Tactical Web ORPG

[MrBones]

My name is Derek Boe.
I'm a pixel artist with 3 years experience.
I've been working on this solo for the remaining 2 years.
I have no knowledge of an kind of programming...
3 launches and 3 failures later I'm down to nothing but a failed back-up site on a buddies server.
http://www.aiongate.com/terra

I came across Battle Forces Online.
It is very close to what I'm going for, so if mobeamer wants to message me that'd be AWESOME.
I'm hoping someone will be interested in helping me out in the coding department.
I am willing to do all needed art and I have many artists helping me with other things, see my portfolio if you want to see the quality of my work:
http://pixeljoint.com/p/3674.htm?pg=1&sec=icons

Anyways, if you're interested please read further, and if you have any questions or you are interested about the project I would love to hear from you. :]
Either PM me here or email me at punkythepenguin [at] gmail [dot] com
In advance thank you for your time.

This is just a basic overview of the project, the storyline can be seen under development at:
http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=6667.msg78087#msg78087

The project is a 2D open world multiplayer tactical game.
Battles against monsters would all be done in the open world, where as PvP and GvG would take place in instances.
At the start the player much choose race, skin color, hair and eye color, this is all done by a dynamic image layering system
Players have to build their characters stats to appropriately match the needs of their class.
Vitality, Attack, Agility, Dexterity, Wisdom, Will

These stats will determine
Health - Vitality, Will
Energy - Wisdom, Will
Power ? Attack, Dexterity
Spirit Dmg- Attack, Wisdom
Dodge - Agility
Defense - Will, Vitality
Hit rate - Dexterity, Attack
Cast/Reload speed - Wisdom, Agility

I still have to come up with a good way for calculation using these stats for what actually happens when a player hits or gets hit.
Haven't come up with that party yet which is a good core element to the game.

Each player has choose 2 of 5 basic skills, they can get the others down the road if they want.
Wait, Jump, Throw, Avoid, Counter
Players must then choose their starting class.
Classes will determine what weapons will have bonuses, and what skills you can learn.
They must then pick their weapon choice, they can pick any weapon really, your class is just going to be less effective with it.
Your attack grid is based on what weapons you have chosen.



The player moves around freely while in the open world to make traveling less of a pain.
The player can party up with other users and explore the open world finding monsters and defeating them for experience points.
There are three types of monsters.
Non-Aggressive (attack and the others might just run)
Passive-Aggressive (you hit one, you fight all)
Aggressive (they're coming for you)

If you engage a monster battle restrictions are put into place instantly.
This can be done either by attacking the monster, or just getting in it's range of view.
Monsters you have engaged can not be attacked by other players unless they are in your guild or party.
You have 30 seconds or so to make a move, if you fail to make your move in time your player will defend for that turn.
The monsters will make their move directly after the person who engaged them makes his move.

For example you engage 3 monsters.
All 3 of those monsters will move after you move.
Unless they are engaged by someone in your party else via attack in which case their turn will occur after that person moves.
If a monster feels threatened they may engage the person coming after them before they even get to attack it to take it off the other player.

Movement and attacking is no longer going to be based on your class.


I realized terrain such as trees and bridges would be difficult for someone with diagonal only movement...
The player will move in any direction by 3 squares.
Now both moving AND attacking are going to be assigned Stamina.
Your average player will have like 10 stamina.
Attacking with a light weapon will take away 5 stamina where as a heavy weapon or a spell would take about 8.
Moving one square will take 2 stamina or so.
So 3 squares would take 6.
Allowing you to move and attack, or vise versa.

If you actually read this I really would appreciate to hear back from you.
Even if you can't do this I'd still like to hear a no, so I know you actually took the time to read this far.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
- Derek Boe

[saljutin]

Interesting... but I don't understand this attacking grinds? How will that work?

[Chris]

1H sword - left hand, Riffle - right hand. I made an ultimate character, 100% field coverage

As for feedback from me, go to wayofthepixel and copy/paste Helm's response. My is very similar.

[mobeamer]

My name showed up in one of your conversations...Google Alerts...they'r great I tell you...keeps track of all kinds of things....

Anyway....

I like your concept, and you have some very nice artwork.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY wish I had time to do a new game, but it looks like I'm spread thin for the next month or 2.

