New style of ATB in ACE, Whats your thoughts. Options

[Kaleb Daub]

Ok I am sure that almost everyone here knows about ATB or action time battles. Well also with this ATB system comes with a face HUD that shows the actors menu face instead of there name. In battle where the ATB,HP.MP,and TP a special type of MP are put on the face graphic.like so.
This is an awesome system I think because I love ATB battles so much. This ATB system was made by Yami and the face HUD by Yanfly.


Here is where my new style of ATB comes to play.
I also like animated gauges and found a ATB system that uses an emotional face graphic HUD, but the gauges were animated so I thought this is awesome but your not always going to have emotional graphics for your characters so I decided how to try it with ACE's default system since the new ATB system i found is also a first person batle system like the default but the battle HUD is totally custom in every way so it isn't fit for the default battle system. This was a problem because I really wanted to use animated gauges for my ATB until I played Final Fantasy X's battle system where there is an order gauge on the side like this.

[Show/Hide] Order gauge

I then thought why not do that and have it like the order HUD. So I configured the HUD position, and this what I came up with.

[Show/Hide] New ATB

Here is what it looks like on the left and right.

Also another reason I like this ATB was the way you could choose different ways of how to fill the ATB gauge I use the option that makes it to wher the faster you are the faster your gauge fills but also the number of battlers will slow/increase it fill speed. This ATB was made by Moghunter

So the big question is what do you think of using ATB in this way.

This post has been edited by mooshra: Jul 23 2012, 03:40 PM

[rewells]

Hm, I personally don't like head on battles. They just look boring to me. I like side-view where the characters move a bit. If you're going to do head on, I'd AT LEAST like to see the character's faces. The gauges on the screen distract me...I think they should be condensed into the upper right corner and you need a box around them.

[Jonnie19]

I'm not sure about the gauges either, They don't fit and they seem like they're just thrown there randomly, and don't seem to have a place.

[Rukiri]

You need to keep it stupid simple, never over-complicate as it just complicates into a complicated mess.
I don't like it to be honest, it just looks completely out of place unless you were to add your hero's stats and a nice face maybe but really it's out of place.

[Kaleb Daub]

Thanks for the replys I know this isn't the best way but me and my cousin are trying to learn RGSS3 and change it to where it adds in faces and maybe stats somehow. This was just a little idea I had I know its not really that good at all but hopefully we will make this look a lot better.

[Tsukihime]

Why not put the gauges in that gap between the actor name and HP?

[LockeZ]

what is new about this exactly, other than the bars being in a dumb place?

[Stonerman]

I think what you are trying would work better if it were restricted to the enemy gauges. The player gauges would be fine down lower where their names are. If you clean it up a bit and put some enemy pictures to go with their respective gauges I could see this working a little more smoothly.

The reason the order gauge worked out in FF10 is because barring haste and slow effects it was largely static and did not require you to watch too closely. With the atb gauge though, you instinctively want to keep an eye on it, which will take away from you ability to focus on the fight itself if it's too far away from the action like in your screenshots.

After typing that, perhaps keeping player gauges there as well could work, but only if menu selection gets in the way of being able to see player gauges normally. Again though, clean it up and make it look like it belongs there and a better judgement could be made.

[userjosh704]

Forget front view or side view, go with an angle like in Super Mario RPG or Breath of Fire. >D

Also, when it comes to ATB, FFX (see also FFT) did it best. Charging time bars suck. It's especially frustrating when you realize that the enemies are faster than you because they don't have the handicap of manual input like the players do. Example, if two or more characters have full ATB, one's turn is being delayed while you fiddle with the commands of the other. Take out the active in active time battle. When someone's turn comes up, halt time for input. Also, who liked waiting for your turns in the beginning of the game when everyone is slow and you have a small party size?

Suppose I want to skip a character's turn? Does that character's time go to 0 or do i get to save some because I didn't do anything? Is there extra recovery time for using especially exhausting skills, spells or abilities?