Basic Combat design!

Spells and Abilities

Out of all the challenges I’ve had in designing my game, combat has been one of the most difficult, and also the most rewarding.

From the very start of my project, I wanted something different from standard RPGmaker fare. Something more like Violated Heroine’s combat, but…. better, to put it bluntly. I wanted something with some flair, lots of cool and unique spells and techniques, and interesting monsters.

So, I’ll start with the spell design, since that’s always a nice place to start, I suppose. Why bother going to a magic school if you’re not learning… magic!

Firstly, the standard magical arrow. It’s the first spell you learn, and for good reason. It’s basic, it’s a little weak, but a good beginner spell.

The skill starts with a quick casting animation, followed by a relatively straightforward approach to a magic arrow. It’s… Literally an arrow that’s glowing magically.

But the cool thing about magic in general is that there are lots of places for expansion!

For example, I could take inspiration from Maplestory, and create something like the Archer class or Mercedes classes higher-level skills (fill the screen with arrows! Magic Arrow Storm! Etc etc).

But, sometimes you can also find some interesting inspiration from outside of games! For example, in the manga for Negima!, this happens later on in the series…

As well as this, early on

In fact, Negima is the perfect inspiration for magical arrows, since they do so much with them! They’re a beginner’s spell that is still used in the end, because by the end, the main characters can fire thousands of them at once, infuse them with other elements…

And even near the beginning they’re infusing them with binding magic to hold people in place, converging them into one strike, using them to enhance a punch…

With the last update I introduced an upgrade to the standard magic archery, one that fires 3 arrows at once!

But I didn’t want it to just be a bog-standard upgrade. That would be boring to me. The other arrows, therefore, don’t fly nearly as far, and verge off into strange directions.

This isn’t just a gameplay element to make it hard to use properly (though that ended up being absolutely perfect with gameplay, as it makes positioning to hit all 3 on one enemy much more difficult!) This sort of design is more fun to play, in my opinion, and is how I’m hoping all magic will progress, not just the magic arrow series.

It was also a purposeful decision to go with the lore of the series though, because in the lore, casting multiple spells at once is hard as balls. I wanted to show that your character is still a beginner, and while you can cast 3 at once now… It’s not nearly as easy as it seems.

Olivia, it seems, still needs a lot more study to reach the level of Negi Springfield or maplestory’s queen of the elves.

Enemy Design

The main counterpart and challenge is always going to go into enemy design, and I will freely admit that this is a weak point in the game as it stands currently.

The enemies have to start at a level that challenges, but doesn’t overwhelm the player for things to work, so…

• Slimes- Basic, low level enemies that attack at a close range. Different colors signify different abilities, in this case, red ones can simulate your character’s body, and eventually try to do more.
• Nekomatas- These feisty cats are just wanting to play. They are trying to jump you, so, if they sense that you might be willing, they dash at you to try to knock you down for some playtime.
• Imps- Only found within the school, these little demons are mischievous, but are not supposed to be overwhelmingly powerful. They’re still demons though, and as such, are relatively hardy, and fast too.

In terms of gameplay, they’re not really much of a threat. The game’s still in its infancy, and I don’t want people to start playing a bullet-hell game without the skills to compete back. (the “Spellcards” available right now won’t cut it)

There is one optional boss that I spent a bit of time planning out though, and that’s…

The Big Slime

At one point, he was a dragon in early development, but I overhauled him recently, with the goal to make him a splitting-style enemy.

And it worked.

Not only is this gigantic slime powerful and hardy, it also breaks off into 4 medium slimes upon death, each of which is still a fair step-up from the current low-level slimes….

And each of those also breaks off into 4 low-level slimes. It’s not the most difficult of bosses yet (AI limitations due to a bug means it won’t chase you much at all… which is a general problem in the game that I need to fix!)

But it’s certainly a step in the right direction for melee enemies. I can expand it to do such things as have multi-form enemies, monsters that drop acid floor/traps on death, etc etc.

I also got working states such as poison or minor paralasys, stat drops, and movement reductions, so expect more of those too! And that’s not even going into ranged-enemy design, which I’m trying to do carefully to avoid unbalanced enemy scenarios.

Field/Stage Design

The combat stage or arena is also going to determine a lot of of what you can and can’t do. In general, I’m currently designing as well as I can around the AI sight bug, which means I’m trying to limit chances for you to run out of the enemies detection range (within reason)

So, the main dungeon works by pulling from pre-set layouts of dungeons, then filling them with monsters, traps, and (soon) treasures.

The narrow design of much of it limits usage of some skills. The upgraded magic archery costs a tiny bit more than the standard, but the extra arrows are going to hit walls and fizzle out. The combat skill thrust, similarly, smacks you into a wall if you hit it generally.

This is already giving some potential for enemy design to me. Why not tank-monsters that can block off escape attempts and are kinda beefy, but slow?

Perhaps some stationary turrets that shoot magic beams at you, ala zelda’s various incarnations (broken guardians in BOTW, Beamos in older zeldas, etc )

It’s really a lot to take into account while designing, and I’m relatively inexperienced, but I hope over time the dungeon, combat, skill, and enemy design in the game will improve to make you really feel like a badass magic student! (or, potentially, make you feel like a dropout magic student who just really likes to play with the cat-people, your choice really)