As mentioned before, one of the next important milestone for the game are the combat mechanics.
Today, I want to show the current progress and what will still to come. As a picture says more than 1000 words, lets start with it first:
ScreenShot of the current Work In Progress:
(1) Center Screen: In the center of the screen you will have a 3D view of the surrounding and the encounter party. As mentioned before, I have a favor for the old classical RPG's like Wizardry or Might&Magic and I want to keep that style.
(2) Right Tab: In the screenshot it is currently empty, but as soon as one of your character has his turn all the possible options are listed there. I will come to this topic in a second.
(3) Left Tab: Here you can see the battlefield. The upper 3x2 positions are reserved for the enemy party, the lower 3x2 fields are reserved for your party.
(4) Text Tab: On this part the progress of the battle can be followed
It's turn based
Combat in ShardWars Bendaria will be solved using a turn-based approach.
Each character has a speed value which determines when he is allowed to choose what he wants to do. This speed value is translated to 'Tickers' which are a sort of countdown. As soon as an character's ticker hits 0 she or he performs an action or can choose her/his next steps.
In the screenshot below you can see a clock with some piece of text on the bottom of the character portrait:
The first value is the action ticker, the second the recovery ticker. Several of the options your going to choose from are not executed within the same time its your turn but need some preparation time. Think of an aimed shot or a wall of fire. As a dumb of rule, the more devasting the action performed, the longer it will take until it is executed. This should provide some additional depth to the battle system - a mage trying to cast his most critical spell to whip your whole party only to be killed in the final seconds.
The second value is the recovery ticker. As soon as it is reaching zero, the combatant can plan his next steps. Again this ticker depends on the action choosen.
The red value in the upper left is the current Hitpoints and the value in the upper right is the current stamina. Most of the actions taken costs stamina (its universally used) - if it falls below 0 the character is unable to perform any actions beside resting.
It's tactical
Each type of weapon and the actions will have a distance modifier. This means, trying to attack with a dagger from the rear row with an normal attack will most probably doing any harm. Moving your party members out of range or into range will play a role as well as the actions choosen. Taking a rogue with an high skill level in shadowing gets the option to sneak behind the enemy rows and put his dagger in the neck of the mage. But again - this is not instant and will cost some time to execute. In the meantime, the enemy may have the chance to kill the rogue beforehand.
Items play a role - but not to prominently
Items playing a role as they provide the basics for your damage or armor ratings. Some of the more rare items even can increase your skill or your basic stats - which then again increases your skills as they are based the basic stats. The damage or armor rating will only be slightly increasing as they go up in quality - the main driver you want to seek for better loot will be that they provide a better speed modifier as they are easier to swing or lighter to wear.
It's skillbased
As mentioned, the equipment only provides the basic values. What you do with them depends heavily on your skills you develop and how you develop. The different skill level will unlock more and more options inside and outside of the combat. Additionally, the skill lvl will determine if you are sucessfull or not. There is no random roll implemented but a simple comparision check. Each item to identify or craft will have a difficulty level - if your skill level is higher your successfull. The same goes for combat - if your weapon skill is higher than your opponents defense skill, your successfull.
It's not the end
Hope you enjoyed the current explanation of the underlying system I want to have in the game. As it is current work in progress there is still the possibility that some pieces will be changed, but the core values will stay the same.
Say hello to the ghosts
Naggas are may not the friendly neighbors
Until next time.
Wylaryzel
I would change the red font to blue, yellow or green close to the color and brightness of the green "100" and yellow "1" "2" "3" "4" numbers shown on the screenshot.
Talented graphics artist you have there: the character, monsters, whole design looks good. UI is simple, attractive retro and effective!
Thank you for the kind words on the graphics - I agree he is really talented and I'm proud that he was willing to work with me.
As I implement more of his work into the game, it gets more and more the feeling of a high-res version of the former DOS era which is what I wanted to have.
With regards to the fonts, you are correct. It something I need to look into as I'm progressing. I'm using the same font since the first instance of the UI - the UI has changed, but I never adapted the colors of the fonts.