Tactics Game Online

Character Attributes

Rather than bury you in a sea of questions regarding every aspect of this tactical, turn-based game development, I thought it would be a good idea to share of the thoughts I have been having regarding details of the characters.  I have always been a point-based character fan (refer to yesterday’s post for details).  It creates an even playing field for entry players as well as veterans, who have been playing for a while.  Everyone has a fair chance, using the same amount of points as everyone else to build their army.  One of the questions to ponder is the genre of this game, but that has no effect on the core character elements.  I am more of a fantasy medieval genre lover, so these thoughts encompass this kind of environment.

First, lets discuss some goals of the characters in this tactical online game.  The characters need to be:

• Easy to understand
• Quick to customize
• Extensible, offering variations and more options over time

Game characters are the sum of their attributes.  To meet the need of quick and easy to understand, we should minimize the number of attributes needed to describe each character, while also allowing for unique qualities to be given to characters that make each unique.  With these thoughts in mind, here are some of the attributes I propose:

• Health Points – The amount of damage a character can sustain before death
• Strength – Determines the amount of damage this character inflicts with attacks
• Speed – How far this unit can travel each turn
• Range – Distance from potential targets this character can attack
• Splash Area – All characters within this distance from the target are affected

Some optional attributes that may also be incorporated are:

• Initiative – How quickly this character acts, which determines when it gets its turn
• Defense – How much damage this character absorbs from attacks before health points are drained

In addition to attributes, each character can have a type associated with it:

• Fighter – These units use close-range weapons to attack enemies
• Archer – These units use long-range weapons to attack enemies
• Mage – These units use long-range magic to attack enemies
• Clerics – These units use healing magic to restore allies

Finally, each character can have 2 to 4 ability slots, giving them special powers, limited by the type it is.  For instance, the fighter would have abilities available to it that relate to enhancing fighter-type attacks, and defense too, of course.

So, there are a variety of choices the players would make for each character they add to their army:

• Character type
• Each attributes value – raising these costs points / reducing them gains points
• Abilities – adding these costs points