MIContest 3

[Meiscool]

A test of skill:

So, awhile ago we had a discussion in a topic about starting a contest that involves using only rtp. Well, we could not decide on what we wanted to include or not. Below is a long post about my thoughts on what to do contest-wise with the discussion.

Anyways, this is not a "make a game using only this stuff" contest. I don't think many would enter and fewer would post something (let's face it, we have lives). However, I did want to make a game related contest, so what I was thinking was this:

I'll make a game, using some ideas that YOU people throw at me. The game will be ~1 hour in length, be a traditional rpg with a VERY short story, and have a scoring system based on how quickly you complete the game, how little damage you took, how many turns you took, etc.

There would be two winners of the contest; one who gets the highest score, and one who has the most liked idea. What would the idea pertain to? Well, creating a character to be used in the battles for the game!

The contest will use all RTP characters (Alex, Helen, Carol, etc), but will include some non-rtp characters in rtp style. These characters (if all goes according to plan) will have their traits designed by you. Visuals/gender/backstory are not what I'm looking for here, but more of a character stats/skills/etc sheet.

The battle system used will be a CBS that can best be described as a Grid-based turn-based battle system. It WILL be a difficult game, but not difficult in the sense of outright hard... more along the lines of tactical battle systems difficult (besides fire emblem..). Grids will be 3x4, and a player character will occupy one space. 4 players in the party at a time. I will design some of them based on how the characters are sort of "pre-designed" in rpg maker, but the extra characters will be designed by you.

Some notes: Each character has four possible actions: Attack, Move, Skill, Defend. That is it, no items/flee/row change/etc. Each character will have no more than four total attacks/skills/magics. Since "Attack" is the basic attack, this means 3 non-basic attack skills. You will design the basic attack, as well as the 3 skills. You will also design the stats of the character.

Damage is modified based on where a player is on the grid. If they are closer to the enemy, they will deal more damage and take more. Farther away, they will deal less and take less. Skills/mag are effected, healing is not.

Player Character Stats will include: Speed, Attack, Mag, Def, Magic Def, HP, and AP
Accuracy will be set to 100%, no misses and no criticals. There are no status effects, though I could be bothered to put some SIMPLE ones in (like poison, AP degen, no move). There is no experience system either, so no leveling. No equips either.
There will be no MP cost for casting spells, instead there will be a time limit given to spells. When casting a spell, a counter will appear over there character, and go down by 1 each turn that passes. Once the counter reaches zero, the spell will activate. This will be modified by player speed if I can find a good formula for it; if not it will be pre-set. If a player is hit while activating a spell, the counter will go up a bit. Spells will be similar to Last Story for the Wii, if that helps you any.
For physical skills, instead of a counter coming up, there will simply be a penalty for using the skill. Damage to self, delayed next-turn, etc.
All actions will cost ability points. Ability points are gotten at the beginning of your turn, and are kept (rollover) if not used. Max will be nine, and different players may recover different amounts at the beginning of each turn. Better skills will cost more AP needless to say. Keep that in mind.
During battle, unless a skill allows it or the attack is 'ranged', players cannot hit enemies behind other enemies on the grid. This is true for the enemies hitting players as well. This means that battles will be a mix of up-front fighters taking blows for back-line attackers/casters. Front line members may choose to use the Defend option to lessen the damage they take. This will also serve to prevent skills from going past them (such as a piercing arrow hitting an entire row). If a player character dies, there will be no reviving them, so make sure to defend your frail units, and don't make your character absurdly frail. Magic attacks can strike anywhere on the grid, and cannot be prevented by having a forward unit use defend (however, they can have the damage lessened for the unit defending). Thus, everyone everywhere needs to worry about taking magic damage.
One last note is that healing magic/skills are allowed, and that they will use the player character magic defense as the statistic to see how much a skill heals. This is to prevent mages with high magic from being OP, as well as give some staying power to the healer.

Design:
Name: Give a name for your character. Make it 7 letters or less please.
Stats: Using a total of 22 points, give a value 1-5 for each of these: HP, SPD, STR, MAG, DEF, MDF. Give a value 2-4 for AP Regenerated/turn, which each point in AP counting as 2 points. That means that 4 of the 22 automatically go to AP, but you could give two more for one more point of AP regain each turn, or four more to regain 4 AP each turn. Balance the characters how you'd like. A special note for speed, 5 basically means they always go first, where as 1 basically means last. Enemies will be set to 2-4 on SPD, so a character with 5 speed will always go before the enemies, and one with 1 will go after. SPD may impact magic casting, so bear that in mind too.
Attack: Give a description of your attack. Is it a thrown weapon or arrow that can hit anywhere? Is it a basic sword swing that can only hit the first enemy in each row? Is it a spear attack that hits an enemy + the enemy behind? You may make basic attacks have an effect (drain small amount of health, chance to poison, etc) but I reserve the right to eliminate these effects if coding them is annoying. AP cost of basic attacks is just 1, so try to make something powered accordingly.
Skills: For each skill, give a cost, effect, area of effect, and penalty/charge time. Keep penalties simple, like "Next turn delayed, small amount of recoil, high AP cost" etc. As for charge time, just say "instant, fast, slow, medium". For effects, things like "heals, damages, pushes enemies back a tile on the grid, etc." Again, simple. For area of effect, first choose if the skill auto-targets enemies, or can be manually positioned. Manually positioned, is of course more useful, so bear that in mind for creating a balanced character. Secondly, for area of effect, please choose one of these options: Self, Single 1x1 tile, 4x1 row, 1x3 column, 2x3 columns, + shape, X shape, 3x3 square. If a skill is too powerful (example, instant magic spell with 3x3 area for high damage with 1AP cost) I will balance it myself, so please try to make balanced skills. I will give exact numerical AP costs myself, so don't worry about that.
Next, tell me how you think this character should be played. Just give a simple archetype (black mage, tank, healer, etc) and tell me where on a 3x4 grid you think they should be positioned naturally.
Lastly, give the character a few personality traits for any dialog they might have. Be creative here. Something like "must say 'toad' in every sentence" is perfectly fine. There won't be must dialog, so that means little time to give a character personality, thus I will run with almost anything you give me to give your character personality in a few sentences.


