Dissidia Sedecim - A recreation of FF6's combat engine

Wow it's been a long time since I've posted here. I forgot to post about the last update, the most significant one too.

The game now has a gauntlet mode where you can fight through a series of fights and face a final boss at the end. So far it's only low level gameplay but we'll add more difficult tiers in future updates.





This update also has a big departure from the original FFVI combat system and from FF combat in general: You can see enemy intention, their ATB and even who they're targeting. The goal is to make the player more reactive and give the player the chance to plan further ahead. If you don't want to see any of that info you can just toggle it off and play it like a classic FF game.

However I invite you to try it with this change. I find it that when I play with the ATB on I heal way less often and tend to use moves like defense, change row or buffs/debuffs more often. Without the ATB I end up doing a lot of pre-emptive healing and IMO healing is such a non-action in a game, it's just undoing the natural flow of the battle which is attrition and see who resists to the end.

Anyway, this is not all, since that update I've been working on the Onion Knight and got some jobs done already: Dragoon, Viking, Summoner and Geomancer. I still need to work on the Sage and Ninja but I'm leaving those for when I create higher level gameplay content. Here's a video showing off all of the geomancer abilities:





You know there's a reason we don't see Geomancers in the series anymore. By design this job is a pain for both the developer and the player. On the dev side it means creating a ton of unique animations, really time consuming, and the player might not even see them. That's because on the player side there are TWO uncontrollable aspects dictating the Geomancer skills: the background you're at and sheer luck. This makes the Geo very unreliable.

I plan to remedy this by:
- Giving the Geo some actually worthwhile skill
- Luck upgrades allowing top tier attacks to trigger more often
- Allowing the player to choose if they'll target the enemies or the allies, giving them control over what kind of Geo action you get (offense or support)
- Writing an actual AI to choose the Geo's attacks, so it doesn't choose a healing spell if everyone's HP is full and it doesn't choose an instant KO attack on an enemy that's immune to death
- Giving the Geo a new skill similar to Relm's paint: You can save the background of the battle you're in right now and release it in the next battle. It's the background that determines which skills come out so this way you can have more control of your geo abilities.

That's it, I'll keep posting updates here and writing these in-depth explanations. The project's moving slower now but it's steady.