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Travio
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I make and play games - playing games I use as a reward for reaching specific milestones within my various development projects. I've played a wide variety of games, having started at the tender age of three and worked my way up over the years so that, at one point, I was actually going out of my way to find the original games (cartridges, CDs, whatever) to play.
All games I elect to review must be 'Complete' status (though games still in the process of clearing out bugs are fine and will be noted in the review itself). These games must have a download on RMN (as I pass them to my Dropbox queue) and need to be self contained - everything I need to play should be in the download, without needing to install anything (including RTPs; we aren't living in the days of slow connections anymore, people). You should also have any fixes in the download, not something I have to look through the comments for - I'm going to be avoiding them like the plague until I've finished the review.
When I review a game, I try to play as much of it as I can possibly stand before posting the review - I make notes/write part of the review as I'm playing, so a lot of what goes into the review is first impressions of sections. I'm also not a stickler - things don't have to be perfect - but I've seen many examples of things not done perfectly but, at the same time, not done horribly. I rate five categories on a scale from 1 to 10: Story, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay & Pacing, and Mapping & Design. 5 is average to me, so it's not necessarily saying that category is bad - it's saying it's middle of the road. Games within the same editor are compared to one another, not games across editors (I'm not going to hold an RM2k game to the same standards as a VX Ace game due to system limitations, but I won't let it hold back the RM2k game's rating) - unless the game is part of a series across multiple editors.
All games I elect to review must be 'Complete' status (though games still in the process of clearing out bugs are fine and will be noted in the review itself). These games must have a download on RMN (as I pass them to my Dropbox queue) and need to be self contained - everything I need to play should be in the download, without needing to install anything (including RTPs; we aren't living in the days of slow connections anymore, people). You should also have any fixes in the download, not something I have to look through the comments for - I'm going to be avoiding them like the plague until I've finished the review.
When I review a game, I try to play as much of it as I can possibly stand before posting the review - I make notes/write part of the review as I'm playing, so a lot of what goes into the review is first impressions of sections. I'm also not a stickler - things don't have to be perfect - but I've seen many examples of things not done perfectly but, at the same time, not done horribly. I rate five categories on a scale from 1 to 10: Story, Graphics, Sound, Gameplay & Pacing, and Mapping & Design. 5 is average to me, so it's not necessarily saying that category is bad - it's saying it's middle of the road. Games within the same editor are compared to one another, not games across editors (I'm not going to hold an RM2k game to the same standards as a VX Ace game due to system limitations, but I won't let it hold back the RM2k game's rating) - unless the game is part of a series across multiple editors.
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1sentence
author=JosephSeraph
Actually @Travio, it depends on what you see as the "protagonist"! The protagonist doesn't necessarily have to be the one you play, heck, it doesn't even have to be a person! I... Can't explain it very well, though, I'm not very fine right now xD ><'
Not to mention my current drowsiness.
me, drowsy, looking at @Lucidstillness' avatar "uhh... did it just mov- AMGWTF"
Hence my use of the ' around my first mention of protagonist referring to FFXII. I vaguely would argue against it not having to be a person (well, I would have to stretch that definition to include character, not just person - an inanimate object really can't be the protagonist of a story).
1sentence
That's paring too far back though and isn't really even talking about your plot. JS is right in that you provide unnecessary details without providing the right ones in the last description (though I disagree that taking out that it's a wizard is necessary):
Evil must be reimprisoned to prevent war.
I feel it provides the right amount of details (at least I'm guessing there's war brewing, given there's tensions between these two countries). This would be about as far back as I'd pare most descriptions.
This is just personal opinion, but a summary sentence paring down should include what needs to happen and why. It doesn't (again, IMO) need to potentially include the protagonist, as more often than not the story could continue without them (a flaw in a number of stories, once again in my opinion). The protagonist should only really be mentioned if it's their story (with LSX, it's about Ridman finding himself, for example, with the war story just being a backdrop; with Pokemon, the whole quest is just a framework for the hero's coming of age story).
As an example of a story that could really continue without the 'protagonist,' I put forth FFXII - the protagonist is Vaan, but really, the story isn't about him. He's just the character we see the story through, little more than a camera for us. In truth, the story is about Ashe and Balthier - they're the actual main characters on the good guy's side (Ashe moreso than Balthier; Balthier's place as one of the main characters is only cemented late in the story). Everything in the story is centered around them, and its their backgrounds that drive most of the story.
Evil must be reimprisoned to prevent war.
I feel it provides the right amount of details (at least I'm guessing there's war brewing, given there's tensions between these two countries). This would be about as far back as I'd pare most descriptions.
This is just personal opinion, but a summary sentence paring down should include what needs to happen and why. It doesn't (again, IMO) need to potentially include the protagonist, as more often than not the story could continue without them (a flaw in a number of stories, once again in my opinion). The protagonist should only really be mentioned if it's their story (with LSX, it's about Ridman finding himself, for example, with the war story just being a backdrop; with Pokemon, the whole quest is just a framework for the hero's coming of age story).
