Yeah, I appreciate the advice. I have thought about that potential problem too, and I''m not too sure how to deal with it. The characters being smaller, it may not be as intuitive as it needs to be. I''ll have to think about it some more.

"'Nazrix is cool' -- Nazrix" --Darkmage --Godfree

Nazrix,

Just a thought, but if you were doing 3D chars you could zoom. For instance, you could make a cool Diablo meets Soul Blade type game that auto-zooms for you. When you''re dealing with archers or ranged enemies, you''d be in long range mode, but when you got up close and personal the view would stay the same but get in closer.

You could still have enemies from all sides, only the eight closest around you would be shown (and give you a chance to master your 360'' knockback attacks )

Just a thought...

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Wav,
Cool idea.

I'm not doing 3-D characters unfortunately. It's still an interesting idea though.



"'Nazrix is cool' -- Nazrix" --Darkmage --Godfree

Edited by - Nazrix on October 2, 2000 9:35:42 PM

Okay, I'd like to take a turn on my discussion here. From a design perspective, assuming that I am able to effectively do something like this, how do you all feel about something like this in an RPG.

Combat in CRPGs is traditionally governed a lot by stats, but do you think it would become too arcade-like if you were able to control whether you hit or miss more by controls rather than by your stats?

I guess it comes down to this: In an RPG-type game would you perfer your attributes and stats determing whether you hit/miss, or would you rather determine it yourself? I'd still like attributes & stats to have some effect, but just not completely govern it like most RPGs are today.

I guess this is going back to the days where we were trying to figure out what makes an RPG an RPG. I keep feeling this overwhelming external force saying I can't mix tactical combat action with an RPG instead of letting stats handle it. I am such a blasphemer by letting these dogmas control me. Landfish, forgive me!




"'Nazrix is cool' -- Nazrix" --Darkmage --Godfree

Edited by - Nazrix on October 3, 2000 10:56:21 PM

There is a technical side to this that I am not sure is being addressed. The animation for the swing of a weapon is pretty fixed. If it is not then the polygons stand a chance of showing gaps and such through the animation. If the animation is fixed then the only way that you can speed up the swing or slow it down is if you start to drop frames or specifically add pauses in your frame setup. I would believe that there are graphical limitations to this system that make it close to unworkable, though I could be wrong. As an interesting point, my team is looking into how to solve this issue and when we come up with a solution we will post it here to this thread for all cause the idea has merit and would be nice to see in a game.

Kressilac

ps The other technical consideration concerns endpoints and begin points for animations that string together in sequences. This could look choppy and unrealistic if not done correctly, taking lag, user delay, and other non-perfect sequencing stuff into effect.

Actually, I am not using polygons. I''m using 2-D sprites.

"'Nazrix is cool' -- Nazrix" --Darkmage --Godfree

Yeah, I realize that my question is kind of difficult because I am asking if this feature will work with the rest of my game, and you all don't really know everything about the rest of the game yet. I think that you have a good idea about the basic structure of the game though, as I've talked about it here and there. So, I just thought I'd throw out the question, and see what comes of it.

The other thing that I am realizing is that part of this is that I started thinking about how automated and mechanic combat can be in a lot of games. I started thinking that if I were to make it more tactical like this that it would seem more interesting. I am seeing that the old Landfish motto about pointless combat is pointless is quite true.

I'm still curious about what everyone thinks about this in an RPG though.



"'Nazrix is cool' -- Nazrix" --Darkmage --Godfree

Edited by - Nazrix on October 4, 2000 1:14:50 PM