[RM2K3] BLITZ MECHANIC? CHANNEL TIME ON MAGIC?

author=LordBlueRouge
I'll keep ya posted, but ya, the biggest take away from this project is that; and I've said this many times to everyone since then. - don't come into RM2k3 with a set of ideas of what you want to do - learn what RM2k3 can do first, then build your game around those limitations.

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Amen to that, and thank you for the information. Will be definitely looking forward to the release. :)

But I hear you on the sentiment man. The name of this game (at least for programming) has been compromise. Since I wasn't sure if I'd be able to achieve Blitz, I actually wound up creating a chained attack / combo system for the Monk character, which makes them play a lot more like say Tifa of FF7 or Zell from FF8.

Still I would love to have as much player agency in combat as I can, so I could use the Blitz combo for other characters if I decide to create something like say Auron from FFX. Will be eagerly looking forward to what you two cook up.

I started this project of mine actually way back in ancient days, though time and circumstance being what it is; I haven't gotten to work on it as much as I'd like. Still it does have some residual roots from when Don Miguel released that first bootleg copy of RPG 2000. Because of that, not unlike Tron, every now and again I'll find bits of legacy graphics from my super early first versions of the game, complete with those god-awful 'Red Screen' Transparencies that RM2k used.

I cannot stress how happy I was to upgrade, since RPGMaker 2003 supported a side-scrolling battle system. I'm even happier now that I have an official Steam version of the engine, and that I was able to bring my stuff over to that and use it, without losing much work over the years.

Also for a bit of humor, back when I was working in RPG2000 my original emulation of the Final Fantasy style of gameplay was to code the player character running on screen from offscreen, doing the animation or casting a spell; and then running off screen again.

A more recent compromise I had to make was a decision regarding the Blue Mage character. Blue Mages get their power from being hit by the spells of monsters, I had a concept originally that called for one of the characters to be a Blue Mage / Summoner. Yet while I was able to set a custom event up where when a monster attacked the players with a spell, the Blue Mage would learn it, this only works if the player is the only character in the party.

So I've wound up creating a secondary method of Blue Magic acquisition, which actually wound up creating a neat little caveat / story beat in the game's lore, that the player may have to fight several monsters to "crystallize the essence". The idea being that unlike intelligent races, lesser monsters often don't crystallize and instead return to the planet; owing to their more primal nature being in tune with the planet.

Story beats aside though, this was basically a glorified excuse to explain to the player why it might take the player many dead Imps/Dragons/etc., and so on before they find that one monster who's spirit crystallized; or basically just a fancy way of saying that the monster has dropped a specific item that the Blue Mage can use to learn "Goblin Punch" and so on. xD

author=Sidewinder
It's not really perfect though. I'm actually not sure if there's any way to target individual enemies or allies, or not.

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Regarding Summoned Monsters, I might have to do a similar compromise there, but you and Blue have given me a few ideas, and I love that idea of using a countdown. I had not considered that at all, so thank you for the suggestion!

This is exactly what I was needing for magic to work better in the game. The concern about targeting should be pretty easy to work around, since Summons were intended to be the "Big Guns" that hit everything. ^^

The idea is that most things are single target, but I want the player to be invested suitably if they want to attack everything on the screen. All-Cures, or All-Damages need to have a little more wind-up time I feel to make them less spammable and more tactical in use.

One idea I'm iterating on deals with the concept of a Blue Mage / Summoner hybrid. This would mean the character is sort of like the "Goof-Off" from Dragon Quest III. They start with 0, but if the player does the work of finding the blue magic spells, and fighting the Summoned Creatures, that character could become absurdly powerful/ broken by end game.

Will be watching both of you guys videos / tinkering tonight. So honestly, thanks a million for the help and for the replies guys! Here's a pair of screenshots of the work in progress; an undersea zone (think Breath of Fire 1), where you have to travel to the capital city of the Mindflayers.