I can tell you from what I read, that the most difficult part to code would be the monster's attacking and deciding what to attack.

I've got an engine that can do the movement and attack range and calculating the damage part. I don't have a lot of code around classes and equipping items but from what I read that sounded pretty straight forward.

If you can hold out till about the end of August, I might have some time to help you out. Can it wait that long?

[MrBones]

Interesting... but I don't understand this attacking grinds? How will that work?

The class specific grids are not to be taken into consideration.
I more less put them up so people can see the class types.

1H sword - left hand, Riffle - right hand. I made an ultimate character, 100% field coverage

As for feedback from me, go to wayofthepixel and copy/paste Helm's response. My is very similar.

I'd like to see you try and fire a rifle using only one arm. 
Rifle also has reload speed, after every attack so they are stuck reloading, not very 100% coverage.
Some classes can learn the ability to move and reload, besides the only gun that can go one handed would be a pistol.

My name showed up in one of your conversations...Google Alerts...they'r great I tell you...keeps track of all kinds of things....

Anyway....

I like your concept, and you have some very nice artwork.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY wish I had time to do a new game, but it looks like I'm spread thin for the next month or 2.

I can tell you from what I read, that the most difficult part to code would be the monster's attacking and deciding what to attack.

I've got an engine that can do the movement and attack range and calculating the damage part. I don't have a lot of code around classes and equipping items but from what I read that sounded pretty straight forward.

If you can hold out till about the end of August, I might have some time to help you out. Can it wait that long?

I should check out Gooogle Alarms, sounds handy.
Well it's a good thing I added your name to the post then isn't it. :]

I've got all the time in the world man, I'm unemployed at the moment.
And it's not like I'm in a rush to get this done, it's been a 3 year project in development.
Another two months is nothing.
Hell if I know for sure you're up for joining the project, I can always start to work on all of the graphics.
Specially after we figure out what we can and can't do.

As for the monsters I still haven't thought that out all that well.
So I'm free to suggestions.
I just really want monsters constantly trying to get to the humans, that's all I really ask for.

An engine with that would be an awesome start, is it restricted to isometric view like Battle Forces?
If so that's not a problem, if not then sweet easier for me.

Do you have some sort of instant messenger?
Such as MSN?

it's funny, I edited off that sprite base of Psychotic_Carp's back at pixeljoint.

[mobeamer]

Sorry, I don't use IM...too many people trying to chat when I want to code *grin*

Send an email to mobeamer at hot mail dot com

I've been itching to try one of those 30 day projects, maybe we can work something out. Working with an artists on a game would be a great thing!

Our first steps would be to flush out the pages we would need to build...ie Login, Character Selection, Weapon display, map, navigation....so on.

[MrBones]

I know how that is, I just turn it off when I start to draw.

I'll send ya an email containing some of the art I've already designed.
Trying to figure out if I wanna re-size it or re-do it...

You wanna complete this one in 30 days?
Or another project of yours? In which case I wouldn't mind helping out.

So basically a site map explaining what every page would have on it?

[saljutin]

BF uses ajax to refresh map every X seconds or what?

[mobeamer]

If I do a 30 day project, we can do it with what you have laid out so far.

I like the concept and it's not far off from things I've done in the past.

FYI: BF actually uses AJAX every 5 seconds to poll for changes in map objects. Once a change is detected it polls every 1 second until it finds no more changes then it slows back to 5 seconds.

(Actually, it determines best timing for the 5 second interval, depending on your browsing speed, so the 5 seconds could go up to 10 seconds if you are on a slow connection.)

All that saves me a good bit of bandwidth. (my first game, refreshed the whole map every 10 seconds. I got a bill of $150, for one month and I only had maybe 100 players...that was a shocker)

[mobeamer]

I just can't seem to let this one go...

I'm thinking that one of first thing you would want to explore is the fight system. As this will help dictate the class and stats available.

I usually start with this system:

The following happens for each "round" of combat, (Assume for a min that each char has the same weapon, IE: A sword):

Determine who goes first - (Speed)
Can you hit the victim - (Attack vs Defense, Range)
How much damage can you do - Damage
Modifications to that damage - (Weapons, Items, Spells)
How much can the victim reduce that damage - (Armor, Agility)
Modification to that reduction - (Weapons, Items, Spells)
Is the victim dead? (N - Allow them to attack, Y - Battle is over)
Repeat...