As an example of a story that could really continue without the 'protagonist,' I put forth FFXII - the protagonist is Vaan, but really, the story isn't about him. He's just the character we see the story through, little more than a camera for us. In truth, the story is about Ashe and Balthier - they're the actual main characters on the good guy's side (Ashe moreso than Balthier; Balthier's place as one of the main characters is only cemented late in the story). Everything in the story is centered around them, and its their backgrounds that drive most of the story.
RESIDENT EVIL SHOOTING SYSTEM FATAL SCRIPT ERROR (game hangs in balance)
Change the line it references (Line 58 in Interpreter 2) to read just
enabled = $game_temp.hit
(Personally, I changed it as follows:
enabled = $game_temp.hit #and $game_map.events.face
in the event I figured out what that function was supposed to do and could correct it, but I haven't found anywhere for that yet.)
As I don't know the intention of the original developer, I don't know what that particular function does so I can't correct it to their original ideas (I expect it took into account which way the zombie was facing to determine if you actually hit or not). It appears to work at that point, but I don't know if the knife is actually able to kill a zombie because they kill me faster than the knife lets me attack (but the game lets you keep playing after a knife hit with that change).
enabled = $game_temp.hit
(Personally, I changed it as follows:
enabled = $game_temp.hit #and $game_map.events.face
in the event I figured out what that function was supposed to do and could correct it, but I haven't found anywhere for that yet.)
As I don't know the intention of the original developer, I don't know what that particular function does so I can't correct it to their original ideas (I expect it took into account which way the zombie was facing to determine if you actually hit or not). It appears to work at that point, but I don't know if the knife is actually able to kill a zombie because they kill me faster than the knife lets me attack (but the game lets you keep playing after a knife hit with that change).
[Poll] What type of Encounter Type is better in your opinion?
My personal preference is a bit of a mix - as pete_mw, use them in places where it makes sense, but don't do them stupidly.
Random encounters shouldn't be every 2-3 steps - depending on the zone, how far into the game you are, encounter difficulty, whatever, they should be more in the 15-40 range (yes, it's a wide range, but there's a lot of factors to work with there).
Touch encounters should be used where they make sense - but not used to where you might as well just force them to fight every two to three steps, and they should be spaced out such that you can avoid them if you choose.
If anything, when designing the game (where monsters have fixed stats and don't scale), it's better to lean towards it being too easy, thinking your player is going to encounter less encounters than you plan, and adjusting the enemies down slightly (particularly bosses - I just ran across the issue playing RnH that random encounters were a cakewalk and providing not a lot of experience, but I was still underpowered when it came to fighting the bosses in the same zone).
Random encounters shouldn't be every 2-3 steps - depending on the zone, how far into the game you are, encounter difficulty, whatever, they should be more in the 15-40 range (yes, it's a wide range, but there's a lot of factors to work with there).
Touch encounters should be used where they make sense - but not used to where you might as well just force them to fight every two to three steps, and they should be spaced out such that you can avoid them if you choose.
If anything, when designing the game (where monsters have fixed stats and don't scale), it's better to lean towards it being too easy, thinking your player is going to encounter less encounters than you plan, and adjusting the enemies down slightly (particularly bosses - I just ran across the issue playing RnH that random encounters were a cakewalk and providing not a lot of experience, but I was still underpowered when it came to fighting the bosses in the same zone).
Hidden Items?
author=LockeZ
(And then you have to, once again, NOT be wearing the accessory that has the description "makes chests have better loot" and is required to get rare items from any treasure chest in the game except the zodiac spear, which inexplicably works in reverse. If you're wearing that accessory, you will never get the spear.)
In vague defense of that, I believe the developer's acknowledged it as a misflag of the Zodiac Spear that wasn't discovered until long after the game was 'gold' and became a 'meh, let them find it instead of trying to fix it' thing.
[RM2k3] Accessing Stats in Battle
Thanks, Cherry - I'll play around with that and be extremely careful with it.
Possible solution to the changes persisting through the entire session - at the beginning of any battle involving monsters whom are affected by these stat changes (as opposed to afterwards, where it might be gotten around using F12), use the same type of code you'd be using to alter their stats in battle to ensure their stats are set to default before the battle starts.
Possible solution to the changes persisting through the entire session - at the beginning of any battle involving monsters whom are affected by these stat changes (as opposed to afterwards, where it might be gotten around using F12), use the same type of code you'd be using to alter their stats in battle to ensure their stats are set to default before the battle starts.
1sentence
author=JustRob
How does this help us improve our story-writing skills if we're only doing this for commercial games?
Chrono Cross
When a young boy finds himself in an alternate dimension, he soon finds out that he could be the trigger to either the saving of the world or the destruction of everything that lives.
