To build a better battle system

[healyg]

I signed up for Shufflecomp Disc 2, a music-themed IF minicomp where you send in a playlist of songs and get a random playlist back; you then need to choose a song (or two, or three, or...) to base an IF game off of. I got my playlist on Friday and already have a pretty good idea of what I want to do with my song(s)... but there's one thing holding me back: I need to design a battle system for this game.

Now, if there's one thing that's been drilled into my head in my years of being a part of the IF community, it's that combat in IF games usually suck. I'm trying to avoid that by designing the combat in my game to be less random and more puzzly. But I've never been good at designing puzzles! So how the heck am I supposed to manage this, eh?

There's actually a solid tradition of puzzly combat in IF, so at least I can look at some precedents. I tried Slap That Fish, by Peter Nepstad, and it's already giving me ideas on what I want to do; specifically, it's given me an idea of what I don't want to do. Slap That Fish is kind of a crappy game, you guys! You can get through the whole front half of the game by typing SLAP FISH over and over again; sure, there's other commands you can try, and in different combinations they beat battles quicker, but why bother with them when you can just beat every fight the lazy way? I know there's a scoring system to discourage taking too long on fights, but like I cared about getting a good score in the early going; I just wanted to beat the game! (Remember, a player would rather get bored than start thinking.) Worse yet, when later battles do start requiring some actual thinking, the player is completely unprepared to deal with it, and they quit. Or, well, that's what I did. Maybe I'll come back to it. Maybe not.

Anyway, from this I learned that I want the player to be engaged with the combat from the very beginning and I want to design my combat such that, if the player isn't engaged, they cannot advance. But I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of battle system will actually do these things. Maybe a rock-paper-scissors deal? But that might be too random. What if I put some tells for the opponent's move? Would that make it too easy? Would the player even get it? Or what if I made it into a kind of jockeying for position? The story would certainly support that, but how would it work? Or how about a kind of Dragon Quest styled combat?? Or maybe combat mazes???

Anyway, I'm probably worrying too hard about this. After all, it's only due on...(checks date) April 25!? oh god only three weeks away

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Zarf made a small puzzly-combat game called Critical Hit. It only appears on the CD-ROM of Hadean Lands, but if you asked him nicely I suspect he might just email it to you...

[healyg.livejournal.com]

Huh, I'll have to email him and see. Thanks for the info!

[xyzzysqrl]

I do feel like tells is the way to go.
"You notice his elbow out of place, leaving his forearm undefended; a rookie mistake."
"His blade is too high, midsection exposed."

...Of course that's super-basic but maybe if you made it CLEAR that you're supposed to read the text and judge your attack by that (high / middle / low to keep it simple?) maybe people would get it?

[healyg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's probably the way to go if I'm doing rock-paper-scissors. I'm also looking into working in a kind of Aces of Aces combat system, where moving into the right position is key. But we'll see how it goes.