Doing that gives the following stats:
Speed
Attack
Defense
Range
Damage
Armor
Agility

I usually allow my Weapons and Armor to affect any of those stats. So if you have a "Huge Sword" your attack might go up, your damage goes up but your Range and Defense goes down)

This allows the user to use any weapon that is available.

I then use a skill based system, so each weapon has a skill associates with it. IE: A sword needs a "Blade" skill, a bow needs an "archery" skill)

A character then has a percent in each skill.

So let's say you have a "Crossbow", it has the following mods:
Range: +10
Damage: +5
Defense: -10
Skill: Archery

If your character has an "Archery" skill at 50%, they would get 50% of the weapon modifier:
Range: +5
Damage: + 2.5
Defense: -5

This allows players to pick their own weapons and their own skill. Unfortunately this means that a "class" based system won't really work.

Thoughts???

[MrBones]

Determine who goes first - Speed (first turn only), Recover
Modifications to speed - Agility, Weight, Items, Spells
Can you hit the victim - Range, Attack vs Defense, Dexterity vs Agility, Wisdom vs Will
How much damage can you do - Range x Damage?, Dexterity, Wisdom (spells)
Modifications to damage - Weapons, Items, Spells
How can the victim reduce that damage - Armor, Agility, Will (spells)
Modification to that reduction - Weapons, Items, Spells
Is the victim dead? N - Allow them to attack, Y - Battle is over
Repeat...

Doing that gives the following stats:
Attack
Dexterity
Speed
Agility
Will
Wisdom

With items deciding:
Damage
Range
Armor
Defense
Recover

You would think with a "Huge Sword" your range and damage go up, but your agility and defense would go down?

Classes would determine your skills and help me come up with original ideas based around the class not the weapon.
I was thinking classes would specialize only certain weapon types.
Sure they can use the other weapons but they wouldn't have the skills needed to use them.
Overall I kind of want every attack to be a skill even melee, each skill has an effect it would do to the other player.
In my mind that makes for more interesting skill combos to be done.

We could even make it so you determine your own class depending on what skills you master.
This would allow for diversity.

Right now the weapons I have in mind would be like...

1-Handed Weapons
Sword
Knife
Mace
Axe
Shield
Jur

2-Handed Weapons
Sword
Axe
Maul
Shield
Guitar
Pole-arm
Wrench

1-Handed Firearm
Pistol
Crossbow
Modified shotgun

2-Handed Firearm
Rifle
Shotgun
Musket

Paraphernalia (Damge over time)
Needles
Smokers
I hope you're not too anti-drug, I really want to make drugs have an influence in an RPG.
It's controversial.
Also I think it could grab the attention of people who play the web mafia games. :]

1-Handed Explosives
Grenades
Bottles
Mines

2-Handed Explosives
Cannon
Time(turn) Bombs

The weapons stats I had in mind would be in this format for example with a 2-handed weapon and a 1-handed weapon

2-Handed Sword
Damage: +10
Range: +2 (squares)
Defense: -20
Weight: +20
Recover: +10 (seconds)

1-Handed Pistol
Damage: +5
Range: +3 (squares)
Defense: -10
Weight: +20
Recover: +10 (seconds)

And your equipment would determine...
Armor:
Defense:
Weight:
Recover:

I'm assuming the easiest way to do my method would be to use a waiting system?
Where the character has to wait until they can do another turn.

[mobeamer]

Attributes look ok to me...I like to simplify things but what you have worked out there will work.

Skills vs Classes

OK, I see where you are going. But let me see if I got it right:

All Skills are available to all players
The class of your character will make your skill more effective
You can make your character better by upping skills in that class.

So let's say we have 4 skills, and each weapon/item would be connected to one or more of them:
Range
Blades
Hand to Hand
Magic

You would have 4 classes:
Ranger - 100% of Range, 50% of other skills
Warrior - 100% of blades, 50% of other skills
Monk - 100% of HtH, 50% of other skills
Mage - 100% of magic, 10% of Blade,  50% of other skills
(or something like that)

So now we come to a weapon, You mention:
2-Handed Sword
Damage: +10
Range: +2 (squares)
Defense: -20
Weight: +20
Recover: +10 (seconds)

Let's assume it is linked to the "Blade" Skill.

