Kayzee

*sprinkles fairy dust on the new person* Hmmmm.... You don't look creepy to me... You look cute! Not that being cute and creepy are mutually exclusive mind. I think I for one manage both pretty well sometimes. I mean I am a fairy after all! We tend to do that. But... That face just looks so cute and innocent! It makes me want to play with you! *giggles and smiles just a little too widely* Hmmm... I don't really use MV, but my advice works for just about anything: Have fun! Don't let your time making a game become all stress and deadlines and seriousness! Try and relax and not worry so much. Too many people get burned out, so take your time okay? :3

Hehe, glad I can help! *sprinkles fairy dust on you* I just think it's easier to have all an enemy's properties in one place so you don't have to edit the script every time you add or change something in the database. I couldn't say if it is actually less work overall, but it's much less of a hassle to edit later.

Of the top of my head, I think you want to do $enemy_human.include?(a.original_name) Though you might want to check if the target is in fact an enemy or else it won't work. I think you should use a note tag of some sort rather then a list of names though, it makes things so much easier in the long run not to have to update the code when you add new enemies. But if you don't want to bother with figuring out the regex stuff for parsing notetags, I understand. Personally I just use one script to do all of my note stuff, but that means a lot of my scripts rely on that one. Oh well...

You know, I was randomly playing Disgaea 5 again today and I was reminded of a recurring problem I noticed with the series a while ago. In fact the more I thought about it, the more I found it's not just a problem with this one series, but with a good chunk of the RPG Genre. Namely the menu design is kind of annoying. Kind of really annoying sometimes. Most often in ways that are pretty fixable. Let me ask you the following: If you are browsing the item menu, and you see a cool piece of equipment you want to equip, would you rather: A. Press a button or something and choose who you want to equip it too right there, or B. Press cancel, go to an entirely different menu, find the item in the list again, and then equip it? Call me crazy, but I rather pick A. Having a dedicated equipment menu is still good of course, but is there any reason not to allow you to equip stuff from the item menu too? Now you may think it's a pretty petty thing to complain about on it's own, and believe me this is just the tippy top of a massive iceberg when it comes to annoying menu issues, but it's a pretty common thing in RPGs to design menus like this, as completely segregated from one another in ways that can sometimes make it so to get anything done you have to flip flop back and fourth between menus a lot. Let me go back to Disgaea for a moment here to explain exactly how bad this problem can get. Okay, for those that have never played any of the games in the series, there are a lot of really strange but kinda neat mechanics you can use to power yourself and your equipment up. But all of these mechanics are completely segregated into their own little menus. What makes it worse is that a good chink of the things you need to do a lot are not really accessed from the menu at all, but instead the menu is called up if you talk to an NPC in the game's 'main base'. So you often literally have to run around from one NPC to another as well as flip flop between menus a lot. I mean don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a home base you can get more NPCs for that provide more functions, but there is no reason you shouldn't be able to quickly access them in the menu is there (this is something I need to do in my game too for a few things come to think of it)? In Disgaea 5 for example, you have to talk to an NPC to learn abilities (and you can only learn them one at a time even though shops and stuff let you select multiple items, but that's a whole other issue), but you need to pull up a whole other menu to equip them, and to change your class you need to go to yet another NPC. Equipment is powered up though 'innocent' monsters that live inside the item (like I said the mechanics can get really strange, you even get a good chunk of powerups from playing a friggin board game) and that has it's own NPC to swap them around, another to go into the item to power it up (for a third time, the mechanics can get really strange) or power it up in other ways and... Phew! Can't you already feel exhausted just listening to my description? It's still a pretty fun game, but would it really be that hard to make the menus flow together a little better? Poor menu design is also probobly a big reason why I dislike 'quest' systems and feel ambivalent about a lot of crafting systems. There is more to it then that really, but nothing annoys me in RPGs more then needing to go to a crappy quest menu (Disgaea 5 added quests the series and it perfectly encapsulates everything I hate about quests and crappy quest menus, as if I didn't have enough to complain about), or messing around in a crappy crafting menu (sometimes just figuring out what I can make in some games takes ages). So what should we do instead? Well, I admit it can be tricky sometimes, but I think it's mostly a matter of figuring out what the player needs to do most often and figuring out ways of skipping unnecessary steps. In the game I am working on for example, I am using a script that lets the player attach runes to equipment. Now the script comes with it's own scene that was meant to be called form the menu, but I am not really using it that way. Instead, I changed it so a rune could be selected and 'used' form the item menu, where it would switch to a mini-scene to select an item and slot to attach to. Though my original motivation was to allow runes to be attached though using them where as you needed to find a special place to detach/swap them, but functionally I could easily let you do both. I later kinda expanded on the idea by changing the item menu to be like item menus in Mystery Dungeon style roguelikes (I mean, that kinda goes without saying, as my game basically is a Mystery Dungeon style roguelike) where equips are displayed in the item menu and selecting an item opened a submenu of options for what you wanted to do with the item rather then just using it right away. That way you can do stuff like equip and unequip stuff in the same menu and give some items multiple uses (like throwing them at things). It makes me wonder how much I can get away with doing this way... but best not over rely on it. After all searching though your inventory can be a pain too. What do you guys think?

