I've been playing through the Mother series lately, and this is reminding me of the "ally defeated" mechanic of the second and third game. Your health is represented on tumblers like a slot machine has that roll down as you lose health. If you gain or lose a lot at once, it takes several seconds for it to catch up to your real total. If the fight ends while it's rolling down, it stops where it is, and that number is your new health total (though healing doesn't have this limit--you always get the full benefit of your healing). Also, if a character hits zero HP, you'll get a message saying they've taken mortal damage, but they'll continue to be allowed to act until the tumblers hit zero, even giving you a chance to heal them and rescue them from their untimely (and sometimes costly to repair) defeat. The significance and relation is that when things are going badly, you're encouraged to think and act quickly so you can stop yourself from taking all that damage, or stop yourself from losing one of your party members during a tense fight. I think the reason the series has tree enemies that explode when they die is explicitly to show you that you can do this.
Re: Lesson 2, I remember reading somewhere that the fact that the cops in GTA were homicidal maniacs with no regard for their own safety was an accident but the developers thought it was so funny they left it in. I'm pretty sure the Street Fighter 2 combo cancelling system was an accident too, and that's been responsible for the popularity of an entire genre.
Mark, you're the Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Paiting) of video games, I love your work, and pretty much binged watch your channel when I discovered it. Amazing work, beautiful curating and great editing. Please keep creating such amazing content.
i was about to comment about the necrodancer myself. One thing that i'd like to point out about that one is that you have a decently large window to put your input in, and that does not only force you to be frame perfect, but allows you to borrow that few milliseconds you need to solve the nasty situation you might find yourself in, but you have to make the successive input faster
Josh DeVita maybe you miscalibrated the video latency? Anyways they are pretty useful sometimes to me, since i might get a bit off-beat, and against death metal they are almost compulsory with the 3rd character of the story
I think the best way of describing necrodancer is that it is a turned based game but if you miss your turn it still gets passed over. Like that one bad friend who will skip your turn in a board game when you are not paying attention.
The game is also available for WiiU (for some time now). I started it and it seemed fine, but it did not make me come back for more. After watching this video, I guess I will. I am really impressed with your ability to put a lot of interesting thoughts into short videos. And it is not only the main topics of game design that you tackle. You come across a small title like this and manage to nail what the game is about and make a generally interesting video of it. Great work!
I'm surprised there's no mention of Braid in the "running time and stopped time" discussion. That was a seriously mind-melting game when I first found it, the whole game centers around that and other interesting time-based concepts, and is easily one of the best puzzle games out there.
This is my interpretation of the lessons pointed out in the video. I'm not sure if this is a proper interpretation, but none of these are rules or laws. Guidelines are guidelines are guidelines. Lesson 1: you can blend any number of genres together in a cohesive way as long as they complement each other in interesting ways (e.g. Transistor's modes of real-time and turn-based combat) Lesson 2: be open to odd discoveries which occur during game development (e.g. "the bug is a feature") Lesson 3: make sure your game's main feature/gimmick/mechanic is applicable to all problems within the game. (e.g. the beat meter in Crypt of the Necrodancer)
When someone talks about a merging between real time, and turn based I can't help but think of Transistor, which allows you to plan out a turn, which prevents you from using many abilities for a short time afterwards, or you can act in real time with almost no cooldowns. It's a really interesting design, and can be used in interesting ways.
Tabletop nerd here! There is a tabletop game called Captain Sonar which also functions as a real-time turn based game. Without going into too much detail, each of your teams turns happen as quickly as your team members can do their respective duties. So, while the game is divided into distinct turns, the speed of turns (and how many turns each side gets, and when) are dictated entirely by real-time ability.
This made me think of the combat system of the great Child of Light : turn-based combat, but with some sort of "timer bar" at the bottom of the screen dictating when characters and ennemies will attack. A higher Speed stat will make your character go faster on that bar, certain attacks take longer to execute, you can slow down enemies while you wait for your turn, there's also an interruption mechanic when an attack hits during the execution of a move, etc. It's pretty simple but it makes for some really enjoyable combat, with both the strategy of a turn-based game and the rush and excitement of real-time, and allows every fight to be a bit different even with a somewhat limited moveset.
I think Super Mario Sunshine suffered from the same thing as Nova 111. The basic mechanic of cleaning up goo was prominent in the early game and utterly missing from all the later stages. Pity. It was a breath of fresh air to play the level with the manta ray spreading goo later on. But I wanted more levels like that one.
