turn based games

[{MSX}]

I think what you are trying to bring up here is different races. I think that races are a great idea... esp. if you could mix and match races available for hire... OR it is somehow randomly factored into it, but with a ballance... Maybe you pick your Kindom's Default Race and have a mild selection from that...

As for creatures as upposed to 'men' I've never been too keen on the usage of animals in RPGs... Mind you maybe using a dragon or some other summoned monster might be different. But then we're getting into spells that summon temporary NPCs for the battle rather than characters that you keep for later.

Ah why not animals and monsters? I think it whould be a nice idea..
It will give us a lot of freedom in doing characters. And what about robots and veichles ?
I think the freedom is better than a "pure fantasy" setting.. Also becouse our graphical appearence will be quite limited, and we are not going to achieve a nice fantasy theme anyway.
If we remove characters, all the game will be based only on men (except for summoning). I think it would be much more vary with them.

In the game Dungeon Seige there is a way that they use 3D objects/models so that when you change say.. to a different helmet from the one you have on, it'll change your characters appearance seemingly my merging a different model or 'hat model' on oyur character's head.. same with the shirt/pants, boots, gloves, items/weapons in hands, etc... If you could learn this technique and how to do it nice and smoothly I think it'll offer you the solution you need for all these massive amounts of combinations, rather than trying to model each and every type of combo you can think of yourself. Plus it'll allow you to make different styles for your A) Characters; Different body colors, heads(hair no hair, elven ears, beards, scars, etc), body type, hands, etc. and B) Items Different styles of helmets and armour + items to give that sort of 'bling' factor.

Ok, this was already in my mind.. if you look at my models, you see that bodys are always the same, with different clothes.
Over this, we could add little differences on "naked characters" such as skin color, eyes, etc just as you said.
In this way all (man) units will share the same animation set (good thing).
But as soon as you add another race (where the naked character is different), you'll need another set.
For example, if you have a "dwarf" model, it will be different from a man, and will require different animations (being shorter much of them will not work good).
Also, we must care that an equip (hat, armor, etc) will look good on all type of character. Think of a robe that works for a dwarf and a giant

Well thats good in a way.. because if the guy doesn't buy and archers or anything then you can just use yours you mow his ass down before he can reach you because he didn't ballance his forces out very well. It plays into tactics and techniques with resource management. So it's good! But yes, you must of course balance he costs of different weapons, ammos and the like. But as you get more powerful arrows or swords and armour, you'll need to raise the amount it's worth.

Ok, you're right I didn't tought of the strategic part.

Yeah... thats an excellent idea on that. Each item has a 'Army Points' value to it.. and you can only take into combat the amount that you set... this may include your men/women aswell. Depending on the level of the characters thats how much they are worth too. Keep in mind that though each member of your army will have their equiped weapons there should be also a sort of cache of weapons and items that your 'kingdom' or army will have in surplus before you give them you your people [size=9px](ala. the Squad Game style of play, only in X-Com the items were annoyingly reset each time you sent them back out which made it annoying to try to match weapons with the member's individual tallents)[/size]

Eheheh you're right Maybe we could set up something to give the possibility to build and save armies. For example, i build (in the managerial part) an army of 100 points and save it. Then for each match less than 100 points i enter, i can automatically choose that army..

Well this idea is coming along nicely... I'd never have thought that I'd see the day when another Squad Game, nor a Fantasy/RPG tyle squad game would come to pass in this era of computer games.

Well there is a lot of work before that

I've started to work on some aspects of the game..
I'm working on a GUI implementation (that i needed also for other games ) and it works nicely except that it don't look any "fantasy"
Anyone good in drawing nice fantasy interfaces ? :mrgreen:

[K4Z]

Hey everyone, I've been away for a few days, I'll try and catch up with all the new posts.

About maps, I generally like big maps - huge maps, but in turn based games it would be better to keep them rather small, esp. being multiplayer. We should also release a mapmaker for people to be able to make thier own maps, and upload them to the server for everyone else to play on. The maps will be more advanced than hopmon, mabye having some tiles (difficult terrain) that need more action points to move across. I obt for no fog of war, have everything visible like FF Tactics.

