STORMCROW'S PROFILE

Oh, yeah, I should probably mention, as a caveat to my above post, that in the past few days of working on my main project alone I've fantasized to varying degrees about as many as half a dozen side projects I'd be totally rearing to start on.

RPG Maker is a little like a relationship*, I guess. You know, you've got the initial honeymoon period where everything's great and you're sizzling with new relationship energy. And then, the sheen gradually comes off. The excitement wears off. Pretty soon, before you know it, you're thinking about side projects. Maybe you even catch yourself checking out graphics or plugins for the side projects you're fantasizing about. Just looking is fine, you think, as long as you don't act on it. Where the analogy breaks down is that unlike your girlfriend or for that matter any reasonable human person, your main project won't get angry or spiteful or resent you for thinking about or looking at other projects. Even if you cheat on it, it will still be there faithful and waiting for you.

In other words, it's like that overused "disloyal man" stock photo meme (which I freaking hate but it seems more appropriate here than 95% of the cases I've seen it used in online).



* Only ever been in relationships with girls, I dunno what weird shit might go on in straight relationships so I can only speculate.

ugh, doing NOTHING. I mean, I was on twitter or facebook or whatever the crap or a wiki-walk about something that linked to something else to something else. very little was accomplished though.

oh, and good use of wisseau

Okay, so this is not STRICTLY programming but it's a very closely related topic: how the default formulas (or the formulas after modification by various common or even nigh-ubiquitous scripting/plugins) actually work. I remember I either made a topic about this in the past or asked a bunch of questions about this in the past possibly in the "What are you thinking about (game development)?" thread but as I cannot remember which or where, I figured it was worth making a new topic rather than invoking necromancy.

I tagged three different engines in the subject because those three seem to be the most widely used. This does not mean if you have a question about how the default math/formulas works in say, RMXP, RM2k, or VX you aren't allowed to ask it here. I DON'T HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE RULES LIKE THAT. But I do very much want people other than me to be able to ask their RM math related questions here and have other other people more knowledgeable than me answer them. (In the event I actually know the answer to something, I'll happily pitch in.)

I'll start with the question that prompted this thread. Format your questions this way if you don't mind, might make it easier to index this knowledge later on.

(I found this stuff was easier to puzzle out on my own in RPG Maker VX Ace because you could CTRL + SHIFT + F through all the default RGSS scripts that made up the game engine looking for an answer. If there's an equivalent way to do that with the "core" JavaScript that makes up RMMV, I don't know what it is.)

Engine: RPG Maker MV
Relevant Plugins/Scripts: None, I think.
In the skills tab of the database, in the "Invocation" section, the second field is Success (percentage). Hovering my mouth mouse (wow that's a hilarious typo if you think about it) over that parameter gave me the following less than useful tooltip: "Probability that the use of the action succeeds". That tells me none of what I need to know:

• If the action fails, does it register as a "Failed" on the user or as a "Miss" on the target?
• I assume if Hit Type is set to "Guaranteed Hit" that the number in this box is the absolute percentage chance that the skill will hit?
• If hit type is set to Physical Attack, how does "Success" interact with the target's Evasion? Does the engine first check to see if the skill succeeds, then check to see if the target evades, separately? Or does it combine together? I.E. does a skill with a 90% "Succeed" chance used against a target with 10% Evasion actually have an 81% chance of hitting?
• Same basic question but if hit type is set to Magical Attack. If a spell has an 80% succeed rate and the target has 25% Magic Evasion, is the real chance the spell will hit 60%? Or is it checked separately?

Example (Optional): Balancing a boss fight in my game. Two of the enemies are bodyguards dual-wielding pistols. Semi-auto pistols in my game already get two shots per attack (Repeat: 2). The bodyguards have a skill called "Double Shot" that lets them fire off four shots at once, the same Repeat: 2 but with a target scope of "2 Random Enemies". Now this fight is too hard and I'm in the process of re-balancing it and one of the problems is that these bodyguards are OP and need to be nerfed. The logical way to do it, it strikes me, is accuracy. The game is kind of sort of grounded in reality (it takes place in the real world in 2076) and in reality unfortunately no one is Jet Li being directed by John Woo and you can't really shoot two handguns at once with any sort of accuracy. So, the succeed rate for shooting this gun once is 95%, the gun's "accuracy". I'm cutting the accuracy for the double shot ability down to 70%. Both of the PCs in the party have (the default) 5% Evasion right now. Having changed Succeed to 70%, does that mean that Double Shot is now squeezing off two pairs of shots at random targets with an adjusted chance to hit of 66.5% (95% of 70%) each? Or is it checking four times to see if the skill succeeds (70% chance) then checking separately to see if the target evades (5% chance)? Or is the math that's actually happening under the hood something different from either of those?

Your questions don't need to include examples and the examples don't need to be as long as mine was if you do include them and yes, I would like an answer to the sample question if anyone has one, it was not just for show. I do think it's important that you name the engine you're asking about, both so the answer can be cataloged properly and because I strongly suspect the under-the-hood math has been at least slightly different in every single version of RPG Maker ever released.

So, the game I want to raise from the dead has been abandoned more or less since RPG Maker 2001 was new. I remember settings and characters and ideas for a few mechanics in my head, but the actual project is so long-abandoned it has been lost for over 10 years so I can't even reference it, I'm just going on memory.

Is it still eligible?

If so, SIGN ME THE FUDGE UP! (er, by which I mean, I will sign up myself, like you do)

if not, boo-urns