The first time I came across this was with special moves (I forget if thats what they're called) in Bravely Default. The whole game is standardly a traditional turn-based RPG, in fact the way that it deviates with its Brave/Default system is something that encourages you to take even more time with your turns as you develop systems of being efficient with your actions as a resource. But when you use a special move, you get a massive benefit and an appropriate passive benefit that lasts.. for the duration of the theme song that plays for that character after the move is used. In fact, if you use a different character's special move within the duration of the original song the passive benefits from before are accumulated into the length of the song currently playing. Mastering this mechanic requires having a fundamental understanding of how many turns worth of actions you can accomplish before jumping to the next special move, always scaled to the curveballs of needing to adapt to the attacks and LENGTHS of attacks of your enemies. Or you can just rapid fire special moves, have all the benefits for one small burst, and not worry about it. Or ignore it entirely, as sometimes a special move can actually be in the way of you fulfilling tactical needs and you honestly don't want to speedrun it. The optionality of it really helped make it special when you could really make use of it
Great video Mark! This must be the most informative channel I'm subscribed to. Each video sparks creativity in me :) It's also lovely to see at least one comment section being constructive and positive.
I don't believe the game is complex. I believe the complexity is an illusion drawn from the fact that the developers allow things to interact. Like the falling rocks, a game developer can tell it to damage all actors and pawns. Assuming you don't introduce the mechanic to your users you are letting them figure it out ( or do it Megaman style and not let them know you are teaching them ) and giving them that sense of accomplishment when they figure it out. For example, In half life, you can damage the tongue things individually or barrel to take a whole group in a row. If the main action of a barrel is to send a signal called damage within a certain radius and the slimes sense damage to drop props. You've enabled some complexity as you have made that single object able to interact with other objects. However you could easily change the signal for slimes to be damag_slimes and suddenly poof you, lose your complexity. I hope I make sense. Again this is my opinion; yours might be different, but I'm always willing to hear it.
Paul Johnson 1: but MEGAMAN GETS MY D*** ******* HARD!!! ;) 2: I do game Dev but I'm pretty new to it, or at least new with unreal engine 4, I used to use cryengine 3. I majorly dumbed down the explanation of things. Ive been told I tend to overassume people expertise in IT so I used the scratch way of explaining things. My bad if it struck a nerve
I've recently played Nauticrawl, which also combines turn-based and real-time elements. It even has a lore-wise explanation why some actions happen turn-based!
This reminds me of in Link's Awakening, there are floor tiles that fall after a couple seconds standing on them, and there are enemies that mirror your movement and you can't attack them head on Combine the two of them in a narrow corridor and you have A Situation
I just start designing a turn based with real-time elements game, so am glad I stumbled upon this channel. I hope I can nail the balance of it. Do you have any other video game design video on turn based games?
Mark, if you ever visit San Francisco, I want to take you out for a beer or two so we can chat video games. Your work has taught me more about game design than any college course I ever took. Despite my friends telling me I'm good at it, your videos still put me flat on my ass with the broader stroke concepts that make up a well made game. It's obvious that too few designers nowadays are properly studying the games being conceived while most are spending too much time doing evil by design. Although I'm excited to play your Mario Maker levels, I'd be more excited to see what happened if you designed your own game. Mark my words (pun not intended) if I ever get to a point where I can hire a design buddy, you're the first person I'm offering the job to. :)
You should look at the game 'bad north'. It has a phenomenal real time strategy system that, even though it is a very minimalist game, it still has tons of tactical depth
Guys, indie game dev here, and I would love to get your thoughts on these 2 combats system for a party-based cRPG ? 1. An auto-battler where you give general directions and strategies to your party, and more detailed orders to each member before the combat begins (i.e pre-buffs, mage focus on offensive or defensive spells, barbarian tank or rush ranged enemies, use this or that ability, this or that weapon...). Once the combat begins, the player has no control anymore. 2. A RTwP where you actually control precisely only your main character and can give basic orders to other party members (Mount And Blade style, but the combat is not physics based but ability based like cRPGs)
First idea is probably done alot already with the idle and mobile games, I would try a few to see if it's actually fun I prototyped the second one and it just turns out to be a CRPG with less depth, the only difference is that you have to move the character around the battle field; i used a standard third person camera. It's an interesting concept but your limiting the player and if it's real time, you can't put certain advanced mechanics like dodging aoes without making it cumbersome to the player. I made the player something like a merchant hiring mercenaries to go on missions. The merchant would be have to run around and collect the items dropped from the enemies and while controlling the AI the would have to keep track of the party's hp. In order to heal you would have to move up near a party member and hand them a potion. Standard commands have modifiers like single command which tells the active party member to do something like attack/move/come to player and holding modifier makes all the party members do the action. It has the potential to be fun but only if you design good enemies without making the gameplay being too stressful and cumbersome
Had this idea for a game mechanic I've been thinking about lately. Basically it would be an adventure RPG with a party of characters and real time battles, where you control the main character while the rest of the party acts independently. However, the main character would be able to stop time (based on a meter filling out, presumably) and during those pauses you could give instructions to the rest of the party and coordinate them, essentially giving you the option of limited turn-based "rounds." Kinda wish I actually knew how to make games.
