on how they would implement turn based combat in RPGs- both the existing features they like and new ones they would like (No "make it realtime" posts)

 

Here are some random ones:

1) Take advantage of a 3d engine- unlock the camera and make it controllable, preferably by holding down the mouse wheel button and scrolling the mouse. This is an extra thing that can occupy the player when it's not their turn. They could look at things from different angles, and look for things to hide behind. And when it's their turn, you could find the best visual angle to view the attack and resulting gore. The only problem would be to get the graphics good enough for such a thing. Maybe it could be isometric until combat.

2) Body part targeting- of course. And visual results of the physical damage. Maybe make the weapons targetable too.

3) Make the landscape part of combat- Have most things be able to be destroyed or used as cover. Allow random rocks to be picked up and thrown. Allow people to shoot around cover at a penalty. (like spraying and praying around a corner)

4) Show special focus on improving combat AI. Make NPC combat speed adjustable.

5) Show text feedback and have dialogue during combat like in Fallout. Like: "Mordino's man is too busy feeling the rush of air on his brain to notice death approaching" or "My eye!"

6) Make it so you could still fight by simply pointing and clicking, but have the option to do more advanced complicated actions

7) Be able to initiate combat at any time

Be able to use non-combat skills to resolve combat. Holding the gun to someone's head and using your speech or charisma to deliver a "Make my day" line to make them surrender.

9) Let the comp ai take over for quick combat resolutions- when people run away, you could have the game automatically calculate whether you can catch them or not, so you dont have to manually chase them all over the place.

[axelgreese]

1,2,3,4,6, & 7 are already avilable in current TB. 5 "like in fallout" obviously it's be done before and there for exsist in current implementations of TB. And 9 is basically 8.

[Revolver]

Yeah, thats why I have the "existing features they like line" instead of saying, "all new ideas."

 

What games is #1 in? I want to see...

 

How does 9 = 8?

[axelgreese]

Yeah, thats why I have the "existing features they like line" instead of saying, "all new ideas."

 

That's not what your thread topic said.

 

What games is #1 in? I want to see...

See Silent Storm.

 

How does 9 = 8?

 

Creating a system which would allow you to end combat without killing all hotile combatants would make it very easy to designate people who "ran away" and end combat that way. Just another scenerio on the same concept.

[Atreides]

IMO 8 isn't as simple as 9 because you still need to have some element of skill, say bluffing or threatening someone (dialogue trees?) which may or may not work. In 9 the outcome isn't important.

 

Anyway a taunt feature would be cool (speech check to see if hostile villagers/enemies will become non-hostile).

[Torias]

you basically describe silent storm, apart from ai quick resolution and the use of "social combat" skills like diplomacy, intimidate, bluff...

[Revolver]

Nice...

/me goes off to find the Silent Storm demo

 

Anyone have original ideas then?

[Spook]

A pity Silent Storm is a WWII game, it did sound interesting otherwise when I looked at it at the official site.

[Iolo]

In addition to doing what TOEE does where enemies move together if possible (depending on initiative and PC's initiative) and showing the initiative order, a TB game could go back to the the original Pool of Radiance did where you could specify that a character act automatically in subsequent rounds using scripts and AI until the player decides to cancel the action. Another option would be to queue up commands that the individual PC would do in subsequent rounds until you either cancel it or all the queued actions run. It could be done so that you can remove a character's queued action (but not add them) when it's not the character's turn although that wouldn't be necessary. This is in addition to what 9 would do where you can decide to quickly resolve a battle almost over or avoid it completely and let the computer resolve it.

 

Another option (that would be configurable based on player setting since you may not want to turn this on) would be to allow the player to eliminate the wait for models to move. The model immediately moves to the final destination (after possibly showing briefly the path that the model will make) with no movement animation in between except in the case where an attack of oppurtunity, a readied action, or overwatch mode or something similar where a player's character is operating out of their normal turn would take into effect by that model moving near them. In the case of someone acting out of turn due to the reason above, the model would appear on top of the highlighted path where the attack takes place. It may not be realistic but it would eliminate one complaint that people like SP raise about turn based games.

[Torias]

A pity Silent Storm is a WWII game, it did sound interesting otherwise when I looked at it at the official site.

it has some sci fi elements and it doesn't retread any of the "D-Day" stuff or other major battles.

 

it's set in that time, but it's not ABOUT the war itself. the war provides a background to the action.

[roshan]

i want a defend option. basically you sacrifice a few action points, but you launch an attack against the next enemy that attacks you.

[Iolo]

TOEE has a defense option. A couple of them I think.

[roshan]

yeah, ir emember.

 

but i hardly played the game. iw as bored sick of it by the time i got in the temple.

 

i have honestly never seen any rpg more shallow and pointless, except for perhaps nwn.

[Iolo]

The Combat and engine had a good implementation. If that was combined with a better story and more role playing goodness and it was longer, it would have been a good combination.

[Revolver]

I wish Silent Storm style combat would be implemented for a pure RPG- have there been any examples? Is it something that would take too much of the developer focus off roleplaying and story?

 

Also do you guys think fog of war is a good thing or bad thing for a TB RPG? Usually the battles are up close and personal enough that it's not relevant though.

[roshan]

The Combat and engine had a good implementation. If that was combined with a better story and more role playing goodness and it was longer, it would have been a good combination.

true.

[MrBrown]

... With full party control. Otherwise there's a huge possibility combat is boring and drawn-out because more time is spent watching computer controlled combatants doing stuff than the player actually playing.

[Equus]

For me the best implimentation of TB so far has been silent storm. It's not without its faults of course.

 

The way it handles enemy movement could have been vastly improved, working out which paths enemy units would take (and any reaction/overwatch shots that would result from their moves) before playing all movements in one go rather than moveing each unit one. Even the option to speed up combat animation would have been nice, as it stands some of the busier levels you can wander off to make a cup of tea/coffee, watch a bit of TV and still come back to find it's moving the 30th enemy squadmember across the lawn.

 

Apart from that the engine is fantastic, destructable environments, bump & specular mapping, nice physics (although a bit over the top at times) and great looking. If they could have fixed the turn times, added a dialogue system and got better voice actors I'd have been in hog heaven.

[Iolo]

I would have preferred some comment from Feargus or other Obsidian employees regarding whether they would consider making a TB game, as opposed to the merits of each or whether the sales would justify the cost. There are certainly ways of improving the speed of TB combat as well without sacrificing tactics and the benefits of TB (I suggested a couple previously in this thread).

 

I saw this post on RPGCodex (who prefer TB) from Feargus himself regarding game systems and TB versus RT:

 

http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3107

 

I really don't want to add 400 caveats to this, but I think I need to add just one. My question is going to be just about combat - it is not about how much a role combat plays in the game or how non-linear or linear the game is going to be.

 

So, the question is - in all of your minds does combat have to be TB to be game that you all like? I've been thinking a lot about game that we are going to make and maybe some small games that we'll make and publish ourselves and I'm trying to figure out what makes the most sense from a combat perspective. There two follow up questions to that, which are is there a form of real-time combat you guys are fine with and what are your opinions of single player w/followers/henchmen vs a fully controlled party? I know that someone depends on the game itself, but I'm curious.

 

My reading of his post indicates that he would prefer to make a RT game but thought it was interesting to bring up as well as the point about making small games that they self published. If they have an existing engine (hence the small game comment) and come out with a good TB game with good set of tactics and options available, I would consider buying the game.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Bringing TB into the 21st Century

 

That almost makes it sound as if TB is old-fashioned.

[Iolo]

As implemented in some games or in some ways, it is old fashioned. There are definately ways to improve turn based so that you don't have games like POR2 where the Zombies take forever to move and at the same time not lose anything.

 

I suggested in an earlier post in this thread for instance a way to eliminate the animations showing the movement of models (without losing any tactics or advantages of TB) which of course could be optional. ShadowPaladin mentioned in the other thread JRPGs which are turn based sell more because they don't have movement (a ludicrous statement if I ever heard one) so I suggested here removing movement from PC RPGs. There is still movement of course but you don't need to show the getting from point A to point B because you know that will happen. The path would be first shown and then the model either gets to the end point or is shown to be interrupted on the way by either an Attack of Opportunity or a model having a readied action that comes into effect. Should be optional of course since some may prefer to still show the movement animation (which could be cool to see in some cases).

[Revolver]

Bringing TB into the 21st Century

 

That almost makes it sound as if TB is old-fashioned.

Yeah I've noticed I'm really bad at making titles

 

I was thinking along the lines of theres only been 1 TB CRPG in recent times and that was TOEE. If you can think of other ones, by all means, point me towards them...

[Iolo]

It's a real shame that TOEE shipped in the condition it did or with the lacklustre plot and quests it did. If it was the game it was promised to be and it sold real well (which it did in its first two week but dropped down due to word of mouth), you may actually see a renaissance in TB games because someone would have shown that they can still sell. At the moment, I can only think of Metalheart as a TB RPG coming out and I haven't followed that one too closely.

[MrBrown]

Bringing TB into the 21st Century

 

That almost makes it sound as if TB is old-fashioned.

I think it is... alot of turn-based games have (to me) seemed like they were just trying to take the default PnP approach to combat. This doesn't always work well. On the other hand, some RT games seem to just copy their RT combat from previous RT games, and not-surprisingly this doesn't work that well either.

 

Well, I think TB makes for great tactic games (hence my earlier comment that TB needs parties... there's not much tactics with only a single character), but since good tactical combat isn't what every RPG out there is aiming for, not every game is going to have (or needs) TB combat, IMO.

 

I think making a good (TB) combat system is about making the game fit around the combat system, as much as making the combat system fit into the game.

[Revolver]

Alright, since I can't get the Silent Storm demo to run on my current comp, can anyone tell me how close the combat is to this description I posted a couple months back on another forum? (back when I was an excitable youngster)

And unlike others, I think a 3D engine is a great innovation to be used for turn based combat. Imagine panning and zooming the camera right before you take a shot with your pistol. Imagine taking an aimed shot and having the camera lock onto the figure of your enemy and a HUD display appears, detailing the vital shots and percentage chance to hit. An aimed shot with a sniper rifle would actually zoom in on the enemy figure and maybe be easier to target, while aimed pistol shots would be limited by range. Imagine the sight of an enemy pointing his gun at you and preparing to squeeze the trigger.