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Game Mechanics Part 5

  • LMPGames
  • 04/08/2023 09:00 AM
  • 420 views
Game Mechanics Part 5

Another week, another game mechanics blog. We are on to part 5 today and will be covering some smaller systems; take a break from the page busters.

So, let’s dive in.


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Anima System
The Anima System is designed around your interactions with characters and the greater world around you. Think of it like Persona’s social stat system, but it has more implications for dialog choices, actions you can take, and what outcomes you will get in certain cut scenes.

Animism – noun – A universal belief that the human psyche is comprised of eight principle elements. Without these character elements, Humans would be mindless, inanimate creatures. The eight elements are:
  • Wisdom
  • Courage
  • Intelligence
  • Insight
  • Honor
  • Corruption
  • Morality
  • Inequity


The Anima system is based upon these traits. Each action you choose to take may impact one of these eight characteristics of your character. If you selflessly help someone in need, you’ll probably add to your courage and honor. If you lie to someone, that will likely lower your morality in most cases. Touch something and got poisoned? Insight will probably suffer from that.

The Anima system will be utilized to build a Mass Effect inspired dialog system where certain actions and choices will require you to meet a trait threshold. If you do not meet it, the option will probably be grayed out (I am toying with hiding them, but maybe that will be a player setting).

Certain story paths will require you to have specific trait values, though these will be limited, more often though you will run into quests you will not be able to undertake if the requestor finds you untrustworthy. There will also be many sidequest chains and character recruitment events where the Anima system will have an influence on what you can do.

Currently the system is still under design. For example, I don’t know if I want these traits to apply globally or to be per-character for certain things or just in general. Obviously the later would be massively harder to do, but there are some benefits to how much more specific I can then use those values throughout the game and a few bad interactions won’t necessarily ruin your playthrough for certain routes.

This plugin will also feature something I have been wanting to do for a while now, which is a Chart.js chart for the stat value display. Since RPG Maker MV runs on top of a browser, JS libraries can be imported. I will be building out a visual aid for the plugin similar to Persona’s.



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Normal attacks are for the weak hearted
I mentioned this last week, but I am working on several systems that will change the battle system and make fights way more tactical. One of the major things I am doing to put this into effect is to remove all normal attacks from Emilar.

Instead they will be replaced with skills that are tied to weapons. While many of these Weapon Skills will be common between weapons of similar types, the rarer a weapon the more likely it will have additional skills and possibly even unique ones.
In general, these skills will be like normal attacks, though the damage formulas may be structured a bit more complexly. These weapon skills will also have cooldowns, if you were wondering how this sounded any different from normal attacks. Some may even have warmups once we get into the later stages of the game.

As an example, starter swords will have a skill called Stab. This skill will have a base damage of 15 and then add your current attack power to 25% of your attack power, minus 80% of the target’s defense.

Formula wise, it looks like this (damage will be rounded down): 15 + (a.atk + (a.atk * 25%)) – (b.def * 0.8)

(a = attacker; b = defender)

Stab has a slight chance to cause the Bleed I status effect and has a two turn cooldown.


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Long Days and Even Longer Nights
Legend of Emilar will feature a faux Day/Night system. It will be story event based, so if as you are moving from one place to another after a cut scene the time of day should change, it will begin to shift. I am also utilizing a lighting plugin to add in lights during night to cities and interiors.
Here is an example of a shift from morning through each time of day to night:

The time of day will impact what NPCs are around, which might impact when certain unofficial quests can be undertaken. The time of day will also impact if shops or open or closed (this also varies per city) and enemies present in some maps (looking to make this a more common thing, but for now it is just in certain circumstances/areas).



Well, that is it for this week. Next week we will talk about the Request System, Rope Climbing, and the HP Gauge system.


Posts

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Are there any more details on the Anima system? Will we be able to tell what our values are during situations where dialog will be changed by the system? Like an on-screen window or something?

What are your plans for the Day/Night system outside of what you have stated, if any?
author=TrashCanEnthusiast
Are there any more details on the Anima system? Will we be able to tell what our values are during situations where dialog will be changed by the system? Like an on-screen window or something?

What are your plans for the Day/Night system outside of what you have stated, if any?


That is an interesting idea for the Anima system; one I had not considered. My initial plan was to have a value added to the dialog options and then color that based on the anima stat it was tied to and enable or disable if usable. But if I move the value out to a UI element instead it might allow for more flexibility.

Hmm, I will have to think on that.

Day/Night system is what is described in the blog. No plans to expand it past that.
More on the Day/Night system. How is that actually going to work with enemy spawns? You said you wanted to make more instances of where enemies spawn based on the time of day, but there isn't an actual day/night cycle.

So how can you add in enemies that spawn based on the time of day outside of quests when there is no cycle and time of day is story dependent?
author=TrashCanEnthusiast
More on the Day/Night system. How is that actually going to work with enemy spawns? You said you wanted to make more instances of where enemies spawn based on the time of day, but there isn't an actual day/night cycle.

So how can you add in enemies that spawn based on the time of day outside of quests when there is no cycle and time of day is story dependent?


Yeah, those are great points. I am going to think about this and get back to you. Maybe we need a wait system so that you can put the time of day into the state you want it to be in? I would need to see if that clashes with anything, I can only think of one instance but the system could be disabled during that part of the game.
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