A Warrior would get 100% of damage (10) while a Mage would get 10% of damage (1).

A player could become better by upping their skills, so a warrior could up his Blade skill to 110% and do 11 damage.

or a mage could up his Blade skill to 50% and do 5 damage with a 2 handed sword.

That sounds ok, but is that what you have in mind?

[mobeamer]

FYI: I'm out for the day, catch you tomorrow....

[MrBones]

There will be all around skills basically these will be the players actions.
The player has to pick 2-3 of these, they can increase the effect it has by adding more points to it if they want to.
They can also choose to get all of these at the lose of using other class specific skills.
Wait: Wait a turn, move 1.5x farther next turn
Jump: Move up terrain
Throw: Toss a player to safety
Carry: Carry a player to safety
Avoid: Chance to dodge attack, if fail 2x damage
Block: Take less % damage
Dodge: If successful step move a square in any direction, if fail 3x damage

I think good way to do classes would be using Ragnaroks system with Base LVL and Class LVL
Base LVL controls your stats, Job LVL controls your skill points.
Essentially each class will have it's own skill tree. (Diablo for example)
I haven't built this but that is how I had planned for skills to work.
Skills will be categorized as; Passive, Instant, Casting, Triggered, or DMG/period time
Each class will have passive skills that give bonuses, and each one will have a few different skill builds.

Lets pretend your a basic swordsmen.
You get Wait, and Block for your two basic skills.
Examples of how wait and Block would level up would be like...
Wait lvl 1 - 1.2
Wait lvl 2 - 1.3
Wait lvl 3 - 1.5

Block lvl 1 - 2%
Block lvl 2 - 5%
Block lvl 3 - 10%
Not sure how high I'd wanna go with the skill levels yet or even if those are proper stats to give the skills.

Swordsmens skill tree would look like.
InstantSlash) Basic sword attack
 - Swipe) Hit two squares
   - Spin Slash) Attack all around you
DMG/OTStab) Basic attack with low chance of bleed out
 - Lunge) Attack 2 squares while moving 1 towards the attack in the process.
  - Impale) High chance to cause bleed out
TriggeredParry) Match/cancel your opponents melee attack
 - Counter) Attack back if successful, if fail x2 damage
  - Double Counter) Chance back with a double attack
Each skill would have a recovery time that would be calculated along with the weapon type's weight as well as the players speed.
Not sure if I'd want the basic classes having any more then 3 skill sets.
This is a rough skill tree.
I'm going to be making up a huge list of skills.
But I think before I do that I should list off all the effects skills will have such as + HP, - HP, -HP/sec ect....
That will allow me to start creating a bunch of skill ideas.

[mobeamer]

Maybe it would be good to flush out just 2 classes so I can see how it works.

Pick two and make the tree 3 or 4 levels deep. I'd suggest a Warrior vs a Mage as they would be on opposite ends of the spectrum (I think)

[MrBones]

A list of basic skills)
Wait: Wait a turn, move further the next
Jump: Jump up terrain
Throw: Toss a player to safety
Carry: Carry a player to safety
Avoid: Chance to dodge attack, if fail 2x damage
Block: Take less % damage
Dodge: If successful move a square in any direction, if fail 3x damage
Rest: Gain small amount of HP and(or) MP

Passive: These are skills that will permanently increase your damage and defense, mainly these will contain Weapon Mastery skills and such (which aren't until 2nd class
Instant: The result of the skill is done right there and then
Casting/Charging: Large scale attacks usually will take more time to pull off, at the end of your recovery your spell will cast.
Triggered: These require something to happen before their result happens, be it a player steps on a mine, to a player countering another players attack
DMG/per time: These skills will do a little damage at the start but will continue to do it's effect until you get it removed via items or someone else, or it runs out
Usually the DMG/per time for melee is bleed out, which is more or less poison status in any RPG.
Where as some spells will have DMG/per time but their's will damage at the start and then continue it's effect.

Every class would have a couple of skills in each category, but it's up to the person to pick the right builds.
Each class will have the basic move attack, which will be determined by the weapons range.

