Convergence Battle System

So it seems I update this blog about once a year (literally). Well with RL crap aside, I've hit a burst of inspiration and am not going into full production mode into Convergence again (surprisingly, after Starcraft 2 just came out). I've promised myself I will devote a few hours to the game every week and I'll try to update this blog at least once a week with some kind of progress or picture. I really do want to get this game done, if nothing else, so I can move on with life. Heh.

At any rate, I'll be explaining the battle system of the game in this post. While Conv does use the default rm2k3 battle system, I've made modifications with it to make it more interesting. I was inspired by Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song's MP regeneration in its battle systems, which allowed you to keep using your abilities instead of the usual RPG thing we're used to of sticking to weak attacks and hoarding all your MP for a boss or something. I wanted to liberate the player from that agony by implementing a similar system.

As such, Conv's battle system revolves around recovering MP, or in the case of this game, it's called AP (Ability Points). You can essentially keep using your skills, but you're not gonna start with full AP. Rather, you will start with a set amount of AP at the beginning of battle and try to gain that as you keep fighting, either by passing turns or performing certain commands. Everyone has a maximum of 100 AP across the board which doesn't change. There are abilities that will initially be available of course, but stronger abilities may require more saving up. In addition, HP is always fully recovered at the end of battles. With these two mechanics in place, you can practically go all out on every battle and not have to worry about possibly hurting yourself later (unless you waste items or something). Added to this, characters are always to recover a part of their HP by defending (with some exceptions, to be covered later).

But of course, battles in general will be harder to reflect this. The game uses touch encounters instead of random battles, which means fewer but more meaningful battles. If you've played FF13 you know what I mean - most of these battles won't be pushovers you can solve by mashing the attack button unless you really want to take forever with it. Of course this will take some testing to get right but I've got some interesting ideas, and this is all programmed into the system already.


Back on the AP system, there are 3 character types. All of the playable characters in the game fall under any one of these three types, which recover AP in various ways.

ATTACK TYPE - Attack type characters recover, or gain AP by attacking the enemy with a basic attack command. These characters tend to have low starting AP and must gradually build up their AP count to utilize stronger attacks or finishers. These characters are geared towards dealing damage but can be put at a disadvantage if not constantly attacking, as they may be unable to use their strongest skills.

BALANCE TYPE - Balance type characters regenerate a fixed amount of AP over time. Although they don't get as much as the other two types, they always regain AP no matter what actions they perform. These characters tend to be more versatile in their battle roles.

BURST TYPE - Burst type characters start with higher AP but are unable to recover AP except by defending. Although they recover the most AP out of the three types, they must essentially waste a turn in doing so. These characters are built more for saving up AP then using a string of abilities before having to recharge again.

There are variations of each of these depending on the character, but otherwise this is how the system works. Relatively simple, but at least it keeps things a bit more interesting than the default. I'll be updating with more game-related info as we go along.

Here, have an animation:

Holy Cow, an Update!

Yeah so this blog petered out and died off for a while. Well I'm making good on my promise in saying that Convergence never gets canceled, it just gets produced really slowly. To show for it, I've actually made some significant process in the past year or so. Barring the animation of battle sprites, I've programmed every major system into the game, including the battle system, party selector, and skill point menu. Thus, I've actually begun the production of the game (what the crap finally) and to begin with, I started with mapping. I'm trying to give myself a deadline of getting a demo out by the end of the year, since not counting the battle sprites I have all the resources necessary to create a demo right now. So yeah, this project is moving all right.

And to prove that I'm not just blowing out lies, here's some screenshots of the first map I made. This is of the street and the apartment building where Valeska lives, with chipsets provided by fellow creator Dajhail:









The interior needs more work and of course we're missing NPCs right now, but hey I only started this week. Once I get some decent character sprites and backgrounds ready, I'll make a post about the battle system and skill point system. Heh.

Antagonist: Gravitis

Gravitis

Age: 15

Race: Sentient Artificial Intelligence

Weapon: Naginata

Occupation: Ravager Advisor & Second-in-Command

Hobbies: Thinking, Meditating

This is Gravitis, second-in-command of the Ravager and IDL's lover. She was once a sentient defense A.I. of Solarcorp, created the same year the Solarnet was released and tasked with keeping the first pioneers of the Solarnet safe (hence her unusual age). After she outlived her usefulness, she somehow managed to get free and wandered the Solarnet on her own, learning all about humanity and its violent tendencies. She had developed a protective and almost maternal personality due to her former role, and through this she determined that she would save humanity from itself someday. Years later she met IDL, and the two artificial beings formed a bond that they describe as "deeper than love".

Gravitis has a seemingly flat and redundant personality and doesn't show much emotion, due to the fact that she wasn't programmed to be such. Although she has become somewhat more human over the years, it is still easy to tell that she is artificial. She is very analytical and practical and at times seems cold, but ultimately she cares for her subordinates and those close to her. Although her programming has made her a very skilled fighter, she seldom fights, preferring to serve as an advisor or a strategist in Ravager operations.

