I’m pretty excited this week with my new monster encounters system.

My original implementation of monster encounters went with the old JRPG style where you have “random” (algorithm, not actually random) encounters which would immediately force you into battle with them.

This past week I decided to try out something a little different. I wanted to keep the same algorithm for encounters themselves, but instead of forcing the player directly into battle, I would spawn monsters on the map near by the player.

When spawned, these monsters will show up as little pink markers on the map showing their locations. This allows you to choose to walk up to and engage, or simply ignore them and continue onto whatever else you were doing. There could be up to 6 at any time, but might be less if they happen to spawn in places you can’t reach (lakes, mountains etc).

After a certain amount of time, which varies on per monster spawned, the monster markers will change to darker color indicating they’re about to wander off. A short period after that they’ll disappear off the map entirely and you’ll need to wait for a new batch to wander in again.

I’ve done some initial play testing with this new setup and the leveling still works out to be about the same; assuming you go attack things frequently and not ignore every time.

For those who like the immediate encounters, they can choose to turn them back on and not use the spawning. You can change this in the options area of the game.

Here’s a quick little GIF showing the monsters spawning in the forest and walking up to one: