Castle Paradox

[Chronoas]

This is probably the most appropriate place I could find for placing this, since it is a 'creative idea' I came up with, so sorry if this doesn't belong.

Anyway, lately, I've been pondering a feature that I've always kind of wanted to have, and have yet been unable to do so. That being having a sort of 'time limit' on attacks. What I mean is, have the damage to an attack be undone after a certain period of time. Now, I've thought of two different ways this could be done.

The first option would be to add a 'time limit' function in, say, the damage settings for an attack. An 'Undo after:' that is defaulted to off, and gives you two numbers, a minimum and maximum time. So, say, I set a poison attack to 'Undo After:' to 50 to 100 ticks(or seconds). As you may guess, the effect of said attack would be undone after a random period of time between the two given numbers.

The other option, and the idea I most prefer, is to add a "Run in Background" bitset to an attack. You see, the closest thing I can think of to doing what I suggest is to have an attack that does whatever, and then have a chained attack after a period of delay that undoes it. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, at the moment, doing it this way causes the ready meter of the character who is doing it to not fill in the meantime. This, unfortunately, makes to not so much an effect that wears off, then an attack that is later undone by said character, and that doesn't make much sense. So, I figure, the easiest way to program it in, and also maintain back-compatibility, is to add in a "Run in Background" bitset to an attack. Any attack that has this bitset on would not pause the ready meter while waiting for the delay. Thus, you could simply make an attack that does damage, then have a chained attack with a substantial delay "Run in Background" that later undoes the damage.

Benefits of such a feature would include the ability to finally have poison and regen that wears off, not to mention the makeshift status effects you could make. For example, "Blind", which drops a character's Accuracy by an amount for a period of time. "Slow" and "Stop", which drops a character's speed (and evasion!) by varying amounts for a period of time. "Illusion Attacks", attacks that do 'damage' that wears off after a period of time. A "Morphine" item, that 'restores' a characters life for a period of time. You could make makeshift poison and regen effects (that affect other stats!). And a whole lot more.

Admittedly, I don't know much about OHR's programming, but this addition, particularly the second one, doesn't seem like it would require much work. Both methods seem to have their disadvantages. Namely, the first doesn't add the nice flexibility for new move ideas that "Background running" attacks do, the second doesn't allow much variability for wear off time (though this may be changed by some creativity and the new chaining options) and COMPLETELY undoing the previous attack's effect may be tricky if the first attack's damage was randomized (the issue is a minor one, though). However, I think it would add a lot of new options as far as making attacks goes. Thoughts?

[Moogle1]

The functionality you describe falls under the blanket of "effects" and is planned for some future release.

"The Arcade" is the forum for talking about gamemaking and related topics, although it doesn't matter too much.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[binoal]

run in background would be a really cool bitset, especially with being able to make your own status effects!
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Resident Evil RPG Demo

http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=963

Legend Of Zelda: Reptilian Warlord Demo

http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=961

[Bob the Hamster]

Sounds like 'Plan for queueable attacks'.

I'll be tackling that sometime after the Ypsiliform stable release.

[Chronoas]

Wow, that DOES sound very similar. I'm glad to hear there are already plans for this in the works.