This idea's kinda neat :)

That said, about the melee stuff, me's just gonna mention a couple'a things:

In addition to damage potential, you can make it so that melee is way better for throwing enemies around'n such. If melee, in general, is the way to go if you want to throw people into, say, the water, and throwing folks into the water is quite a bit more effective than shooting at'em till they're dead, then melee'd often be prefered over ranged. ... baseball bats are terribly handy in Worms: Armageddon 'tleast :) (yes, and in the other Worms games where you have baseball bats too I suppose :| )

Attacks of opportunity, or some such. Melee characters can automatically smack folks with their terribly huge axes and such if they move too close, maybe even ending their turn in addition to damaging. Additionaly, you might make neat combos by smacking some enemy right into some melee ally of yours etc...

Also, level design and AI behaviour can make for situations that encourage melee rather than ranged attacks (eg. rather cowardly enemies hiding in some building, sort of forcing you to get in melee range anyways).

Quote:Original post by Gnarf
This idea's kinda neat :)

That said, about the melee stuff, me's just gonna mention a couple'a things:

In addition to damage potential, you can make it so that melee is way better for throwing enemies around'n such. If melee, in general, is the way to go if you want to throw people into, say, the water, and throwing folks into the water is quite a bit more effective than shooting at'em till they're dead, then melee'd often be prefered over ranged. ... baseball bats are terribly handy in Worms: Armageddon 'tleast :) (yes, and in the other Worms games where you have baseball bats too I suppose :| )

Attacks of opportunity, or some such. Melee characters can automatically smack folks with their terribly huge axes and such if they move too close, maybe even ending their turn in addition to damaging. Additionaly, you might make neat combos by smacking some enemy right into some melee ally of yours etc...

Also, level design and AI behaviour can make for situations that encourage melee rather than ranged attacks (eg. rather cowardly enemies hiding in some building, sort of forcing you to get in melee range anyways).

That's sort of where I'm leaning towards now. Melee can be very useful, and the idea of melee being able to smack folks around seems pretty nice. Weapons are going to have ranges that are a little larger than life - they're still short range, direct attacks, but it makes them slightly more useful.

Most "arenas" in the game are going to be more well-behaved than a worms match might be. Probably more like Gunbound. Strong characters have a higher movement potential to run/jump towards the enemy and smack them, while weak characters only have enough stamina to maybe hide under a nearby overhang and stay protected.

Quote:Original post by wildhalcyon
You're right. I have absolutely no intention of using a traditional setting, but on the other hand, I hate the old west theme.

That's just because the old west theme has been driven into lameness by cliche TV shows and badly made movies. In fact, a seriously dark-plotted movie is due to be put into development any time now (if not already). The creators of this movie will hit gold, the old west theme will return to all of it's glory, and hundreds of new wild west video games will go into development. Better to go forth now while your game will still be unique.

Don't think of old west. Think of horses, villages, and loud guns.

Quote:Original post by Kest

Quote:Original post by wildhalcyon
You're right. I have absolutely no intention of using a traditional setting, but on the other hand, I hate the old west theme.

That's just because the old west theme has been driven into lameness by cliche TV shows and badly made movies. In fact, a seriously dark-plotted movie is due to be put into development any time now (if not already). The creators of this movie will hit gold, the old west theme will return to all of it's glory, and hundreds of new wild west video games will go into development. Better to go forth now while your game will still be unique.

Don't think of old west. Think of horses, villages, and loud guns.

Sorry, you still haven't convinced me. I doubt I'll ever be interested in the period as a genre I'm afraid. If it occured between 1800 and 1900 and between St. Louis and San Francisco, its not for me.

This may be because of cliched shows and movies, but I have yet to see one that I actually like. The setting just isn't one I can appreciate as much as other settings.

There is a good solution to adding melee combat in a tactical setting where ranged combat dominates.

As soon as two characters are in a melee combat, neither can fire ranged weapons larger than a pistol and can only aim at each other.
Also they can no longer be aimed at individually by other characters.
Melee combat is a lot of moving around, up under over each other: you can never get a reliable shot in.
Therefore you add the rule that any shot fired at them, has a 50% chance of aiming at your friend and a 50% chance of aiming at your enemy.
You feeling lucky?

If you add this rule, going melee against better gunfighters/snipers/whatev is a good way to prevent them from being effective, while at the same time melee warriors will only be extra exposed while they're running to get into melee range. How exposed depends on where you want the balance of the game to be.

Quote:Original post by wildhalcyon
Sorry, you still haven't convinced me. I doubt I'll ever be interested in the period as a genre I'm afraid. If it occured between 1800 and 1900 and between St. Louis and San Francisco, its not for me.

This may be because of cliched shows and movies, but I have yet to see one that I actually like. The setting just isn't one I can appreciate as much as other settings.

Well, just don't think of it as west at all. Fantasy settings have horses and villages. Modern settings have guns. I've seen plenty of gunslinger anime movies that were very "west" style but also very cool.

Have you watched Vampire Hunter D? Horses, villages, guns. Yep.
Trigun, Gungrave, Cowboy Bebop. Check them out.

Update!

Although this post is moving away from the battle system description itself, I wanted to discuss more of the background of this game so people can get an idea of where I'm trying to fit this into the rest of the gameplay.

The game is a single player RPG that takes place after a brutal world war that decimated the population. The war itself was fought using "engineered" individuals, which is very general right now because I'm not quite sure what setting I want this to be in. It could fit with magic, technology, mutants, whatever. 300 years later (present-time in the game), small dominions have begun to reappear, and local governors are beginning to get power-hungry in the leadership bubble following the destruction.

The player is in charge of a society of remnant engineered beings which is attempting to maintain peace between the new governments. They will have to deal with mediating disputes between the countries, protecting civilians, and dealing with rogue mages/robots/mutants/jedi/etc.

Character advancement is similar in some aspects to traditional RPGs. Each character has a level, HP, attack, defense, etc. The biggest difference is that characters are created randomly with different skills, and the game emphasizes recruiting new characters through a variety of means - bribery, persuasion, permission, and in battle - as the story progresses.

The spirit of the game is meant to be reminiscent of the fuedal history in China and Japan, particularly from Samurai lore and the Three Kingdoms period.