OnyxTanuki

My idea would be to have the shards not representing the elements, but rather be specific skill types, such as weapon techs, offense magic, buffs, status magic, etc. Certain shards could be equipped based on the player's class, as well as some shards providing certain skills depending on who uses them (for example a sword user wouldn't get the same skills from a Weapon Tech shard as a Whip user would). When equipping a shard, the character would be placing it into a 5x5 grid, with the elements labeled on each axis, and they'd get abilities based on the combination of elements and the level and type of shard. For example, if your Mage puts a Lv 1 Offense Magic shard in the Fire/Wind slot, they'll get a weak Explosion spell, while moving it into the Fire/Fire slot instead would get them a pure Fire spell, or putting it in the Earth/Mu slot might give them a Gravity elemental spell.

It could be done pretty easily in a lot of cases, though it does depend some on your items. Like if all your healing items are potions it may not make much sense to see some lying around in a cave, but if the character knows some basic alchemy? Or if the healing items are plants or berries? That'd make it easy to put items in bushes, under rocks, and hanging off vines. As for how to do it and make it look right? I'd suggest making an event where, if the player is touching it, they get some sort of balloon icon or something, and then can interact with it by entering an action key. Or you could create individual sprite edits that have a bright outline to signify where the items are.

I actually am in the same boat as you are, Hakuro. However, I do understand why hetero romances are more commonly shown; it's because heterosexuality is more commonplace than homosexuality. Players will be more likely to connect with the romance because that's what they're used to. And throw in bisexuality and pansexuality (both of which could also identify with a male/female relationship) and you can probably see how having the protagonist straight will alienate far less players than having him/her be gay. That being said, I would love to see more homosexual characters in games that aren't played off as stereotypes. One of my game projects has two of the protagonists in a long-standing relationship, with one being gay and the other bisexual, and some romantic tension is included due to one of the female characters having romantic feelings toward the gay one. The game universe has little stigma attached to the sex of the people in a relationship, and I want to play the whole thing off as naturally as possible, so while you are made quite aware of the heroes orientations, it's not meant to be like LOOK AT THESE HOMOSEXUAL GAY PEOPLE WHO ARE IN A HOMOSEXUAL GAY RELATIONSHIP ISN'T GAY HOMOSEXUALITY AWESOME. To them, gender is only as much a factor in picking a partner as preference of body type, hair color, or personal interests. And I think that's also how you could view things to help you write a heterosexual or lesbian relationship despite being a gay man. Don't look at it as a man and woman or a woman and another woman being together; view it as two <i>people</i> being together. Now, as far as the options and circumstances behind relationships, that's entirely dependent on the plot and mood of the game. Personally I feel like having characters start and maintain a relationship as part of the game is kind of unnatural outside of dating sims, but it can work since obviously the heroes are spending a lot of time together, and being thrown constantly into situations where one or the other may lose their life will intensify the concerns they have toward their future, potentially spurring them to spill out their feelings "before it's too late." I do think it's easier if the characters you plan to have hooked up have some history though. Returning to my example, the couple I have in my project have been together for quite a while by the time they are first introduced to the player, so that kind of cements them as being a couple into the player's mind, I think. Games where there's multiple options - such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age - need to be played off fairly carefully, and in such a case I'd say also that it's better to reduce the amount of personality the hero shows that's outside of the player's control, as that'll let the player treat the hero as his/her own avatar in the game world and better connect with the romantic choices being made.

So this is more along the lines of a character being limited to a certain level, then their level cap changes later on? I actually asked a similar question before elsewhere, and the solution i got was a line of script: $data_actors[X].max_level = Y When you want to change the character's max level, simply use the Script Call in the event thing and put that in, with X being the actor's ID and Y being the new level cap. Also, just to be safe, you may want to set the character's total experience equal to the minimum amount for them to have their current level (like, for example, if your old level cap is 20 and you're using the default experience gain, set their total EXP to 40900); I say this because I don't know whether a character keeps gaining EXP even at level cap, and if they do, then changing the max level would result in some weirdness where they could potentially jump several levels the next time their EXP changes. Altering their EXP to a specific value would require coding too, since the default system only allows you to increase or decrease EXP, but I'm not entirely sure of the coding for that, unfortunately.