Fervidor The Last Story on the wii had something similar going on, with a special bar that paused time, let you get an aerial view of the combat area, and then give all your AI partners a simple command. The combat in that is so close to being really really good. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of at all times, but the encounter design doesn't really advance throughout the game, so it ends up feeling quite samey. I never finished it but had a really good time with it.
Remember Antichamber? This one which couldn't decide if it wanted to be a weird exploration game or a first-person puzzle game? This game almost never combined the two elements and siffered because of that. Even some of the puzzles were completely isolated from the environment.
Another groovy episode! I've seen games toying with this idea before, and you can trace the desire back to Cytron Masters which was a Real time tactics game which restricts players from constantly moving via a regenerating energy bar. Then of course there's Dandy Dungeon which led to Gauntlet. It's a hard thing to balance especially if you make moving recklessly far too powerful. Say you're playing a sim game wherein the decisions are clocked against real time but split into turns. Does that mean the person who moves the quickest will always do the best? What if you restrict the number of turns? Does that mean players miss out events later for being reckless? There's defintiely more ways to incentivize this than combat and I look forward to what games may play with this idea in the future. Also it was nice of the dev to talk to you about this! Thumbs up to company for providing an interesting story.
AI War doesn't quite apply to this directly, but it adds a lot of principles from turn-based game design into an RTS. For example-- typically, in an RTS, you and your enemy should both be gaining strength over time. Your opponent is actively building up an army, whether you are doing anything or not. In this game, that is not so. With the default settings the AI plays completely reactionarily apart from the occasional telegraphed waves that it sends your way. If you attack the AI, its response will elevate. You have to take care that your attacks are carefully placed so that you gain the most strength compared to the AI. Yet, you have as much time with your limited resources on your own home planet to build up what you want or need to make your first attack. If you feel comfortable enough with the game, you can make the AI's response elevate gradually over time as well as with your own attacks. Aside from that, no matter what you're doing, you can just pause the game. Enemy waves still tick down and enemy ships will still respond to your fleet if you haven't paused-- even if the enemy doesn't gain strength. This gives you a lot of extra time to micromanage if you want or need it. You can even queue up orders while time is paused. Of course, the game throws its own twists in despite the gentle pace I've described so far. There are certain things that you can trigger-- either knowing the risks and planning around them... or accidentally, having not scouted them-- that operate no matter what you do. Of course, pausing the game is always safe, but Raid Engines (if alerted) will send a wave a minute to a random planet connected to it. This wave doesn't directly attack you-- it roams space, seeking your weak points and attacking you from angles you didn't know were weak. You've got to take it out quickly, or you will definitely be overwhelmed. There are also tricky things to plan around-- Global cloaking devices that cloak every enemy ship around a planet, Eyes which detect when you outnumber the AI and respond with a devastating counterattack if you do, and more. This is just stuff you can encounter without enabling any additional official modifiers, which throw more twists and scary obstacles in the way. You certainly need control of the pace in AI War. Lategame can get really hairy. Don't forget the Neinzul Hybrids that you can give the AI. They attack you and develop completely independently than the AI's own aggression. They pressure you to actually develop at a reasonable pace.
Okay, okay... so I've seen pretty much all of your videos, and they're great... but I still don't know how to make any video games. So... what's up with that?
Kind of a shame Nova-111 didn't live up to the enticing expectations... but who knows, maybe this game will inspire someone else to make something similar, and perhaps even better.
+mark brown Love the videoes, keep them coming. I just have to mention that when you mention new games, especially indies, i always get suspicious. there is no shortage of examples of the lines of advertizing and... editorial contend being blurred. keep that in mind when putting out more great design videoes.
+haldir108 Hi there. Thanks for watching I've been a journalist for, I dunno, 6 years? Maybe more? So, I'm fully aware of the ethical boundaries and would never accept money for editorial content. I do know that the line is a /lot/ more blurry on TH-cam (hence the new FTC regulations and all that), but I come from a more traditional writing background. But anyway, the wonderful thing about Patreon is that I don't even have to /think/ about advertising conflicts - the show is 100% funded by the viewers :)
+Mark Brown My apologies. i worded myself pretty dam poorly. I should not have used the word advertising, but more along the lines of doing a friend a favor, by talking about their game. When you say that you were told by developers about such and such of the development, the viewer may wonder what relation you have to them. There has been way too much drama around this and similar issues the last year or so, so my well meant advice would be to make an extra effort to keep it transparent. Talking about games that are at least a year old also helps dispel any concern that somebody is influencing you and your videos for gain. Again, thanks for a great piece of infotainment, that i am always looking forward to more of.
Gah stop showing clips from Life is Strange! I bought it but my PC can't handle it, so I'm waiting till I buy a better one and have been avoiding spoilers for months
Ok, I'm really curious what sort of bug would somehow lead to an enemy moving between turns in a turn-based game. How do you somehow accidentally implement a real-time mechanic?
