As you all know, Players versus Player combat will (at long last) be making an appearance in Empires of Arcadia. Over the summer I’ve been drafting a rough plan of how it will work and have come up with a PvP battle system that will be both competitive and innovative. It will integrate with Player versus Non-Player combat seamlessly as well.

The basic idea of PvP is that you do not fight other players directly. I have decided not to implement direct combat for a number of reasons, but that’s outside the scope of this article. Instead of fighting other players directly, you will fight their Eidolons (this is a story element, explained later). Each player will possess an Eidolon (starting at a certain, but currently undecided level) which will serve as a guardian of sorts. First, allow me to explain the functions of an Eidolon in PvE combat.

Your Eidolon, as a PvE companion, will serve as a conduit for a number of things, the first of which is your Limit Break. Depending on your Eidolon’s ability set, your Limit Break will become available to you in battle at a certain time or when certain conditions are met. These abilities are often devastating to your enemies or very helpful to your character and can range from simply dealing extra damage to resurrecting your character upon death.

Secondly, your Eidolon can serve as a spiritual guardian of sorts that can bestow persistent abilities upon your character, again depending upon your Eidolon’s ability set. These can range from extra attack to extra defense or any number of bonuses to your statistics.

Your Eidolon’s ability set is determined by how you use it in combat. Each Eidolon starts with four basic persistent abilities that increase attack, defense, spell damage, and spell defense, and three basic active abilities that deal physical damage, deal physical damage, or add temporary status effects. How often you use each of these active abilities will determine which new abilities it learns. Which persistent/passive ability you have active most will determine which one increases in power. All active and passive abilities are based on an experience scale; experience for your Eidolon is taken out of your main experience pool. You can decide how much experience goes toward your Eidolon in your Eidolon screen.

In addition to abilities, your Eidolon will have a full set of statistics that increase as it gains levels. How these statistics increase depends again on how you use the Eidolon. This will be shown in a bar-graph chart that shows the frequency of use of each skill type. If you have ever played Morrowind or Oblivion, this system should be fairly familiar to you, as each stat may increase anywhere from 0 to 5 points based on skill use. These stats will not affect anything in PvE - they are used in PvP only; this is something you may want to keep in mind when determining your Eidolon’s battle style.

In PvP, your Eidolon will serve as your avatar. There is no player-to-player combat for reasons I’ll explain later. You will be able to directly control your Eidolon’s actions in combat to a certain extent. In the event that you defeat another player’s Eidolon or another player defeats yours, it will no longer be available for use in PvE or PvP combat, thus negating/removing both its persistent and active abilities, until it is revived, either via a Spirit Shrine or through the use of a spell or potion. Your Eidolon gains 100% of experience received from PvP battles, based on its level vs its opponent’s level.

I have decided to implement it this way for the main reason that even though your Eidolon is killed, it will not decommission your player. You are still free to enter PvE combat with a dead Eidolon, though you won’t have access to its abilities or your Limit Breaks. The reason for this so that players are free to enter combat with other Eidolons even when that Eidolon’s owner is offline.

Which brings me to my next point; no, both players involved in a PvP battle will not directly control their Eidolons. Only the player who initiated the battle will be able to directly control theirs. For this reason, I will be implementing a system of macros where you can select how your Eidolon behaves under certain conditions; e.g., when it is low on health, has been attacked, or any number of conditions. For players of Final Fantasy XII, this will be familiar as well.

This is basically the tip of the iceberg for the Eidolon system and it may or may not be subject to change prior to release. However if you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, feel free to let me know.

Now that the battle system has been mostly recoded, I’ve given it a new look that better suits the game’s theme and the actual layout of the battle. The icons are only placeholders, there will be new ones before release.

Have a look.

I’d just like to let everyone know that EoA will fully support the Webkit browser engine in addition to Gecko. This means it will be compatible with Konqueror, Safari, and Google Chrome.

No, it still won’t be IE compatible. Sorry to get your hopes up.

I have managed to recover most of EoA’s source code, minus most of the battle system. The inventory is completely intact thankfully. I will be recoding the battle system from the ground up once again, however there are a few things I’ll be doing differently this time around. If there is anything you think should be included in the battle system, now is a great time to make a suggestion.

Please be patient and bear with me as I recode everything that was lost. Thankfully I’ve only lost about 2 weeks worth of progress, and I expect it to take about that long to catch up again. While this has been a major setback, I fully intend to complete EoA as before.

Again, if you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free.

No, I’m still not dead. I’ve been on campus for about a week now and have had very little time to code. Don’t fret, as soon as classes calm down and such I’ll be cranking out updates at the usual pace. Sit tight until then.

Edit:
My computer crashed today, causing me to lose all of EoA’s source code except for what’s uploaded to the server. In effect, the entire battle system has been lost. If I can find a way to restore it, I’ll continue coding. However if it ends up being lost for good, then more than likely I will put EoA on ice for some time. I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve decided to implement a few changes to the way equipment is rated in Empires. In Legend of Arcadia, each weapon and piece of armor had a damage or armor rating, which was added to your total rating, which determined your damage or damage mitigation.

