TOOMANYTOASTERS'S PROFILE

Because I haven't gotten far enough in the process to answer these questions for my current projects, I'll use my old dead project Oceanus and my horrible retard brainchild Catastrophe, both short-lived, as examples.

Firstly, how to you place encounters on your map?
I use events on the map that either pursue the player or follow a set path, for the most part. I really dislike random battles; I don't like sneaking up on the player, and I hate being interrupted in the middle of solving a puzzle to do something else. Using events allows for much better dungeon design; rather than having battles spring up at unpredictable times, you can space the battles out and place them at convenient intervals, as well as letting the player see what's ahead and give them a chance to avoid it if they so choose. One of the first things I caught on to when experimenting in RMXP was that I could use Move Route, Event Touch and Battle Processing in tandem.

Secondly, how to you explain random encounters? Both games had monsters that lurked in the wild preying on vulnerable travelers. Both games also had human enemies that were attacking you for whatever reason, and whole dungeons could be full of them. Human enemies were either highwaymen/muggers, part of a plot-related faction, or important characters that would end up as boss fights.

Next, how do you balance your fights? It depends. Most dungeons would either be crawling with generic enemies that required you to use any strategy you wanted, or the enemies would have a sort of theme that would make you use unique strategies. For example, I had a haunted forest planned for the second contract in Oceanus in which the enemies were all, surprise surprise, ghosts. They were unaffected by physical attacks, and you had to use elemental skills to damage them.

Lastly, how to you distinguish them from boss encounters? Bosses are big, bad, and ugly. They're generally a LOT tougher than all the other enemies in the dungeon, and they require specific strategies. Unlike normal enemies, the situation changes over time; the boss might be using basic attacks while his minions are doing the real work. With both of them alive, your fragile characters have a difficult time breathing as they're under the constant threat of death in a single turn. Once his minions are dead and he's sustained a fair amount of damage, however, he might start unleashing his dark magic on you or draining your HP. If he gets desperate enough, he'll even summon another one of his underlings while continuing to dish out his own brand of whoopass. This is just an example, based off the Dracula fight from Catastrophe that was never fully functional.

author=Shadowtext link=topic=2519.msg52197#msg52197 date=1230077218

author=TooManyToasters link=topic=2519.msg52135#msg52135 date=1230052369
You know, i almost returned this game to the store. I am soooo glad I didn't.
These bosses are getting rapetastic, though. Giga Gaia wasn't too bad if he doesn't wreck you in the first few seconds, especially since the arms could be killed with one Triple Strike from Crono, frog and Robo. The Golems, however, are a tad difficult.

Giga Gaia is one of the harder bosses in the game. The Golems aren't so bad if you know the trick to beating them--namely, getting all your characters to wear armor that protects against an element (Fire armor's the easiest to obtain en masse, since you'll probably have had trouble collecting all the elemental Vests and Mails by that point, at least on your first playthrough), and only attacking them with that element.

I did something similar: went in with Lucca and Frog, equipped everyone with Ruby Vests, waited until all 3 characters could move, them bombarded them with Lighting II > Water II > Fire II. It ended up being pretty easy (though very satisfying).
Also I got me some Magus.

Pretty sure I'm using 1.02 as well. That's odd for such a small difference make it totally bug the game for some people but work fine for others. It seems only one of the scripts works per person.
The chances of that must be one in a billion.

author=myersguy link=topic=2740.msg51789#msg51789 date=1229926138

author=TooManyToasters link=topic=2740.msg51729#msg51729 date=1229915656

author=Rei- link=topic=2740.msg51513#msg51513 date=1229832148
I'd have to choose "Return", depending on instances it could be applied to.

This. Being able to erase any mistake that doesn't end in your instant death would be really, REALLY useful.

...so then, you want to die?

Err, no. I can't very well turn back time if I'm dead, can I?

Bit of a necrobump, but holy crap thank you. GRS's script outright broke my game, but after implementing this and double-checking the math, it works. Thanks.