Antagonist: Ice Dragon Lord

Ice Dragon Lord

Age: Unknown

Race: Virus

Weapon: two-handed sword

Occupation: Leader of the Ravager

Hobbies: Reading, Traveling

And here we have Ice Dragon Lord, also known as IDL. He is a sentient virus of unknown origin who has since gained great power and appeared as the leader of the global hacker organization, the Ravager. Although he assumes a human form, his true form is that of his namesake - a massive, ice-elemental dragon. He possesses a myriad of abilities, such as hacking and magic, and has the ability to create other viruses - most of which are other ice dragons modeled after himself. He is calm but ruthless in battle, but is a charismatic and effective leader well-respected by his followers. He is also a deep thinker and often spends his free time meditating and thinking. His name is both feared and admired in the Solarnet, and is the single greatest enemy of Solarcorp and perhaps the world itself.

Main Character: Valeska Nadine

Gonna start posting character profiles here. I'm pretty much just ripping off (bandwagoning with?) my RPGmaker friends with this blog and these character profiles will be similarly knocked off!

Valeska Nadine

Age: 19

Weapon: twin scimitars

Occupation: Nothing spectacular

Hobbies: Video Games, MMORPGs

And here we have our main character, Valeska, an avid MMORPG player. This picture depicts her Avalon Online persona which will end up becoming her standard avatar for the Solarnet (and other than the outfit, she really does look like that IRL). Despite her looks, though, she is actually quite a loser - working a minimum wage job and having a laughable social life. She spends her days hanging around trying out new MMORPGs and otherwise staying away from real life, and hardly goes outside.

Valeska is somewhat jaded and cynical, but she's noble at heart and loyal to her friends (if she can get any that is). She is a free spirit and prefers to keep to herself - a difficult thing, considering that her looks often attract the wrong kind of attention. At the same time, she's somewhat aimless and lost, not really knowing what she wants to do in life. Her consistent playing of MMORPGs on the Solarnet has made her handy with various weapons, though she prefers to use two swords. Through an event in the story, she ends up learning the ability to analyze avatars or beings in the Solarnet and stealing/downloading their abilities, skills or techniques, which becomes her greatest weapon later on. She ends up getting dragged into the chaos of the Solarnet where she finds herself working for people she doesn't really want to work for and fighting battles she doesn't really want to fight. But who knows, maybe she'll find the purpose she's been looking for.

Rpg2knet: Convergence Blog GET

And now we have our Rpg2knet: Convergence blog. After developing this game for 2 years now (albeit at a slow pace) I figured it was about time we had some kind of page or blog. Although I intended to design an entire website eventually, this will do for now, since there's not all that much to put on a website just yet, and I haven't decided on an overall design yet.

For those who don't know, Rpg2knet: Convergence is an indy RPG being made in Rpg Maker 2003. Although it is based on the RPG making website and community, Rpg2knet.com, being an Rpg2knet member is not necessary to understand any part of the game. Though the vast majority of the characters are named after actual Rpg2knet members past and present, these characters are independent of the members they are based on. The story itself stands on its own, so any interested player can get into the game pretty easily.

Originally, Convergence was the sequel for Rpg2knet: Endless Thread, another community game made around 2004, but the project was scrapped and we couldn't get the original staff to work on it again, so we decided to make the game its own. Although its story has nothing to do with Endless Thread, it shares many similarities with it, such as the use of Rpg2knet members and locations and the overall setting and themes. Endless Thread had an interesting and unique feel to it, and we tried to capture that same feeling in Convergence, its spiritual sequel.

STORY

The game takes place some time in the future, in our world. The global corporation known as Solarcorp has developed a next-generation form of internet called the Solarnet and made it available to all people of all economical levels. Upon its release, it quickly became the "new internet", and millions of users flooded in to use it. The Solarnet was effectively an actual online virtual world parallel to the Earth's geography, rendered realistically and believably, in which sites are represented as actual locations where people could literally live and work. Since its introduction, it became civilization's new frontier, with many companies and organizations establishing their hold on certain areas and building this new world from the ground up. The world's nature could be altered easily like a virtual world should, allowing for infinite possibilities and imaginations to roam free. Since its release, the Solarnet has served as the central hub for all other online worlds such as MMORPGs and the like, and has become an important part of life.

In time, however, the Solarnet came to reflect an exaggerated form of human civilization. Fifteen years after its release, the Solarnet is a crowded, surreal, and diverse place full of all kinds of people living alongside artificial intelligence creatures and surreal creations not possible in the real world. Solarcorp's Armed Solarnet Defense Force (or ASDF) is unable to maintain law in such a massive and freeform place, leading to a general feeling of lawlesness in many parts of the Solarnet. Hackers became the top criminals of the modern day, able to alter the very fabric of the Solarnet to fill their needs, or creating viral minions to serve as their weapons. Despite this chaos, many have abandoned the real world to live in this strange digital world, and many more have suffered injuries, permanent disabilities, or even death from violent disconnections caused by "death" in the Solarnet. The Solarnet continues to grow, but as it does, Solarcorp's loss of control becomes readily apparent.

Now, a united global organization of hackers known as the Ravager have come to power, unleashing a reign of terror on websites across the world. Led by an independent virus known as Ice Dragon Lord, the Ravager has shown a level of organization never before seen in hacker groups, and a global war between the Ravager and Solarcorp has broken out, with millions of Solarnet denizens caught in between. But even stranger are the recent reports of unusual paranormal activities related to the Solarnet. People are disappearing, and are said to have crossed over physically into the Solarnet. What these anomalies entail is yet to be seen, but soon it may not matter, for there may not be a Solarnet left when the war between Solarcorp and the Ravager reaches its pinnacle.