JRPG Combat System
2D Combat System
Group Size: 1
Duration: 4 weeks, February-March 2022
Program: Unity 2021
JRPGFootage
Over the decades in gaming history, combat systems have evolved tremendously, from simple whips and items in Castlevania, to fast-paced battle techniques reminiscent of Devil May Cry. However, there's a combat system that has remained prominent for almost 40 years, and is still going strong: the turn based system. Although the system has gone through its own evolutions, the core fundamentals remain the same: strategically choose your action, and, with a little luck, defeat your enemies. As such, I decided to try my hand at this combat system.
For this project, I decided to work in Unity 2021. It's a game engine that I'm very familiar with, and can see any progress made without relying entirely on looking at my code. This makes for a more streamlined process, and I can see any mistakes I make in real-time, rather than having to sift through my code to find mistakes.
In the process of making this system work, I ran into two difficulties. The first challenge was how to approach the project. I had never done something like this before, so I was going into this project blind. Fortunately, there were tutorials on how to get started, so those were incredibly useful.
Player Turn and Actions
The second difficulty was understanding how turns worked in programming. I understood how they worked from a purely gameplay perspective: a player does an action while the enemy waits their turn, then an enemy does an action while a player waits their turn. However, I had difficulty translating that into code. Once again, tutorials were there to help make light of how they functioned.
Battle States
My main reason for making this system was experimentation. This is the first battle system I've ever made, so that's an experimentation in and of itself. However, I decided to make a battle system that was more complex in theory and in execution. This is because I wanted to expand upon my gameplay programming skills, and just try something new. Although it's not a great showing of my UI programming skills, there's at least a functional UI present.
All in all, this was a fun and slightly challenging project that left plenty of room to experiment with the format and mechanics. It's something that I would love to expand upon and flesh out in the near future.