CRAZE'S PROFILE

I've been playing Super Mario World for the first time, and I suck at games. As such, I've been savestating my game right before some levels, or at checkpoints in levels that give me a hard time. I really don't like doing it - I am not a cheater, and it feels like cheating to me - but I find that I can enjoy the game more when I can die 800 times and not have to replay two levels to get back to the castle.

I don't do it for every level, only those that give me real trouble, or if I'm really proud of myself - I escaped Vanilla Dome 3 with a cape and Yoshi, so I was pretty ecstatic! Not that it's helping me much in Vanilla Dome 4, which I've taken at least twenty shots at by now...

So, is this cheating? I mean me, specifically, as well as savestates in general. Personally, I feel that both are cheating, but in my case it's for my own enjoyment, no matter how much I dislike it.

Lennon
I could see how engines would matter in a more technical type of game, like and action or FPS or something, but for 2D RPGs the only difference I can see is the graphics. It's not like using something else allows a better story, and it would only change gameplay if you have a really technical battle system or something.

I would just rather people use what they feel like using, what they're good with/accustomed to. This community has enough problems with not finishing shit as it is, we don't people going "should I really start over because this guy told me to?"

I have never seriously told somebody to start a 2k/3 project over to work in VXP (feel free to check my posts and call me out if you wish).

All I'm saying is that VXP allows you FLEXIBILITY and EASE OF USE. You don't need to know how to script to make use of Melody, which means you do not need to make a shitty CBS with Show Picture and the modulus function.



Hey, look! Charge Time battles, like in FFX! Cool! And what's that? Spells that target random enemies? The ability to learn a smidge of code or ask your friendly neighborhood Craze/GRS/chaos/etc. to help you make skills that target enemies with <50% HP, hit x times based on the user's SPD, or <whatever> with Melody's easy-to-understand modules for skill/item/state targeting and effects?



Oh god. How many pictures and years would this take to work in 2k/3? (And for what purpose?) This took me a few hours to finagle up; an hour was wasted realizing that the small window on the very bottom had its y coordinate set to 600 or something stupid like that, so it was actually not that much time. ::D



Melody can have some cool things done with it! Look, Rage Points, which accrue as you attack - a built-in part of Melody, and something that you guys try to do with facesets (hahahahahahahahahhahaha). Also six animated PCs with unlimited frames if you use animations (otherwise same setup as 2k3) yeah whatever boring




Obviously I didn't finish setting this up, and I was testing the yellow "leader" BG against the ugliest windowskin in the selectable bunch, but this just MORE STUFF YOU CAN DO IN A FEW HOURS INSTEAD OF A FEW MONTHS.



If you're willing to learn the absolute tiniest amount of scripting, you can set up sexy common events like this one!



In VX only, the notebox make using scripts easy and powerful. Just put in tags like <base dex: 50> and that enemy has fifty Dexterity points (btw a new stat added in with Melody DEX+ Seeds and everything, if you want it)



Like mentioned before, some people here know some RGSS. We make scripts and can help you if we feel like it and you aren't a dick. (My script pictured above lets you have equipment and states that, say, increase a character's chance to evade fire damage by 60%, or have a +15% chance to achieve a critical hit with a slashing weapon.)



<3 http://site.scfworks.com/






Rips and originals for 2k3... r - resized? HOLY SHIT
(Exit Fate, Diablocide, The Room: PPP and Eyes Without a Face (last two by YDS), respectively.)


And that's why you should use VXP.

I might share a few other things soon that I don't hate, but I just finished writing this up for class. I can't read it with a straight face, so hopefully you'll find it as amusing/disgusting as I do. The assignment was to write a vocation on a yellow sheet of paper and an abnormal habit or hobby on a blue piece of paper. Then, the scraps all went on the floor and each person drew a yellow and a blue sheet.

I got social worker and chews arm hair.


“Honey, you smell like an orchard of passion.” His deep voice rushed through Natalie's body as she soaked in their rich tenor. “How do you become so alluring each and every day?”

