Kayzee

Twine huh? And you decided to develop in RPG Maker? Hmmm.... Any particular reason? I mean, beyond them both being used to make games, I wonder if there is any overlap in the type of you want to make? Hehe... I can think of one type of game that is fairly popular to make in twine while having quite a few made in RPG Maker also... I might be off the mark, but I always find those types of games interesting...

Nin nin nin! Wooosh!

I know nothing about the script in question, but maybe it's expecting the condition to be a string to be used with eval? Try quoting the condition like this: disable_good(11, "!$game_party.has_item?($data_items[31])")

Hehe, but you can just use a D10 and multiply it by ten if you wanna do that. :3

I tend to use 10 or 11 elements divided into 3 or 4 cycles: The Energy/Destruction Cycle: Fire, Ice, and Lightning The Nature/Creation Cycle: Water, Wind, Earth The Cosmic/Existence Cycle: Light, Dark, Law, Chaos The Null/Nonexistence Cycle: Void The cycles don't actually reflect on how weaknesses work much, that's much more ad hoc. Also, other elements that don't really fit in: Plant/Wood (water+earth maybe?), Metal (fire+earth maybe?), Poison (may or may not be covered by plant), and about a billion others. That's not even getting into the possible difference between 'elements' and 'damage types'. Like the Physical and Absorb elements in default RPG Maker are not really elements at all, are they? Then there is the old cut, stab, bash damage types.... But this is about colors not elements. The mix of colors reflecting a mix of elements is an interesting idea though. Really I usually think of earth as brownish but made it magenta so I could get every addictive and subtractive primary color, and the way they mix makes sense this way. Fire + Water = Earth makes some degree of sense, since lava and water combine to make rock or obsidian. Fire + Wind = Lightning also makes sense, and so does Water + Wind = Ice. Perhaps the exact algorithm should be that addictive primaries add, and subtractive primaries subtract? Or like how Quantum Chromodynamics has Antired, Antiblue, and Antigreen... Maybe this is getting too complex. Edit: Oh no! I forgot about the tastiest element of them all! I was going to list it with the 'other elements' but it slipped my mind.

Technically it's a bit more complex then that because of the way D&D uses multiple dice. Dice rolls in D&D and other such games are usually notated in XdY form, where x is the number of die and y is the max value of the die. Maybe this might help: class Game_Battler < Game_BattlerBase def dice(num, max) result = 0 num.times do result += 1+rand(max) end return result end end if you add that as a script then you can put "a.dice(X, Y)" to roll XdY dice. If I wanted to get fancy, I could probobly make something that uses string replacement to translate dice notation into a function call or something. Of course this ignores things like 'advantage' right now, but it's possible to do. You can add stuff to dice rolls so 'a.dice(2, 4)+2' or 'a.dice(1, 20)+a.agi' will work.

Eh personally I am not a fan of ABS scripts, they all feel rather clunkly to me. Though the tool system might be helpful yeah. I think there are other scripts that might do a better job at tools, but I am not sure. Also, if you are a fan of really old school D&D, you might like Dungeon Craft. It's basically a modern open source version of Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures, which was a construction kit to make games in the style of some of the official AD&D PC games. Probably not at all the kind of thing you are looking for, but I thought I would mention it just because Unlimited Adventures has a kind of special place in my heart. I think it was the first RPG creation tool I ever used!

Well, D&D has a much different kind of 'ruleset' then VX Ace does. I mean, RPG Maker doesn't really have a concept like feats or the kinds of skills a rogue is likely to use. You might be able to find scripts for some things like that, but a one to one translation of the D&D rules to RPG Maker would be a lot of work I think. Plus their are slightly different rules depending on the addition of D&D you are using.

My memory is pretty bad too to be honest...

Oh yeah, not that I think about it I think you told me this before on discord.

Hehe... Neato! Norway sounds like a nice place to me, the whole region does really.

