JALEX'S PROFILE

author=Thiamor
Also what if we had a thing where the top 5 battles are added into one rpg maker game of sorts where you get to fight all 5 of them, one after the other?

That would only work if everyone used the same number range. If you had player characters with 9999 HP and I have player characters with 255 HP (with bosses appropriate to each party), the two bosses would be incompatible.

author=CashmereCat
I'd be keen to judge, but only if you care about me not being that qualified.

You're probably more qualified as a judge than I was when I joined the Castles event...

author=turkeyDawg

author=Liberty
But it is so. Instead of calculating properly, it instead makes the mistake of taking a number from 1 to whatever number you picked. That's fine in and of itself, but each step you take it rerolls, making the chances of a 1-or-2-step encounter that much more likely.

I'm not entirely sure I understand this: So what you're saying is that every step has a 1/EncounterRate percent chance of a battle, when it should be rolling for an encounter every EncounterRate number of steps?

By default, the formula for encounter rate is something like "1 + rand(n) + rand(n)", with n being the encounter rate specified in the map settings. In theory this means that, if n = 30, you can have anywhere between 1 and 60 steps before the next encounter, and this number is reduced by 1 each step. However, the encounter formula is recalculated every time you take a step, so the rate can be 55 for one step and 1 for the next, leading to a battle.

After spending the last hour or so looking at the Game_Player class in VX Ace, I'm really not sure what exactly is going on with the encounter rate, but I think that adjusting the formula (at line 195, if you're curious) to include a constant step number greater than 1 in addition to the random factor should prevent one-step encounters.

You could start by adjusting the encounter rate to eliminate one-step encounters; in fact, the first thing I do whenever I start a new RPG Maker project is go into the scripts and edit the calculation for the number of steps between each encounter.

Also, the Flash game MARDEK uses a system where a warning icon appears right before each random battle; if the enemy group was weaker than the player's party, the icon would be a different color and you could skip the battle with a button press. I personally really like this system, and there's a script floating around that recreates it.

author=Ratty524
When asked why, they state that it feels like an interruption. Something that arbitrarily forces you out of what you are doing and puts you into a battle.

I think the problem here is twofold: the game abruptly shifting to a new scene just for combat, and the notion that combat is inherently inferior to exploring the map. Both of these issues are present regardless of whether you use random or touch encounters (in fact, the abrupt scene shift bugs me more when using touch encounters!)

As for wanting to avoid combat entirely, I think that's based on a stereotype that RPG combat is boring, and monsters are a waste of time at worst or a source of experience/gold at best; it's as if combat encounters exist only to serve the player (that said, I think the combat itself is another topic entirely).

One of the goals for my own game is to create a setting where monster encounters are actually dangerous, and the player feels like they're at the mercy of the environment, not unlike, say, Dragon Quest. Maybe it's out of spite toward the mindset from the previous paragraph, but I really don't think that wandering monsters particularly care that they've annoyed their latest meal.

While this does look interesting (and I'd definitely like to see a Mario level editor that doesn't involve ROM hacking or SMBX), right now it looks more like a toy than a viable game making tool (then again that may be exactly what they're going for).

My main concern right now is that apparently there are only two graphical styles available, one of which (8-bit SMB1) I think is rather ugly.

author=alterego
So, imo, get rid of the "small things" and just tell the story that needs to be told. And if you want to make use of the "actual gameplay" just make really kick-ass boss battles, or even puzzles, and be done with it.

Why should "actual gameplay" be limited to boss battles and other things that generally make up a minority of the content? Since we're writing games rather than novels, I think it makes more sense to create gameplay segments and adapt plot points to those, as Sviel said. If your plot calls for the heroes to climb Mount Snow for whatever reason, then create a mountain pass for the player to explore.