Movement in Isometric RPGs - Click, Click, Click

[Faarbaute]

It's long been a pet peeve of mine that movement in CRPGs often amount to little more than a formality, where, hypothetically, nothing is lost, except the illusion of freedom, if you were to do away with it all together ala Age of Decadence. I mean, other than the satisfaction of clicking your dudes around.

One idea I have to remedy this, is to make moving your character(s) around in an isometric RPG more involved, and if you don't mind me using these terms, more of a "core part of the gameplay loop" by fundamentally changing how your character interacts with its surroundings.

This would be achieved by the combination of a complete freedom of movement (click anywhere to move + click, hold and drag to plot a path or wasd if you're a fag) and an environment full of hazards and obstacles.

In other words, by turning those sweet gfx backgrunds into (more of) an actual environment that you interact with, instead of just being a pretty backdrop to be raced through, while looking for points of interest.

Tripping on roots or getting your feet wet would be the least of your problems if you decided to just click somewhere in the distance, expecting your character to safely navigate there on his own.

While on the other hand, it would allow you to stay in cover by carefully moving your character along the edge of a treeline, or ford across a river, to name just a couple of examples, and have these things be part of the actual gameplay, and not something that is done through dialogue.

I obviously like this idea myself, but I have a feeling that it would antagonize alot of people.

Still, I believe this could be massive, particularly for the exploration aspect, which I love about RPGs.

It would also obviously take a very careful implementation to not have this turn into a complete clownshow of funny death animations, or a frustrating mess that grinds the game to a halt, completely overshadowing any other aspect.

What do you think, niggas? Am I trying to fix what's not broken or is there any merit to any of this?

 

[vitellus]

exanima has all the movement solutions for an isometric game you could ever need. once you learn it, it becomes absolutely intuitive.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

It's long been a pet peeve of mine that movement in CRPGs often amount to little more than a formality, where, hypothetically, nothing is lost, except the illusion of freedom, if you were to do away with it all together ala Age of Decadence.

Of the 10 major subgenres of CRPGs, at least 3 are focused are exploration (real-time blobbers, Underworld-likes, and Open World RPGs; this will be 4 if also include Rogue-likes, and turn-based blobbers have decent exploration as well). Isometric perspective is inherently unfavorable to exploration while being favorable to combat, and therefore is best suited for Tactical RPGs, i.e. the subgenre focused on turn-based combat. Tactical RPGs can and should integrate the environment as a factor in combat, which will give the player an incentive to pay attention even when out of combat; there already exist squad-based tactics games where this is the case.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Isometric perspective is inherently unfavorable to exploration

Would disagree there. It works quite well in JRPGs and action games; the problem is twofold- the first is the click to move control scheme being shit. It makes movement feel like a chore. I don't know why, but it does. The second is that western developers generally don't play with the interface the way japanese developers did back in the day when iso/top down was being used. Things like false walls, perspective tricks (simply hiding a chest behind and object with the fixed camera) or outright invisible, untouchable objects, like being able to search a random chunk of wall or even floor and find something there. Now, none of these things are realistic, but they make for excellent gameplay; checking suspicious walls and objects, trying to move around in a spot where you can't see your character- these things sound dumb, but they offer just enough 'challenge' if you could call it that, to make exploration engaging, rathering than a boring task of uncovering all the blank spots on the map by clicking on them. Having enemy encounters be objects on the field you can and should avoid (or chase if it's a loot goblin) also makes things more interesting. Field abilities or tools, like breaking down false wals with a hammer or bombs, shooting switches with arrows, or even simply jumping help as well.

I would say that what is actually unfavourable to exploration is realism. Nobody wants to spend half an hour mapping out a large, mundane area. People want to find secret doors and hidden treasures, and they want to feel just a little bit clever for doing so, rather than having them automatically pop up because the elf happened to roll high on his spot check while you were mindlessly walking into the nearest patch of fog, or being in 'plain sight' but actualy being 4 pixels big that you need to click on to find a ring of wizardry someone left on a table.

That's not to say you can't do exploration well with other types of camera; I think it can work with anything, really. But you need to make searching for things feel like a game, instead of feeling like trying to find the remote.

 

[Faarbaute]

exanima has all the movement solutions for an isometric game you could ever need. once you learn it, it becomes absolutely intuitive.

Interesting. Not quite what I had in mind, though.

 

[bionicman]

That's why blackguards is the best rpg

 

[octavius]

exanima has all the movement solutions for an isometric game you could ever need. once you learn it, it becomes absolutely intuitive.