Hey. Yeah, I'm a journalist by day. I'm the editor of Pocket Gamer and have written for Wired, Edge, Eurogamer, and others. I've met plenty of game developers, yep. I'm not sure what you mean by the last bit. If you're asking about my favourite indie games, I guess... Braid, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Gone Home, Papers Please, The Stanley Parable. Lots of others, but they're the first to come to mind Thanks for watching!
ive made a prototype game that combines real-time with turn based, not inspired by this but from my own experience. its nothing fancy but i find it fun for what it is and not overmade with tons of mechanics, if you want to check it out pm me.
why aren't you playing Jagged Alliance 2 is a bloody mystery to me. since you love turn based games i thought you would know at the very least about JA2.
+McBacon1337 Can you do a video on fighting games in light of this concept of blending real time and turn based? Seems like the blurring of "turn based" advantage/disadvantage (using this word loosely) and real time (in game fighting movement) come together during the chess like mental warfare that goes on in a competitive match. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
I got Nova-111 on Wii-U, despite good reviews it seems the miiverse community is DEAD; I think the game gets boring and lacks more level-design variations, but it has really interesting mechanics.
Im sry but the game might feel turn based but it IS a real time game. To be turn based you must be able to make a pause than ever you want without pressing a pause button, this doesn't work if things drop your had automatically. What does look like turn based is just the enemy reacting to you. If you think about it you have this in nearly every realtime game. Some mobs which wont attack you if you don't come close enough for example isn't turn based but it's the same thing, the mobs behaviour is that they wait for a certain action of yours (in the game in the video that action is simply moving, in my example it's getting closer). Another example: coin blocks in Mario. They don't unleash the mushroom until you jump into them. This doesn't make Mario a turn based game.
i just cant play turn based games after Ronin simutaneous-turn-based-action-hollywood-movie-maker genre, both sides act at the same time, what a shocking idea!
Erm... Nothing new here. The Total War series has been using turn-based campaign maps to host real-time in-field battles since the 90`s. Sure, the two timer systems are distinctly segregated, but what I`m saying is that it certainly isn't a new idea.
Trying to get into CRPGs and started Baldurs Gate 2 because of is legendary repuation. But it has real time combat with pause and by God do I hate it. Its honestly hard to see how people enjoy rpgs this way. Maddeningly clunky and finicky
I've been playing through the Mother series lately, and this is reminding me of the "ally defeated" mechanic of the second and third game. Your health is represented on tumblers like a slot machine has that roll down as you lose health. If you gain or lose a lot at once, it takes several seconds for it to catch up to your real total. If the fight ends while it's rolling down, it stops where it is, and that number is your new health total (though healing doesn't have this limit--you always get the full benefit of your healing). Also, if a character hits zero HP, you'll get a message saying they've taken mortal damage, but they'll continue to be allowed to act until the tumblers hit zero, even giving you a chance to heal them and rescue them from their untimely (and sometimes costly to repair) defeat.
The significance and relation is that when things are going badly, you're encouraged to think and act quickly so you can stop yourself from taking all that damage, or stop yourself from losing one of your party members during a tense fight. I think the reason the series has tree enemies that explode when they die is explicitly to show you that you can do this.
That's a really good point, I completely forgot about that little mechanic. Nice one
Re: Lesson 2, I remember reading somewhere that the fact that the cops in GTA were homicidal maniacs with no regard for their own safety was an accident but the developers thought it was so funny they left it in. I'm pretty sure the Street Fighter 2 combo cancelling system was an accident too, and that's been responsible for the popularity of an entire genre.
@Mathias Hunter Instablaster =)
@Mathias Hunter You are welcome xD
Man, that classic mid-review turnaround made me a bit sad. It just sounds _so good_.
Mark, you're the Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Paiting) of video games, I love your work, and pretty much binged watch your channel when I discovered it. Amazing work, beautiful curating and great editing. Please keep creating such amazing content.
Yeah, I've got same comparison in my head. Love both series!
i was about to comment about the necrodancer myself. One thing that i'd like to point out about that one is that you have a decently large window to put your input in, and that does not only force you to be frame perfect, but allows you to borrow that few milliseconds you need to solve the nasty situation you might find yourself in, but you have to make the successive input faster
Josh DeVita maybe you miscalibrated the video latency? Anyways they are pretty useful sometimes to me, since i might get a bit off-beat, and against death metal they are almost compulsory with the 3rd character of the story
I think the best way of describing necrodancer is that it is a turned based game but if you miss your turn it still gets passed over. Like that one bad friend who will skip your turn in a board game when you are not paying attention.
The game is also available for WiiU (for some time now). I started it and it seemed fine, but it did not make me come back for more. After watching this video, I guess I will. I am really impressed with your ability to put a lot of interesting thoughts into short videos. And it is not only the main topics of game design that you tackle. You come across a small title like this and manage to nail what the game is about and make a generally interesting video of it. Great work!
I'm surprised there's no mention of Braid in the "running time and stopped time" discussion. That was a seriously mind-melting game when I first found it, the whole game centers around that and other interesting time-based concepts, and is easily one of the best puzzle games out there.
