Happy Friday y'all. Thought I’d better check in seeing as I've not written a blog post for a few weeks. Combination of days off and doing actual proper work. Not just figuring out how to build stuff so I can write tutorials for you lot! Which is actually what I'm doing at the moment!
Having finished the crafting system, (and yes, I know I need to work on those tutorials) my next major project is going to be creating a Pokemon-inspired, turn-based battle system. Current stage? RESEARCH.
Nidoking is best boy.
Battle systems can grow to be inherently complicated, so it's vital for me to understand all of the mechanics that go into one (in this case Pokemon) so I can then strip it back, work out what counts as 'core' and build test projects from there.
In its most basic form, stripping out items, statuses, and most other options, you could describe Pokemon's battle style as:
1. Send out Pokemon
2. Attack
3. Repeat til one faints
Then, layered on top of that you've got moves, typing, status effects, items, abilities, stat differences, Pokemon switching, field effects, weather and more recently, special mechanics like Mega Evolution, Z-Moves and Dynamaxing. It all starts to get rather complicated. Plus, you've then got to make it look nice but that's a whole other kettle of fish!
Status effects like poison and the weather are just a couple of the many mechanics that make up this battle system.
For the sake of planning where to begin with building an imitation of the Pokemon battle system, I have labelled pretty much everything as "Nice to have" I.e. Not vital to making the battle actually function. The starting point should literally be: here are two things, make sure they can damage each other and whoever runs out of HP first wins.
Even that is going to be a challenge for me – I've never made anything turn-based, so I don't even know where to begin! But, as during my research I've found relatively few turn-based tutorials, I know this current experiment should be useful to some of you out there, and that's what makes it worth it! So I'm sure the first, basic test projects won't be that interesting, but they should pave the way for what I'm hoping will be quite a complex, turn-based system. Stay tuned!