Best basics for Armsmen; Wait, Block
Armsmen would choose from...
Swipe Instant
Hit up to two people in a 1 square radius
Lunge Instant
Player attacks in 2 square radius, but must move 1 square towards target to complete
Gash DMG/period time
Deep cut, chance of bleedout
Parry Triggered
Match/cancel your opponents melee attack
Patience Charging
The moment you are done recovering a strong high critical attack at one enemy in a 1 square radius

Best basics for Herbalist; Jump, Rest
Herbalist would be able to choose from...
Flare Instant
Small fire damage, chance of temp blindness
THC Instant
High potency smoke damage, chance of confusion
Suffocation DMG/period time
Blows a thick cloud towards target, chance of confusion and speed down
Cougher Triggered
Hold in THC smoke until hit, chance could inflict damage on self
Cloud Charging
Immediately after recovery a cloud will appear around you for 1 round

There really isn't any magic my RPG.
It's all mostly an illusion caused by drugs.

[codestryke]

Looking over your initial specs, this no reply in 30 seconds is going to get very, very tricky. What if someone times out, loses there internet connection, the server goes down <name one of 100 other reasons> for going over 30 seconds. When working with multi-player poker it's not to bad as you can just use a pass or fold and it's not to bad of a hit on the player. With what I'm reading though you would lose the battle at hand and if the game is a battle game this could really tick off a lot of player's. Course too players will lie and say but my connection dropped etc if the battle is going bad. I'm interested in hearing how you might envision handling this situation, or maybe give you (both?) something to think about.

[MrBones]

Shitty deal.
Sucks to be them.

Seriously I've thought this topic over time and time again.
I couldn't think of a good way to make it fair for any type of situation stopping you from playing a game.
Most realtime games just log you out when you leave, but this would be cheap for people to just use just before they die.
Think of this almost like a real time game except you have to recover so it feels almost like it's turn based.
And 30 seconds is still a guesstimate; Weight and Stamina lengthen or increase the wait time for your next turn.

Maybe we can just make it so your turn is infinite.
Since in no way does it stall any one else, only stops you from doing anything while AFK.
At least how I had it before they had an automatic chance to minus some damage coming in.
You'd better hope your character has enough defense to not get slaughtered while you're away from the keyboard...

[saljutin]

well even in some other MMORPGs (those you have to download client and all), when you loose connection you are still logged in world. They have some sort 10-30s timer before your char actually leaves world. But if player looses connection in middle of fight his char stays there and eventually dies. That is how it is. If connection is lost on client side then he should not whine over it. Problem is if error occur on server side and then some players loose things.
codestryke said that there is no problem with this in online poker, but what if you have some good cards and some amount of money is on the table already and all odds are for you that you will be winner, then you drop your connection and fold? Will player whine? Yes he will, but he will be mad on his internet provider and not on server itself.

[JGadrow]

Just a thought. Shouldn't weapon penalties be applied at 100% at low skill levels and be REDUCED at higher skill levels?

In the example above 50% skill with a -10 Def weapon resulted in -5 Def. If someone had 25% skill, would the resulting stat be:

Def -7.5

or

Def -2.5

This will require you to store whether each attribute is a bonus or penalty. But it is a more logical system. As you get better in something, you reduce the penalties associated with it and reap more of the benefits.

[codestryke]

With a application though you have persistant sockets open directly to the server and the server knows when it lost your connection. You don't have this with web apps, you just don't know.. Ok well you do have it with PHP as you can open sockets with that as well however there are HUGE work arounds you have to make because the browsers (ie, ff, opera etc) only allow two connections open to a given resource. So you can send and receive but if someone continues to say check there message center or something in another instance of the browser it'll hang that instance.

Damn late for work more on this when I get home tonight.

[mobeamer]

Lots to reply to, where to start...

30 seconds and timeouts. I too faught with this problem for a while, what I ended up with is a persistant world. Once a character enters a map/region. They never leave till they die. If the player logs off, then the character controls themself or it stands stupidly and dies.

As for a time period, the best method I have seen to handling this is that each character has a "wait" period. A character can take an action, but it must then "wait" so many seconds (30) before taking the next action. That is what gives a strategy RPG, the strategy.