This is my interpretation of the lessons pointed out in the video. I'm not sure if this is a proper interpretation, but none of these are rules or laws. Guidelines are guidelines are guidelines.
Lesson 1: you can blend any number of genres together in a cohesive way as long as they complement each other in interesting ways (e.g. Transistor's modes of real-time and turn-based combat)
Lesson 2: be open to odd discoveries which occur during game development (e.g. "the bug is a feature")
Lesson 3: make sure your game's main feature/gimmick/mechanic is applicable to all problems within the game. (e.g. the beat meter in Crypt of the Necrodancer)
2: these are not bugs these are features
-Bethesda
Jk
When someone talks about a merging between real time, and turn based I can't help but think of Transistor, which allows you to plan out a turn, which prevents you from using many abilities for a short time afterwards, or you can act in real time with almost no cooldowns. It's a really interesting design, and can be used in interesting ways.
Tabletop nerd here! There is a tabletop game called Captain Sonar which also functions as a real-time turn based game. Without going into too much detail, each of your teams turns happen as quickly as your team members can do their respective duties. So, while the game is divided into distinct turns, the speed of turns (and how many turns each side gets, and when) are dictated entirely by real-time ability.
This made me think of the combat system of the great Child of Light : turn-based combat, but with some sort of "timer bar" at the bottom of the screen dictating when characters and ennemies will attack. A higher Speed stat will make your character go faster on that bar, certain attacks take longer to execute, you can slow down enemies while you wait for your turn, there's also an interruption mechanic when an attack hits during the execution of a move, etc. It's pretty simple but it makes for some really enjoyable combat, with both the strategy of a turn-based game and the rush and excitement of real-time, and allows every fight to be a bit different even with a somewhat limited moveset.
Subscribing SO HARD right now.
You won't regret it. :)
I think Super Mario Sunshine suffered from the same thing as Nova 111. The basic mechanic of cleaning up goo was prominent in the early game and utterly missing from all the later stages. Pity. It was a breath of fresh air to play the level with the manta ray spreading goo later on. But I wanted more levels like that one.
The basic mechanic of SM-Sunshine is using the water-jet backpack to solve many situation (cleaning/dashing/hovering…)
He is good at finding obscure games
The first time I came across this was with special moves (I forget if thats what they're called) in Bravely Default. The whole game is standardly a traditional turn-based RPG, in fact the way that it deviates with its Brave/Default system is something that encourages you to take even more time with your turns as you develop systems of being efficient with your actions as a resource. But when you use a special move, you get a massive benefit and an appropriate passive benefit that lasts.. for the duration of the theme song that plays for that character after the move is used. In fact, if you use a different character's special move within the duration of the original song the passive benefits from before are accumulated into the length of the song currently playing. Mastering this mechanic requires having a fundamental understanding of how many turns worth of actions you can accomplish before jumping to the next special move, always scaled to the curveballs of needing to adapt to the attacks and LENGTHS of attacks of your enemies. Or you can just rapid fire special moves, have all the benefits for one small burst, and not worry about it. Or ignore it entirely, as sometimes a special move can actually be in the way of you fulfilling tactical needs and you honestly don't want to speedrun it. The optionality of it really helped make it special when you could really make use of it
i thought he said "Laura Croft's brass eyes"
Same here.
wait he didn't say that ? what did he say then ?
@@SebastianAndreiIordache94 bra size
spent 20 seconds trying to make sense of that sentence before it clicked
Me too
Your vids impress me more each time, truly great work Mark!
Another great video Mark! Every episode makes me want to make a game
This game is the true definition of
"Thats not bug, thats feature" meme
Great video Mark! This must be the most informative channel I'm subscribed to. Each video sparks creativity in me :) It's also lovely to see at least one comment section being constructive and positive.
In other words, "its not a bug, its a feature" to the extreme
Brilliant video Mark. Very relevant to the game I'm working on right now.
Blown away by the sheer simplicity AND complexity of the game.
I don't believe the game is complex. I believe the complexity is an illusion drawn from the fact that the developers allow things to interact.
Like the falling rocks, a game developer can tell it to damage all actors and pawns. Assuming you don't introduce the mechanic to your users you are letting them figure it out ( or do it Megaman style and not let them know you are teaching them ) and giving them that sense of accomplishment when they figure it out. For example, In half life, you can damage the tongue things individually or barrel to take a whole group in a row. If the main action of a barrel is to send a signal called damage within a certain radius and the slimes sense damage to drop props. You've enabled some complexity as you have made that single object able to interact with other objects. However you could easily change the signal for slimes to be damag_slimes and suddenly poof you, lose your complexity. I hope I make sense.
Again this is my opinion; yours might be different, but I'm always willing to hear it.
