GREATREDSPIRIT'S PROFILE

author=kentona link=topic=1350.msg20574#msg20574 date=1213825451
I classify it as an Action Adventure. I feel that, to be an RPG, you need some sort of quantitative progression of attributes. (A health bar shaped like hearts doesn't count).

It can be seen as discrete values though: Each heart is made up of four quarter-hearts, making each heart worth 4HP. You start with 12HP, each time you beat a boss you get 4 more HP! (Plus there's heart peices->containers to get more HP)

Meanwhile games like Legend of Mana work with relative values. You have 100% HP, you get hit, you're at 95% HP. There is a real HP value that you can't see (you can see your HP in the menu, which you can't get to during battle and you get full HP when a battle ends, so its pretty useless).

The Point: People have their own definitions of the genre. Arguing it never really works and it really doesn't matter if a game falls under a genre or not.


Top 10 later.

If there's a syntax error you should be able to open the script editor after the game window closes from the error and it should take you to the line with the syntax error.

Vigilante Eight?

author=Jabbo link=topic=1329.msg20264#msg20264 date=1213631997
- Spillover damage exists in RPGs but it's too unpredictable to be used as an argument for anything. Heavy hitters that deal 50% of the monster's health at once get no spillover, so spillover is only an issue when the conditions are right.

The quantity is, I think, on a per game basis. Most games don't give you how much health the enemy has whenver you want it. I find that spillover damage is something I regularly think about in a game like Persona 3 where you can always see an enemy's health bar, but other games where you can't even scan the enemy its a much smaller issue to even think about.

author=Jabbo link=topic=1329.msg20264#msg20264 date=1213631997
- "Wasting one attack" honestly shouldn't be relevant except in boss battles, which you're likely going to be fighting more than once anyway. One attack will rarely decide a battle anyway, regardless of its strength.

First attacks are relevant when you can't rely on an attack to always do damage, even against regular enemies. Again, this is more of an on-game basis. You can count on regular attacks working against 99% of enemies in FF6, but in Persona 3 (again) you might find that your first attack against an enemy whose resistances you don't know can actually give you a game over (extreme case, its more likely that you'll do trivial damage, no damage, or heal than actually game over. I only had it happen once)

It is me picking at a minor issue though. Probably because that extreme case happened to me the same day I did that post.

author=Jabbo link=topic=1329.msg20264#msg20264 date=1213631997
- Healers: true. I can't think of a counterargument. Of course if everyone's constantly on dire straits, your healers are all going to approach middle ground anyway. They need to heal enough to get people back up, but also often enough so that people don't die. Slow = Death and Fast = Heals that are too weak.

Then don't pump your healer with useless stats like strength :P

There's also items which don't rely on personal stats (except when the character's turn comes up so they can use the item). There is the sweet spot of where healers can act quickly and effectively, but there's other possible builds too. You can add HP/Def so they can survive more hits so another, less efficient at healing, character won't have to take over if the healer goes down (Counterpoint: Pump speed so they don't die in anything short of a single hit, but the rate those blows occur is a factor in the character build and if its even possible to get that much speed with a similar cost to getting the HP/Def to not die).

author=Jabbo link=topic=1329.msg20264#msg20264 date=1213631997
- Healing item efficacy: it's a personal opinion that all healing items and spells should heal percentage HP instead of straight values. Or at least a hybrid (10% + 20). Maybe it's just me, but I never use better healing items until I have a lot of them (when I can afford a lot of them). So do you really need to be using Elixirs in the late game? You have 99 of them, anyway, so they may as well be Potions. Not really a solid argument, just food for thought.

I never liked %-based healing items. They either suck (10% of your health? They'd be useless in battle and after battle you're pumping your characters with them like they're drugs. It gets worse if they're expensive that you can't effectively heal after battles with them or if there's annoying item limits (Imaginary example: You can only hold 20 10% HP healing items! Sounds like a huge pain and running from most battles is in order)

Maybe a compromise would be to have decent healing % items (50% lets say) and have something like SD3's inventory/storage: You could take 9 items into battle but you could hold 99 in your storage (which you can't access during battle). I know you never mentioned inventory limits, that's my own little tangent :\

author=Jabbo link=topic=1329.msg20264#msg20264 date=1213631997
- Fun: good point. Personally when I play a game and have the option of modifying HP or Def, I'm annoyed because I don't know which one to pick. Other people might be the opposite. Should I put things in my game that I find aren't fun, simply because other people find them fun? It's a difficult question.

Nah, make the game for yourself first. You will get people who don't like it (there's plenty of other games for them to play anyways) and you will get people who do. There's no way around it and you'll never get anything everybody likes. Think of it as messing with the mold without completely breaking it. Just make sure that you at least find it fun when you've implemented your idea.


Argh I'm terrible at these posts. Most around too much :\

Its in there already: Go to the 4th tab in a Condition Branch. There's an Item X In Inventory second from the top.

There's also one for weapon and armour too.