Exanima is how I imagine Ed314 or wassisname would perform in a real life situation.

 

[Zlaja]

an environment full of hazards and obstacles

After reading this I got flashbacks of playing D:OS and immediately got a headache.

Things like false walls, perspective tricks (simply hiding a chest behind and object with the fixed camera) or outright invisible, untouchable objects, like being able to search a random chunk of wall or even floor and find something there

You could find cool hidden loot in Baldur's Gate, if you payed proper attention in certain places.

 

[vitellus]

exanima has all the movement solutions for an isometric game you could ever need. once you learn it, it becomes absolutely intuitive.

Exanima is how I imagine Ed314 or wassisname would perform in a real life situation.

how apt of a description lol

 

[Cross]

One way to make isometric exploration more compelling would be to borrow the line of sight system from Nox, which only shows you what your character can see. Notice how the areas behind the pillars and the areas the character has his back to are obstructed from view.

But at the end of the day, a first-person perspective will always be superior for exploration.

Isometric perspective is inherently unfavorable to exploration

Would disagree there. It works quite well in JRPGs and action games; the problem is twofold- the first is the click to move control scheme being shit. It makes movement feel like a chore.

Click to move is used because it's the ideal control scheme for controlling a party. It's weird that you bring up JRPGs because they illustrate this quite well. As far as I can tell, despite there being a gazillion party-based JRPGs, there's not a single one that allows you to approach combat proactively, whether it's going for stealth and sneaking party members into position, setting up traps and hazard spells, hiding behind a corner or whatnot. Combat is always a separate instance disconnected from the environment, which renders the isometric perspective somewhat pointless.

 

[Damned Registrations]

As far as I can tell, despite there being a gazillion party-based JRPGs, there's not a single one that allows you to approach combat proactively, whether it's going for stealth and sneaking party members into position, setting up traps and hazard spells, hiding behind a corner or whatnot. Combat is always a separate instance disconnected from the environment, which renders the isometric perspective somewhat pointless.

Breath of Fire 5 had a heavy emphasis on setting traps and such on enemies. It wasn't popular though. Though possibly for other reasons, as it was an oddball in many ways. I wasn't a fan of the traps and such myself though despite liking the game in general; it felt like busywork. I find when it comes to combat, setup of buffs/debuffs and combo attacks is far more interesting. Throwing down a landmine and waiting is dull. Planning 4 turns ahead so that my 7 different buffs are all active at the same time the enemy has the most debuffs possible and my attacker has fully charged his attack is far more interesting. Jrpgs also tend to be far more involved when it comes to party management; rather than selecting a few feats or spells every couple hours and swapping your sword +1 for a sword +2, you're often constantly gaining new spells, specialized equipment and new party members, to such an extent that speedruns of those games often involve nearly as much time spent navigating menus in and outside of combat. It fills the pacing out in between fights and exploration pretty well, whereas an IE style game tries to do that with dialogue about how the room smells or the wall has claw marks or whatever.

I find trying to be proactive with combat in an IE style game tends to be a hopeless endeavour, as you are just as likely to have the thief trigger some arbitrary cutscene and get gangbanged by a dozen ogres as you are to actually ambush something. At best you can try to autistically maintain a proper formation while moving, but in a game where walking around already takes about 5 times longer than it should because your dwarf waddles along like a drunken senior looking for his mobility scooter, I can't be arsed to make sure the mage is always 20 feet behind the tank.

 

[NecroLord]

What are you talking about, mate?
Click, click, click is the way to GO!
That and keyboard shortcuts.

 

[luj1]

It's long been a pet peeve of mine that movement in CRPGs often amount to little more than a formality, where, hypothetically, nothing is lost, except the illusion of freedom, if you were to do away with it all together ala Age of Decadence. I mean, other than the satisfaction of clicking your dudes around.

One idea I have to remedy this, is to make moving your character(s) around in an isometric RPG more involved, and if you don't mind me using these terms, more of a "core part of the gameplay loop" by fundamentally changing how your character interacts with its surroundings.

This would be achieved by the combination of a complete freedom of movement (click anywhere to move + click, hold and drag to plot a path or wasd if you're a fag) and an environment full of hazards and obstacles.

In other words, by turning those sweet gfx backgrunds into (more of) an actual environment that you interact with, instead of just being a pretty backdrop to be raced through, while looking for points of interest.