I’ve decided to do away with this all-too-common way of classifying equipment and have implemented another method. With this new method, all items will instead have an item level and a quality rating. You will only see the item level when you pick up an item, as well as any additional stat modifiers it has (+str, +mana, etc). There won’t be a damage or armor stat on any item, as your effectiveness with a particular weapon or piece of armor depends on three things: 1) The item level of the item,  2) Your skill at using that particular item, and 3) The quality of the item.

Taking into account these three factors, a single effectiveness rating will be calculated internally that will decide how much damage you deal with a particular weapon or how much is added to your total damage mitigation. You will not see this effectiveness rating. I’ve decided not to show this rating to the player in order to add incentive to search for new items and to experiment with each item he or she finds in order to find the best possible equipment combination for their character rather than simply using the highest-level items that can be found at the time.

You will still be able to determine if one item is greater than another by comparing the item levels, however items of different levels may not compare the way you would think. Just because an item has a higher level does not necessarily mean it is better.

With this system, each character will be truly unique as each item will have more or less usefulness to one player than the next, meaning every high-level player won’t be wearing the same equipment. One man’s trash will truly be another man’s treasure.

If you’ve ever played old-school Dungeons and Dragons, this system should be very familiar to you. I’ve taken the concept a bit further and applied it to Empires and so far it seems to be working very well so far.

Suggestions, comments, questions, etc are more than welcome.

EDIT: The battle system has been tested with two players and it is working! View the ownage!

No, I’m not dead. Not yet anyway. I haven’t had much time to code lately due to computer problems and having a social life (believe it or not!), but I haven’t forgotten the game. I’d also like to let you all know that starting August 21st I will be cranking out updates at a much slower pace, as I’ll be moving on-campus and starting classes.

Anyhow, a few notes about the battle system. Mutli-player battles have been coded and so far I think it’s going to work out pretty well. There have been a few changes due to code restraints, but this is how it’s going to work.

One player will initiate a battle, and on the left side of the other party member’s screens there will be a list of all the battles the members of their party have initiated along with a Join button. You can join any of the battles, however each player can only be in one battle at a time. Once in the battle, each player will act independently of one another as will the monsters. You won’t see monsters attacking any player but you, as monsters only attack you once you’ve ended your turn. However, you will see the effects that your party members have on the monsters. You will see the monsters’ and players’ health/mana/stamina update in near real-time.

You can view the activities of your party members by clicking the Party tab at the top of the battle screen. Along the left side of the screen you will see your party members, along with their health, mana, and stamina bars as well as any combat enhancements they have on them. You can click a party member’s icon to target that party member if you wish to cast a beneficial spell upon them. Keep in mind though that even if you cast a beneficial spell on a party member and end your turn without attacking an opponent, you will still be attacked by your opponents due to the fact that they attack each player simultaneously.

Once the battle is over, the item drops from the monsters will be distributed amongst players according to the Party Loot rules set by the party leader. This can either be roulette, round-robin, or master loot, in which the party leader loots everything to be distributed later. The total experience, gold, and SP gained will be added up and distributed amongst the party members, along with a 10% bonus for being in a party.

Remember, this is all just theoretical. It may not end up exactly as described, but that’s the plan.

If this sound confusing, you’ll just have to wait until it’s released. It’s actually quite simple once you’ve fought through a battle or two.

Here is one more small update for the weekend.

You’ll notice the grey action bars at the bottom. Since I only have 30 stamina total, the three attacks, which (for testing purposes) cost 10 stamina each have maxed out my stamina for that turn. The two extra attacks won’t be performed when I end my turn, so their bars are colored grey.

Also you’ll notice I redesigned the navigation.

Total battle progress is about 80%.

Here is another screenshot for you all.

I’ve redone the action bars so they’re color-coded. Enemy actions are orange/tan, your actions are green, general messages are blue, and error messages are red. The action icons (attack/item/end turn) have also been updated.

In addition I’ve nearly completed the necessary framework for cooperative battles and it’s nearly ready for testing. All in all, the battle system is about 75% complete.

Here is a tentative list of features that will be making the transition from Legend of Arcadia to Empires of Arcadia.

• Player Shops
• Augmentations
• Essences (now Deities)
• Limit Breaks
• Alternate Advancement (now Faction Advancement)
• Random hunting
• Random boss encounters (no more lures)
• Continent-based locations
• Item effects
• HP/MP Regen in battle
• Workshop

These features are slated to be implemented in EoA in one form or another. In the coming days/weeks I’ll be covering these features as well as new features I’ll be introducing. If there is something from Legend of Arcadia or Project Genesis/HeroRPG or an entirely new feature you’d like to see in Empires, feel free to comment.