LOCKEZ'S PROFILE

post=151988
Since we are on the topic here, can anyone post a link on tips of how to modify one's DBS?

For 2K3, here's one thing you can do to solve a significant problem with the DBS. The problem is that the skills can do a percentage of a normal attack - but this percentage can't be more than 100%. You can add damage to that, but the added damage isn't modified by enemy defense - which can cause serious balance issues, and make defense nearly worthless. I'm sure a lot of people would like physical skills to be able to do more damage than a normal attack, but still calculate defense normally. Magical skills have a similar problem - though there's no equivalent to a "normal" attack, it would be nice if magic defense applied to the whole damage.

The solution: Make all your elements do more than 100% damage by default. For instance, make the fire element do 500% damage to enemies by default, and then it can do 250% damage to enemies that resist it and 750% damage to enemies that are weak to it. And for non-elemental attacks, give then an element called "non-elemental" that uses the same 500% number. Wow, that's an easier hack than you thought, huh? Now each tick of "10%" of normal damage on the skill screen is actually 50% of normal damage.

In my game I also use weapon elements to create protect and shell statuses, since I think "double defense" is a garbage way to improve defense, as it tends to either be worthless or make you invincible. The method is a little too complex to describe here though, but you can look at my game Vindication. But the point is that you can use elements and statuses in creative ways to do a lot more than you think, without ever resorting to ridiculous MP-detecting battle events.

You can probably find a tutorial on ridiculous MP-detecting battle events, if you care. But they're pretty complex, and they mean you can never create enemies that drain MP, among other restrictions.

I'm starting an RMXP game in which my main goal is to make every single battle interesting and challenging. One way I'm doing this is to make the battles all be one-time-only -- because, in my opinion, once the player has proved they can defeat a battle, they shouldn't have to do it over and over again. But another, more important aspect is that every battle will involve its own strategy. Which isn't to say that the game will be constantly changing, but rather that it will be constantly building upon itself.

It's still in the system development stages right now, so I can't post a video or give detailed stats, but I can describe an outline of what I have planned. So here's an example sequence of battles.

Battle 1: Two normal soldiers with swords, and one soldier with a harpoon launcher. The normal soldiers simply move around and attack. The harpoon soldier stays still and shoots harpoons at party members. Party members who are harpooned become pinned, unable to perform physical attacks or use items, but still able to cast magic (only two of your four members can cast magic). The harpoons, once shot, are targettable with normal attacks by other party members - attacking a harpoon will release the party member who was pinned by it.
Battle 2: Same as battle 1, but with two harpooners instead of just one.
Battle 3: Same as battle 2, but in a different configuration. A wall drops down, spliting your party in two so that they can only rescue allies on the same side. The wall can also be destroyed, if it is attacked several times or burned with fire magic.
Battle 4: Similar to battle 3, except three characters are on one side and one is on the other side. The side with three characters also has an additional sword-wielding soldier. This forces the player to choose between spending turns on a rescue operation while being attacked, or letting the fourth character die.
Battle 5: Boss! The boss launches harpoons, and continuously summons sword-wielding and harpoon-launching soldiers to aid him. During the boss battle, one member of the player party has access to a harpoon gun as well, and can target any of the enemy soldiers except the boss. The enemy soldiers also have the ability to rescue each-other, but pinning them is still useful because it does almost as much damage as a normal attack. The boss is shielded and cannot be pinned by harpoons, he must be killed with normal attacks and magic.


This is not all the battles in the dungeon, it's just a few. Each dungeon will have several bosses. The battles before each boss will often prepare the player for the boss in this way.

I use a custom XP system in Vindication. It involves a custom victory screen that pops up after battles. If you want, you can download Vindication and steal the scripts.

The basic way it works is:
- On round 0 of every battle, a battle event sets a variable to the amount of XP that the battle is worth.
- Escaping from a battle sets the XP variable to 0. I use a custom encounter system (in order to create a minimum and maximum number of steps before each battle), so this is easy. With the default encounter system, it will be harder.
- A parallel process common event checks to see if the XP variable is above 0. If so, it turns on a switch. If not, it turns off the switch.
- An auto-start common event starts automatically if the switch is on. It waits 0.1 seconds (to allow for the XP variable to be set back down to 0 if the player escaped). If after that time the XP variable is still above 0, it calls the victory screen.
- The victory screen is a common event that must be called. It shows a picture and then does all the calculations and awarding. This is like 1500 lines of code and involves looping through party members and calling several other common events, so I won't go into detail, but you can download my game and check it out if you need help or just want to use it verbatim. Message me if you have any questions about how it works, since it's kind of a mess.
- If a battle is in the middle of a cut scene, the victory screen will not appear until the cut scene ends. Often, this is a fantastic feature, but in cases where I want it to appear immediately, the cut scene can call the victory window common event directly, allowing you to show it whenever you want.

post=152174
I was simply asking for the general opinion of wether Orbs that give magic (They have been used in many RPGS, not just FF7) are a better alternative than Class Orbs.

Y nots both?

If you use a custom font that looks the way you want at the size you want, then RMXP won't anti-alias anything because it won't be enlarging or shrinking anything.

It has to be a Truetype font, though. RMXP won't use VGA res fonts for some reason. This makes it a lot harder to find one, since most "crappy" fonts are not Truetype.