Would be very cool, so excitted to see it ;p

Well, the trouble is that I have finals next week, and I go away to visit family from the 20th to the 30th. My inlaws live in a place that doesn't have internet and may or may not use electricity, my family lives where internet basically doesn't exist. This means I will need to wrap up my Apocalypse contest entry early, so I will have finals and the contest that I will be concentrating on for the near future.

However, I have difficulty concentrating on what i am supposed to do, so maybe I will accidentally write an engine

Well, that's not quite what I meant.....

I don't really mind if you don't want to do it like this, but I was referring to Chrono Trigger's style, where you contact an enemy, and you enter battle mode, but no transitions occur. The battle happens on the same map, and nearby enemies also enter the battle. It also allows for different results based upon position, like an enemy only counterattacking if it's close enough.

Check out this. I think it's a really cool feature.

Oh, and while we're talking about code-related things: Who wants access to the github repo?

But it was the coolest battlesystem ever. Only thing I would change is adding the ability to move your people around, for more tactics.

Also: Current Wiki Here. Please put that in first post, pimath.

Oh ok.

This is how it works. (Let's base it on 12 members in party)

In battle, you can group members to up to 3 "cycles". So you can have 4/4/4 or 2/6/4 or 9/3 etc.

In each turn, 1 member from each cycle (could be called leader) can perform action or switch to other member in the same cycle.

Some of the spells can affect the entire cycle, all "leaders" of cycle, individual, etc. All physical attacks will attack the "leader" of the cycle.

Since it's called a "cycle," the order of members in cycle is important.

Let's say you have a cycle with guy A→B→C→D.

As A, you can't just switch to C, but rather take a turn to change to B and then C. You can only switch once per turn per cycle, requiring total of two turns to switch from A to C.

Also, in addition to this, each member could have a special attribute that enhance the cycle leaders a bit when they're in the leader position. Let's say that the leader s of cycles are A, E, and G. A's special attribute is MP+10 and E's special attribute is STR+2 and G's special attribute is INT+3. All the cycle leaders (and only the cycle leaders) will share these attributes.

EDIT: Oh. I forgot about the EXP sharing. The less cycle the battle was fought with, the more EXP will party receive. The members who weren't partcipating in the cycles won't get EXP. The current cycle leaders will receive 1.2x EXP while the other members in cycle receives a normal amount of EXP.

Well, not everyone has to be a party member. After all, we need villains, mentors, etc. 12 members is fine, but don't be afraid to reduce it. You don't need the numbers to line up perfectly if you allow swapping individual people.

Oh ok.

This is how it works. (Let's base it on 12 members in party)

In battle, you can group members to up to 3 "cycles". So you can have 4/4/4 or 2/6/4 or 9/3 etc.

In each turn, 1 member from each cycle (could be called leader) can perform action or switch to other member in the same cycle.

Some of the spells can affect the entire cycle, all "leaders" of cycle, individual, etc. All physical attacks will attack the "leader" of the cycle.

Since it's called a "cycle," the order of members in cycle is important.

Let's say you have a cycle with guy A→B→C→D.

As A, you can't just switch to C, but rather take a turn to change to B and then C. You can only switch once per turn per cycle, requiring total of two turns to switch from A to C.

Also, in addition to this, each member could have a special attribute that enhance the cycle leaders a bit when they're in the leader position. Let's say that the leader s of cycles are A, E, and G. A's special attribute is MP+10 and E's special attribute is STR+2 and G's special attribute is INT+3. All the cycle leaders (and only the cycle leaders) will share these attributes.

EDIT: Oh. I forgot about the EXP sharing. The less cycle the battle was fought with, the more EXP will party receive. The members who weren't partcipating in the cycles won't get EXP. The current cycle leaders will receive 1.2x EXP while the other members in cycle receives a normal amount of EXP.

This suggested system seems to be too harsh on penalizing the player when they switch charcters. If you want to move from player a to player d within a cycle it takes 3 turns of you doing nothing to be able to do so leaving that slot open to be attacked. Also, having 12 active characters per battle seems like a bit overkill imo. I'd personally opt for a more simplistic battle system.

On a somewhat unrelated note, if an action rpg is chosen I'm unsure how well a multiparty system would work out unless you want to have a main character (Controlled by the player) and the secondary characters auto controlled by AI in battle (some what like kingdom hearts).