Turn based RPG/strategy brainstorm & musings

Hi there,

I've been a big fan of various turn based games like NetHack style roguelikes (time passes when you take a step), Shining Force, Fallout 1 & 2, Arcanum (which uses the same system as Fallout 1 & 2) etc. Lately I've been musing about adopting that style of combat where players have time to think their actions and make a choice.

Never mind how difficult this may be in Construct 2, I want to at least try anyway. The following is a list of what I like and would like to mix together from other turn based style games:

ASCII roguelikes

Time only passes when you take a step or an action. You can move as quick or slow as you want and it won't affect the status of your game play. This let you have time to make decisions in hectic battle but also let you breeze through pests.

Fallout 1&2, Arcanum

You can switch between real time or turn based combat, which again let you breeze through pests or give you more time to make choices for combat actions. Additionally, your character has something like a charge that regenerates over time, determining how many things you can do before it's someone else's turn to do something. The charge cost of the action also says something about how long that action takes to complete. For example, it takes a charge to walk one step and 3 charges to reload your gun.

Baldur's Gate

Real time combat with auto-pause option when it's your turn to do something, so you can still think for your combat action or breeze through pests.

Shining Force

A completely different game from the above, but I want to toss this into the mix of inspirations here because, perhaps a character's movement in a turn based environment in combat can be restricted by a boundary of freedom, rather than costing charges to move, and charges can be used for non-movement related actions like casting a spell or swing at a direction.

I'm sorry if these sound confusing to you. Please don't hesitate to say so and I'll be happy to clarify. Just want to start a discussion and idea exchange about reviving these turn based elements in games. What are your thoughts? Or confusions?

Always been a great fan of turnbased games or a mixture of realtime/turnbased

One that worked really well for me on the rpg side was "Star Wars: Knights of the old republic" and on the strategy part the "Total War" series.

I just prefer having time to think about situations and then come up with a tactic or strategy. I also hate games that use a timer whenever developers run out of ideas. And worst of all are those "quicktime events". Boringly hitting keys, when the computer tells me so. Wasn't good, when Dragon's Lair came up and isn't good today.

But back to topic. I would love to see the old school turn based games getting a new chance. And I don't think it is difficult to accomplish this in C2. I don't know much about C2, but I know for sure, it isn't difficult to do in CC.

Turn-based strategy games are among my all-time favorites. For example, the Civilization series (especially Civ 3 and 4) and Master of Orion (especially MOO2). I also like some less well-known, historical war games that are turn-based. Even for a game with a reasonable scope, something a single designer could handle in C2, I think the biggest problem would be the artificial intelligence. Ideally, you want a credible computer-opponent that doesn't cheat. At the very least, you want to create the impression of such an opponent.

In fact all "real games" are turn based games ;-p ... but computer turn-based games are now very unusual but still exists (heroes of might & magic series). I like this concept too ... i found now too many web multiplayer games wanted to make you connect all the time for doing actions or loosing because other players do so ... this no life concept is not good because you are playing more to avoid frustation when loosing than because the game give you great pleasure when playing !

Yes the IA is really the "hard" part of this kind of games unless you make a full multiplayers with no computer ia turned based game.

for "Real" games turn based ... such as strategy games, wargames or board games they become quite unusual too with time ... too many rules too know, taking too much time etc ... but perhaps some new technology can give a new life to those concept such as "ePawn" ... so computers can bring a new life to classic "paper/carton" games and you can play without spending time with real friends on your table ;-p

So the turn based concept is not dead and even can become again very used in a few years ... perhaps hmtl5 quick dev concept can help doing this kind of new gen computer assist games coming soon ;-p

So, how has developing the turn based RPG come along?

I know its been a while since you posted this, but any update would be golden.

I'm developing a game is based from advance wars of Game Boy Advance

aweshum: In the meantime/since I made a tutorial that shows how to handle some turn-based board game.

You might be interested in checking it out.

I'm working on a party turn-based game with three heroes, and it's coming along quite well. Hopefully, I'll be able to post a screen shot in the next few weeks. I need to finish the character portraits and get some character and environment art done because I'm mostly using placeholders while I build the core mechanics.

The HUD will be very much like Baldur's Gate, but the characters will handle more like Golden Axe 2d sprites. The environments will be isometric like a combination of both of those games.

I haven't been working on anything, to my very shame! Though I'm considering coming back for some more constructing nowadays.

Having brought up with a game programmer friend of mine about making turn-based games in Construct 2, and how it feels more geared towards action games, he told me one thing: if you really think about it, everything is a turn based game. The "turns" in real time games are simply with much shorter delay and with many "empty turns". This makes sense when you think about how Baldur's Gate and Fallout have a real-time / turn based toggle.

Before any of that though, I'm going to hit up a basic tutorial again to learn Construct 2 from scratch, after all these updates...

I've been working on mine for the last 4 months or so. The turn based system was kinda tricky, but it seems to work okay. I've had to be creative to solve a few problems here and there, but I'm happy with the way things are going. I hope to be able to show it off in a month or so once I get some more graphics done.

Love turn-based. Actually trying to implement the new multiplayer plugin into my existing turn-based game. Very exciting stuff indeed.

I'm working on an item shop RPG and there's a turn based trading system... It's been difficult to figure out but a lot of fun. I'll keep an eye on this thread and maybe post some of my own ideas sometime.

I love turn-based! X-Com, Fallout 2, and Jagged Alliance are all-time favorites! I have an idea for a game that would neatly fall into the style, but I have a lot to learn/plan before I can build it.