Probably to create a state and have it set the Sp-Parameter EXR to 0%. This will prevent the affected character from receiving any experience in battle so long as s/he is afflicted. I'm not sure if it'll prevent them from earning experience via events, though, so just to be sure, if you offer experience through a quest system or something and want that experience to be blocked as well, you'd have to run a conditional for each character so it only gives them the experience if they are not afflicted by the state. Also, if it's something that persists through resting at an inn, you'll need to find some means of reapplying it after the player goes to an inn. In any case, once you've made the state, outside of the limitations I mentioned, toggling their experience would be as simple as removing or adding the state.

Hmm... I can understand why an attack would deal less damage as stamina decreases from a logical standpoint, but it seems like it'd be pretty annoying in regular gameplay. I wouldn't see any real point in expending more than a certain amount of the bar attacking if the damage gets reduced fast enough. If it's a negligible change though (like, say, having the attack be reduced by 1% for every 3-4% Stamina lost) it should be fine, I think. I would, however, include some combos that would be the reverse, in that they deal more damage with low levels of Stamina instead, or have additional effects that kick in below a certain Stamina or become more or less likely to work depending on Stamina. That would really give a player incentive to research the best way to get their Stamina as low as possible to use those low-Stamina-high-damage skills to their fullest. I'm also curious just how it'd work as far as expending it. Are you forced to use up Stamina until you have none left, or can you cancel it out at any time? If the latter, what's the benefit gained from canceling an attack when your Stamina isn't empty? Do you get stunned somehow if you surpass your limit? Or perhaps the Stamina fills up like an ATB gauge, where your character's turn comes up when it's full, and thus canceling an attack midway would get the character his/her turn again faster? Or do you take more damage if your Stamina goes below a certain level?

One way I'd like to see it done is actually having the recurring enemy be sympathetic somehow. For example... maybe at the time he's first fought, he's one of the strongest generals on the villains' side, and he fights you on honorable terms, assuring you it's nothing personal. And throughout the game he continues to hold no ill will in the battles, but because of this he becomes rather disenchanted with the idea of having to fight you, because of his boss's apparent obsession with wiping you from the face of the planet. But while the recurring would be more the muscle, and despite his personal feelings, he's emotionally weak, clinging onto the villain's approval, and thus is going against his better judgment every time he fights you. Perhaps eventually he wakes up to the idea that maybe he just doesn't need the villain's approval, but by the time he turns against him the latter has found the power to combat your party himself and pretty much tosses the recurring aside, which solidifies the recurring's realization that he was little more than a weapon to the villain, and not a real person. I suppose what I'm thinking would be like an extended General Leo, if you know what I mean?

Personally I'd leave it off at maybe double the size of your default party, but it really does depend on the gameplay. For example, FF6 had 14 PCs, which in most cases would seem like too many, but the majority of them did get their time in the sun, and a handful of areas did allow the use of multiple full parties. In the case of games like Suikoden and Chrono Cross though, the PCs are so numerous that they essentially become functional trophies; you pick the ones you like and keep playing with them while the rest just sit on the shelf collecting dust. If you have a lot of character customization, I'd suggest a reduced total party size, too, as micromanaging a larger number of characters can get too much for the player to handle; in that sort of situation I'd go either for an unchangeable party of three to five or maybe have one or two spare characters you can swap out.

