Welcome to another Outhoused Studio devlog! This time we're going to make another progress update since the last time we checked in. Last time we went over how we're going to set up a party selection scene and how this fits into the context of our MVP. This time we'll talk about the progress we've made in our battle scene, namely with our ATB combat bar, and the things we've realized on the way.

Our progress on the ATB combat bar

We've said in the past that we want our combat experience to be very dynamic. We also said we were interested in turn-based combat. Our solution, which we find to be a happy middle ground inspired by Child of Light, is to have an active turn based combat system. This means every character moves along the select bar in order to reach the selection point. The selection point is the point at which characters select the ability they want to cast. From there, the player must move along the perform bar to reach the perform point to actually perform the chosen ability. The speed at which a character moves along the select bar is determined by their initiative. The speed at which a character moves along the perform bar is determined by the character's initiative, as well as the perform time of the ability. For instance, some more powerful abilities might require more time to be cast, during which time the player might be open to possible interruptions.

Please note that we also took casting time interruptions into account during the status effect creration and there is a status effect that allows characters to resist interruptions during their casting (wizards in particular).

So far we've implemented an ATB combat bar that consumes our party exported from the party selection screen. From there, a default set of enemies are generated to oppose our chosen party and all battle participants are moved along the select bar with respect to their initiative. Once there, they can select an ability. We've stubbed this in for now. After that, they move along the perform bar with respect to the ability perform time, and once they reach the perform point, the battle participant performs the skill, and an animation in the style of Darkest Dungeon plays before battle is resumed.

What we realized on the way

Something we realized while working on this was that we absolutely needed to find a way to segregate different sections of the combat experience in order to reliably test those sections. It's really annoying, for instance, to have to start from the main menu, select a party, and then get to the battle scene in order to test whether the characters are properly moving along the ATB bar, so we're going to spend some time thinking about how we can better isolate this for development. We're also likely to have the same problem for selecting abilities and ensuring that those abilities have the intended effect on their targets, so this is another reason for us to find a better way to compartmentalize segments of the combat experience.

What's coming next

Next on the road map for us is going to be to define the manner in which we're going to segregate parts of our combat experience, as well as working on the skill selection mechanism.

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