Final Fantasy Tactics is a wonderful turn-based strategy game. It has been a huge motivator for Tactics Game Online. Several components of FFT can be found in TGO. The square based battlefield, the character classes, and several of the character attributes have made influential marks. Quite simply put, Tactics Game Online is a Final Fantasy Tactics equivalent with simplification, online gameplay, and multiplayer opportunites integrated into it. We take the best of the best and try to make it reachable for all.
Well, a solution for the relationship between strength and defense may have been found, and it can be summed up in one simple rule: the 150 rule. This rule is simple, between a unit’s strength and defense, the total cannot exceed 150. This solves many problems, and keeps players from making armies of maxed out units.
Out of the five attributes in Tactics Game Online, one has been difficult to describe, that of defense. To keep things as simple as possible, strength, defense, and speed all have values between 0 and 100. Range and splash could be given these ranges as well, but these seem better and easier for players to understand if they mean literally 5 range for 5 squares distance, and 2 splash for 2 squares from target square. More on these examples another day for those that this confuses.
Defense, though, if more difficult to determine because its relationship with strength has a huge impact on combat. There are a couple of scenarios. Some relationship are extremely simple and allow players to predict combat results quickly, others would be more complex. The question that must be asked is if the tradeoff between complexity and a more fluid combat system is worth it.
The most simple approach is to have damage equal to the attackers strength minus the defenders defense value. How much simpler can you get? Some disadvantages are that this can create many situations where units have no possible way of damaging other units. For example, a unit with a strength of 20 would almost never be able to hurt an enemy with a defense of 70. And would about units that have 100 defense? How do you hurt these tanks?
Another, more appealing approach is to have defense depict the percentage of absorbable damage. So, if a unit with a strength of 50 attacks a unit with a defense of 50, the defending unit takes 25 damage (50% of 50 damage). Pretty simple still, but again, this situation runs into the challenge of what happens with units with defense values of 100.
A goal I have is to have units be able to inflict some amount of damage to all units, regardless of how high their defense values are. One way to allow for this in either scenario mentioned above would be to allow units to inflict greater damage if they attack the back of their enemies. Appealing, but a greater level of complexity to battle dynamics.
After describing so much of the intricacies of developing a fun and balanced multiplayer tactics game, I decided it was time to dive into seeing what it would take to build one. Fortunately, I have a great starting point from the project I last worked on, Legendary Kingdom Tactics. LKT for short, this game was my first game I have developed. It has much of the same elements as this one, with one key difference, this one will be much simpler.
Unity 3d IDE
I forgot how much fun it is using Unity 3d. If you have never heard of it, go to their website and check it out. The first order of business was to tear out everything that LKT used that Ball Tactics will never need. That has been quite a chore, and I am sure there is more that will be removed later. With that completed over the weekend, I was able to begin working on a login and registration process. LKT never had an integrated registration, something I wanted to change for Ball Tactics. Well, as of this morning, both are working. As you can see from the screenshot (kind of hard to read I know), I was able to successfully create an account in the game and log in to it. Next up, developing the army builder section, which will allow you to build your armies that you will wage war with other players through. I will keep you updated on how that is progressing this week, and also place a working version of the game online after that is finished. There is no point putting it up for you now, since all we have is a working registration and login. There are other account management screens I know it needs too at some point, like a “forgot my password” button and an “View/edit account settings” page. Those will come eventually. Lets get something working that is fun for you to play with first before we do the boring stuff like that.
Health Points
To keep it simple, and very intuitive, every character will have a fixed, unchangeable health point value of 100. This value cannot be increased or decreased in any way by the players. Each characters health value may be influenced by only one factor, whether the total army value exceeds the allowable amount.
Strength
This value refers to the amount of damage a character will inflict on another character.
Defense
When being attacked by melee or ranged characters, the defense value refers to the percentage of damage this character will absorb. For example, a character with a defense value of 50 will take half damage, rounded up, from melee and ranged attacks.
Speed
The amount of movement points this character has available to move each turn.
Range
The number of spaces away this character can be from its target to attack.
Splash
The number of spaces away from the target square that are affected by an attack.
The building blocks
Here are some of the essential elements that will make this game fun and enjoyable of us tactics game lovers:
- Turn-based gameplay – Each unit in the battle will take turns moving and attacking
- Multiplayer focus – Every battle is between two or more players. This is not a solo game, but focused on player interaction
- Grid battle field – Battles will take place on a grid board, that may or may not have elevation to it. There are variations to the type of grid layout we go with. The options are square, hex, or even a 3d layout that incorporates height.
- Customizable units – Battles take place between small squads of units. Players assemble this small squads and challenge other players to a duel.
- Free to play – As states yesterday, there is no hidden agenda here. Lets make a free game for all of us to play!
- Expandable format – Lets design this game so that we can add to it over time. New units, maps, weapons, armor, items, etc.
So there you have it, the essentials of the game. There are many questions to answer that we all need to tackle together, and these questions need to be handled in a systematic and logical order as we develop the game. Your feedback is crucial to the success of the development of the game.
Big things can come in small packages. Tactical, turn-based games are in short supply. You know the kind of game I am talking about, don’t you? Think Final Fantasy Tactics. Heard of it? Would about advance wars? Lord of the Rings Tactics? Those are some of the recent ones, but there are others. There have been several games over the years that capture the essence of gameplay that we now coin a “tactics” game. Its almost a genre within itself now, like “tower defense” games.
Well, to lead to the point of this short introductory article, I would like to create in with your help a simple and expandable, possibly even extendable, turn-based tactics game that can be played for free online. This game would need your help to be a success, there is no hidden agenda here, except to provide us all with a simple and fun tactics game that we can all play and interact with online. What do you think, is it possible? Stay tuned! Many more thoughts and articles to come.