A woman replied half-seductively, “by washing my hands and body with non-abrasive Lemon Labyrinth soap from Zest, your number one hand and body soap supplier.” A third party quickly notified Natalie that she could buy Zest soap in various scents at any bath supply or general store in the toiletries aisle. Disgusted, the woman stomped the volume knob with the heel of her hand, then lifted her arm to nibble on a patch of blonde, currently untrimmed hair. Natalie Illburg hated the taste of lemon soap. She used Zest brand, but only bought lavender- and apple-scented bars and foaming dispensers.

Natalie pulled into Julian Drove's driveway, chuckling to herself about how she drove to see Mr. Drove. She had mastered the ability to both chuckle audibly and chew on arm hair at the same time. Once, it had happened when an eighteen-wheeler pulled in front of her during a humorous commercial for ultra-absorbent paper towels, and her sudden nervousness pulled out ten hairs and a small patch of skin. Ever since then, Natalie made sure that she chewed softly while driving, but the remaining scar tormented her daily.

“How do you do, Ms. Illburg,” said a tall Hispanic man, his voice the same as the one on the radio.

“Well enough,” began Natalie, “but more importantly, how are you dealing with recent events, Mr. Drove?”

“The loss of a child is a difficult time for anybody, but I'm beginning to accept it.” Julian let the woman into his home.

“She has only been sent to private school, Mr. Drove -”

“Please, call me Julian. I promise, no paparazzi today.” Natalie and the actor's demeanor became more relaxed as they sat down together on the couch, with her securely held by his left arm. “It's a great thing you've done for us, Natalie. Hard, yes; I do love my daughter, but she just doesn't understand us.”

“So true.” The social worker was then silent for a moment, until she looked at Julian's wrist. Her eyes slowly crept up his long, muscular arms. “I'm hungry, Julian.”

“I'm all yours,” he said, as Natalie began to pluck every follicle of arm hair with her razor-sharp teeth. After she reached his elbow, Julian asked “should we tell her, someday? My daughter, I mean. About this, what you've done. What we've done.”

Natalie looked up at him, a single black hair hanging off of her bottom lip. Her eyes told Julian that she wanted nothing more than to simply exist as his personal trimmer. Julian met her eyes, then turned away, the scent of lavender and the tugs on his arm enough for him as well.

Ryan James Yezak is a gay man that produces hot music videos to pop songs. You can check out his video blogs for more information, especially his response to people saying that his flamboyant videos are setting back gay rights.

Anyway, in this topic I will give you an avatar from one of Ryan Yezak's music videos. I already have a few planned, so request away! Note that it'll take me longer to decide if I don't know you or you... don't do much. I'm going to quote Ciel commenting on his Halloween sprite avatar topic, since he typically says things better than I could:

Ciel
oh sorry, i lost interest when various people with 0 internet charisma flooded my topic

If you do request, please actually wear your avatar for at least a week. Also, if you love David Rae (the hot blonde stud/guy in my avatar, not to be confused with Joe Lauer, the cute blonde one really like the videos, I screenshotted a bunch of scenes to use as 1366x768 wallpapers that I'd be willing to zip up for you all.

Don't be a shy kinda guy I'll bet it's beautiful/Come on baby let me see/Whatchu hidin' underneath

The point of this guide is to explain how 2k/3 works by default, and then how to optimize it so that you can better balance your game. You'd still be better off using VXP, but if you're in the middle of a 2k/3 project and wish to renovate it, follow this topic!

I'd suggest googling/looking in this forum for Aten's David and Goliath patches.

You can read the help manual by following instructions given here. The manual isn't perfect, however! Especially for numbers, the best place to consult is this topic. (Why are you using this horrible program?)

Whenever the word "default" is used, it means calculations without the optimal attribute fiddling I'm going to present. The word "optimal" means calculations with the to-be-described attribute fiddling.

