MUNINN'S PROFILE

author=Marrend
I've been fiddling with the "floor", "ceil" and "round" functions to this end. However, they all seem to do the same thing? Not sure what that means.

It seems that "Floor" should always eliminate a decimal component by rounding down, "Ceil" should always round up, and "round" should go to whichever is closer.

What's the exact line of code that you're working with?

author=Rave2010
Well, I think if such field would be introduced, automatically adding engine to list we can choose from is a no-go.

I agree, automated addition of new engines would be quite the terrible idea. It wouldn't work anyway, because someone would still have to come along and compile the necessary data for the engines section.

author=Dyhalto
As someone who actually uses 'Custom' as his maker, I prefer it over 'Other'. 'Other' is bland and non-descript. 'Custom' sounds unique, which the obscure makers are when you consider the demographic of the rest of the community.

However, it's grammatically incorrect in cases of obscure makers. 'Custom' means "created (or altered) for a specific purpose". Right now, somebody who takes a less-known maker and makes a game in it without making any customizations whatsoever will end up under the label of "Custom", despite not actually being any more "Custom" than something made in one of the RPGMaker engines.

I'd support renaming that particular category to "Other".

author=ChaosProductions
Dividing by level falls short at higher levels. An enemy that gives 1000 EXP to a Lv50 Player gives 833 to a Lv60 Player. Depending on your game, that's a very significant jump in power. At the highest levels, it's obsolete entirely: a Lv70 player getting 10,000 EXP from a foe still gets 7,777 EXP from the same foe at Lv90.

This feature only really helps at the lower ranges, from say, 1-20 or so. After that, then the player becomes able to grind from progressively weaker and weaker foes.

An alternative to this can be found in the 3rd edition (and possibly other editions, but I can't say firsthand) of Dungeons and Dragons: Rather than dividing experience gained by level, the experience gained is multiplied by ~0.7 for each level of difference between your character's level and the level your character is expected to be at. This results in a system that scales no matter what level range it's applied to.

(If I were modifying the system to work in a JRPG, I'd lower the penalty a bit. DnD cuts the experience in half for every two levels, but that's because there are only 20 levels total (without going into epic levels), and a 2-level difference is expected to make your character twice as powerful as they were. JRPGs tend to have a slower rate of power gain, so I'd lower it to halve experience every 5 or 10 levels, depending on how wide of a range I want the players to be guided towards. (This would be multiplying it by either ~.87 or ~.933 for each level of difference))


On the subject of level caps in general, I don't really like the idea of caps that the player is expected to hit during the mandatory game content, unless they've done a lot more grinding than expected. My method for figuring out a "good" level cap would be as follows:

1) Figure out the minimum level a character can reach the endgame at. Design the final boss to be beatable by a highly skilled player at this level.
-- a) If you have several sidequests at the end of the game that give the player additional characters, equipment, spells, etc that boost their power level, feel free to raise the difficulty of the boss slightly. This will result in the player having several options at the endgame for raising their power level to fight the final boss. The player will be required to pursue at least one (or a few) of these options, but they can choose to go for more to make the fight even easier.
-- b) If your game has few (or no) sidequests of the abovementioned sort throughout the game whatsoever, feel free to decrease the difficulty of the boss slightly. Your not-expert players will appreciate not being forced to grind at the end of the game.
2) Once you've determined how powerful the final boss will be, figure out what level a party would need to be such that, with all of the collectable extras that have been found throughout the game so far, they'll be able to trivialize the final boss fight. ("Trivialize" may be a bit of a subjective term. I'd define it as the point where a player has no chance to lose if they apply only a little bit of strategic thought to the battle).
3) Set the level cap slightly below the level found in step 2. This means that, if a player goes through and finds every single power-boosting item in the game and raises their level up to the cap, they will have a very basic grasp of the game's battle system if they wish to win (ie. They'll have to do something more complicated than mashing "attack").

author=Caz
People who I can HEAR saying "should of" instead of "should have" make me mad.

Are you sure they're not saying should've? It's a perfectly valid English contraction and is phonetically indistinguishable from "Should of". (Now, with regards to people who write "should of" instead of "Should have" or "Should've" online, I'm very much in agreement with you)