Roguelikes have been around for ages ya know, since at least the 1980s. Though they never were discussed much until recently I guess and even nowadays you only really see elements of their gameplay pop up in indie titles. I kinda like to think of them as kind of like a RPGs with a little bit of an old-school arcade game bent. Not that they were actiony (though nowadays a lot of them are) or anything, but they sort of had a similar kind of vibe in many ways. They almost all have randomly generated maps or other elements and some form of 'permadeath' where if you lose you would have to start again form the start. But the cool thing is because of the random elements it's often a fresh experience every time you play and you can't just win by rote memorization alone. Their combat system is also often very tactical in a lot of ways and often involves you needing to come up with clever ways out of jams with the tools you happen to have. Like older arcade games it's often less about 'winning' or 'losing' then it is about mastery, but instead of mastery of twitch reflexes and/or muscle memory it's mastery of tactical thinking, risk assessment, and improvisation. I think they are super neato! And honestly, I sort of roll my eyes every time people say Steam is filled with crap. I know steam is filled with lots of crap, but, you know, Sturgeon's law. This is exactly why we have search engines people, to, ya know, help us search for what we want.

Hehe, not saying it isn't useful at all, it just seems a bit gimmicky to me to do stuff like that. I mean, one thing I think is fun about Nethack is that the calculated current phase of the moon has an effect on the game. Like a full moon making werecreatures stronger. But I personally think I rather it be random or based on the number of times played or some in game date rather then the real date. I was playing with making a script to calculate a lunisolar calendar for my game actually, but I am pretty sure I am not going to use the actual computer time. Partly because my game is turn based anyway, partly because the season will likely effect some things and I don't want players to be forced to deal with it for playing at a particular time of year, and partly because I kind of want to use time as a sort of resource (like for example maybe dying will cost you a day or a week of time).

No reason not to have both I think, plus I am not sure if it's totally obvious how to equip stuff through the item menu unless your used to games that do that. Someday I reaaaally have to figure out a good way of doing a tutorial that isn't boring, because my game has lots and lots of odd mechanics. I will probobly end up doing what a lot of Mystery Dungeon style roguelikes do and have a mode where the player can do short puzzles that revolve around a single mechanic.... It's a great way to do it I think. Anyway thinking about it, the equip menu does do a better job comparing stats I think? Though my item menu also displays an item's stats and stuff... if you have it identified of course. :3

Hehe, you do have a point. My game has only one party member and limited inventory, and all the armor actually uses the same slot type, but I might as well re-enable the equip menu. Only disabled it to make the main menu a bit less cluttered really. Also, Symphony of the Night actually did the reverse and only had an equip scene, with you having to equip items to use them. Which would have been better if it had it's own slot or multiple slots really. It could have made using items a bit more strategic since you couldn't really spam them in the menu, but the game was piss easy anyway so...