Paul Johnson
1: but MEGAMAN GETS MY D*** ******* HARD!!! ;)
2: I do game Dev but I'm pretty new to it, or at least new with unreal engine 4, I used to use cryengine 3. I majorly dumbed down the explanation of things. Ive been told I tend to overassume people expertise in IT so I used the scratch way of explaining things. My bad if it struck a nerve
You should check out Transistor if you want a beautiful game unifying real time and turn based combat
I just finished Transistor and I aprove.
I've recently played Nauticrawl, which also combines turn-based and real-time elements. It even has a lore-wise explanation why some actions happen turn-based!
This reminds me of in Link's Awakening, there are floor tiles that fall after a couple seconds standing on them, and there are enemies that mirror your movement and you can't attack them head on
Combine the two of them in a narrow corridor and you have A Situation
I just start designing a turn based with real-time elements game, so am glad I stumbled upon this channel. I hope I can nail the balance of it. Do you have any other video game design video on turn based games?
Transistor, apparently
These game design vids are so professional and then he hits you with the metaphor “Lara Croft’s bra size” killing you instantly
Mark, if you ever visit San Francisco, I want to take you out for a beer or two so we can chat video games. Your work has taught me more about game design than any college course I ever took. Despite my friends telling me I'm good at it, your videos still put me flat on my ass with the broader stroke concepts that make up a well made game. It's obvious that too few designers nowadays are properly studying the games being conceived while most are spending too much time doing evil by design. Although I'm excited to play your Mario Maker levels, I'd be more excited to see what happened if you designed your own game. Mark my words (pun not intended) if I ever get to a point where I can hire a design buddy, you're the first person I'm offering the job to. :)
This is my really exaggerated way of saying "Great job as usual, keep up the good work."
You should look at the game 'bad north'. It has a phenomenal real time strategy system that, even though it is a very minimalist game, it still has tons of tactical depth
Hopefully Nova 111 will get a sequel that will improve the game's mechanics and push the game to its full potential.
Guys,
indie game dev here, and I would love to get your thoughts on these 2 combats system for a party-based cRPG ?
1. An auto-battler where you give general directions and strategies to your party, and more detailed orders to each member before the combat begins (i.e pre-buffs, mage focus on offensive or defensive spells, barbarian tank or rush ranged enemies, use this or that ability, this or that weapon...). Once the combat begins, the player has no control anymore.
2. A RTwP where you actually control precisely only your main character and can give basic orders to other party members (Mount And Blade style, but the combat is not physics based but ability based like cRPGs)
First idea is probably done alot already with the idle and mobile games, I would try a few to see if it's actually fun
I prototyped the second one and it just turns out to be a CRPG with less depth, the only difference is that you have to move the character around the battle field; i used a standard third person camera. It's an interesting concept but your limiting the player and if it's real time, you can't put certain advanced mechanics like dodging aoes without making it cumbersome to the player. I made the player something like a merchant hiring mercenaries to go on missions. The merchant would be have to run around and collect the items dropped from the enemies and while controlling the AI the would have to keep track of the party's hp. In order to heal you would have to move up near a party member and hand them a potion. Standard commands have modifiers like single command which tells the active party member to do something like attack/move/come to player and holding modifier makes all the party members do the action.
It has the potential to be fun but only if you design good enemies without making the gameplay being too stressful and cumbersome
@Mark Brown : the mechanic that enemies move / time passed when you take action, is seen in the combat System of valkyrie profile 2
What a happy little accident.
Jeff The Wizard “There are no accidents” - Master Oogway
I can't get enough of these bob ross jokes man
Fantastic analysis
The Patapon series is also a great turn-based/real-time/rhythm game hybrid.
Had this idea for a game mechanic I've been thinking about lately. Basically it would be an adventure RPG with a party of characters and real time battles, where you control the main character while the rest of the party acts independently. However, the main character would be able to stop time (based on a meter filling out, presumably) and during those pauses you could give instructions to the rest of the party and coordinate them, essentially giving you the option of limited turn-based "rounds."
Kinda wish I actually knew how to make games.
Fervidor The Last Story on the wii had something similar going on, with a special bar that paused time, let you get an aerial view of the combat area, and then give all your AI partners a simple command. The combat in that is so close to being really really good. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of at all times, but the encounter design doesn't really advance throughout the game, so it ends up feeling quite samey. I never finished it but had a really good time with it.
Fervidor now that i think about it i'd recommend you check out the Last Story, its pretty much exactly what you're thinking of.
Valkyrie profile 2 has a real time turn based kind of gameplay too, you should look it up ;) Great video as always
Remember Antichamber? This one which couldn't decide if it wanted to be a weird exploration game or a first-person puzzle game? This game almost never combined the two elements and siffered because of that. Even some of the puzzles were completely isolated from the environment.
+artman40 I did love it so though!
Another groovy episode! I've seen games toying with this idea before, and you can trace the desire back to Cytron Masters which was a Real time tactics game which restricts players from constantly moving via a regenerating energy bar. Then of course there's Dandy Dungeon which led to Gauntlet.