So I'm sure this has probably been done before, but I'd like to try something simpler than my main project, and something like this seems like it'd be fairly simple to do. The whole game would follow the same kind of concept as the Ancient Cave in Lufia 2's post-game; you have a main hero who's exploring the tower/cave/forest/whatever along with a set of other adventurers, attempting to bring back the treasures locked within. The problem is that it shifts around the players so that every time they enter it's different, and whenever the player leaves they lose everything they collected - items, magic, equipment, levels, everything - with the exception of items retrieved from special chests. The overarching goal is to make it to the final level, which presumably is where the ultimate treasure is located. What I wonder is what might be the best way to explain the loss of power and items? The most obvious option is also the most cliche - amnesia. I could make it clear from the start that the hero and his companions are all stricken with amnesia, but that they at least have knowledge that the dungeon itself is responsible somehow, and that retrieving the treasure at the final level will presumably absolve everything. And if I do something like this, I'd like their memories to return little by little, most likely in the form of key items they receive from a boss room every so-odd floors, though in such a patchwork fashion that the truth behind it all isn't completely clear to them until shortly before they face off against the final boss. At the same time, though, as I mentioned before, amnesia seems so damned cliche, and when the player is first starting off, just having the hero always awaken without any memories would trivialize any progress they made before, as the hero will always be going through it the first time. It also presents quite a problem with how many times he may have run the dungeon previous to when the player picks the game up, and this raises questions as to whether it's really amnesia or if it's a time loop. The time loop thing also might work out, but that'd be difficult to implement I think. It'd make sense for it to be revealed later on in the dungeon progression if it turns out that's what's happening in addition to the amnesia. Or perhaps the hero and his party have Groundhog Day syndrome where they remember their progress, but nobody else seems to? And if I do something like that, I could potentially have the key items reverse the Groundhog Day syndrome on key NPCs to open up new functions at the base camp... Sorry, just rambling about potential plot stuff there. If anyone has input about it I'll be happy to consider other options. For now though, I do have other ideas I would like input on: - Should I allow for items that the player uses to keep their levels from a certain point? I mean floor skips seem fairly obvious, either as a special item that remembers the deepest you've been or as an NPC who can teleport you to a different floor from the first, but without being able to start above Level 1, skipping the initial floors may not work to the player's favor unless s/he already has enough permanent equips to take on higher-level monsters, and even then the player might run behind in levels as they progress further and further without regular permanent equipment upgrades. - Should I have a set party, or allow the player to choose who they take with them? In either situation I could unlock new PCs through the item that breaks the Groundhog Day syndrome, but in the former I'd have to balance each set of floors to handle how many party members the player is expected to have at that point, while in the latter case I could probably start off with a full party that expands into maybe eight to ten characters, but it'd also require permanent items to appear more often, which in turn might make it too easy if the player's already decided on their final party. - If I go for a set party, should the player be able to choose their classes, or even change them? Changing classes midgame would be no different from having different characters though, in the long run. If the player sets their classes from the start, though, they might feel like they could advance or change later, as even in early class-based games like Final Fantasy 1 there was a class advancement. And there's always the possibility of a player picking out classes that they later don't like and wanting to change. Perhaps with a special NPC that changes a single character's class at the cost of a hard-to-find permanent item? - How should I handle initial items and equipment? Should an NPC hand the player a starter pack with some base-level items and equipment, or with just a few items in a care package, or should I just let players collect their own stuff within the dungeon walls? Or perhaps you collect money in the dungeon that stays with a bank NPC that can be unlocked, and you can buy starter items that way? - If the big boss is truly either manipulating time or altering the memories of those around the dungeon, why would the player be able to collect things within his dungeon to combat this effect? Obviously the items would be vital to letting him maintain the effect, so shouldn't he horde them elsewhere? What reason could I have for him not to protect them with his very life to ensure nobody can reach him without incredible luck or natural power? Anyway, I might come up with the answers to all this on my own, but either way I'd still like input on the ideas, particularly on the overarching gameplay stuff since I'm not especially concerned with the plot being more than a basic Get The MacGuffin with a little alternate motives on all sides thrown in as well...

This reminds me a little of a DS download game I played a while back called Crimson Shroud, except that game intentionally mimicked a board game. Anyway, lemme make sure I got down how this works. Let's say you're just now entering a fortress held by the enemy. You have a chance of each area spawning one of several setups of enemy encounters, which might include a group of soldiers on break in the courtyard while another group is keeping guard in the rafters, or it may instead have a slightly larger group of soldiers holding training practice in the same courtyard, or the courtyard may be completely clear while the rafters are lined with guards waiting to ambush you. Each time you enter the fortress there's a chance of any one of those scenarios occurring in the courtyard. So let's assume we come across the first, where there's soldiers on break and a small number of guards keeping watch above. You are then given the options to charge into the on-break guards, avoid them and search the rafters first, throw a rock to distract the ground soldiers, back off and leave the courtyard, or sneak underneath the rafters to avoid both the on-break soldiers and the guards on the rafters. If you charge in, you'll surprise the soldiers and start the fight with a round advantage, but soon realize your error as every turn your party is assailed by arrows from the guards above, and immediately after clearing the ground troops you're assaulted directly by the guards. Sneaking up to the rafters will let you surprise the guards above, and then you'll get extra choices to deal with the enemies now below, making this the better choice. Throwing a rock as a distraction would fail, as they'd figure out where the rock comes from, see your party, and charge your location, but because they haven't had time to prepare their weapons and the guards above have no idea what they're charging at, they'll be attacking with a little less strength and you'll be able to take more options before leaving the cover you've been fighting under to climb the rafters and fight the guards. Retreating means you'll just return to the previous part of the fortress, and sneaking past means you won't be able to access any of the treasure being kept on the rafters or in the middle of their break area. If this is the way you have threats working, it actually sounds like a fun way to do things. Fights actually matter to your party rather than just being a random means to grind up gold and experience. Of course the danger to this is that actual fights will be occurring far less often, and thus you'll want to adjust stats and abilities of troops so that fights are longer and/or harder. Of course this also means completing a battle will provide greater rewards in terms of gold and experience. It may affect how much control a player has to explore, however, in that every portion of a dungeon will be turned into a series of cutscenes that lead into battles. If that's what you want, though, that's fine. I can see a few ways this could be stretched out into longer sequences too. For example, if you eliminate all the ground guards but miss one of the ones in the rafters, he may escape deeper into the fortress and warn a later threat group of your presence, thus forcing some of the later threat battles into a disadvantageous situation without the player being able to do anything about it. Or perhaps you could include secret areas that can only come about when the player goes through a certain threat scenario. You might even be able to recruit someone later on in that area if you don't do a full clear. Anyway. This does seem like it could be a fun and fresh mechanic if done right, so you have my support.