Health/Hit Points (HP)
Don't die
Your HP determines how long you have to live. Damage goes directly to your HP, and you're dead when it hits zero.
-Every point of HP is one point of damage you can take before you die

Mana/Magic Points (MP)
Cast those spells
MP is consumed when using skills. That's it.
-Every point of MP you have is a point of MP you can spend

Attack (ATK)
Boom boom pow
ATK determines how much damage you do with weapons and physical skills.
-Every two points of ATK you have raises your default weapon damage by one
-Every two points of ATK you have raises your default physical skill damage by one, when Attack Influence is ten
Optimized:
-Every point of ATK you have raises your optimal weapon damage by one
-Every point of ATK you have raises your optimal physical skill damage by one, when Attack Influence is five

Defense (DEF)
Metal slimes go
DEF protects you from physical attacks.
-Every four points of DEF you have lowers the default physical damage you take by one
-Every four points of DEF you have lowers the default physical skill damage you take by one, when Attack Influence is ten
Optimized:
-Every two points of DEF you have lowers the optimal physical damage you take by one
-Every two points of DEF you have lowers the optimal physical skill damage you take by one, when Attack Influence is five

Intelligence (INT)
Mysticality
Your INT increases the amount of magical damage you do, and lowers the amount of magical damage you take. It is the most complex stat, acting as both an offensive and defense element.
-Every four points of INT you have raises your default magical skill damage by one, when Intelligence Influence is ten
-Every eight points of INT you have lowers the default magical skill damage you take by one, when Intelligence Influence is ten
Optimized:
-Every point of INT you have raises your optimal magical skill damage by one, when Intelligence Influence is five
-Every two points of INT you have lowers the optimal magical skill damage you take by one, when Intelligence Influence is five

Agility (AGI)
Riiiiidge Racer!
The AGI statistic is used to determine your speed in battle, and your accuracy with normal attacks. How it actually works is a mystery to probably even Enterbrain.
-Every point of AGI might raise your speed. Maybe. If you're lucky. It also has a tiny impact on your weapon accuracy. Heh?
Optimized:
-Every point of AGI does something, maybe? It's much more standardized, at least.

Accuracy (ACC/HIT)
Did I really just miss again
ACC is an invisible stat, and is different for normal attacks and skills. Your ACC is the percent chance that your action will connect with its target.
-For weapons, ACC is determined by the equipped weapon's Hit Probability (from now on called "HIT%"), and is somewhat affected by wielder's and target's AGI. AGI is ignored if the "ignore enemy evasion" box is ticked for the weapon
-For skills, ACC is the HIT% (Success Rate box) of the skill
-For enemies, HIT% is 90, then affected by AGI, like a weapon. An enemy's HIT% can be lowered to 70% by ticking a monster's "Attacks Often Miss" box

Critical Hit Rate (CRI)
Lucky day
CRI is an invisible stat, based on the hero and his weapon, or the monster. Your CRI is the percent chance that your attack will deal 300% damage. This only affects normal attacks.
-For heroes, the CRI is equal to 1/x, where x is the number in the Critical Hit Probability box. Thus, with an x of 10, there is a 10% (1/10) chance; with an x of 25, there is a 4% (1/25) chance
-On top of a hero's base CRI, a weapon's flat Critical Bonus is added - so with a Critical Bonus of 15, the weapon has an additional 15% chance to get a critical hit
-Monsters cannot achieve a critical hit (they have a CRI of 0) unless the Critical Hit Probability box is ticked. If so, it works exactly like a hero
-CRI can be ignored if the target has a piece of equipment with "Prevent Critical Hits" ticked

Evasion (EVA)
I just dodged that kraken
EVA is an invisible stat for heroes. It is directly subtracted from ACC (I am almost positive), and can only be gained by ticking the "Increased Evasion" box on a piece of equipment.
I believe it works in either one of two ways, the latter being the more likely. I'd test more, but I really dislike 2k3 and nobody should use it anyway. If anybody could confirm either way, I'd be glad to hear it. In any case, it's a fairly sizable amount of EVA!
-Increased Evasion triples the miss rate of normal attacks OR
-Increased Evasion sets your EVA to 25% - so normal attacks miss you 25% of the time

