I'd say you should exploit all the features that separates ranged combat from melee.

In a melee, what you have is basically two people bashing at each others. Sure, they can dodge, parry, jump around like in the Matrix, but in the end, they need to stand right next to each others to do anything useful.

Ranged combat means:
- You can hide, and *still* be able to hit your opponent
- Your guns might have different range. You might be able to hit your opponent, even if he can't hit you
- You can use the environment for cover, making you difficult to hit

Basically, it seems the environment and your mobility plays a far greater role. You can't just stand still and shoot if you want to survive.

So let players use cover, implement some line-of-sight so they can hide from each others, give the weapons different attributes for range and other stats.

At least, that would be a good start, I think. You'd probably need to flesh it out a lot still

Edit: And of course aiming time would make sense in a real-time system. You click to fire, and the character takes aim, waits a bit, and fires. :)

If you wanna add strategy to a real-time gun-fighting rpg battle system i think i might be able to help..

You could have an aiming system which freezes the battle temperarily so that the character can go into aiming mode once he/she has selected a target.. In this mode the camera could centre itself behind the character and a cursor would move around the target, slowly cycling down from very large swinging movements to very small subtle movements over the target.. The player would have to press fire once the cursor is over the target but there's would be a time limit so that you couldn't just wait until the cursor was fixed directly on the target.. This is very similar to a game called ring of red for the ps2 (find it on www.konami.com)

Or i guess you could have a timing bar with a cursor that would travel across it and a critical hit region so if the player presses a button once the cursor is over that region they score a critical hit but otherwise score a normal hit or a miss depending on the save attempt made by the enemy..

any help!?!?

There might be some more subtle aspects about tactics in armed combat, but then you'd have to ask an expert. There are lots of tactics for mass combat, but with 1 or 2 characters you're much more limited. Since any hit can probably kill you, cover and good use of the environment is one of the most important aspects. Oh, there's one aspect of realistic games with armed combat that should be really important in your game - in Splinter Cell, you can't handle more than 2 or 3 guards at most, so if you don't want to be sneaky you have to kill them one at a time without the others being able to hit you (cover) or knowing about you. This usually requires a quite a bit of tactics.

ArchangelMorph's idea is really cool since you want to make it depend a lot on the player's skill. Actually I think you could aim the gun yourself, with the spread (how much the bullets deviate from where you're aiming at) depending on the character's skills, gun, and condition (tired, injured, etc). A nice system that would work even for an FPS: When firing (with the left mouse button) you have maximum spread. But before firing, you can steady your weapon and aim more carefully (decreasing spread) pressing the right mouse button.

Actually you can replace the basic random spread that you see in games like Counter-Strike with the floating cursor thing that was pointed out by ArchangelMorph. It requires a lot more player skill, since it's possible for the player to see if the gun is aimed right where he wants it, or not. This should be enough to make combat in your game interesting :)

All great ideas! But thats to complicated for this type of game. It is not an FPS, and its noting going be switching into any type of first person action. Think of Final Fantasy 7 (just the part where you move around the area's) but with real time gun battle. When I say real time I don't mean you can switch in to first person and gun down your enemy. Basically you just would put it on them the cursor would change do what looks like a aimer and from there is where I would add strategy. One hit kills wouldn't work because its an RPG not an FPS. Gun battles would happen FREQUENTLY too.

May I suggest copying shadowrun for Gensis. (It's a totally different game from the SNES title, much better too) It was done in a KOTOR style real time top down shooter.

'A' was draw weapon and put away weapon. NPCs would act differently if you walked around with your weapons drawn. It's also allows ambushes, where the enemies have their weapons out and you don't.
'C' was target, simular to GTA. Pressing C would cycle through all the enemies on the screen.
'B' was shoot. If you fired correctly, it would have a Rate-of-fire, which means you can't fire again until a certain time. The gun would jam occasionally, which just mean lose a turn and some bullets.

Shadowrun uses hitpoints, which might be good for an RPG, since it doesn't allow critical damage.

If you want some sort of One hit - one kill system, you can do something simular to CyberPunk 20-20, which is known as the more realistic Pen and Paper gun game. Basically, you roll 1 ~ 8, where
1 = head
2 ~ 4 = body
5 = Right arm
6 = Left Arm
7 = Right leg
8 = left leg.

If you damage that body part within a certain amount, it becomes useless. Head is double damage, and if you're head is useless, you're dead. :P

Depending on damage, you roll for 'shock', which is when your body freaks out and a player blank from the pain. Basically, lose a turn. If you stay in shock, you're basically screwed unless another party member saves you or you bleed to death.

Not only is there local damage, but there's 15 overall hitpoints, where 5 points chunks represents the amount of mobility lost. Take a few hits to the arm, you can't run as fast as you use to. :)

Yeah you're right :) Just don't make the player a tank or people will always overlook terrain and tactics.

I know it's an RPG, but just because you have HPs doesn't mean it has to be unrealistic. It's pretty lame to see someone get shot in the chest 10 times and still move like it was nothing.

A concept that is really easy to implement and understand is this: The player has HP or body parts or whatever, but they're really weak. One shot in the head is enough to kill the player. Now, this is not much fun, so you need some kind of shield that can wear down with shots (taking the role of HPs in RPGs like you want :) ) . Call it "luck points". As long as you have them, the shots that were supposed to hit you barely miss. This way it still plays like an RPG but it stays realistic enough. Now you can come up with ANY way at all to recover them and stuff, like luck points for killing enemies, some kind of special item, or make them recover over time, which is better than just using a bandage and you're automatically better :)

Quote: A concept that is really easy to implement and understand is this: The player has HP or body parts or whatever, but they're really weak. One shot in the head is enough to kill the player. Now, this is not much fun, so you need some kind of shield that can wear down with shots (taking the role of HPs in RPGs like you want :) ) . Call it "luck points". As long as you have them, the shots that were supposed to hit you barely miss. This way it still plays like an RPG but it stays realistic enough. Now you can come up with ANY way at all to recover them and stuff, like luck points for killing enemies, some kind of special item, or make them recover over time, which is better than just using a bandage and you're automatically better :)

I like this a lot, very good idea. But there is going to be no way to actually manually select where you would like to shoot. Yes getting shot 15 times in the chest and still moving is pretty unrealistic. But so is getting hit by a sword 15 times. =) I think an RPG is pretty much unrealistic, except for the fact you can make an illusion of realism like you said. The armor being more of the hitpoints while keeping the body to a realistic level. This will probably not work because this is not a future style game or anything involving shields or super armors. Modern day theme involving guns. I guess body armor could be substituted for the shields. But what would happen to the people with out the body armor? Would they die instantly? So far I think maybe allowing really low hit points and something of a luck point system would be good. Maybe 20 hp being really high amount. Possible to die fast if your not aware of your surroundings and also possible to take on many smaller crowds with 5 hp ect. Seperating the high levels from the lower levels while also adding the skill of the player to move with the terrain and use his specials and counter moves wisely.