It's a hard thing to balance especially if you make moving recklessly far too powerful. Say you're playing a sim game wherein the decisions are clocked against real time but split into turns. Does that mean the person who moves the quickest will always do the best? What if you restrict the number of turns? Does that mean players miss out events later for being reckless? There's defintiely more ways to incentivize this than combat and I look forward to what games may play with this idea in the future.
Also it was nice of the dev to talk to you about this! Thumbs up to company for providing an interesting story.
Necrodancer looks like an amazing game! I must play it :D
The scrolling health counters in Earthbound.
way before this game, the legend of zelda used enemies called Goriya that only move when Link moves, but have to be fought in real-time (i.e. the bow)
AI War doesn't quite apply to this directly, but it adds a lot of principles from turn-based game design into an RTS.
For example-- typically, in an RTS, you and your enemy should both be gaining strength over time. Your opponent is actively building up an army, whether you are doing anything or not. In this game, that is not so. With the default settings the AI plays completely reactionarily apart from the occasional telegraphed waves that it sends your way. If you attack the AI, its response will elevate. You have to take care that your attacks are carefully placed so that you gain the most strength compared to the AI. Yet, you have as much time with your limited resources on your own home planet to build up what you want or need to make your first attack. If you feel comfortable enough with the game, you can make the AI's response elevate gradually over time as well as with your own attacks.
Aside from that, no matter what you're doing, you can just pause the game. Enemy waves still tick down and enemy ships will still respond to your fleet if you haven't paused-- even if the enemy doesn't gain strength. This gives you a lot of extra time to micromanage if you want or need it. You can even queue up orders while time is paused.
Of course, the game throws its own twists in despite the gentle pace I've described so far. There are certain things that you can trigger-- either knowing the risks and planning around them... or accidentally, having not scouted them-- that operate no matter what you do. Of course, pausing the game is always safe, but Raid Engines (if alerted) will send a wave a minute to a random planet connected to it. This wave doesn't directly attack you-- it roams space, seeking your weak points and attacking you from angles you didn't know were weak. You've got to take it out quickly, or you will definitely be overwhelmed. There are also tricky things to plan around-- Global cloaking devices that cloak every enemy ship around a planet, Eyes which detect when you outnumber the AI and respond with a devastating counterattack if you do, and more. This is just stuff you can encounter without enabling any additional official modifiers, which throw more twists and scary obstacles in the way. You certainly need control of the pace in AI War. Lategame can get really hairy.
Don't forget the Neinzul Hybrids that you can give the AI. They attack you and develop completely independently than the AI's own aggression. They pressure you to actually develop at a reasonable pace.
When a reasonable pace is 1 upgrade per hour... XD
Just out of curiosity, what was that WW2 game at around 2:08 ? It looked awesome.
In case you're still curious 6 years later, it's Company of Heroes (or maybe the sequel).
Very slick editing man, what software do you use for that?
Ta! I use Adobe Premiere. Quite pleased with the circle transitions which I made m'self :D
I have a feeling you'd really enjoy Duskers, then :)
I like Superhot, because it feels like a turn based, first person shooter.
I really like time being used as a mechanic in games. Quantum break did it alright, while titanfall 2's time jump was fun
@@jex-the-notebook-guy1002 it's literally the past and the present. What are you on about.
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team did this occasionally.
what game is that from 5:27 ?
The Magic Circle
That timed enemy reminded me of Earthbound combat
Okay, okay... so I've seen pretty much all of your videos, and they're great... but I still don't know how to make any video games.
So... what's up with that?
same
"or stopping time..." *video loads* >:
Great, as always.
3d favourite youtuber
+xbob Driesestig Thanks! Glad to exist in three dimensions :D
+Mark Brown Clever.
lol smart
Another instance of the programmer successfully selling "Is not a bug, it's a feature".
this reminds me of a turn based platformer... I cant remember whats it is called but I think the guy who made mari0 made it
We need Nova 222 now to fix this issues.
Kind of a shame Nova-111 didn't live up to the enticing expectations... but who knows, maybe this game will inspire someone else to make something similar, and perhaps even better.
So any other notable games which didn't take a full advantage of its concept?
I'm a simple man. I see advance wars i subscribe.
0:17 I see what you did there.
Transistor is interesting
+mark brown
Love the videoes, keep them coming.
I just have to mention that when you mention new games, especially indies, i always get suspicious. there is no shortage of examples of the lines of advertizing and... editorial contend being blurred. keep that in mind when putting out more great design videoes.
+haldir108 Hi there. Thanks for watching
I've been a journalist for, I dunno, 6 years? Maybe more? So, I'm fully aware of the ethical boundaries and would never accept money for editorial content. I do know that the line is a /lot/ more blurry on TH-cam (hence the new FTC regulations and all that), but I come from a more traditional writing background.