The moment a player realizes that, ya he could run over there and cut that orcs head off....but the 10 goblins next to it will kill it before they can run away....that's the moment when you have sucked them in.

Online Poker: It's another beast, I suggest that you have two wait periods...a normal wait period of 30 seconds and then a longer period of 2 min. The longer period kicks in once per session. This will allow the players to accidently get kicked out but they will have enough time to log back in.

Browser based poker games are pretty dangerous to build (unless ur really good ... codestrky I assume you are the best *grin*).  If you are thinking about that check out the randomization functionality of most web based languages, they are seriously flawed.

Back on topic:

Maybe what is throwing me with your skill system. (I think I am following you now) Is that we assume that a weapon has a certain range and damage. However in your example, the skill is dicatating the range and sometimes the damage.

Maybe you can elaborate on the Armsman example, but give him some weapons.

[MrBones]

I think for characters wanting to be safe in monster lands they have to set up camp.
Allowing them to be safe while they are offline, but if they don't then they are free food for monsters and when they come back they'll be a zombie, or dead.

All weapons have a basic attack.
Those grids are for your basic attack of that particular weapon.
Your weapons weight will add to your fatigue.
Each round you will be given a set amount of fatigue to use. ex) 12 per round.
Allows for some movement and a skill or even just two basic attacks

Lets say;
Each character starts out with 0/1000 fatigue.
Moving one square while in the open world would + 1 fatigue point.
Battles are the same, some battles will actually win you fatigue points to make it interesting.
A weapons basic attack would use no more then + 10 fatigue.
Skills can go anywhere from +10 to +100 fatigue just to pull off, weight of the weapon used will add to this as well.

Weapons have 3 weight categories
Light, Medium, Heavy
+10%, +15%, +20% fatigue

Fatigue will also eventually effect how long you wait.
There would be 3 modes of fatigue.
Fine 100% speed, Worn 80% speed, Tired 45% speed

Skill types have their own range and rules, they take more fatigue to pull off so they do more damage.
Skills are weapon specific so their range is really just modifications to the weapons range as is.
Some skills will cause the player to move, some skills require them to remain still for a turn, some skills are just simple damage.

We could also just give each weapon category a range circle instead of each weapon in particular having a grid.
Almost like a target so it gets wider the more range. Iunno, just a thought.
I'm not even sure if what i just ranted on about even answers your question.

[codestryke]

mobeamer -- interesting way of handling the battle.

I was wondering more from a overall way of doing such a thing rather then just this game, as many have said there are many things to consider when dealing with timeouts. It's always an interesting question when it comes to web games, trying to get to the "almost" real time combat.

Plus too, it also depends on what type of game this is. Meaning is it going to be a round based play game where you declare a winner or will it be a persistent type of game where resets only happen maybe once a year or more. If it's round based then getting a "too bad" message will anger a lot of folks. If it's a persistent game then, well they'll deal with it.

The other question I bring up is, like mobeamer's game blades, are both parties going to HAVE to be online to battle? As previously stated this too causes a lot of problems as there may not be anyone to even battle during certain times (especially when the game is just starting out).

Anyways I'm not knocking your game idea at all I think it's a very interesting idea.. Just trying to think of all the what ifs

[mobeamer]

yeah Bones, you missed the question *grin*

Can you flush out that armsman and how his weapons will go....leave out the fatigue thing for a min.


C - In all of my games I've struggled with the online vs offline battles. I mean the majority of a pbbg is offline at any one time, so how does a player fight another player? This is where I finally went with the "once on the map, always on the map" strategy.

I believe BF has a flag, where if you are offline for more then 2 min, the AI engine will take over your character. This gives a character a "chance" to stay alive. This also gives other players the ability to kill your characters which is a "reward" all by itself.

I think that allowing bad things to happen to your player while you are offline is a good thing. Imagine...u the player you got this nice character going, u know that if you log off there is a possibility that someone is going to come along and kill your player. That's going to have you (the player) thinking about the game all day long. I like it when you think about my game all day long, that means that you'll login and play longer when you can get back to it. And that's what it is all about aint it.

Now, I do not like it if NPC/Monster kill you while you are logged off, that's dirty, the game should not actively engage offline players. But if another player did it, that's part of the game.

*shrug* That's my two cents.