The Home of The True Coolness
The Home of The True Coolness
Gameplay Overview
GAMEPLAY:

Battle System

Battles themselves will be entered by running into enemies around the map. Each enemy will have a specific radius they can "see" you in. Most enemies will have a range of 3-7 squares, if you get in this range they will chase after you. You have a bit of a chance to get away but you have to notice them noticing you fairly quickly to get out of it. When they catch you you get in a battle on your next step (this is because of not turning pages in events, and other RPGM2 oddity). Some enemies will only be able to notice you in front of them, and others will be able to notice you all around them (some work on vision others on super hearing (so I don't have to worry about running/walking issues)).

As of right now the battle system is turned based, I might change it but right now it's not that big a deal to me if it stays this way. So every turn speed determines your order in line and each person makes their command at their turn, and not the beginning of the whole turn. Each person will have a number of Stamina Points to expend each turn to perform actions. Each person gains 3 SP per turn with a maximum of 8SP. The command list is as follows

Attack - 3SP
Secondary Weapon - 4SP
Ephemeral Force - 3SP
Item - 2 SP
Defend - 1SP
Do Nothing - 0SP

So as long as the character still had SP remaining that turn they can do other actions, with some exceptions. You can only use one item per turn, and cannot use item in combination with any other command. Using defend ends your turn, but you can use it after you perform another command besides item. You can only use Secondary Weapons once per turn (unless you have the accessory which allows you to use it twice per turn), no matter how much SP you have. Same goes for Ephemeral Force (and there will be an accessory to perform two of these as well). And you can attack as much as you want per turn. Do nothing ends your turn after you perform it. When you have 8 SP you can perform a special attack which uses all of your SP and some EP, this will be specific to what class you are.

Defend will double evade instead of doubling defense, cause that just made more sense to me.

There are 4 main types of E Force (still haven't settled on what to use for "elements" yet, was thinking about the Zodiac but nothing final yet) are Chaotic (attack E Force), Harmonic (healing E Force), Disorderly (negative status), Orderly (positive status). The more you use each type the stronger it becomes, but the weaker it's opposite becomes. So if someone were to constantly use Harmonic E Force (healing type) then that type of E Force would gain in strength up to a maximum of 15% extra. Each time they use that type of magic they will go up .5% in that category and the other one will go down .25%. Status type magic (orderly and disorderly) can go up to 7.5% extra or .25% each time it is used.

There will also be a Chaos Meter which will fill up each time you are hit and is dependent on HP damage taken. The formula is
damage / (Max HP * 4)
is how much percentage it fills up each time. For each 10% increase in the meter the character gets a 1% increase in a chance for a critical attack. So when it is full they will get a 10% increase in their critical chance. When it's full they can choose to use it then to get a 100% chance of a critical that turn, or leave it full and keep the 10% bonus. The meter will empty when a character is killed. Normal critical rates will never go over 25% and with this addition the max is 35%, unless they use a full meter.

Enemies will level up with the character, so as the character gets stronger the enemies will get stronger with them, similar to FF8.

So for Classes each character has 3 different classes they can master. None of these classes overlap so you can't make one character be a class meant for another person. Classes also determine what kinds of weapons the character can equip, each class has a type of primary and secondary weapon for the class. The classes are also how people learn spells and abilities.

STATUS EFFECTS

Poison - lose 10% of HP per battle turn
Toxin - lose 10% of Max HP per battle turn
Blind - acc down 50% of current acc
Fatigue - only gain 2 SP per turn
Vigor - gain 4 SP per turn
Doom - 5 turn till death
Hasty - speed up
Lazy - speed down
Frozen - paralyzed
Stunned - paralyzed
Insomnia - lose 5% EP per turn
Dream - sleep
Chaotic - Confusion
Fear - defense down
Dumb - intelligence down
Calm -attack down
Rage - attack up
Composed - defense up
Clumsy - skill down
Focus - intelligence up
Grace - skill up

Other Gameplay Elements

The game will feature a day and week timer so time of day and day of the week will affect small events and a few major ones. Didn't want it to affect too many necessary things as I know how tedious it can get to have to wait a whole week in the game for something to happen. So this will mainly be to make people go inside at night, and certain shops be only open during the week and such. This will be similar to how Dungeon Warden has his game set up. This is just in there for a bit of realism to the game and just to have the game be a bit more dynamic.

There will also be a random weather generator which I will explain below this section. It will change between Sunny, Windy, Partly Cloudy, Overcast, Light Rain, Rain, and Thunderstorm. This is to add more to the ambiance of the game than serve an actual gameplay purpose. Though certain people won't be out in the rain, and such so it will have some effect on gameplay just not a whole lot.

The story will happen in a fairly linear pattern though I will try to have a lot of side quests and small errands to run with villagers to give the player other things to do. In every village there will be quite a few citizens who will have side quests and just little diversions associated with them. Some of these will give money, info, or items sometimes rare ones. Also I will try to have quite a few minigames as I plan on making an Advance Wars type minigame for the player to mess around with, and maybe make the Jet Fighter 6 game into a very simplistic shootem up, and right now I have a bass guitar which the player can play, so I'll put in some songs I know and get them to try their luck playing them. Once the player gets a vehicle though they will be free to go where they want, but the battles may be too hard for them, so saving will be good.

In the game it will be possible to foster relationships with each of the main characters. So characters of the same sex will develop stronger friendships and will go further into their past, and characters of the opposite sex will be able to progress from friends, to boyfriend girlfriend, to a serious relationship, and then possibly marriage if things go far enough. Each character can only have one significant other as if they try to have two they will find out about each other and the relationship with both will be damaged (though not permanently). This is only obvious as being part of a close knit group it would be hard to be a "player". Azir will be the only exception as his culture does not see a need for love, marriages are only for status and procreation, so any attempts to have one of the other characters fall for him will fail, maybe in a funny fashion. All of this will be done internally with variables but in the game it will only be noticeable through their conversations. Getting the meter to go up will vary from the two people being in the party together, to specific events, to answering correctly to their questions. Obviously the events will add the most, and answering wrong or trying to start a relationship with the other character will make the meter go down. So how far each of these relationships go will be strictly up to the player, and there is no right way they are supposed to end up. After they get married it will be possible to get divorced so they do have to keep it up, and not start flirting with the other character. Was going to have this as a love story between just Dragomir and Magdalena, but then though this would be a much better idea. Haven't though much into any of the specifics of how this plays out but that'll come later when I figure more of the specifics of the story and side quests.

There will be an overview map with a couple of enemies running around on it, then from this map the player will either enter a town map (which depending on the size of the town might goto a town overview map, which will go to individual parts of the map) or a "dungeon" map which will be any place of interest. Enemies will only be in overview maps, dungeon maps, and some towns. Most of the enemies will be normal animals, and people. There might be some fantasy creatures, but I'll have to come up with a good explanation for them.

Also there is a custom camera system, which includes both free camera mode, and preset which gives 7 different angles ranging from close up to overhead, which try to give the best angle without showing the horrible clipping planes the game has.