Masashi86

I was wondering what are the ways developers gets their battle system to feel good and responsive, and have a good "flow" in them. I'm bit struggling with my own at the moment. What is a good ways to try to setup and fine tune it so it would feel good to play? (Using ORK as the central tool to make the battle system).
Various thoughts are welcomed :)

Kirb

Play games that DO feel good, and take notes. Why do they feel good? When do they feel good? What visual and audio feedback are they giving that is absent from your own system, and how can you incorporate them yourself? These are good questions to ask when trying to analyze the shortcomings of your own game.

artainx

Kirb has good advice, ask yourself also if the elements currently in your combat are crucial or just fluff content. You might find it is all useful, you may find some aspects useless.

Definitely play games that inspire you to make your game and see what works and why.

gamingislove

Also, the speed of animations, movement and GUI fades can be crucial.

E.g. having the battle menu fade+move in and out should happen fast (like 0.3 seconds max, probably better 0.1), otherwise that will begin to feel slow and unresposive.
Same goes for animating the actions, if it takes forever to run to the target and play a slow attack animation, that can get boring as a player :)

Masashi86

Good notes from all, thanks :)
I guess it's basically a consensus of informing the player well in battle (good GUI & HUD), animations, camera work, time between actions (as little as possible wasted) and sound. Sound does make a big difference in the feel.
One thing I noticed, that I've done a lots of mock-upping, so nothing is final yet or close, cameras are bit out of place still, and sounds are very few or not at all, only the animations are ok.
Maybe I should focus to do a good backbone for the system first (getting the basic numbers working), and see how it works without animations or camerawork first, and after that see, how the battle can be visualized the best way (with cameras, animations, GUI and sound) I've been worrying to make the battle visuals working too much that I forgot to make the core mechanics working. I've been little going, "perse edellä puuhun" a Finnish proverb, literally "climbing ass first up the tree" :D (not seeing where to go)

Masashi86

A clearer backbone has been found. (finally)
One thing that I made is a baseAttackEvent, where are all the usual steps needed to complete an ability. Just need to change the details for different abilities. Using this as a template, it's possible to get a very consistent move patterns and it gives a good structural feel to the battle system.
And also I can focus to the content of the battle (which in my game will be very important)