Test environment to outline and prototype the classes of a turn-based combat system.
This is intended as a platform to experiment with the number crunching that goes into a traditional JRPG. The formulas and data used by other games are widely available, but implementing them in a game of my own so far has been a fairly tedious process. To tune and update these existing formulas into something more uniquely my own, I will need to achieve a more efficient environment. The goal is to be able to experiment with things like character levels and stats on-the-fly and see how they affect combat in a much more streamlined way. Doing this in a familiar web framework should eliminate the overhead of translating into UE4 Blueprints and recompiling a full 3D engine for every change.
The bigger picture is to create optimally challenging gameplay within each "chapter", and a satisfying sense of progression from one to the next. Each new area the player encounters should be filled with new enemies that provide a challenge without being overwhelming. This requires a general assumption of the character levels a party should be at when they first arrive so that encounters can be tuned to match. This also includes the experience required to get them to these levels, and how experience gained in this area will prepare them for the next. The key here is determining the optimal rate of scale, the type of gameplay that encourages but never requires grinding. A determined player should be allowed to overlevel themselves for the next zone but not realistically beyond that.
This project should provide a sandbox to experiment manually and then use that data to automatically generate experience curves and stat progression to map out numbers in conjunction with the given story beats. It should result in a way to generate the numbers that make up a challenging boss encounter for a given area, or make a character feel overpowered when retreading old ground. And it should be able to do all of this mathematically, without having to rely on guess-and-check.