JUDE'S PROFILE

On the subject of battle mechanics I think rhythm or flow or whatever-you-want-to-call-it is pretty important. In the old method, the rhythm was more or less steady as you damage the enemy and keep your health up in a battle of attrition until your magic points are exhausted.

Things got better when designers gave enemies the capability to vary the rhythm in the form of things like spike damage. That's an example of reactive rhythm, with players now reacting to the enemies' actions instead of just the status of their health bar. The reactive rhythm sort of diversified with reactions like interrupting enemy actions or preemptively using barriers, but the concept of varying combat rhythm was still enemy-driven.

But combat rhythm can also be directed by the player--or proactive rhythm. There have been a lot of ways designers have implemented proactive rhythm such as threat management (common in MMORPGs), but one of the more common methods is resource generation. By that, I mean magic points or a similar resource pool that is restocked when the player takes action (WoW's Fury or 4 Heroes of Light's AP). The rhythm is varied by instances of resource generation and resource expenditure, which are player-driven mechanics.

Two other examples of proactive rhythm are Final Fantasy 13 and Xenoblade. In the former, you manage a resource called chain. Chain is accumulated by damaging the enemy until the enemy is "staggered," which presents an opportunity to do maximum damage in safety. Similarly, Xenoblade has chain/topple mechanics where players proactively try to knock down their foes with a certain combination of abilities, opening their enemies up to even more lethal attacks. Proactive rhythm boils down to the player taking actions to control what's happening in battle.

Anyway, I brought up both FF13 and Xenoblade because they represent an ideal merger between proactive/reactive rhythm and have the kind of battle mechanics the modern jRPG should aspire towards (ignoring FF13's non-combat related flaws). In addition to minding your chain in FF13 you are also reacting to enemy spike damage by shifting your party into defensive formations at the right moments. The combat rhythm alternates between player and enemy control, so a new meta-rhythm emerges where the player has to identify when that switch occurs.

Xenoblade is even more interesting. Enemies emote spike damage which is preemptively mitigated by using a shield or dodge spell. What's interesting is these spells are only useable when you've charged up your own talent art meter (yet another proactive mechanic... there's also tension which is both proactive and reactive... Xenoblade is very layered). So now you're proactively reacting to enemy actions, and who's controlling the rhythm becomes seamlessly blurry. This trend continues once you realize that proactive topple mechanics can also interrupt enemy spike damage, creating wildly satisfying turnabouts in combat rhythm.

While the two former examples don't have turn-based battle systems, their mechanics can translate into one that is. I think the modern jRPG battle system should try to achieve dynamic combat rhythm in the way those games have.

One thing I would recommend when looking at your proactive mechanics is to avoid having them be passive. My example there is 4 Heroes of Light, in which you sacrifice a turn to generate AP. 4 Heroes of Light could've been more interesting if each character class had an actual action associated with AP-generation. Like a Warrior would Taunt or just use a normal attack, or a White Mage uses a small heal to generate AP for "the big one."

Hopefully I wasn't rambling too much. I should organize these thoughts some time.

author=Khos

Those are amazing.

My recommendation would be to make any ground tile solid black, smattering a few blades of grass aperiodically to imply the texture you want. You definitely want your sprites and impassable tiles to contrast against the passable ones, otherwise the graphics are cluttered and confusing.

I'll echo that using rips from old games is wrong, but I'll add that taking from your peers is several magnitudes worse.