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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Game Design/Development  |  Topic: Brick-based combat 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Brick-based combat  (Read 3903 times)
Glazius
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on: April 08, 2005, 10:37:30 AM

My inspiration: SaGa Frontier II.

This is designed for close-in skirmish-style combat. Anyway.

Every weapon has a set of basic bricks. They vary from weapon to weapon, but there are always at least 6. You get them all to start with, and they form the core of the combat system.

You can queue up a lot of bricks, but your execution speed is a factor of your stats, weapon skill, and weapon of choice. When you activate a brick its chance to hit and damage capacity are influenced by whatever brick your opponent currently has activated. Your own bricks (such as Focus or Charge) can affect the next attack brick you use.

Some weapons have good defensive bricks against other weapon types - let's say Staff has a brick called "Spin" that's good defense against Unarmed. But these bricks have a weakness - they can be "broken". Breaking is a one-way operation, and happens when your next queued brick can "break" your opponent's next queued brick. If your opponent sees you unarmed and queues "Spin", you can queue a brick called "rush" that will break it. When your "rush" fires, it automatically pulls your opponent's "Spin" brick out of the queue and shoves a brick back on called "rebalance" - your opponent spends his next turn essentially doing nothing.

But all bricks that can "break" can be "counter-broken", so to speak. If your opponent anticipates your  "rush" and queues the "thrust" brick, when your "rush" fires it'll be wasted, his "thrust" brick will execute immediately, and a "rebalance" brick will go on your queue.

But but, all bricks that can "counter-break" can be "recounter-broken". If you think your opponent is going to break you with "thrust" you can queue "kick", which will do a little jump-kick over the staff thrust and give your opponent "rebalance".

There is no staff brick that can break "kick". But if your opponent has "spin" going, your kick will likely not hit or do much damage - and if he had "spin" queued again, it'd go off and you'd have a poor chance of landing more unarmed strikes.

Special techniques require a specific combination of bricks to be executed in succession. If you chain together "charge", "feint", and "kick" bricks, immediately after the kick executes you chain on the special "spin-kick", which isn't affected so much by the hit/damage adjustments that your normal bricks are, and does more damage to boot. Of course, if your opponent manages to read your combo and "break" one of its elements (if he's not using a staff, for instance) and shove a "rebalance" brick at you, it'll break the combo chain and you'll have to start again.

Further, after you've had a "rebalance" brick shoved into your queue, for a small number of bricks after that, you can't "break" your opponent's attacks since you're still finding your rhythm. So if your opponent breaks your combo, he may be able to land one in return that you can't break. But since your opponent sees your current attacks (though not your queue) and can figure out your combo, you may want to fake starting a combo, cue a brick to "counter-break", knock him off balance, and then follow  up with a real combo.

Magic bricks go into the system the same way, as their base elements. This would need either a trinary or pentad element system - fire weak to thunder weak to ice weak to fire, or fire weak to water weak to earth weak to wood weak to metal weak to fire. That preserves the "one-way" nature of combo breaking. Magic bricks can chain to cast spells or even chain into normal combat bricks for magic-infused combo arts.

Against multiple opponents, bricks still come off the queue one at a time. If one opponent draws a "break" from you, the next brick in your queue is queued and you're considered to be using the attack you used to "break" the first opponent. Whichever opponent strikes you first draws the break; however, once you've been hit without a break or counter-break, your queued brick can't be broken. So if you're facing two unarmed opponents with your staff and the first queues "grab" and the second "kick", if you have "thrust" queued and the "grab" opponent strikes first, you break. If the "kick" opponent then hits you, you've already thrusted, and won't get broken unless you queued "thrust" twice (though "thrust" may not be as good at defending against kicks as "spin" was). If the "kick" opponent strikes first, you get broken. If you had "spin" queued and the "kick" opponent struck first, the "grab" opponent wouldn't be able to break you out of your spin.

Two questions:

First, what problems are there with this system?

Second, is this the way Matrix Online combat currently works?

--GF
stray
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Reply #1 on: April 08, 2005, 11:39:28 AM

Second, is this the way Matrix Online combat currently works?

Pretty much, yeah.

I didn't get high enough lvl to see how complex it could get though.
Hoax
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Reply #2 on: April 08, 2005, 12:21:43 PM

MxO wants to work that elegantly but does not.

There are four basic attacks and the a wide variety of special attacks.  The problem is the first round of combat is very random, when you are pulled into interlock I never seemed to have any say on my starting attack. 

Also the first round is rediculously important at least at lower levels because if the first hit lands a successful status effect on the opponent they are pretty much fucked (stagger, dazed, disarmed) because now their rolls are w/ a negative modifier. 

Basically many duels in MxO I participated in or witnessed involved one person landing their starting attack and then basically combo'ing out on the other person.

At higher levels with more special skills and more buffs from items and stats it might become the complex and interesting pvp I hoped it could be but I can't say for sure.

A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation.
-William Gibson
sinij
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Reply #3 on: April 09, 2005, 10:11:42 AM

I see some problems with this system. If brick changes are fast enough lag can play huge factor in determining who wins, it doesn’t allow for variable execution time that is not multiple of ‘brick’ and it allows only one thing at a time to happen.

It is better system than a lot of fire-and-forget best DPS wins but it still not there as far as requirements of fun and skill-driven combat goes.

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Glazius
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Reply #4 on: April 09, 2005, 01:46:43 PM

I see some problems with this system. If brick changes are fast enough lag can play huge factor in determining who wins, it doesn’t allow for variable execution time that is not multiple of ‘brick’ and it allows only one thing at a time to happen.
You step through your bricks at varying speeds depending on your weapon, armor hindrance, whatever. I'm looking at speeds of between 3 (naked monk) and 10 seconds (plate armor and greatsword) per brick. Somebody taking the system into PvP is probably going to make some advantages out of ping time and reactive play, but if you want to be proactive you can queue entire brick chains (fake combo -> real combo, real combo alone, two fake combos and a real combo, or if you want to be all Sirlin about it 40 fake combos in a _row_) with a single keypress. 30 seconds of lag is probably going to hurt, but I don't think you could show me a real-time computer game where sitting idle for 30 seconds wouldn't be a disadvantage on anyone's part.

When you say "only one thing at a time", what do you mean?

Quote
It is better system than a lot of fire-and-forget best DPS wins but it still not there as far as requirements of fun and skill-driven combat goes.
What _are_ the requirements of fun and skill-driven combat? I'm all agog.

--GF
Samwise
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Reply #5 on: April 09, 2005, 02:14:34 PM


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sinij
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Reply #6 on: April 10, 2005, 12:55:08 AM

Quote
When you say "only one thing at a time", what do you mean?


Multitasking. Keep players busy with doing something, preferably more than one thing at a time. Get players to manage casting and cool down timers, windows of opportunity, DoT ratios, you name it. Brick queue automates too much, it should be up to a player to recognize opponent's move and activate counter rather than try to guess it and queue. One will be perceived as based on player skill and another will be seen as random luck.

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
Xuri
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몇살이세욬ㅋ 몇살이 몇살 몇살이세욬ㅋ!!!!!1!


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Reply #7 on: April 20, 2005, 11:08:04 AM

Can I put the bricks in a stocking, and use that as a weapon?

-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-
voodoolily
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Reply #8 on: April 20, 2005, 02:34:56 PM



What about this?

Voodoo & Sauce - a blog.
The Legend of Zephyr - a different blog.
Alkiera
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Reply #9 on: April 20, 2005, 03:55:13 PM



Thing is glad you likes brick-based combat.  Thing is all about brick combat!

Alkiera

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