But anyway, the wonderful thing about Patreon is that I don't even have to /think/ about advertising conflicts - the show is 100% funded by the viewers :)
+Mark Brown My apologies. i worded myself pretty dam poorly. I should not have used the word advertising, but more along the lines of doing a friend a favor, by talking about their game. When you say that you were told by developers about such and such of the development, the viewer may wonder what relation you have to them.
There has been way too much drama around this and similar issues the last year or so, so my well meant advice would be to make an extra effort to keep it transparent. Talking about games that are at least a year old also helps dispel any concern that somebody is influencing you and your videos for gain.
Again, thanks for a great piece of infotainment, that i am always looking forward to more of.
@@haldir108 are you still a gamergater?
@@alexscriabin actively? I don't think I've changed my beliefs radically since back in the day.
Gah stop showing clips from Life is Strange! I bought it but my PC can't handle it, so I'm waiting till I buy a better one and have been avoiding spoilers for months
Undertale and Deltarune are my favorite turn based real time game
If you can find an emulator you should have a look at an indie game for the psx called Timeslip. It's about a snail stuck in a 30 second time loop.
Legend of Grimrock had a similar mash up that would have come before this.
Valkyrie Profile 2 did this to
I've met the creator of this game. The person was nice.
Ok, I'm really curious what sort of bug would somehow lead to an enemy moving between turns in a turn-based game. How do you somehow accidentally implement a real-time mechanic?
forgot to add code to freeze the ai maybe?
And then there are people who find the learner stage deeply boring so never progress far enough to like the game.
"Great games are played, not made!"
Mr Mark are u journalist? u have met game devloper. So have preference in Indie game?
Hey. Yeah, I'm a journalist by day. I'm the editor of Pocket Gamer and have written for Wired, Edge, Eurogamer, and others. I've met plenty of game developers, yep. I'm not sure what you mean by the last bit. If you're asking about my favourite indie games, I guess... Braid, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Gone Home, Papers Please, The Stanley Parable. Lots of others, but they're the first to come to mind
Thanks for watching!
Necrodancer?
Damn I read the title amd thought you meant Final Fantasy 12/13(s)
2:12 What's that game?
Company of Heroes 2
What game is the clip at 5:25 - 5:33 is from?
The Magic Circle!
@@GMTK Awesome. Thank you =^)
You should try the Ronin. It combines real time stealth and turn based combat. It is a good idea. The game is quite boring but the idea is good.
whats the game at 2:03
I think it's something called advanced wars? Sorry if this is coming a bit late, lol
It was advance wars. But you gotta play advance wars days of ruin. That is a top notch turn based strategy game. It was on the original DS.
"AW : dual strike" is my fav TBS
5:25 is that game
Game @ 5:36?
ive made a prototype game that combines real-time with turn based, not inspired by this but from my own experience. its nothing fancy but i find it fun for what it is and not overmade with tons of mechanics, if you want to check it out pm me.
why aren't you playing Jagged Alliance 2 is a bloody mystery to me.
since you love turn based games i thought you would know at the very least about JA2.
+McBacon1337 Can you do a video on fighting games in light of this concept of blending real time and turn based? Seems like the blurring of "turn based" advantage/disadvantage (using this word loosely) and real time (in game fighting movement) come together during the chess like mental warfare that goes on in a competitive match. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
I got Nova-111 on Wii-U, despite good reviews it seems the miiverse community is DEAD; I think the game gets boring and lacks more level-design variations, but it has really interesting mechanics.
05:25
what is that game?
+The Stitch Clearly stated in the notes, click "Show More."
Anyone know the game at 2:06?
advance wars
would be great if the game would actually run
Im sry but the game might feel turn based but it IS a real time game. To be turn based you must be able to make a pause than ever you want without pressing a pause button, this doesn't work if things drop your had automatically. What does look like turn based is just the enemy reacting to you. If you think about it you have this in nearly every realtime game. Some mobs which wont attack you if you don't come close enough for example isn't turn based but it's the same thing, the mobs behaviour is that they wait for a certain action of yours (in the game in the video that action is simply moving, in my example it's getting closer). Another example: coin blocks in Mario. They don't unleash the mushroom until you jump into them. This doesn't make Mario a turn based game.
Diablo video please. It has a similar trait
I have an idea for a real-time-turn-based game, but it does not work like this.
Lara bra size I lost it there
i just cant play turn based games after Ronin simutaneous-turn-based-action-hollywood-movie-maker genre, both sides act at the same time, what a shocking idea!
Español?
Erm... Nothing new here. The Total War series has been using turn-based campaign maps to host real-time in-field battles since the 90`s. Sure, the two timer systems are distinctly segregated, but what I`m saying is that it certainly isn't a new idea.
How does it always feel like Mark Brown is condescending to me?
Trying to get into CRPGs and started Baldurs Gate 2 because of is legendary repuation. But it has real time combat with pause and by God do I hate it. Its honestly hard to see how people enjoy rpgs this way. Maddeningly clunky and finicky
:3