Here some ideas I have for working with characters:

- You click to go to a 'Character Managment' screen, select one of your characters and equip, heal, etc, and prepare all your characters.
- You exit that screen and click on a 'guild' and select a character to be trained at the guild for a few days (this would cost money), and that character would be unavailable for use for half an hour or so (server time). The guild will train and raise that characters level a little bit, having a max level that the guild will train to. (training is automatic you don't actually see anything, and can only train one character at a time) You click on the giuld later to pick up your character.
- You challenge another player to a fight, either by a search option for players with lower level characters, or by choosing from a list of all active players. You select a map and a total character points, etc. Then you goto the actuall 3d map, and select from a list of your characters to deploy on the map. Once both players have deployed, the battle starts.

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Instead of building and saving 'armies' (armies consisting of hundreds of men) you just work with a small amount of men. Say, an average player would only have 5 or 6 characters. Once you start a battle with someone, you select which characters you want to put in the battle.

About character deaths, I was thinking something like in a battle, if your level 4 warrior on 2/10 hp and is hit for 7 damage from a level 8 orc, your warrior would be K.O'd, and can be revived after the battle (or during, with a spell, etc). But if the warrior is hit for a huge amount of damage like 100 damage from a level 30 wizard, your warrior would be killed and lost for ever. (or mabye using a ressurection scroll to revive him, which would cost an enormous amount to buy.)


Hey have you made anymore 3d models?

[WILL]

Hey everyone, I've been away for a few days, I'll try and catch up with all the new posts.

About maps, I generally like big maps - huge maps, but in turn based games it would be better to keep them rather small, esp. being multiplayer. We should also release a mapmaker for people to be able to make thier own maps, and upload them to the server for everyone else to play on. The maps will be more advanced than hopmon, mabye having some tiles (difficult terrain) that need more action points to move across. I obt for no fog of war, have everything visible like FF Tactics.

Hmm... I think you missed what type of game {MSX} is trying to make. Have you ever played a squad game? ie. X-Com(aka UFO)... geez, I fail to have any others to refer too. It was a pretty niche genre.

But basically how it works is each character in your party/squad has individual MUs or Movement Units. And each action costs a specific amount of MU Actions include, turning left or right, walking in one of 8 directions(depends if you choose an insometric map or not), crouching, changing possitions of items, equipment, using a peice of equipment, throwing something from your hands, dropping something on the ground, etc I think you get the point. When using a weapon, you had types of attacks too. 'Aimed shots' cost more than 'Snap Shots' and 'auto-shots' even less. Of course this was with guns not bows/cross-bows/spears, etc

Now to fight you had to find the enemy characters[size=9px](in the case of X-Com/UFO it was aliens)[/size] you did not see them on the map unless you had a line-of-sight eye contact with them. Some maps were dark[size=9px](or dark areas, no lights, etc)[/size] and you had to light them up with glow sticks and such. [size=9px](torches or flames for this game, no doubt?)[/size]

It seems rather involved and complex, but in reality it was very fun to play and had a sense of realistic combat. IT's never been used in an RPG or Fantasy themed game before though. It would be a first and quite fun if some of the ideas discussed here come to bear.

Here some ideas I have for working with characters:

- You click to go to a 'Character Managment' screen, select one of your characters and equip, heal, etc, and prepare all your characters.
- You exit that screen and click on a 'guild' and select a character to be trained at the guild for a few days (this would cost money), and that character would be unavailable for use for half an hour or so (server time). The guild will train and raise that characters level a little bit, having a max level that the guild will train to. (training is automatic you don't actually see anything, and can only train one character at a time) You click on the giuld later to pick up your character.
- You challenge another player to a fight, either by a search option for players with lower level characters, or by choosing from a list of all active players. You select a map and a total character points, etc. Then you goto the actuall 3d map, and select from a list of your characters to deploy on the map. Once both players have deployed, the battle starts.