Targeting Chance (ODDS?)
I'mma just gonna hide here
Targeting Chance is an invisible stat on heroes, based on the row they are in. I am not entirely sure that it actually exists, but I'm pretty sure. More testing by others would be appreciated.
According to a test with one character in the front row and a second in the back row...
-The front row is hit ~60% of the time
-The back row is hit ~40% of the time




Weapon Accuracy: 100 - (100 - Attacker's Weapon Hit%) * (1 + (Target's AGI / Attacker's AGI - 1) / 2)
Examples:
When a 125 AGI Attacker with a 90% Hit weapon attacks a target with 100 AGI, the resulting hit rate is 91%.
When a 140 AGI Attacker with a 70% Hit weapon attacks a target with 85 AGI, the resulting hit rate is 76%.
When a 400 AGI Attacker with a 95% Hit weapon attacks a target with 600 AGI, the resulting hit rate is 93%.
As you can see, AGI doesn't have a tremendous effect on accuracy, but it's present. The lower the weapon's accuracy, the more profound the difference AGI makes is. For the sake of balance, you can likely ignore AGI's effect on accuracy - but not on speed.

Note that if a weapon "ignores monster evasion," the hit rate is just the weapon's HIT%. If the Target is stunned/asleep/cannot move, the Attacker's hit rate is automatically 100%.


Weapon Damage: (Attacker's ATK / 2) - (Target's DEF / 4)
Examples:
These examples assume that attributes (elements) are at 100%. They probably shouldn't be; more on this later. The relation of ATK to DEF doesn't change, however, so the following examples still provide a basis for understanding how this all works.
When a 40 ATK Attacker attacks a target with 40 DEF, the resulting damage is ~10.
When an 80 ATK Attacker attacks a target with 40 DEF, the resulting damage is ~30.
When a 40 ATK Attacker attacks a target with 80 DEF, the resulting damage is ~0.

When a 250 ATK Attacker attacks a target with 250 DEF, the resulting damage is ~62.
When an 500 ATK Attacker attacks a target with 300 DEF, the resulting damage is ~175.
When a 325 ATK Attacker attacks a target with 520 DEF, the resulting damage is ~32.
If you balance ATK to be always roughly the same as DEF on both characters and enemies (the way it's supposed to be; more on this in the Character Stats section), you can assume that damage is going to be the attacker's ATK / 4.

Note that damage has a set variance of +-20%; in the 40 ATK vs. 40 DEF example, the damage will be 8-12. If the Target is defending, damage taken is halved (so damage would be, using the same example, 4-6). If the Target is defending and has the "super guard" trait ticked in the Heroes tab, that damage is quartered, resulting in 2-3 damage.


Weapon Skill Damage: Base Damage + (Attacker's ATK / 20 * ATK Influence) - (Target's DEF / 40 * ATK Influence)
Examples:
Attack Influence is the 0-10 bar for skills that determines how much ATK/DEF is used to determine damage. At default levels, ATK Inf 10 means that the game does normal physical attack damage, plus whatever flat damage the skill does. At optimized levels, we're going to make normal damage be at ATK Inf 5, so that you can make skills that are, say, 120% of normal damage.
When a 40 ATK Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 ATK Inf skill on a target with 40 DEF, the resulting damage is ~20.
When a 80 ATK Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 ATK Inf skill on a target with 40 DEF, the resulting damage is ~40.
When a 40 ATK Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 ATK Inf skill on a target with 80 DEF, the resulting damage is ~10.

When a 150 ATK Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 ATK Inf skill on a target with 150 DEF, the resulting damage is ~47.
When a 150 ATK Attacker uses a 10 damage/7 ATK Inf skill on a target with 150 DEF, the resulting damage is ~36.
When a 150 ATK Attacker uses a 10 damage/5 ATK Inf skill on a target with 150 DEF, the resulting damage is ~28.
When a 150 ATK Attacker uses a 10 damage/2 ATK Inf skill on a target with 150 DEF, the resulting damage is ~17.

