MERLANDESE'S PROFILE

In Valkyria Chronicles they had a similar idea.

Squad members would be incapacitated on the field for three turns before perma-death set deep into their frail bones. If you got any other member to their side before that "doom counter" terminated then they'd call a medic who would single-handedly hoist them out of harm's way and start working some sort of military medicine that I imagine came at the cost of morals and ethics. After a few more turns the fallen member will be brand new and ready to redeploy, super soldier serum coursing through their veins.

I added some embellishments but that's kind of what happened.

Still, it fell prey to LockeZ's first concern, which is that a Game Over state would only happen if a) the main character was incapacitated AT ALL or b) if key members didn't get picked up by the medic before the doom counter doom counted. Any other character dies and it's a perma-death, and with so many troops at your disposal you can sometimes just suicide bomb with your favorite character.

LockeZ's made a good point about how often you might have to heal/defend. I think in order to really stress that each character has the same weight while keeping a Game Over/Mission Failure option you would have to rethink how the confrontation works. In a system that is as generic as the one outlined then it would be hard to employ, but if this particular narrative turned some ideas on its ear (no heals, "Death" having other requirements, "Death" having other abilities, some benefit for the AI to NOT kill a character that quickly, etc.) it might be able to side-step it.

My worry about this isn't so much what triggers the Game Over as the Game Over itself. I like the idea of an effect happening upon character death that isn't lopsided to story characters, but I take some issue with the tangential idea of Game Over.

I think this idea would benefit from piggybacking on discussions about exciting Game Over alternatives, or how forcing a battle restart (hard force or soft, through logical incentives) is quintessentially worth the same frustration as a complete loss. If this latter problem were addressed I think the canopy effect over the whole team would be great in that it would give you real appreciation towards the NPCs. :)

Here's an update of the system in action. It looks like garbage right now but it works like a charm!

Bare Bones Functionality

Right now it doesn't support keyboard, nor can you confirm your selection, but the Delete/Backspace/ESC erases letters and the Shift key switches between CAP and lowercase. It's also smooth and quick!

EDIT:

With a Better Sprite Font

author=Deltree
Complete first impressions without reading the thread!

Are the wheels interlocked? I'm guessing not, because the 'A' and 'h' are next to each other, but they probably should be if you're going with something "different" that could startle a player into just going AAAA to get past the screen. Which is probably what I would do!

I reckon it would be good to know the target platform, since it seems like in 95% of instances there would be a simpler way to accomplish the input. Pretty much any touch device or console system is going to bring up its own proprietary keyboard when it detects a text field or place to input a string. If it's an RPG Maker game, it's even possible to allow keyboard input with a script.

Thanks for the first impression! Good things to process. :)

This will be for Construct 2, and be primarily PC. I have no plans for mobile, but I am keeping functions in mind for it just in case. If I had plans for mobile I would just uproot the whole system as I made the port and replace it with keypad, so just pretend those blasted things don't exist for a moment.

I like that everyone is concerned that I should just rely on keyboard, but give me a little credit here! XD The point of testing new UI/UX is to improve a system in such a way that everything becomes easier and more intuitive. I (hopefully) wouldn't be trying to program this complex and possibly-flawed idea if the best UI option (keyboard) was already the top option.

What will happen is you'll be playing the game like a platformer, using either arrows, WASD, or the gamepad for directional inputs. In my experience, swapping from a controller-like functionality to a full keyboard is not excellent, but doable if all you play on is the keyboard. But if you have the gamepad in you'll need to physically change hardware. So having keyboard input is still going to be implemented if I can pull it all together, and the GUI you see will just flip automatically (outer ring) to what you're typing as you type it. But if you're using something other than a keyboard this will accommodate that better (this is my hypothesis, so "better") than other previous systems.

Ima do it, and patent it, and get famous, guys. No longer will I go by my given name. I will be Merlandolf the White!