Comic Book Meets Turn Based Tactical Combat

I'm still trying to envision what your trying to do. I see tactical pieces in this design like...an abstract sense of different components of combat, such as positioning, surrounding, weapons, and techniques/abilities on this "board" in a tactile (as in feeling, not tactical) sense. Not that you can "move" your kung fu training diagonally, and your sword along the horizontal and vertical, but...I dunno theres something there. Thats what first came to mind when I read your post. Its sort of surreal and fuzzy still, maybe you could elaborate a bit more? Definitely sounds like something to be discussed though. I don't think anything is really ever outdated. Anything can evolve and be new again. Hell, I still play MUDs once in a while and roguelikes will never get old. I guarantee you I'm not the only one to have played the original Quake or mario games in the last 6 months.

For you're idea I'm picturing an Advanced Wars like game (please correct me if I'm wrong). The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels. In advanced wars there is a simple animation for each type of unit attacking or defending, but you can skip them (they can even be turned off). This is because the combat is the focus, not the animation. It seems like you want to make animation the focus, and I'm not convinced it will work.

I can picture it though, and I think it would be charming. If the underlying system was good enough, and the stills could be skipped in cases where you've seen the same "good guy attacks goon" comic a million times, then it has potential to be a good game. Just keep in mind that eventually, repeated animations will start to get old.

Is this different than Dofus and BattleChess?

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Original post by Nich For you're idea I'm picturing an Advanced Wars like game (please correct me if I'm wrong). The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels. In advanced wars there is a simple animation for each type of unit attacking or defending, but you can skip them (they can even be turned off). This is because the combat is the focus, not the animation. It seems like you want to make animation the focus, and I'm not convinced it will work.

I'm still not quite sure where he was going with this, but in one scenario, I could see it as "playing" a graphic novel. In a case like this, it would almost be like interactive fiction where the focus is on story and the artistic way of telling the story, so you would need a lot of unique panels for that purpose, which, again if its your intent isn't a big deal. I'm not a big fan of interactive fiction (heh...or story lines I guess for that matter) but I know a lot of people who are, and I could see something like this working, at least for an indie crowd.

I'm imagining something like the fate/stay night games. which is a visual novel type of game. A sample video is

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(It's in japanese)

Notice that they are using stills of the characters then just zoom, pan, add overlays, etc to give the effect of fighting. Is this somewhat close to what you are imagining?

It's fun to look at first but seeing the same things over and over gets old pretty fast, unless you make a lot of stills.

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Original post by Nich The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels.

Actually, what you could do is use a cell shaded renderer and render the frames like that.

This way you can vary the positions of the characters, change the terrain and so forth and still get the comic book frame feel.

Most video cards can easily render hundreds of frames per second in near photo realism, so such a system could do virtually instant frame rendering for cell shading, especially as the models don't need to be as detailed as photo realistic rendering.

If you are suing a 3D environment (despite the map being only 2D like chess board), you could actually use the details on the board to determine the objects in the cell shaded frame.

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Original post by Wavinator I was thinking about whether or not it's possible to both simultaneously abstract tactical combat (between say a party of adventurers and opponents in a single-player cRPG) and add a totally different graphical style to it.

I like the idea of the graphical style. It would add a very unique and recognisable element to the game. If you have a well developed and interesting combat system (and even abstract ones can be this way), then you could have a real success on your hand with a game like this.

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Original post by themime I see tactical pieces in this design like...an abstract sense of different components of combat, such as positioning, surrounding, weapons, and techniques/abilities on this "board" in a tactile (as in feeling, not tactical) sense.

I did a mockup of this but unfortunately cribbed artwork from other sites so I'm not comfortable posting the pics I have. What I have is a nighttime city block that acts as a stylistic backdrop (the fight doesn't happen on that graphic). A kind of chess board expands from that scene showing six combatants. Some have swords, some have guns.
When one attacks another, comic book panels fly onto the screen, the panels flash and damage bars are shown.

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I don't think anything is really ever outdated. Anything can evolve and be new again. Hell, I still play MUDs once in a while and roguelikes will never get old. I guarantee you I'm not the only one to have played the original Quake or mario games in the last 6 months.

