My RPG. Part 1

Alright, here's a little update on what I've got going in my RPG.

- Movement is constricted to a square grid, once you start moving, you can't stop or change directions until you reach the next square.

- You can move up, down, left or right.

- You can't go through walls or enemies

- If you click when you aren't moving, you will attack in the direction you're clicking.

- You can call up the grid.

It also uses this awesome picture for the player, made by my good friend Mitchell Crouch.

Now, for stuff I've been thinking about.

The choice to go with a square grid is really a gut decision, I decided that it's what the game needs. I did know that I was going to be doing a top down game though, I'm nowhere near good enough to make it first person, especially for multiple people. I'm thinking about dropping the clicking to attack because I'm thinking about putting in some kind of bonus for attacking from behind, but I'll figure that out later when I actually have some more things in the game.

One dilemma I've had so far is with the implementation of classes. I really like games where you can modify your character's skills to create your own "class". But I want the game to be multiplayer, and I don't want one player with the most optimised super character overshadowing people who picked skills that don't word at the same time, like all weapon skills or something. So I've decided to uses classes of some description.

My first idea was to make classes have a bonus to certain skills, or perhaps restrictions so you can only put a set amount of ranks into a skill, it's not a bad idea, and I might test it to see how it goes, but for now I'm looking for something different. I just think that doing it that way would still be an invitation for Mr Optimal to do his thing.

My current idea is to have tech trees, or talent trees. Each tree has a few skills or abilities to put ranks into, like each rank adding 10 damage to fire spells. Once a set amount of ranks have been put into any ability in the tree, the next tier becomes available and so on. There would be a tech tree for each class that only they can put ranks into, as well as some communal tech trees that any class can put ranks into. Alternatively, there might just be a few tech trees for each class. This is all theoretical, so I'm not sure how it would go.

If you have any suggestions for me to do with classes or skills or that kind of thing, feel free to comment your ideas.

I'll try to get at least one more post up tonight, probably with regards to the different roles I want to have in the RPG.

-Shadowfred