FACESFORCE'S PROFILE

Wow, so many different methods. Well, it seems that there is one thing that has not been mentioned much, but then again, this is my personal opinion of course;
Spoken japanese is different from written japanese.

This was a problem I ran into time and time when I was living in nishikawaguchi. Of course, my best advice is going to be very simple; Learn Hiragana above all else, you do not necessarily have to learn how to write japanese characters, but by all means memorize them. Your goal is to have reading comprehension above all else, so just like when you were a child in grammar school, make a list of 10 kanji a week and memorize them on sight. Test yourself every 4 weeks.

And for the spoken portion of japanese, my best advice is simple; Buy yourself a phrasebook or google some basic japanese phrases, and watch japanese soap operas.

Yes, I said soap opera, and not anime, or any sort of comedy drama; Your first major milestone will be recognizing certain words and natural sentence structure within the conversations. (This is important in any language). Many of the japanese soap operas I used to study with have normal, everyday style conversations, allowing you to natrually let your vocabulary expand by listening to them speak. Look up the new words you hear, write it down and add it to your list to study each week.

A good place for you to start would be "Tokyo Rabu Sutori", as any conversation that Kanji has with Satomi and Mikami are very natrual speech, while his boss uses a more proper way of speech, and Rika a very modern(for '91) way speech. This is probably the best way to learn spoken japanese outside of just going to japan and socializing. Or at least, it's what works for me.

author=Merlandese
I'd say that that's correct. The Accuracy stat in most RPGs is a type of complication I think he's trying to avoid. If you create a scenario in which your opponent now has to suffer your attack, The Gods of Chance shouldn't come down and decide that you messed up anyway.

That doesn't mean you can't have damage delays, intentional dodges/blocks, or other ways to divert the damage, but randomness is The Great Equalizer (it allows players with less ability to be on the same ground as more advanced players), and is typically seen as the opposite side of the coin as strategy.

I see your point, but from a different design perspective, a slight amount allows for a more unpredictable gameplay. I could even argue that if randomness is "The Great Equalizer", then there is a bit of design failure on part of the game creator; But I am just arguing for arguing sake. Don't take any of that rant seriously.
Alrighty... I think I am going to go with the idea of beats, every turn the player makes a intelligent decision to dodge taking damage, he gains a beat. Once he has 3 beats, he can take two moves instead of one. Do you guys think this would be a good idea to add some strategy to the battle?
EDIT: Namely, my worry is this: If there is no randomness what so ever, and all choices have practical predetermined actions, what is to stop a player from memorizing the best choice of moves? For example, in chess there are many extremely fast ways of winning. It is only because the human or AI can recognize the moves, and then choose a moveset that will assist them to win. But sometimes, they make mistakes.
I understand we are allowed to use a very minimal amount of randomness for the enemy behavior, but this is my worry.

Alrighty then, I am going to make a contest version with simplified numbers then(I'll reserve the only random factor only to deal additional damage, or for the Ai's programming. Oh good lord, programming a AI who knows if you are in line of sight, or if he has ammo is difficult!)
Now, I am coming from rm2k, so I have a slight problem in visibility I just noticed. Where is the flash event option? I was wanting to make the enemies flash red in order to show damage, but to no avail. I am using rmvx ace.

author=slashphoenix
I'm debating if I should go back to sleep for an hour before work starts, or just have another cup of coffee and sketch for a bit...

Also, I'm looking at all the rules on the RPGology Contest and wondering what the heck that's all about.

Ahaha, good luck if you can figure it out. I've decided to just swing for it with a turn based version of a run and gun. XD (I have no idea how to understand them either)

So, anouther fruitful day of studying Confucius, trying to figure out how to mix southern sensibilities with eastern philosophy. Bit by bit, this mixture of American Southern thought, with the teachings of the romans, greeks, germans, iranians, chinese, japanese, and indian tradition is coming out with a extremely pragmatic result, although now I am studying, it seems the common agreed punishments are grim indeed.

I hope my plane ticket comes sooner then later so I can have something better to do.

I have a question, my battle system is very simplistic but involves environment as a part of it (for example, instead of generic skill progression, tactical placement of a table allowing you the chance to seek cover behind it), despite it being turn based. Is this allowed, or should I strip out those elements which help give it a bit of depth?

I mean, it can work without any real environmental interaction, but it mostly becomes a game of dodges to get close enough to deal damage, or to let your skills warm up.