I am pretty sure you can use L and R buttons (pageup and pagedown by default on keyboard) to flip through different party members in the equipment menu at least. I don't think VX Ace has an R2 or L2 defined though. Myself, like I was saying above, I got rid of the equip menu all together and just use the item menu to equip things. Still not sure if I want to leave the equip menu as an option though. Thinking about it I wonder if I could combine my skill menu with the item menu too. Of course my game only has a single member party right now, but I could always use L and R, or have you choose the party member first. Or maybe since I don't have extra party members I should use L and R to switch menus like you suggested.

What I think? I think I have seen scripts like this before, but never thought it was particularly useful to use the computer's real time unless you are making something like Animal Crossing. That said, it wouldn't be hard I think to modify it to use an in-game timer. The nice thing about Ruby's Time class is you can use it to do math with times and dates!

I think it's supposed to be something a bit in between, like bubbles in a giant sea of aethier. Also we know for sure that some regions are connected, like IRPO and Mosperiburg. We also know for sure some are disconnected, like Riki's world. Then there is blue's 'region map' item which... doesn't help one bit to explain anything.

Yeah, I mean creating something with any kind of physics to it or even different game states is really annoying with events. Possible, maybe not even hard for some people, but tedious and really hard to keep track of.

On the subject of custom scenes, funnily enough I made a custom scene a while ago just to run common events in without loading a map. I used it for exactly one thing right now: To display a special message when loading a game if it's checksum doesn't match one stored in the global save data, but I figured it could be handy for some cutscenes and other stuff down the road. I wonder now if there are any handy script call commands/tricks I could add to make something that people can make minigames with easier? I don't really think so, but maybe. I think the biggest problem with using events for anything complicated is you mostly have to do everything through variables. There are ways around this, but they involve brute forcing it using script calls. This can actually be really handy, but if you know how to script anyway why bother doing complicated stuff through events at all? But in some cases there might be room for something between events and scripting to be handy. For example look at this: It's a dialog thing I wrote to add script call commands I can use to make conditional choice menus. Most of the dialog was done through eventing, but the problem I had is that choice menus are annoyingly inflexible. So I scripted up a replacement way to make them, with each choice having a label to jump to and sometimes a 'token' which is set when the option is picked. And bam! Adventure game like dialog trees! This is a good example of a place where expanding the event system a bit can be very handy. For minigames though? I am not sure if this will work. It might be handy to make an easy to use DSL thing to create some objects, but I think most of the time a lot of minigames might be complex enough you might as well write a full ruby script for it. Also even my example above might be too complicated. I donno. Mostly just musing about it. Also: I'm still making stuff! Sorta... Also also: Yes, I am in my game. Yes I explain a lot of crap. I guess you could call me an... exposition fairy! :3

I see what you mean! There was even a crime family in that town in SaGa Frontier wasn't there? Still, one of the things I find fun about SaGa Frontier is it was a game where those random lizard shopkeepers just kinda fit in and I never really questioned it. Monsters are basically just another race who live along side humans and mystics and robots. Then again, SaGa Frontier was really vague about a lot of how it's world worked wasn't it? I mean what exactly were 'regions'? How did the many regions fit together? It felt like traveling randomly through time and space at times. I kinda liked that aspect of it in a way though, it was delightfully wacky.

Good fully featured minigames are also kinda hard to do! I mean in some ways making a good minigame is kinda like creating a whole new game from scratch. And yeah, I agree eventing is no substitute for a good script. I mean, you can do a hell of a lot with events, but it can be incredibly tedious to do. Like, yeah, I can also create a computer using redstone in minecraft, but I am not about to do my taxes on it. Though the nice thing about events is that you can use them with scripts.

You can also set the font of the windows contents bitmap to whatever you like, that will make what ever font settings you want show up only for that window.

That would have the same problem of only allowing percentage based boosts though, wouldn't it?

Well, I think this script is one of the most useful scripts I know of for doing stuff like that. It works using states so you couldn't exactly give items conditional stats that way, but you can have a state that boosts defense by 200% or something. I am not sure if there are any existing scripts that might be more suited to directly fiddling with an item's stats based on a condition.

Neato! I miss the funny lizard shopkeepers though...