Again, --not to pick on you, I think you just don't understand the genre or have played anything like it before. But the maps are usually auto-generated ratehr than pre-generated. The idea being that you have to explore the map a bit to find your enemy. It's a sort of gurella warfare style of play... Now you could mix it up by having a mor open style of maps... and maybe sets of pre-made 'known' maps and having it as a gameplay option when you create a game for others to join. I mean... thats an idea, but some parts will need to be at least semi-hidden. For the sake of having a save starting point. ...Well save until the game progresses farther along. Unlike most multiplayer games where you have head-to-head match-ups like these I think each 'game' would tend to be rather quick. Maybe another option for gameplay that sets you up for 'waves' of combat... you get 3 'waves' or 'parties' ready and whoever wins at least say... 2 out of 3 wins the whole match.


You could break up playing the game like this:

Movement Units(MUs): Each characcter has a max number of MUs that allow you to preform actions that require a set amount. If you don't have enough MUs, you cannot perform the action until the next Turn. [size=9px](X-Com had settings that reserved MUs for actions like 'Snap Shot', 'Aimed Shot', 'Crouching', etc... and unless you were perfroming that action it would not allow you to do anything else unless you had enough left to perform whatever you toggled your characters to reserve MUs for)[/size]

A Turn: Each player's characcters reset their amount of allowed MUs and can play them out on their own time. The enemy will only perform actions(auto attacks) when his characters have enough MUs to do so and they spot YOUR characters. You can do the same by leaving your characters 'postured' with enough MUs to react to an enemy character stepping into YOUR character's line-of-sight.

A Round: After all of one player's characters have been killed or retreated[size=9px](how this will be handled has to be addressed as in X-Com you had to load into the transport and 'Take Off', whatever was IN the ship you got back, everything else was lost)[/size] the Round is awarded to the player that won. Items if the losing opponent retreated then what he managed to take away is his. The rest goes to the winner. (Hey, maybe you can come up with a Prisioner system so unconcious characters from your opponent can be captured? )

A Match: At most an odd number of Rounds played until one or the other wins the majority of Rounds. Whoever does this wins the Match. There could be some kind of XP bonus for winning matches... Ability to up one character's stats? Like a promotion? It's an idea...


Well those are my thoughts, ideas for the moment. If this is not goingto be a squad game then {MSX} please tell me now so I don't sound like a sow. :lol: From your posts it clearly meant to me that it was.

Personally, I'd rather it be a Squad Game rather than another FF Tactics clone. I did not like that game what-so-ever. Like a cheap version of a real RPG.

[K4Z]

er, yes I understand what type of game {MSX} is making. I have played many squad based games.

I'm just throwing around some ideas for originality, instead of another X-Com.

I prefer games that have user made maps instead of boring randomly generated maps.

small maps: this means that the maps are small enought to start the "core" of the battle in one or two turns. No "fog of war" here.

Remember we are doing a turn based multiplayer game, where one player at turn sits without doing anything but waiting. We should avoid dead times. If they must wait for 10 turn to reach the other, with its movements covered by fog of war, they'll fall asleep. Also, i would keep the number of units in games small, maybe about five for player (this will be decided by players anyway).

I'm just reinforcing some of {MSX}'s ideas.

Going by some of the posts it sounded like people wanted a hint of RPG to the game. Mabye similar to fallout. But kept simple with a 2d interface, with battles in 3d.

Here some ideas I have for working with characters:

- You click to go to a 'Character Managment' screen, select one of your characters and equip, heal, etc, and prepare all your characters.
- You exit that screen and click on a 'guild' and select a character to be trained at the guild for a few days (this would cost money), and that character would be unavailable for use for half an hour or so (server time). The guild will train and raise that characters level a little bit, having a max level that the guild will train to. (training is automatic you don't actually see anything, and can only train one character at a time) You click on the giuld later to pick up your character.
- You challenge another player to a fight, either by a search option for players with lower level characters, or by choosing from a list of all active players. You select a map and a total character points, etc. Then you goto the actuall 3d map, and select from a list of your characters to deploy on the map. Once both players have deployed, the battle starts.

