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ENCOUNTERS MECHANICS
Posts
rabitZ
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CloseI've been thinking about the mechanics of initiating enemy encounters for my game!
Now would be a good point to decide on changing them IF I change them.
So, what are some of the best alternatives to enemy mook encounters?
I know 2 at the moment:
1- random encounters: you just walk around and out of the blue POOF battle screen.
A big no no, obviously.
2- touch encounters: you see the monsters on the map and the battle starts when you touch them or they touch you. Obviously this raises questions: Should they move around randomly? Should they be hard or easy to avoid? Should they chase you? Should they chase you only a short distance? If you escape, what happens?
I have some semblance of number2 right now in my game.
I would welcome your opinions/experiences/suggestions!
Now would be a good point to decide on changing them IF I change them.
So, what are some of the best alternatives to enemy mook encounters?
I know 2 at the moment:
1- random encounters: you just walk around and out of the blue POOF battle screen.
A big no no, obviously.
2- touch encounters: you see the monsters on the map and the battle starts when you touch them or they touch you. Obviously this raises questions: Should they move around randomly? Should they be hard or easy to avoid? Should they chase you? Should they chase you only a short distance? If you escape, what happens?
I have some semblance of number2 right now in my game.
I would welcome your opinions/experiences/suggestions!
Coded encounters: At the beggining of the game, a set of 3 buttons are chosen (as in up, down left right shift) They are hidden from player view. If you press those 3 in that order, an encounter appears. At the end of the encounter, the button setup changes.
Space_Monkey
366
I have battle squares in my game that work like the random encounter spots between cities in Final Fantasy Tactics but on a less linear worldmap (the Dragon Warrior 1&2 map).
If you fight a story or side-quest battle on a bridge, then every time you cross that bridge in the future you have a 50% chance of triggering a battle. If you don't want to fight the battle, you just run or "x" out of the battle setup screen.
I'd like to have random battle dungeons though so I'm considering making invisible on-map monsters that move towards you in certain dungeons. They would be 100% escape failproof too.
If you fight a story or side-quest battle on a bridge, then every time you cross that bridge in the future you have a 50% chance of triggering a battle. If you don't want to fight the battle, you just run or "x" out of the battle setup screen.
I'd like to have random battle dungeons though so I'm considering making invisible on-map monsters that move towards you in certain dungeons. They would be 100% escape failproof too.
hmmm... interesting Space_Monkey and Idida1!
I feel that this is a very important part of a standard RPG!
I want to get it right!
Please keep sharing your experiences people :)
I feel that this is a very important part of a standard RPG!
I want to get it right!
Please keep sharing your experiences people :)
Darken
3952
http://rpgmaker.net/articles/11/
have you checked out this article? It mentions p much any possible encounter (except for the minor variants of course). I hate linking to articles without saying anything but this topic has been discussed to death.
@idida1: that is just fake random encounters with no reasoning behind it.
have you checked out this article? It mentions p much any possible encounter (except for the minor variants of course). I hate linking to articles without saying anything but this topic has been discussed to death.
@idida1: that is just fake random encounters with no reasoning behind it.
I like random battles, but I wanted to go for like a code set-up that would generate enemy blocks in random places on the map, and they also are based on your luck stat. The lower the luck, the higher your chance to walk in on it and the higher the chance you'll wander into tough fights. But also the higher the luck, the better the chance you'll have to stumble upon the 'weak enemies with high exp' and secret monsters, when you do fight.
2 is actually divided into a number of different subcategories.
Craze's games alone have like 14 different ways of handling touch encounters.
There's also the 'not so random' encounter model, where pretty much every single battle in a game is scripted and unavoidable. This is more common in games with fewer battles. (I've used this in one or two of my games, and for short stretches in just about all of them.)
Craze's games alone have like 14 different ways of handling touch encounters.
There's also the 'not so random' encounter model, where pretty much every single battle in a game is scripted and unavoidable. This is more common in games with fewer battles. (I've used this in one or two of my games, and for short stretches in just about all of them.)
Space_Monkey
366
author=chanaauthor=Space_Monkey
random battles make me forget which direction I was walking in a dungeon.
author=Max McGee
2 is actually divided into a number of different subcategories.
Craze's games alone have like 14 different ways of handling touch encounters.
Well I must certainly play some of those games then :)
As a player I like the Chrono Trigger method. As a developer I like random encounters, because tweaking every fight is a huge time sink. Right now Necropolis uses a random encounter system where you have a chance to avoid the battle by tapping the cancel button.
LightningLord2
230
An interesting encounter mechanic I've seen is in Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis - on any map, if you want to grind, there's the "Training" option - but instead of battling random foes, you split your troop in two sides and have them battle. Yes, they won't die from it and yes, you do get exp for that. An interesting side note is that if you level up very much from this, you get the "Bogus Hero" award, that prevents you from getting critical hits.
That....is an awesome solution! I'd want to implement something like that in To Arms! if it was a live project.
KreadEX
497
Personally, I like touch encounters the best. Especially with some flavors, like stated in the article Darken linked.
But aside from simply stunning a group of enemies, you can design a lot of traps to damage them before the battle starts, cause status ailments, or whatever you fancy. Remember Valkyrie Profile 2, for instance, where you could fire photons on enemies to transform them into a crystal, then fire a second one to swap your position with it...
There are various ways to make really something out of touch encounters.
But aside from simply stunning a group of enemies, you can design a lot of traps to damage them before the battle starts, cause status ailments, or whatever you fancy. Remember Valkyrie Profile 2, for instance, where you could fire photons on enemies to transform them into a crystal, then fire a second one to swap your position with it...
There are various ways to make really something out of touch encounters.
Darken
3952
Oh yeah, if you want to see touch encounters coded well, play Cyber Factor. Every enemy event will wander around until the player encounters its radius, then the enemy will chase the player for a short period of time (the monster will give up if the player persists running away, and going back to its original wander state). If the player iniates a battle and runs away, the monster will still be on the map but will stay still giving the player time to run away. This is probably the best way to do a regular touch encounter.
http://rpgmaker.net/tutorials/16/ to see how the radius of the monster is calculated and detected.
http://rpgmaker.net/tutorials/16/ to see how the radius of the monster is calculated and detected.
Thanks for your answers guys!
Darken I will most certainly check that out...
Thinking about this, another great truth, also crossed my mind:
Encounter mechanics don't matter if the battles themselves are boring...
So, back to gam making!
Darken I will most certainly check that out...
Thinking about this, another great truth, also crossed my mind:
Encounter mechanics don't matter if the battles themselves are boring...
So, back to gam making!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Yeah, fuck Etrian Odyssey forever.
No, but seriously, I actually do love Etrian Odyssey. For a dungeon crawler, it is seriously terrifying and thrilling. FOEs are minibosses that move in a pattern until they see you, and then move towards you. The catch is that they move a step every time you take a step, and also move a step every turn you spend in battle, which means that your battle against normal enemies, another FOE, or even a boss can suddenly become massively harder when one of them joins the fight.
So yeah, seriously, fuck those FOEs and fuck Etrian Odyssey forever.