Thanks, that's good to know. I got the idea and thought it would be a great way to show a different style as well as allow interactions (like grabs and holds) that would otherwise be very tough to do. But the presentation may be too weak to support the idea.

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Original post by Nich For you're idea I'm picturing an Advanced Wars like game (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Haven't played this, but I checked out screen shots and I think I see what you mean. I was thinking smaller scale (individual characters) but the idea still holds.

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The main issue I can see is that the players are going to see the same panels over and over, or you're going to need hundreds of panels. In advanced wars there is a simple animation for each type of unit attacking or defending, but you can skip them (they can even be turned off). This is because the combat is the focus, not the animation. It seems like you want to make animation the focus, and I'm not convinced it will work.

The panel reuse issue as well as how jazzy/effective they could be is my main reservation. The panels are representing something that you can't readily see on the abstract tactical board. If you turn them off, there's no real point in having them because you now don't know why/how you're winning or losing.

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Just keep in mind that eventually, repeated animations will start to get old.

I agree with you. Art fatigue. But why doesn't this affect a game like Diablo, though? Is there something about the view that alters how much of the same attack animations we can stand to see?

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Original post by sunandshadow Is this different than Dofus and BattleChess?

I think so. I haven't played Dofus but by the screen shots it looks to me like your typical isometric combat game. BattleChess might be a little closer in spirit in that when units interacted on each square on the board there was a specific combat animation.

One big question is why not simply stick to some sort of isometric view and just animate attacks and responses on that. It would work because it would be conventional and readily understood. Honestly, that may be the way to go.

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Original post by yapposai I'm imagining something like the fate/stay night games. which is a visual novel type of game. A sample video is "> (It's in japanese)

THANK YOU! That's almost exactly what I had in mind, except that the art would be far smaller.

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Notice that they are using stills of the characters then just zoom, pan, add overlays, etc to give the effect of fighting. Is this somewhat close to what you are imagining?

Yes. There would be at least two panels for every attack, with particle and sound fx for each. How they entered the screen (zipping in and crashing into an existing panel, for instance) would vary as would how they left the screen.

The tactical board would have a few generic ways to represent the results of the comic panels. If you got a killing stroke, for instance, you might see a panel showing a character flash and then a gunshot wound might overlay the head of the victim. The panel would fade and the figure representing that hero on the tactical board would slump over and vanish.

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It's fun to look at first but seeing the same things over and over gets old pretty fast, unless you make a lot of stills.

Ironically it might be far easier to render a boatload of stills than it would be to have lots of two party animations. There are a lot of 2d tricks that would take a lot less work than complex anims for 3d models.

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Original post by Wavinator I agree with you. Art fatigue. But why doesn't this affect a game like Diablo, though? Is there something about the view that alters how much of the same attack animations we can stand to see?

The "meat" so to speak of diablo isn't the animations however, it's the advancement, the items and the story. The animations are also very short, so the player isn't patiently waiting for them to end so that they can get on with the rest of the game. The game would be much, much worse, however, if they played the same cutscene in between acts, and you couldn't skip it. That would be art fatigue.

That said, this idea is really starting to grow on me. Again, you can't rely on the panels making a mediocre game good, but if they were added to a decent battle system, with a cool comic book style story underlying the battles, then you have an excellent game on your hands. Just realize that flashy comic book stills doesn't give you a license to skimp on the "meat" of your game :).

So to answer your question, this kind of style would make an amazing game *IF* it had a good game and story underlying it.

That's kind of complex, and I have no way of knowing for sure whether my mental image of what you describe is accurate, but my mental image is pretty awesome. The "action panels" wouldn't be up all the time, right? They'd just be adding flair and data to the movement and transformation of pieces on the gameboard.

I think it would work very well, and could be made appealing and engaging. Have a handful of different panels for each possible scenario and outcome, and slam them onto the screen as the dice rolls pan out.

