[Starlight] Ranged Attacks (Patreon)

if you're a fan of jRPGs, then I hope you've played Eternal Sonata. It features a turn-based but time-limited combat system in which you have just a few seconds at a time to move around the map and wail on enemies as much as possible, and it's honestly one of my favorite battle systems to date. 

And, if you've played Eternal Sonata, then I hope you have, at least once, tried Viola. Viola is a tough farm girl archer who has no role in the story other joining the party because some asshole was fuccin' around with her goats and she ain't havin' that shit. I don't really love the character, but I love playing as her because her style of combat is so different from everyone else's in that game that I sincerely just spent most of that game's battles looking forward to when it was Viola's turn next.

In a game full of melee party members and some twat boy who no one I know likes,  Viola, as the Designated Archer ™,  doesn't need to run up to enemies to brutally murder them. the player is given the limited amount of time to first person aim at them in the 3d environment, and, at will, just fucking unload as many arrows on them as the timer and their button-mashing skills will allow. one thing that sets Viola apart is her sheer damage, because it scales up the further you are. Repositioning wastes aiming time, but you can seriously magnify your damage output if you're quick enough. Between that and the attack spamming, she's capable of outdamaging most other characters by an almost alarming amount. And I love her for it.

For Starlight's ranged offense, I wanted to see if I could capture the same feeling Viola's combat has, but in a 2d set up. We're not going to quite the same extreme, as range is already a much more substantial advantage in a tRPG than it is in that game, and Viola already feels broken there. Nonetheless, trying to recreate that set up and feeling provides a different sort of minigame to make combat feel different.

once again, this will look awkward because i don't have any ranged combat models yet. ignore that part.

unlike normal combat where the top and bottom are identical to help with soft focus visibility, the bottom bar becomes the timer here. once it drains to the far left, the round is over.
also unlike normal combat, the hit blocks on the top no longer move automatically, but are moved left or right by the player. line up the hit blocks with the marker, and mash that attack button!
unlike viola, there is still a cap on how many attacks can be hit (corresponding to the number of attack chances you get in melee combat), but if you get the aim right on the crit block, you can crit every single one of them. 'course, trying to do that may just throw you off... you've only got a few seconds after all.

when attacking from further away, you'll find that the hit blocks also decrease in size. in this example i have to use extra time to correct the aim, so i end up only getting one attack in: 

you can also see the enemy, who is equally ranged, can counter attack still. ranged defense is normal as shown before.

that's gonna be it for today. this definitely took more effort than the previous mechanics to get going, and yet, still less than i expected. this puts us at 5/11 of the main mechanics done!

what's left:

• Item Usage
• Art Usage
• Unit Summary
• Combat Forecast
• Personal Skills
• Win/Loss Conditions

all of these remaining ones deal with adding new UI elements. programming that isn't hard at all, but will probably be slower due to needing to make new graphics. for instance, item usage is next, so i have to make item menu graphics. we'll see how that goes in the near future, i guess...