Real-time battles, part 1: timing

Ok, so my last post wasn't exactly about real-time battle systems like I said it would be. This one is.

As I mentioned previously, there are advantages to a real-time battle system (like World of Warcraft or most other MMOs). For one, you don't need to whisk the player off to a "battle mode" that exists in some parallel universe. Another big advantage is that battles can be more realistic. Enemies and party members can attack and be attacked at any time, and there doesn't need to be any god-of-the-battle AI that dictates when each character or enemy is allowed to execute a move.

As you might expect, these advantages come with their share of tricky design decisions. This is the first in a series of posts that will discuss some of the common ones. Where to start?

Timing

Attack speed -- At first glance, timing seems easy. Each character or enemy has an attack speed, probably determined by some stat or the awesomeness of your weapon.

Cooldown -- Ok, that might be enough if all you do is flail about, but what if you want to give your player a special "extended flail" skill? You wouldn't want him to be able to string these together endlessly (it just wouldn't be fair), so you need a cooldown time for each ability or skill.

Charge time -- So now you can't eliminate your target with an endless string of "extened flail," but couldn't you just string together every skill in your arsenal and gank your unsuspecting target that way? (Indeed, this is the method used by every god-forsaken rogue in World of Warcraft.) This wouldn't be too challenging, either (yes, I played a mage), so you also need to implement some system where abilities require time to execute. Then you need to decide whether the charging process can be slowed or interrupted.

Down time -- This is similar to cooldown, but instead of affecting a single ability, down time affects your ability to do anything at all. After executing your supremely powerful "nuclear meltdown" ability, there might be a period of time when you can't execute any new moves, which leaves you vulnerable to the giant cockroach monster that survived the meltdown. Final Fantasy XII used down time instead of cooldown; WoW imposes a uniform down time of about a second after each move, in addition to skill-specific cooldown.

Easy enough, right? Part 2 will cover the intricacies of enemy AI.