UPDATE

Working on the battle system I decided to change where the characters are positioned on screen depending on the type of attacker they are. The terrain will change to accommodate these changes.

Narissa, as a sniper/scout, will usually be behind trees or on higher ground to increase her chances for a surprise (read undefendable) attack.


Jidor, as a swordsman, will be out front, taking and giving damage to the enemies and acting as a shield to the weaker members of the group.

Clarissa - with her double-headed pike - will also be a close-range attacker, but has longer and more flexible reach than most mellee types.

Mirad, as an attack mage, will be in the mid-lines, a suitable place to attack with either staff or magic.

Now, here's the thing. I was thinking about trying my hand at making the battles turn based strategy-type. Think FFT/Suikoden Tactics/Vandal Hearts style. I'm not the best at coding and it may blow up in my face, but I'm gonna give it a go and see what I can do. I know what I want - a monster sprite is on the map. Running in to it teleports you to another map where the Strategy/Tactics battle begins and the end of the battle results in either teleportation to the last church (in case of party defeat) or teleportation back to the map.

Now this could get a bit tricky as, though there are only four protagonists, you have access to only two of them for the majority of the game - the others coming and going when they need to. This means that you can hire some help in various places who will have two types of aid to offer - support aid and battle aid. So, when one of the hired help are booted out of the party because the other two roaming members return, they'll stick around until their contract runs out, but will only be able to provide support in battles based on the support type they are - healer/buffer/damage.

However - if I can get the battle system working with the TBS then I may add a 'switch' command that allows you to change a character from the field into a support and vice-versa. Except for the main characters there can only be two others on the field at the time - so a total of four on and two off - because you can hire up to two characters at a time. It's something I'll have to work out.

If that doesn't work I'll go back to an enhanced DBS and try to make it possible in that. Gah!

Any thoughts on this? Questions? Queries?