Created characters will be thrown into the game mostly as you design them. I would prefer to have a fair mix of mages/fighters, so if you see 3 people make a magic character, please try to make a physical one. If more people enter characters than I expected, overflow will be implemented into boss characters. If you specifically want to make a boss character, say so and make it... but bear in mind that I may have to edit it.

Judging will occur by the people that play the game. They will post their score, as well as some notes on who they felt was the best "Player-made-character". If everyone felt that your tank really saved their ***, and they post it saying how nice a character it was to have, then you might very well win the create-a-player portion of the contest! Making someone very powerful will no doubt be useful, but making someone who needs to be babied/tanked for/healed constantly make cause a team more problems than help, so keep balance in your mind.


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This is just an idea. I have all the resources ready to make this, as well as the plot and ideas. I just need to make it. However, if no one would play the game to score or judge the created players, I won't bother. So let me know your ideas.

[Meiscool]

No need to provide sprites, I'm just gonna use stock ones from a website. Because of that, I may have to change your character's weapon, but I will try to keep your skills the same. At least one point must be in magic (which is to prevent mag-only characters from being OP and physical-only from being OP). Next, each point in AP counts as 2 of the total 22, so that needs to be revised too.

I'm having a lot of difficulty making how the battle layout should look at the moment.
Mock:

[Meiscool]

Thanks

BTW, if anyone has any links to websites with a lot of pose art for the RTP characters, please share them here. It will make things a lot easier on me, and also possibly allow me to make more than 4 generic enemies. Also, all enemies will be human, as per plot purposes.

[Prpl_Mage]

Well this sounds like a terrific idea. What program will you use to make this? Also the visuals there looks pretty swell.

When you say that spells work like the last story, do you mean that they have a timer and gets interrupted or is it also all those circles that appear on the ground? Like if I use fire on an enemy, I actually use it on the tile it's standing on. And continuing to stand on that tile after getting hit will damage the enemy?

Faldea disciple of the tide

Stats:
HP:3
SPD:5
STR:2
MAG:4
DEF:2
MDF:2
AP:2

Attack:
Halberd attack - damages a foe in melee range and an adjacent target. (possibly reduce the targets speed by 1 for a turn or two)

Skills:
I: Crashing wave (3ap) - short charge time, single target. Deals damage and pushes the target back

II: Well of life (4ap) - Instant, self/single target (or cross shape). Heals ally.

III: Tideslash (5ap) - short charge time, 3x3 area. Deals damage and reduce targets AP by 1.

Playstyle:
Balanced character with an focus on magic. High speed ensures an advantage. Rather slow AP regen which forces the player to decide when to use abilities and what's worth saving for. Capable of healing after 2 turns(granted you start with + 0 and gain 2 each turn) or pushing enemies back.  The most expensive skill will take some time to gain but the reduction of Ap can lead to a tactical advantage.
An overall caster that could benefit from being on the front-line but is more likely to stay behind because the lack of defense.

Character:
A female caster that loves fighters and dislike cowards(ranged/casters). Arrogant and loves to point out that she (who's a caster) engage enemy in close combat with her halberd unlike other mages. Often points out bravery as a virtue and make references to water in metaphors.

[Meiscool]

For the heal, 4ap is steep for a single heal, but fair for a targeted cross heal. Which would you rather it be? I'll down it to 2ap if it is a weak single target heal, or 3 if it is a strong single target. And just the counter from last story, no magic circles.

[Prpl_Mage]

For the heal, 4ap is steep for a single heal, but fair for a targeted cross heal. Which would you rather it be? I'll down it to 2ap if it is a weak single target heal, or 3 if it is a strong single target. And just the counter from last story, no magic circles.

You're the designer so you probably knows best. Let's go with the cross shape though. I kinda prefer useful healing in games and a battle system like this would probably make characters get close to each other.

[Meiscool]

I'm cancelling this for the moment. At this time is doesn't look like my work schedule is going to accommodate all the things I would like to do hobby-wise. I'll keep ya'll posted.