And it also sounds like the game won't entirely be nothing but fighting other players, so that was some ideas about outside of the actual fighting.

[{MSX}]

Ok, some quick answare before my boss came in

First, i've never played FF Tactics. The game i envise will have the battle system like UFO, as WILL is describing, so i think squad game is the right "genre".
About the maps, we could have pre-made or randomized, it doesn't make all this difference. The important things are others
:arrow: Dimension and characteristics of the map. We all agree on this i think. Flat, square tiles, blocking features, etc. About difficoult tiles, i think they can be done. For example, they could require twice as much AP (or MU) as normal tiles..
:arrow: Fog of war or not.
About fog of war, WILL think it's a good thing. I have some doubt about fog, expecially becouse of the multiplayer nature of the game. Anyway, instead of fog, i'll use "view fields", in which only tiles visible by your characters are really visible.
I fear that players will feel bored don't seeing anything on the game. If we do this, we must ensure that the parties will get near quite quicly, to avoid dead times. Also, it will increase a little the complexity of the game, and could be source of cheating (maps revealer are avaiable for almost all games with fog )
It is true that "view fields" give a whole lot of tactical possibility to the game, but it will also slow the gameplay down.
It would be nice to try out both modes to see how they would work before choosing

I don't like very much the idea of multiple rounds. I don't think games will be so quick, and it would add even more things for the server to remember. It should keep track of rounds (more states to keep in mind), and it would add complexity.
If players wants to play at "best of three", the will be able to do that simply by creating more games

About guild training, i think it's better if a character get trained in games instead than in offgame facilities.

Ah, when i speak of army i don't mean 1000s of peole, I mean 4 or 5, the ones you use in a game Army is probably a misunderstanding word, i should have said maybe "party"

It could be helpful to choose some words to define things, to avoid misunderstandings:

character, unit: a man or creature you control in the game
item: all objects avaiable in the game: swords, armors, potions, etc.
party: the groups of characters you use on a game
game: the actual combat
possessions: all characters and items a disposal for a player
offgame: the "manadgement" session, where you manage your possessions, sell/buy, join games, chat.
ap, mu: action points, movement units (sinonyms): the points to be spent for moving, fighting, and all other activities of characters.

Btw i've made other models, more sci-fi than fantasy: a bat, a drone-robot, and a one-wheel scooter They're simpler than the others, in truth i've made this one before those already posted, i've just retouched them. I'll post them this evening

One thing i'd like to know from you guys is: is it a problem if the setting will not be strict fantasy but something more free, so that we can put lots of things inside ?
What i'd like to have a database of as many items and units as possible.

Actually, my boss is late for work

[K4Z]

I like the idea of having robots and the like aswell, since knights and wizards aren't everyones cup of tea.

I just threw out the idea of training because it might make leveling up lower characters a bit harder. A Level 1 character would posibly die a lot quicker in combat, and in most games if a character is killed, or KO'd, they don't recieve any exp.
Or you could make it that just getting a sucessfull hit on an opponent gains a bit of exp.

I just use FF tactics as an example cos it's just a typical Tactics game. Most maps are small, like 10x10 tiles, whole map is visible. Each character has a move distance, and once they move you choose a facing, up down left right. Then you attack, say with a bow, can fire so many tiles in a straight line. If you attack someone from the side or behind, you do more damage. So you have to position your characters in the right place, offensively and defensively. Making the game rather stratigical.
Though I'm aware x-com is different, the Tactical genre has a lot of ideas that could make fore a more original and fun game when mixed together.


I've been experimenting with Blender (a pretty old copy, like 3 years old). Mabye I can export from Lightwave to Blender. BTW, I really like the non textured style, I know we probably won't get the same quality, but FF7 pulls of this style off really well.

[cairnswm]

I will join in these discussions next week again. At the momnent I am concentrating on my Dogfight competition entry.