Even though you can explore the ocean floor early on, you have to go even further into the depths find that city. The idea is that they live at the deepest parts of the sea, at levels where the light is almost gone.

So as you approach the trench, you can make out in the gloom their city vaguely. This actually factors into the Mindflayers culture too as their enviroment shaped their society.





No plans really to ever sell it for cash. While the story and scenarios are my own, I do reuse a couple of assets from various Final Fantasies etc. to save time. Most of the chipsets were hand constructed so that I could get the looks I wanted.

Mainly it's just a little something I wanted to make and give the RPG Community / Square as a personal contribution / gift in these crazy times; as it were. Plus if it makes people a bit happier, or forget their RL troubles for a bit; mission accomplished you know? My only real regret is that I don't speak Japanese well; so I may have to do a rough translation once I finish so any Japanese players who want to play it can do so also.

Hey Sidewinder! So I tinkered with the idea you described tonight, but I ran into two issues while doing so. The first being that when I assign a "No Movement" to the player character while he is alone in the party, the game automatically ends. Is there any way to alleviate that?

Second issue I ran into was with the code itself. Enclosed is a screenshot of what I was shooting for. The problem I found here, is that the game seems to keep counting down and while I get the message saying the variable was reduced, I am doubtful it actually does because the other condition is never triggered.

This prevents me from going to the third event, which covers spell effects, damage (Fire being 15 x Zack's Int, and the removal of the "Normal" condition). Normal is basically a 'hidden' status effect to mask the condition from player eyes. I wish there was a way to call a specific pre-programmed spell, but I think I may have to do hard code calculations for these kinds of spells.

Anyways, I'm sure I made an error in the code somewhere, but I'm not sure where. This aspect of RPGMaker 2003 is one I haven't used as much so I'm still working and tweaking things. If I figure it out, will post an update.

Also Blue, when you have time could you shoot me a cliffs notes of how you achieved the above demo with Sabin's Blitz? My best guess from the screenshot is that it has something to do with using the Pummel battle animation and an internal calculation for damage, but I couldn't get the codes I tried to input to function correctly. Will keep working at it now that I know it's feasible but if you have any insight, I'd love to take a gander at how you constructed the code. Thank you again both of you. :)

Sorry on the slow responses. Had a bit of family tragedy crop up which has made the last few months challenging to say the least. I've been tinkering with the code in my spare time, but I ran into a new problem. There does not appear to be any way outside of items to "invoke" a skill, so any spell I programmed would probably have to be specially tailored for each mob so as to give the illusion of an elemental weakness.

Going to try an experiment with Action Times+ to see if I can program the spells in that manner. On a happier and unrelated note I figured out how to make a basic "Gil Toss" ability.

What I wound up doing as a stopgag solution for my issue on Magic / All Casting was I gave the White Mage and Black Mage a "Spread" option, which basically causes them to take a round to retarget. Works like this.

Black Mage Abilities:

Fight
Target All
Magic
Item
Defend
Escape

Target All: Allows the BM to use all targeting versions of his spells and since they are different spells entirely, they can be tuned to deal less damage. The Black Mage also gets a new ability called "Focus" which does the reverse allowing them to swap back to single target spell casting.

As for Summons, since I'm still having some trouble with the cast times, I wound up looking at the older source material from Final Fantasy. Wound up reviving the concept of the Evoker (FF3j), and turned Summon into a Proc that happens when the character uses Evoke, Fight, Defend etc.

Character can Summon and use a single target ability that evokes the Esper in Question. After using that ability a few times, or getting lucky on a proc they can use an all-targetting Summon. Not thrilled with this system as proc based abilities can be dicey, but I also want to be a realist and get something in the battle code so I can return to making the game rather than tinkering with the same character for weeks or months.

Anyone who has suggestions, tips, or ideas (heck a screenshot with a 'how I did X') would be amazing, as I can sometimes be as dense as a piece of granite. Either way thank you very much everyone for all of your help!