The other day, I was thinking of ideas to make my battle system in my game go a step beyond. Recently, I've really been dedicated to attention to detail, going one step further than I normally would have, and not taking 'good enough' to be good enough. I feel this project could potentially be something a possible future employer could look at, so I want to put as much effort into making it a great game as I can.
That being said, I was drawing up a sample interface that would kind of work with the 450 x 370 game window that I have. Drawing it up, I based it upon what Radnen said here:
I think your game is the perfect candidate for an on-map-engine type of battle system. But they can be tricky to make.
I'm going to try to dig out the paper to give you guys an idea of what I had in mind, but I had the thought: would it be possible, or even practical, to create an MMO-style battle system with an ability bar, and some abilities? I know how complicated it would be, and I'd definitely be starting with a simpler system to test and fool around with once I get to it, but I just wonder if it would be possible to do in Sphere. I'm not really talking about having a massive selection of abilities, even, nor a customisable ability bar. I'm just talking about having certain quests in the main storyline unlock special abilities bound to the 1-6 keys, that the player can use to gain an advantage in battle, particularly with bosses.
If this wouldn't be possible (or practical according to my limited programming skills), I would settle for a simpler system, as I don't even know if anyone would like the MMO-style ability combat. I'm just curious if it's possible though. Any answers are appreciated. :)
It is entirely possible to make an MMO. You'll have to delve into tutorials on making good networking code, however. Radnen has some experience with this, I believe (I myself have never attempted networking in Sphere...).
On the server side, you can save yourself some pain by experimenting with Firebase (http://forums.spheredev.org/index.php/topic,17.0.html), as NEO so helpfully linked us to. It seems powerful and good enough for your MMO plans (not too much data).
Now the real question is, are you really going for the "massive" in MMO? If you're trying out an MMO, also make sure you know where and how to get a public big enough to actually play it. Think about how you would push this out to people, basically "market" it, even if it's free. Otherwise you're going to have big areas with nobody in them, unless you reduce that scale of "massive" a bit.
Well, honestly I'm not trying to turn my game into an MMO, as it would be relatively foolish for me to try that with such a limited knowledge of programming and a relatively limited knowledge of networking haha. I'm just curious if a combat system like what you often see in MMOs, with the ability bar and a few abilities and whatnot, would be possible in Sphere, or even really that practical.
I do admit that a small multiplayer arena mode would be a cool addition to develop, but I'll think about that again once I'm actually closer to finishing this project. :P
Well, I don't see why not! In the end, it's just data that you'll have to keep passing to each other, and it's not even that much data. There are methods to collect all the data from an object and create a string that you then send to the other player, where it's parsed back into data (check out JSON and JSON's .stringify() function, I believe... But ask someone else how to really use that stuff ;)).
Well, I'm still working on the world design, quests, lore, etc, but when I actually go to make the battle system... well, let's put it this way: you'll probably be seeing a lot of me around here then haha