[WILL]

Personally I'd like to see how it would fair as a fantasy alone squad game. The idea is interesting. However {MSX}'s Squad Game 2, could be a mix? You could work it in, but you reall have to have some convincing way for it to work. I mean... in FF6 it worked sort of because they were just gettingback alot of 'lost' tech from older days, but only a select few had it or it was a thing of the Empire that ran almost everything(like a superpower so only they had the big toys). Such would have to be true in this game unless you came up with something else. Why use an archer when you an just recruit a guy with a Missile Launcher. It's a hard mix.

K4Z: I kind like the idea of awarding XP points towards successful hits. The character it kind of learning that way too so it makes sense. But if they are unconcious, but you still win they should get something for any attacks/kills the got before they passed out.

Thats another thought.. What about characters that sustain wounds or have to heal? Is there going to be a per-game penalty for that or just chop that feature due to incompatability of the game-style?

As for the, I think I'll call it 'Ray Traced Look' of the models made by {MSX}, I like it alot. AndI think that if you stick to it it'll make for an amazing feel to the game. Not to say that you should not have grass or wall texture, but just the characters, unit, creatures, etc. Keeping them small and almost cutesy, but cool it a way to go with it maybe.

Will be interesting to see how you plan to handle camera view options, lighting. Esp. dark/night-time maps. Can you say cool torch glow?

[{MSX}]

Personally I'd like to see how it would fair as a fantasy alone squad game. The idea is interesting. However {MSX}'s Squad Game 2, could be a mix? You could work it in, but you reall have to have some convincing way for it to work. I mean... in FF6 it worked sort of because they were just gettingback alot of 'lost' tech from older days, but only a select few had it or it was a thing of the Empire that ran almost everything(like a superpower so only they had the big toys). Such would have to be true in this game unless you came up with something else. Why use an archer when you an just recruit a guy with a Missile Launcher. It's a hard mix.

Well you always can find an excuse for that
Anyway, we can choose this later eventually.

K4Z: I kind like the idea of awarding XP points towards successful hits. The character it kind of learning that way too so it makes sense. But if they are unconcious, but you still win they should get something for any attacks/kills the got before they passed out.

ok for that.

Thats another thought.. What about characters that sustain wounds or have to heal? Is there going to be a per-game penalty for that or just chop that feature due to incompatability of the game-style?

Umm i don't think this would add much to the game.. Maybe we could think of adding it later ?

As for the, I think I'll call it 'Ray Traced Look' of the models made by {MSX}, I like it alot. AndI think that if you stick to it it'll make for an amazing feel to the game. Not to say that you should not have grass or wall texture, but just the characters, unit, creatures, etc. Keeping them small and almost cutesy, but cool it a way to go with it maybe.

Eheh ok I just hope we can create enought contents with this style
For the map, i think it should instead be textured.
Yesterday i modeled a nice Vampire

Will be interesting to see how you plan to handle camera view options, lighting. Esp. dark/night-time maps. Can you say cool torch glow?

I dunno We have to think about it. How do we put in night/day? Dark areas? Light sources?
For this, i'm to keep it simple (stupid )

For the camera movements, i think they will be as usual, some zoom and rotation, with automatic centering on units and the like.

For K4Z: what about downloading a newer version of Blender ? I't about 10 MB and it's free
If you're interested i can send you the "template" guy.

Btw, i'm thinking of a thing: is better to do animations in blender and then export them or to create a little tool to animate the models? The problem is that blender let you do only one animation, so it's a problem to do multiple actions (walk, hit, etc). I've already done some little tools to animate times ago.

Also, i'm almost done with a working GUI, if anyone is interested in trying it out let me know

[K4Z]

It will be interesting to see how the fantasy and sci-fi will come together.
A huge battlemech with a plasma launcher would easily kill a little man with a bow. However this could be ballanced by making the obviousily weaker characters cheap to buy/hire, and cheaper to buy equipment for. Also with a lower points value as discussed before, like 1 battlemech would equal 5 bowmen, etc. (lol, good luck bowmen )
But this, like most games, will take a bit of experimenting to get the right ballance.

Ok, i've just started to download the newer blender.

Send the template to kas6666@hotmail.com. I'd like to test out the gui aswell.