Really, they'd be a good way to handle any situation that the gameplay screen fails to express well. Just the other day, I was thinking how nice it would be in there were little pictures in the corner of NetHack that would show a door opening into a dark room, or the appearance of a monster that I might not spot right away in its ASCII form. You could draw player attention to important things, report the occurance and outcome of different events and clarify the situation with these things.

This reminds me a little bit of a thread (one of yours, perhaps) from many months ago, discussing whether players would be more willing to accept the outcome of a hidden event if they got a tiny play-by-play of how it happened. You send your space marines in to fight their space marines, and suddenly it's the next turn and half your guys are dead and the others are hiding behind pillars. If that's all you see, you swear and accuse the designer of screwing you, but if you get a five-second vignette of your guys walking into a trap, getting caught in a crossfire and quickly reacting by scrambling for cover, you think you just got outmaneuvered by the enemy.

I'd warn you against making them too long or obnoxious. They should be punctuation, not cut-scenes. And I'd rather have sound effects than voices. I can hear the same gunshot or explosion a hundred times and not hate it, but the fifth time a character says, "Okay, team, this is it! Let's take it to 'em!" I want to light a Q-tip and burn my ears.


EDIT: Yep, it was one of your threads.

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Original post by Nich The "meat" so to speak of diablo isn't the animations however, it's the advancement, the items and the story.

Good point. I wasn't seeking to make the anims the main focus. I would want cRPG level advancement and depth, but what I wanted to do was include gameplay choices that are often notoriously difficult to implement. (The need for precisely placed two-party animations where one character takes another hostage or grapples with another would be a good example.)

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So to answer your question, this kind of style would make an amazing game *IF* it had a good game and story underlying it.

I will take a conditional vote of confidence over no vote at all! [smile]

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage The "action panels" wouldn't be up all the time, right? They'd just be adding flair and data to the movement and transformation of pieces on the gameboard.

Yes that's right. The pieces on the game board would be minimally animated but contain the steak, with the panels offering little details and a lot of the sizzle.

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Have a handful of different panels for each possible scenario and outcome, and slam them onto the screen as the dice rolls pan out.

Hah, I was thinking about going as old school as showing the dice rolls, but that may be going too far. I think what I'm trying to say is show things in a fashion so as to not be afraid of letting players know it's a game.

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Really, they'd be a good way to handle any situation that the gameplay screen fails to express well. Just the other day, I was thinking how nice it would be in there were little pictures in the corner of NetHack that would show a door opening into a dark room, or the appearance of a monster that I might not spot right away in its ASCII form. You could draw player attention to important things, report the occurance and outcome of different events and clarify the situation with these things.

Okay I had not thought about expanding this beyond combat but it could work. Characters falling into a trapdoor, for instance, or jumping up onto piping ala Splinter Cell before an enemy comes in.

I think the panels should offer game state information that tells you why you have the choices you do. So if you get a sudden backstab on a character that's in an adjacent square, it's because you've entered some advantageous state.

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This reminds me a little bit of a thread (one of yours, perhaps) from many months ago, discussing whether players would be more willing to accept the outcome of a hidden event if they got a tiny play-by-play of how it happened.

Yeah, I remember that and that's part of where this comes from.

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I'd warn you against making them too long or obnoxious. They should be punctuation, not cut-scenes. And I'd rather have sound effects than voices. I can hear the same gunshot or explosion a hundred times and not hate it, but the fifth time a character says, "Okay, team, this is it! Let's take it to 'em!" I want to light a Q-tip and burn my ears.

Thank you, that's good advice. I was thinking they'd only last a couple of seconds, enough to have a visual effect and inform you of success or failure.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by sunandshadow Is this different than Dofus and BattleChess? I think so. I haven't played Dofus but by the screen shots it looks to me like your typical isometric combat game. BattleChess might be a little closer in spirit in that when units interacted on each square on the board there was a specific combat animation. One big question is why not simply stick to some sort of isometric view and just animate attacks and responses on that. It would work because it would be conventional and readily understood. Honestly, that may be the way to go.

Viewtiful Joe and Max Payne might be two other examples to look at.

Personally I don't see the value of trying to implement panels in a game, I always thought the continuous motion of 2d or 3d animation was an inarguable improvement over panels.