Only thing is, it doesn't tell me where the error occurred. Only "SystemStackError occured" "stack level too deep". No other info. So I guess that means I have to search every method that script uses D: One thing of note is that stating it how you said initially doesn't cause the error, so I suspect it has something to do specifically with calling a particular actor rather than referencing oneself. I may have to have the skill do something else, like switching a variable on via a common event and having the actors gain their states that way, then having the removal of the state trigger that variable to turn off... it's a roundabout way to do things but it's worth a shot.

I do personally think leaving EVERYTHING up to the player would be pretty overwhelming, and might make actual story progression difficult to achieve. You need some sort of framework for them to build onto IMO, and they need to know exactly what the impact of their choices are, as well as what their limitations are. For example, a person may have made their favorite character into a mage gunner, but three quarters of the way through the game decide they want to have him as a tank swordsman since his personality is more fitting of a paladin. However they now have all their stats set to improve the damage done by their guns and magic, so they either have to restart the whole game or choose another character to be their tank. Unless you include a stat and skill reset, in which case the importance of their actions are severely trivialized. A few ideas I think would work really well as far as setting up some limits: - Have your main players already assigned their own classes, but allow them a wide range of subclasses for the player to choose from. For example, they could have their knight subclassed as an archer, a swordsman, a magician, a cleric, a tank, a beastmaster, anything they like. And because they build all the stats themselves, he could be just as good in any role. However, this also gives them the ability to feel like they've made a unique class out of him by combining his nature as a knight with another set of skills to make him a strong war cleric, or a spellsword, or a samurai. It also allows you to do things such as factoring his class into skillmaking, so the formula given to one hero will create a different skill for them than it will on him. And lastly, it'll allow you to solidify his personality without making it seem like his talents are completely in opposition to his personality. You wouldn't have a young girl from Podunk who loves flowers and her dog Sparky become a full-on necromancer unless she had some personal struggle with how her need to kill to attain strength conflicts with her innocent personality. However, she might be okay with having to kill others to protect those she loves, which would let her be okay with being a necromancer if she can use those dark arts to heal and protect rather than just rain DoTs down on the enemy and sell her soul to demonic entities. - On that note, make sure skills actually have limits. This, IMO, isn't something you can just wing it with; you have to know right from the jump what certain aspects of a skill will cost the player. For example, if your max party size is 4 and you have the player choosing All Allies as the scope of a healing spell, it might add a 4.5x multiplier to the mana cost, with the extra 0.5x coming from the convenience of essentially casting four copies of the single-target version of the spell at the same time rather than having to spread the healing across four turns. Or you might add an Over Time effect that'd put on a 0.8 multiplier, so you're sacrificing a bigger heal for some cost effectiveness and a small bit of insurance. Or perhaps you could add a Fire element to that Gunner skill for 1.1x cost, or have it fire off without expending ammo for 1.5x cost. It'd limit the player's options just a bit in the start of the game, as they may not have the mana to fuel that 1000x Attack Power axe technique that strikes all enemies for non-elemental damage that ignores Defense and has a 99% chance to cause instant death. But maybe they'll make a skill like that as a Hail-Mary strike that'd eat up their warrior's mana rather than assign him multiple smaller skills he could spam until the cows come home. - Make sure that both you and the player are fully aware of what each stat does for them. Are you going to have Agility boost the damage of Bows rather than Strength? Have their Stamina boost their HP? Allow classes with certain passives to reduce physical strike damage with their Magic Resist rather than their Defense? Have Guns do set damage that's only altered by the target's Defense? Let the player know that ahead of time through a tutorial or a library in the starting village or a database accessible through the main menu. And make sure you already have all that figured out.