Actually, it helps more than you think - you have to look at a story and decide what it's key plot points are. What is the actual driving story? And then, you refine it down to one simple sentence. For example, you haven't quite looked deep enough for Chrono Cross - you've left in too many unnecessary details:
A boy finds himself the catalyst of the end of the world.
It's about stripping the details out of the plot to get the core of what the story is. Going back to Chrono Cross - how much is this story really about Serge anyways? Sure, he plays a big part in what appears to be the plot, but is that actually what's going on? Could Chrono Cross not really be better summed up as "Time itself is threatened by a monster" - after all, the Time Devourer is the 'real' enemy of the game, with everything that happened all just a big plot by Belthasar so that Serge could destroy the Time Devourer and end the threat of Lavos once and for all.
Doing this with commercial games (or hell, any already extant story) is just as beneficial as doing it with your own writings - you're still learning the skill to look at a story and pick out the key plot point, even if it is hidden in a bunch of other useless details. Suikoden 2, for example, is framed in this huge, lavish story of war between nations, but in reality it's about two friends forced against each other - the war is the just the backdrop upon which the main story plays out.
[RM2k3] Accessing Stats in Battle
author=Kazesui
Just to make sure you've noticed this: From what I can see in the documentation, the stat diff only applies to the heroes, i.e. not monsters. So what you'll have to do is decrease the stat of the party members to give the illusion of the monsters growing stronger. I also assume that the changes you do there are of the permanent kind, so you'll have to keep track of how much you've changed it during a battle such to reset it to the original stats afterwards
I've looked it up in the documentation - it does currently exist only in the Actor class, which poses a bit of a problem - but I think I see a way that I might be able to temporarily trick the system into accepting them for monsters (this might require more work than it'd pay off), I need to play around with it once I get a compiler going. I also wonder if I couldn't just entirely redefine the Monster class to include calls referring specifically to getting their four stats - surely there's a reference in RM2k3 directly to those stats, it's just a matter of finding a way to map them to the C++ to call them. Work has just kept me away from wanting to touch the C++ though.
author=bulmabriefs144
Btw, you can also use Common Events, to do exactly the same things with no C++ coding. Make a common event called CheckStats or ChangeStats (depending on what you wanna do), and use the variable system->Hero and possibly the Change Character Base Statistics. Even though it's not in battle (well, the variable system is), common events allow you to do quite a bit that isn't in the battle menu. I just tested it, common events, if it can call rain (trust me, it can), it can definitely give you stat access/change (the only two things it doesn't seem to do through CE is Pictures, you have to patch for it to even show pictures, and strangely, Battle Animations because out of battle animations use Hero).
This only works for characters, not for monsters. The only apparent way to alter monsters stats, at the moment, appears to be through skills (which don't stack), through conditions (which don't stack), or by replacing the monster (which takes a lot of space in the database). If it comes down to it and I can't smoothly pull off the effect I want, I'm most likely going to be going with a combination of the first two to accomplish something close (as it is, an 'Enrage' effect makes the battle much harder).
author=Cherry
The only way to change monster stats is using conditions. The RPG Maker doesn't provide an attackDiff, defenseDiff, etc. feature for monsters, it's just reading the stats from the database and applying the conditions to it.
Maybe I should add an onGetMonsterATK, etc. hook in the future...
So, surely there's someway to at least read their stats that could be manually written on top of what you already have, and that, in theory, could be used to directly alter the stats in the database? For that matter, being able to alter information in the database would be just as effective for what I'm trying to do.
Anyways, if this whole idea doesn't work out right, I might just have to put off using the version of strengthening I was envision for an RGSS-compatible project and go with the conditions method ('enraging' during the fight) for this project.
[RM2k3] Accessing Stats in Battle
... and that was exactly what I was wondering, if there was a way to do it, and of course DynRPG presents a way to do exactly what I need. <3 Now, I'll just have to patch it in and do a little bit of coding work to see if it plays nicely on the bosses (and maybe, just maybe, do it on some of the random encounters as well, so you can't just Auto your way into beating them).
Stack level too deep?
Another question - what order are you putting them in in the script editor? That in itself could be causing the error if they're in the wrong order - I can't much help with what order they should be in... =/
I'll take a look through the scripts, but my initial run through says they should work as is.
Edit: By my thinking, it should be...
Core Engine
Equip Engine
Battle Engine
Battle Command
But that's just from my quick look through the scripts. Those last two I know for sure, I'm just not 100% sure where to put the Equip engine.
Anyways, I need to sleep, if you can't get it figured out by swapping orders around, I'll take a better look tomorrow/after I wake up. - T
I'll take a look through the scripts, but my initial run through says they should work as is.
Edit: By my thinking, it should be...
Core Engine
Equip Engine
Battle Engine
Battle Command
But that's just from my quick look through the scripts. Those last two I know for sure, I'm just not 100% sure where to put the Equip engine.
Anyways, I need to sleep, if you can't get it figured out by swapping orders around, I'll take a better look tomorrow/after I wake up. - T
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