Tripping on roots or getting your feet wet would be the least of your problems if you decided to just click somewhere in the distance, expecting your character to safely navigate there on his own.

While on the other hand, it would allow you to stay in cover by carefully moving your character along the edge of a treeline, or ford across a river, to name just a couple of examples, and have these things be part of the actual gameplay, and not something that is done through dialogue.

I obviously like this idea myself, but I have a feeling that it would antagonize alot of people.

Still, I believe this could be massive, particularly for the exploration aspect, which I love about RPGs.

It would also obviously take a very careful implementation to not have this turn into a complete clownshow of funny death animations, or a frustrating mess that grinds the game to a halt, completely overshadowing any other aspect.

What do you think, niggas? Am I trying to fix what's not broken or is there any merit to any of this?

great post and true example of innovation


You could have,


- cover with defensive bonuses
- bonuses to saves
- hazards and small ticks of damage
- random events
- controllable points of interests
- areas that give you temporary buffs
- etc.

 

[Zlaja]

exanima has all the movement solutions for an isometric game you could ever need. once you learn it, it becomes absolutely intuitive.

Exanima is how I imagine Ed314 or wassisname would perform in a real life situation.

It's ED-209, damn it!

 

[Cross]

As far as I can tell, despite there being a gazillion party-based JRPGs, there's not a single one that allows you to approach combat proactively, whether it's going for stealth and sneaking party members into position, setting up traps and hazard spells, hiding behind a corner or whatnot. Combat is always a separate instance disconnected from the environment, which renders the isometric perspective somewhat pointless.

Breath of Fire 5 had a heavy emphasis on setting traps and such on enemies.

From what I remember, combat encounters in Breath of Fire 5 still take place in a separate instance. So if you touch an "enemy", you go to a battle screen where you fight 4 enemies or whatever. You can't, for example, move party members into a certain position before combat, nor can you cast spells outside of combat.

The point is that CRPGs use point and click controls because it's the quickest and most efficient way to control multiple party members, both inside and outside of combat.

 

[Faarbaute]

Isometric perspective is inherently unfavorable to exploration

Would disagree there. It works quite well in JRPGs and action games; the problem is twofold- the first is the click to move control scheme being shit. It makes movement feel like a chore. I don't know why, but it does. The second is that western developers generally don't play with the interface the way japanese developers did back in the day when iso/top down was being used. Things like false walls, perspective tricks (simply hiding a chest behind and object with the fixed camera) or outright invisible, untouchable objects, like being able to search a random chunk of wall or even floor and find something there. Now, none of these things are realistic, but they make for excellent gameplay; checking suspicious walls and objects, trying to move around in a spot where you can't see your character- these things sound dumb, but they offer just enough 'challenge' if you could call it that, to make exploration engaging, rathering than a boring task of uncovering all the blank spots on the map by clicking on them. Having enemy encounters be objects on the field you can and should avoid (or chase if it's a loot goblin) also makes things more interesting. Field abilities or tools, like breaking down false wals with a hammer or bombs, shooting switches with arrows, or even simply jumping help as well.

I would say that what is actually unfavourable to exploration is realism. Nobody wants to spend half an hour mapping out a large, mundane area. People want to find secret doors and hidden treasures, and they want to feel just a little bit clever for doing so, rather than having them automatically pop up because the elf happened to roll high on his spot check while you were mindlessly walking into the nearest patch of fog, or being in 'plain sight' but actualy being 4 pixels big that you need to click on to find a ring of wizardry someone left on a table.

That's not to say you can't do exploration well with other types of camera; I think it can work with anything, really. But you need to make searching for things feel like a game, instead of feeling like trying to find the remote.

It's the fire and forget nature of the point and click movement system that's the real culprit IMO. There's just not alot you can do to make exploration that engaging, when you have to accomodate it.

Agreed on realism being a problem as well, though.

 

[Faarbaute]

great post and true example of innovation


You could have,


- cover with defensive bonuses
- bonuses to saves
- hazards and small ticks of damage
- random events
- controllable points of interests
- areas that give you temporary buffs
- etc.

The sky is the limit, really.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I don't really have problems with top-down movement. They still have Fog of War, so exploration exists. Every CRPG since the original BG lets you shift-click to set a specific route. Navigating every party member over every root and stone sounds asinine. Empty space is necessary for exploration. You're not finding anything if you're dropped on top of it. Old Sycamore if Kingmaker is a good example of how to make an isometric RPG map.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

IE games where the environment is only a static backdrop with one or two scripted events added on top of it were true decline. Even the interactivity of previous Fallout 1&2 isometric RPGs were substantially superior. Too bad modern isometric RPGs usually just copy the formula of IE games like they are a gold standard.

