RPG Maker Forums

I'm in the planning stages for my game, and I'm investigating whether I can create a strategic style battle system similar in some ways to "Avernum: Escape from the Pit" by Spiderweb Games.

So far I've determined that a side view system like Battle Symphony or Victor's Animated Battle (or perhaps even Victor's Map Turn Battle script) would be ideal from a visual and animation standpoint. I've skimmed the manuals for those, but there is one feature that I need that I don't see in those scripts: strategic movement.

I want character positioning to be more integral to the battle gameplay than just stepping forward, attacking, and stepping back. In Avernum, positioning your characters is part of the strategy. You can use some of your action points to move characters around - move your fighter in close to engage enemies, and move a weaker archer or wizard away from the front line so they can attack safely from a distance. Characters and enemies that are next to the character have limited mobility (can only move one space per turn), which helps pin them down. To me, this makes a ranged weapon like a bow more meaningful to the game play: it's not just another weapon, but it actually has benefits and drawbacks.

Also, it would be nice to have obstacles on the battlefield terrain, which you can use to your advantage. For example, if there were only a couple of ways to get from the left side of the screen to the right side, you could position your fighter to block one path, and use your archer to cover the other path from a distance... that sort of thing. That's one reason why I was considering Victor's Map Turn Battle script, since I could take map topography into account when moving characters. There seems to be a couple of decent pathfinding scripts out there that I might be able to utilize.

Anyway, my question is: how would I implement those kinds of movement rules? Would I need a specialized script for that, or could it be done through events? It looks like it might be possible to do it through some complex eventing on the Troops tab, but that seems like an awkward way to do it, and I'd have to duplicate the logic for every troop...)

I'm still new to RPG Maker, and although I've learned a lot, I'm not ready to tackle scripting yet. I'm not opposed to hiring someone to do some custom scripting, if that's what's needed... but I'd like to know what my options are first (assuming that what I want to do is even possible).