Silver is probobly my favorite color, but gold is kinda up there too. Though I mostly like gold cause it's the color of shiny treasure! Honestly though, I wouldn't use the word 'energy' in that context. It's kind of overused and vague. I would probobly use the word 'mana' instead. I know when people hear mana they often think of magic points form a game, but mana is actually a pretty cool word with a special subtle meaning. It's basically a special kind of power born of respect and reverence. Personally I rather use a more old englishy word for it though. All due respect to the Polynesian people of course, I just think old englishy words are more fairy-like. One word that might work is 'wald'. It's a nice fairy-like word for it because it means both 'forest' and 'power/dominion'. Another word I like is 'dwim' which is kind of a made up singular shorting of 'dwimmer', and also sounds a lot like 'vim'. Also, I spot a u! Are you British? Or maybe Canadian, I donno if they do that too. I live in America myself, when I am not hanging in fairyland anyway. :3

It's both really. It's a feedback loop: People create and watch media based on their own preferences, which are influenced by the media they are exposed to. Don't think you are immune to this just because you don't watch TV much, this is true with all media, including Youtube. This is just how culture works in general. Cultural information spreads in forms that are mimicked and spread by people exposed to them, and cultures evolve naturally from the information that is passed from person to person. I probobly already told you this, but for the sake of anyone who I haven't told this to: We have a name for these units of information ya know. You might have heard it before even. They are called 'memes'. The word meme was actually created as a sort of play on the words 'gene' and 'mimic' to describe how cultures sorta evolve through the coping of cultural information the same way genes do with genetic information. It's worth thinking about what makes up your 'cultural DNA' so to speak and what differs about other people's. And it's good to remember that unlike your genes, you can always be exposed to different memes and have your cultural outlook changed. The good thing about that is, you aren't stuck with the same memes as soon as you are born. The bad thing about it is that memes have a nasty habit of sneaking up on people and worming into their head and can be very destructive. Hehe, even the idea of memes it's self is a meme, so be careful when taking it too seriously too. :3

I was kinda saying something similar in my own response. Like I said, there is a lot of media out there and a lot of it is created by and/or targeted to different cultural groups. However I don't really think he was entirely wrong. Consider this: How much media is there that actually has a broad cross-cultural appeal, and of that how much of that tends to primarily created by, marketed to, and staring white people? I am pretty sure that's mostly because there are (or were) more white people making and/or buying more stuff, but still! Come to think of it though, I think a lot of media today is way more diverse in it's casting then it was in the past few decades, so that's probobly a good trend... but on the other hand we now have hoards of angry people ranting about how SJWs ruined Star Wars and Ghostbusters and such (and maybe they even did, I donno movies aren't my thing) so... yeah. Point is, I can see where he is coming from. I think it's more the case that people in any given group will tend to be drawn more to characters within that group, but I think a side effect of that is that media kinda becomes segregated into lots of little cultural niches that don't tend to overlap much, and when they do it's mostly the people with the most population/money/power/whatever who get the most exposure. But hey, China is trying to kinda take over Hollywood so maybe in a few decades white people will stop being in everything and be replaced by Chinese people. It could happen!

This is pretty much true, but you gotta remember that 'niche' is often in the eye of the beholder. I mean, there is a lot of pop culture out there that seems mostly made by and/or targeted at particular demographics and as a result anyone outside that demographic often ends up finding it niche regardless of how overwhelmingly popular it might be with that demographic. And if the demographic is a minority group in the first place it's going to often be doubly niche to anyone outside that group. So I am willing to bet there are people out there who have been mostly exposed to things that cause them to generally think of characters as some other race by default. But you don't tend to see them because the stuff you are interested in tends to be 'niche' to them, so they don't hang out in the same places. Really 'pop culture' is more like a bunch of segregate sub-cultures then anything else. Every once and a while something will break out and become popular with a lot of different people true, but I think the only reason white people seem to be over represented is just because there kinda are more of them around making stuff.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I haven't done it, because I am not sure if it would make her stand out in a way that really wouldn't add anything. I kinda like the idea of every fairy having their own skin tone, but at the same time... Well, historically fairy culture is deeply entangled with human Celtic and Nordic cultures and a lot of fairies do have sorta have light skin. May or may not be the 'majority', but still a sizable chunk. However, here is the real point I want to make: For fairies, skin color is more or less completely unrelated to race. Regardless of what skin tone may be more popular, to call anyone with a different skin color a 'minority' would be like calling anyone with a different hair color a 'minority'. Especially in a culture where using hair dye is common. I mean, do you treat humans who dye their hair blue as their own racial group? That sounds kinda silly to me! Same with fairies and skin color. Sure, some social groups might prefer a different style of fashion, but it's not related to race. It's not that fae beings don't have their own racial groups of sorts mind you, they are just not marked by skin color. I mean, I may have said it before, but a good way to annoy a fairy is to mistake them for a pixie and visa versa. I mean, fairies and pixies get along okay sometimes, but they have a history ya know? It doesn't help that humans mix them up all the time.