Isometric RPGs should take example on other possible evironmental exploration/interactions implemented in other isometric games, e.g. Aliens Dark Descent or Weird West.

 

[LanciaArdita]

In other words making cRPG gameplay more inline with movement as defined by TT rules, with crawling, swimming, slower and faster walking, climbing, flying etc and with the addition of mechanics like covers which give bonuses to AC and difficult terrain which bestow maluses upon saving throws and so on.

I assume the reason this was not done until now is because it would be a considerable investment when it comes to coding/animating and also programming a graphic engine competent enough to support all of those advanced functions of reactive environment.

Personally I consider the implementation of a relevant form of verticality more of a priority in crpgs (something like the devs of Solasta did, but obviously better and not as boring and grid-y as in Solasta) but your idea is also neat.

 

[luj1]

great post and true example of innovation


You could have,


- cover with defensive bonuses
- bonuses to saves
- hazards and small ticks of damage
- random events
- controllable points of interests
- areas that give you temporary buffs
- etc.

The sky is the limit, really.

No one innovated in this genre since forever

 

[std::namespace]

I obviously like this idea myself, but I have a feeling that it would antagonize alot of people.

its because you dont understand what a game is yet, padawan

moving your character(s) around in an isometric RPG more involved, and if you don't mind me using these terms, more of a "core part of the GAMEplay

educate yourself on what a game is, its the only thing the dex has taught me in 15 years, i tried defining a game back then but my categorization was weak in comparison:

Chris Crawford​

Game designer Chris Crawford defined the term in the context of computers.[8] Using a series of dichotomies:

1. Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.
2. A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
3. If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
4. If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete", it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
5. Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

see, your MOVEMENT needs an OPPONENT that can interact with your movement and you have to make NON-TRIVIAL DECISIONS for it to be GAMEPLAY
alas, if you create a challening and interesting movment that then becomes a game unto itself!
everything else will antagonize people with half a brain
larpers need not apply

 

[Damned Registrations]

In other words making cRPG gameplay more inline with movement as defined by TT rules, with crawling, swimming, slower and faster walking, climbing, flying etc and with the addition of mechanics like covers which give bonuses to AC and difficult terrain which bestow maluses upon saving throws and so on.

I assume the reason this was not done until now is because it would be a considerable investment when it comes to coding/animating and also programming a graphic engine competent enough to support all of those advanced functions of reactive environment.

Personally I consider the implementation of a relevant form of verticality more of a priority in crpgs (something like the devs of Solasta did, but obviously better and not as boring and grid-y as in Solasta) but your idea is also neat.

Incursion did pretty much all of that. Because true roguelikes are the superior form of rpg. Sadly, the game was never properly finished. Sourcecode is out there though, maybe some day some lunatic will finish it off.

 

[Cross]

In other words making cRPG gameplay more inline with movement as defined by TT rules, with crawling, swimming, slower and faster walking, climbing, flying etc and with the addition of mechanics like covers which give bonuses to AC and difficult terrain which bestow maluses upon saving throws and so on.

I assume the reason this was not done until now is because it would be a considerable investment when it comes to coding/animating and also programming a graphic engine competent enough to support all of those advanced functions of reactive environment.

Jagged Alliance 2 has most of those things (except for flying, obviously).

 

[Faarbaute]

I obviously like this idea myself, but I have a feeling that it would antagonize alot of people.

its because you dont understand what a game is yet, padawan

moving your character(s) around in an isometric RPG more involved, and if you don't mind me using these terms, more of a "core part of the GAMEplay

educate yourself on what a game is, its the only thing the dex has taught me in 15 years, i tried defining a game back then but my categorization was weak in comparison:

Chris Crawford​

Game designer Chris Crawford defined the term in the context of computers.[8] Using a series of dichotomies:

1. Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.
2. A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
3. If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
4. If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete", it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
5. Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

see, your MOVEMENT needs an OPPONENT that can interact with your movement and you have to make NON-TRIVIAL DECISIONS for it to be GAMEPLAY
alas, if you create a challening and interesting movment that then becomes a game unto itself!
everything else will antagonize people with half a brain
larpers need not apply

Are you retarded? That's what I'm arguing for here.

edit: also, get the fuck out of here with that condescending attitude, faggot.