Some notes on the potential initiative system.

Like Child of Light, a game I still need to finish and hereafter referred to as “CoL”, the characters will travel along the initiative bar until they reach the “Casting” point. For “CoL”, that was a predetermined position near the right of the bar. For Starfall Dungeon, hereafter referred to as “SD”, that point is the center of the bar with the allied units traveling from the left and the enemy units traveling from the right, both on the top half of the initiative bar, hereafter referred to as TIB.

Upon reaching the center:

• Enemy units choose an action to “Cast”. Factors that will need to be determined are:
  • Speed of the potential actions to be chosen
  • Proximity of the allied units to their casting or action period
• Allied units perform an animation to indicate that they can act. The player can then select the unit to bring up the action wheel.

After an action is chosen, the unit will move down onto the lower half of the initiative bar, hereafter referred to as LIB, and start moving back to their starting position, allied units to the left and enemy units to the right. If the unit takes hit point damage while they are on LIB, they are moved back up to TIB to a point directly corresponding to how far along the unit was on LIB.

To extrapolate: if the unit had just chosen an action when they took damage, they would almost immediately be able to choose another action to perform; however, if the unit was moments away from performing their chosen action, they would have to travel almost the entire length of the initiative bar before being able to select another action.

Different actions take longer to perform than others. The speed of each action and the likelihood of being attacked while casting needs to be taken into consideration when selecting an action to perform. CoL had a mechanic that delayed the enemies while traveling along the initiative bar. It might be wise to add a mechanic that allows for manipulation of the initiative bar or to avoid casting at the wrong time. Perhaps adding an option to the action wheel, such as “Defend”, to do so?

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Also, there’s Pneuman. Him’s a springy piston man!