"Street" Fighter

After the setup of the RPG system, I worked on letting turns pass, letting the player choose actions and giving the player the ability to attack, as well as defend. The monsters can also randomly choose an action, damage gets calculated, the UI updates... just about anything you might expect in a turn-based battle system!

Click 'Read more' to read more about how I created this system!

Attacking, Defending

There's so much code I can't possibly show all of it. In a nutshell, this is what happens:

• All gameobjects tagged "Characters" are put into a list.
• The list is sorted based on each object's "Speed", which decides the order of the turns.
• "DoTurn()" is called with a turn number, starting with 0.
• The turn number supplied with the DoTurn call is used to check which object's turn it actually is.
• Depending on whether or not the object is a player or an enemy, different things happen.
• If it's a player, it simply moves the menu to a position offset from the character object.
• The menu itself links to different methods, which allows the player to attack, defend, run or use an ability.
• Right now, only attacking and defending works.
• After the methods are done, "AfterTurn()" is called, which increases the turn number and loops back to DoTurn().
• If the object that has the turn is an enemy, its script MonsterActions is called, which randomly decides whether it will attack, use an ability, or "observe", which is just doing nothing.
• For each type of monster, I can enter diffferent values to determine their action. So, wolves have a high chance to attack, but maybe a frog would have a high chance to observe.
• Finally, there's a state machine to keep track of what's currently happening: battle start, a turn, an action, or battle end. It doesn't do much yet, but I'll probably need it when working on action commands.

As an example, the code used to calculate turn order.

PartyAttack() is run from the menu. Enemies are spawned on a UI canvas, allowing the player to select them. Each enemy has "SelectTarget(this.gameobject)" set as their OnClick. By doing it like this, they can also be targeted by abilities with the same method.

Lots of long lines, but it's really quite simple. The attacker's strength - the target's defense is the damage. Can't be lower than 0. Subtract from the target's HP. Change a UI element to create the damage numbers.

Finally, the AfterTurn() script is called after... well, each turn.

Next week I want to work on Mario & Luigi-style action commands. Dealing damage through turns is pretty fun to RPG fans, but this is a platformer & RPG hybrid. Platforming is higher paced gameplay, so I don't want players to feel bored while they're battling enemies.

I've also worked on levels, which I'll cover in a later blogpost.