Regarding stereotypes, I think the big question is this: What marks the difference between a 'stereotype' and an 'archetype'? Broadly speaking most stories are kinda built on the back of archetypes, that is to say basic foundational character types that are used again and again throughout history as part of the collective culture of all people. There is really nothing wrong with using archetypes in this way. In fact, It might be impossible not to. No matter what character you think of it most likely can be traced back to a basic archetype. Even going out of your way to defy an archetype is still using the archetype to define the character by way of contrast. There can be simple purely archetypal characters that while sometimes a bit boring can be used to comment on and dissect archetypes, or there can be more complex characters often mix and match foundational archetypes to build something that if not unique is at least interesting. It goes beyond fiction too, but I will refrain from my usual philosophical/religious wanking this time. Lucky you! :3 Stereotypes aren't the same thing though. I guess maybe the best way to explain it is that you could say stereotypes are like what happens when you take an archetype and kinda suck all the life out of it till it's nothing but a ridged walking corpse and throw it out into the world with no context or subtlety. It's become a shambling zombie of an idea without purpose or understanding, only existing to spread it's self and uncaring about the damage it causes. Archetypes don't need to become stereotypes for them to be useful. Like say you want to have a 'greedy merchant' character. There are plenty of ways to express the archetype without making it into a harmful stereotype. You don't need to make them have a hook nose, or have them be fat, or whatever else. They can take many many other forms. You can mix other ideas in to make the character more interesting without sacrificing the core archetypal ideas. You don't need to crush all of the expressive spirit out of an archetype and render it in it's most base stereotypical form. So basically: An archetype's lifeblood is it's ability to express things across different cultures and incarnations. Stereotypes are zombified husks created when an archetype is rigidly locked into a set from where their freedom of expression is taken away. So, experiment I say! Mix and match, create atypical forms, do something interesting with your archetypes! Don't just blindly rely on set patterns! Also, remember that even if stereotypes are bad, inside every stereotype is a poor abused archetype that needs some love too! Letting them be expressed in a new way can give them a new life!

Well, like I said, I am pretty sure there is no hard limit on the number of events in game, the only limit is with the editor. Best bet I think would be a script that would clone a basic event a bunch of times using regions or something. Or maybe one that loads events from a copy of the map. I would be able to code it myself, but I am having a looooot of trouble focusing on anything lately because of this annoying buzzing going on in my ears all the time. Plus I am pretty lazy anyway.

This is probobly a limit of the editor and not the game, since I am pretty sure there is no hard limit on the number of events in-game. It's impossible for scripts to change anything in the editor, so any events beyond 999 will probobly need to be added with scripting. Also, you do realize how insane a 500x500 map is right? Honestly even if you have an anti-lag for insane numbers of events, just having a map that big might be laggy enough on it's own. I don't know how splitting the map would 'completely break' your game's gameplay system, but really dude? I approve of using events for trees and stuff though! See that's how you make details on a large map people, not making insanely large images to use as map backgrounds. Seriously, if you have to use super large maps don't use parallax mapping. Imagine if this 500x500 map used it? It would need a 16,000 x 16,000 image. That would need at least 768,000,000 bytes or so of ram to even load wouldn't it? I swear every time I hear of someone using these monster sized maps I want to code a seamless chunk loader thing. Too bad I am so darn lazy.

Personally I am kinda more worried about all the graphics fitting together in a consistent style then I am making them all extra unique. Unless that style is purposefully a mishmash, but at least that is consistently inconsistent. Though part of me kinda likes the idea of going ultra minimalist like in this screen shot I have shown off before of a RPG Maker game I found: I would probobly not go to quite that level of abstraction if I did it, maybe something more like Nethack's tiles: For now though I am just using the VX Ace RTP and some similar style graphics I found online. Maybe a bit boring but it works.