JPRATT'S PROFILE

For the support character, the lower their own life the more abilities they have. You could play with this concept a bit. For example, for each ally fallen the skill power increases or at least group skills increase. Think of it as an adrenaline rush ability and the portion with fallen allies allows more time to tend to others. So you might start with basic healing, but as the supporting character's own life drops they gain stat boosting abilities (perhaps which only boost the other characters primary traits of defense, MP and speed.) That should give you a bit of inspiration for support.

For the speed character, she could be fast enough to hit all enemies on every attack, but requires rest to build up energy. 1 rest turn could allow for a low damage output on all enemies, 2 rests would be a moderate damage output and 3 rests would be her big output. An alternative attack would be on a single enemy, allowing for 2, 3 or 4 attacks in a row with damage output higher on an individual enemy than when hitting a group. Support character could have a skill that adds rest to the speed character, speeding up their attack time.

Another option for the speed character is rather than making them fast, make everyone else slow. Have them be a manipulator of time. This way the character could act as a balance between support snd fighting. Speed up the tank, slow down an enemy, undo the damage done on them in the moment by "reversing" time a few seconds. This would be a diminishing character. The longer a battle goes on, the weaker they become and fewer skills they can access because for this character, more time had passed.

Long Explanation
Hi all. I've been struggling to solve a simple programming issue on a complex CMS. Above is my CMS done with pictures. The green areas are content areas which I'm not having issues with. The stuff in the red box is my struggle.

The dark box within the red zone is a highlight image I use as a cursor position.

The character menu (and all sub-menus) appear in the same red box space. The idea is the options change and the cursor & highlight move back to the top position. So instead of seeing the current options, the menu would change to show only the options "Profile, Conditions, Reputation, Romance and Stats." This means instead of 8 menu options there are 5.

After selecting a sub-menu if I then close my menu (shift) and try to reopen it, or try to go back one menu (x) the highlight moves to position 1, but the actual selection doesn't. If I press down from this point the highlight jumps to position 2 instead of position 1 (from position 0). It also no longer recognizes selecting a sub-menu, such as Character (enter/z) any longer.

What I Need
Is anyone able to point me to a tutorial or sample project which utilizes menus with sub-menus which function similar to what I'm trying to accomplish? If I can see the functioning code for one, I can figure out where I'm going wrong. I've found tutorials for simple CMS but nothing which delves into sub-menus for RM2k3.

Basic Setup

Menu Variable: defines which menu options are currently displayed.
Menu Position: defines where the cursor highlight position is (1-8).
Key Input up/down: Movement for cursor movement.
Key Input Enter/Z: Forward to next menu / show new content.
Key Input Cancel/X: Back to previous menu.
Key Input Shift: Open initial menu / close menu system.
Menu Option Limit: Determines where cursor goes if passes limits.

Objective
Player presses shift to open up the main menu or to close it (parallel process.) This should show the initial menu images, options, content and erase /reset everything when shift is pressed again. This works fine as long as I don't go to sub-menus.

Player should be able to press enter on any menu option to change the menu options to the sub-menu options.
Cursor position & highlight image would default to position 1 at top.
Menu limits would change to the total options for that menu. If the cursor moves past the top position, it jumps to the bottom position and vice versa. I feel like this piece has become overly complicated. It functions, but not sure if it breaks something else.


Player should be able to hit shift to close the whole menu system from any point, reset it, without it causing issues when they open it again. Currently if they go into a sub-menu, the cursor positioning gets wonky when reopening.

Player should be able to hit X to go back one menu without it getting wonky. Currently X will go back one menu, but then all the movement and selection gets messed up.

Another way to think of what I'm trying to do is to look at this image. Imagine I'm trying to open up these sub-menus, but instead of drop down menus when "hover" is clicked the top bar options would change to submenu options. And when one of those options are clicked, the top bar would change to the sub-submenu options. And if X was pressed the top bar would change to the previous set of options or if Shift was pressed, the options would reset to the original options.

The problem I'm pulling my hair out trying to solve is to get the save/load system to work properly, considering I am using BetterAEP to skip the main title screen. While in game testing, I am able to save a file - the save01 files will appear in the folders - and I can retrieve that save while the game is running. I'm also able to exit the game without a hitch.

However, when I close the game and return, even though the save01 files are still present in the folder, the option to load a previous save will not be available. It never recognizes that there is a save file.

I've tried the following, and end up with the same results continuously;

- Creating a new game disk and testing.
- Uninstalled and reinstalled RM2K3; using version 1.08 to be compatible with Dyn.
- Deleting and re-adding custom save-load plugin.
- Deleting and re-adding BetterAEP.
- Playing around with the code in the game (I'm 99% sure this isn't the issue.)
- Re-reading and following Cherry's guide steps about 5 dozen times.
- Creating a game disk and replacing the RPG_RT file.
- Basically tried breaking in in as many ways as I can to fix it.
- Reinstalling BetterAEP, DYNRPG, CustomSave-Load on new game discs, in various combinations. Everything always appears to be working correctly, except the load is never recognized.

At this point I would settle for either option, to avoid having to transfer every part of my game over to a new folder 1 copy and paste at a time:

1. Preferably resolve the load problem so I can use BetterAEP without a hitch.

2. Failing that, how do I remove BetterAEP permanently from a game file I'm working on?

3. Is there a third option, where I can skip the standard title screen using BetterAEP (since it works and I can't stop it from working) where I can use another save/load/quit option other than Cherry's that is meant to work with BetterAEP?

Summary: Everything works for the system as far as I can tell, except that after leaving the game or a game test, then returning, the program will not recognize that there is a saved game.

There ya go, only $30 from your $500 goal now.

Very cool idea. Though as I look at your maps all I can think is, I want to use that city scape for my City Rampage game idea.