When a 400 ATK Attacker uses a 50 damage/5 ATK Inf skill on a target with 400 DEF, the resulting damage is ~100.
When a 400 ATK Attacker uses a 250 damage/5 ATK Inf skill on a target with 400 DEF, the resulting damage is ~300.
When a 400 ATK Attacker uses a 50 damage/5 ATK Inf skill on a target with 300 DEF, the resulting damage is ~112.
When a 400 ATK Attacker uses a 250 damage/5 ATK Inf skill on a target with 300 DEF, the resulting damage is ~312.


Magic Skill Damage: Base Damage + (Attacker's INT / 40 * INT Influence) - (Target's INT / 80 * INT Influence)
Examples:
Intelligence Influence is the 0-10 bar for skills that determines how much INT is used to determine damage. At default levels, INT Inf 10 means that the game does "normal" magical attack damage, plus whatever flat damage the skill does. At optimized levels, we're going to make normal damage be the same as physical attack damage at INT Inf 5, so that you can more easily make skills that are competitive with physical attacks based on a character's ATK:INT ratio.
When a 40 INT Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 INT Inf skill on a target with 40 INT, the resulting damage is ~15.
When a 80 INT Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 INT Inf skill on a target with 40 INT, the resulting damage is ~25.
When a 40 INT Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 INT Inf skill on a target with 80 INT, the resulting damage is ~10.

Notice how much weaker the INT stat is compared to ATK, with the default settings!
When a 150 INT Attacker uses a 10 damage/10 INT Inf skill on a target with 150 INT, the resulting damage is ~28.
When a 150 INT Attacker uses a 10 damage/7 INT Inf skill on a target with 150 INT, the resulting damage is ~23.
When a 150 INT Attacker uses a 10 damage/5 INT Inf skill on a target with 150 INT, the resulting damage is ~19.
When a 150 INT Attacker uses a 10 damage/2 INT Inf skill on a target with 150 INT, the resulting damage is ~13.

When a 400 INT Attacker uses a 50 damage/5 INT Inf skill on a target with 400 INT, the resulting damage is ~75.
When a 400 INT Attacker uses a 250 damage/5 INT Inf skill on a target with 400 INT, the resulting damage is ~275.
When a 400 INT Attacker uses a 50 damage/5 INT Inf skill on a target with 300 INT, the resulting damage is ~81.
When a 400 INT Attacker uses a 250 damage/5 INT Inf skill on a target with 300 INT, the resulting damage is ~281.




The following settings will create the optimized outputs for stats, described above in the Character Stats section. They work due to multiplying how powerful each stat is - but it also multiplies the base (flat) damage of skills, too; more on that later.

B-level damage is considered "normal." This is different from 2k3's defaults!

Weapons: A 400 | B 200 | C 100 | D 0 | E -200
Use these numbers for normal weapon attacks, applied to equipped swords and clubs and whatnot. This includes elemental properties of weapons - Swrd-Fire and Staf-Ice could potentially be some of your attributes. If you're just lumping all weapons into a general physical damage attribute, you'd just need Phys/Phys-Fire/Phys-Ice/Phys-Mud/whatever.

Physical Skills: A 800 | B 400 | C 200 | D 0 | E -400
Use these numbers for physical skill attacks. This might very well include the exact same elements as the previous category, but you'll noticed the numbers are doubled - because of this, at Attack Influence 5, a skill will do the same damage as a normal attack.

Magical Skills: A 1600 | B 800 | C 400 | D 0 | E -800
Use these numbers for magical skill attacks. Anything governed primarily by Intelligence should use this category of attributes. These are your basic Fire/Poison/Blood/Psychic/etc. elements. At Intelligence Influence 5, a character with a 1:1 ATK:INT ratio will deal the same amount of damage as a normal physical attack.

A final, quick note: the base damage of skills is also going to be multiplied by 4 or 8, if it's physical or magical. So, "base damage 10" for a physical attack will really mean "base damage 40!" Make sure you don't accidentally over-power your skills.

You should really just invest in something better, like VX or XP, though!