Hmm... well, since you mentioned that your hero is essentially a dead person, perhaps instead of having the souls of each individual class inhabit her body, she could be the one inhabiting other bodies? It could work a little like Quantum Leap, in that the first time she inhabits a person's body she has to learn the ins and outs of that person's life. It may also open the door to certain characters joining forces in the living realm who come to realize you're possessing them, and then it becomes a goal for you to gain your own individual body, like a marionette or robot that you can inhabit, and that could act as a thirteenth "null" class that doesn't actually get inheritable abilities of its own, but can draw from the key abilities of the others. Or perhaps it can develop just enough skills of its own that it can benefit from combinations of others' abilities, but only a few at a time. Essentially it'd work like FF5's Freelancer class, allowing you to choose a combination of abilities from the other characters. In the end that'd put you with a total of thirteen characters you can use, although most likely the heroine will be locked down as an essential character once you have her body made unless she's going to inhabit another person's body to guide them to the main party. If you do something like what I suggested, it'd give you the afterlife as your character's class hub, as it'd be Death himself who would allow you to possess the others. However, it'd require a lot of places where you'd have to put stops to each character's individual plotline any time s/he would meet up with another character that could be possessed. Or you could have a group already assembled where you have to play part of that section through as one character, then you move on to another. For example, you could say the Monk, Priest, and Paladin are members of a monastery, and you initially possess the Paladin. He gets exorcised by the Monk when his group realizes what's going on, only for the exorcism to draw you into the Monk's body, after which point their goal is to find a means to train the Priest to give you a proper exorcism. Of course this ends up with you in HIS body, and during that length they finally decide you need to be sent to some inanimate object to keep them free of your influence. You could do similar plotlines with the rest of the classes too, such as possessing the elementals in turn to try guiding them to the same spot, where they might be able to fuse their abilities into the body that the Monastery party needs to put you into, or guiding the Witch and Wanderer to discover the power to animate the elementals' golem, or guide the Warrior, Gunner, and Lancer to find the proper location to achieve the transfer to the golem. This does bring about the problem of how you'll actually leave the bodies, and how the passage of time in one of the bodies of one group will affect what happens in the other groups. And another issue would be why you can't freely swap out between the members of the Monastery group when you might be able to freely trade yourself between the elementals' bodies. But I'm sure that's something you could work out yourself. But anyway, this also fits well with why you are able to carry the class's passives with you but not most of their skills. Magic and battle techniques would require the right body, whereas a passive effect is more likely imprinted upon your soul, and thus would be carried from body to body. This might actually make the Monastery plotline a good starting point, as you could teach the player how to jump between bodies when the Monk's attempted exorcism fails, and show you how you carry the passives over without gaining the other party members' abilities.

If I wanted to have something like, say, a character graphic overlapping the box on one side, could I use an invisible face graphic for all text boxes to offset the text? Or would the game register a completely transparent face as having nothing there? It'd look a bit awkward IMO if characters' legs were getting overlapped by text. Also, how viable would animated text boxes be? For example, having a few frames of animation for the face for talking, or making the first text box in a conversation phase in?

I apologize, I didn't make it completely clear what the effect is. When Actor 6 is channeling his ability, he's summoning a protective wall for the entire party, not just for himself. Just having it check for state as you wrote it works fine if the ability only affects oneself - in fact that's what I did to get the other passive effect I referenced to work - but I need each character to have the passive's effects if that specific actor is under the effects of his channeling state. As for the effect of breaking his meditating, I want the opposite to happen; he's not going to become immune to those states, he's going to lose the meditation if any of those occurs, and the team by proxy loses the wall state he's channeling onto them. That's easily done with Yanfly's Lunatic States script, so that's no problem.