Okay, so it's technically possible to do the thing. RPG Maker can keep track of turn counters and learn/unlearn skills.
Buuuuut, it can only do it for one skill at a time, and it can only do it for specific combat encounters. Which means I'd have to make a separate event for each skill and proceed to copypaste each event into every combat encounter I make. That wouldn't be a lot of work right now because I only have four or five skills planned and only two combat encounters up, but it'd get ridiculous and stupid really fast. And I can't try and make a script for it because, despite the dozens of tutorials about RPG Maker, I can't find one that actually teaches you how to write scripts. I know RPG Maker was designed to be accessible for script kiddies, but this is kind of ridiculous.
There is a game somewhere in my cavernous freeware games folder that has something similar to what I want to do, and IIRC it was made in RPG Maker, so I can try to crack that open and derive what I need from there; that's probably my best bet right now. Until then, I'll just stick with the existing combat system.
Hmm. Okay, so I can't crack open that old game, but I can look at what it did and guess at how they did it.
Standstill girl uses a meter called EC, or emotion crystals. You can stack 4 or 5 of them at a time, IIRC. Certain moves increase EC, and certain moves require a certain number of EC as a cost.
If I had to make a guess, EC's derived from the Tech Points system in RPG Maker. So, with some fiddling with that, I might be able to pull it off.
Okay, so I think I may have irrevocably broken the script suite for Izzet Theatre, and I can't find anything on the internet that might help.
At best, this means ten minutes of copying over the script suite with an untouched one from a fresh project. At worst, we gotta start the whole dang thing over again.
In the era after the great shrug, we're making decent progress. We've got ourselves a miniboss; it's sprite consists of some hilariously janky art that I found off the internet, but it's a miniboss nonetheless. I also managed to finally fix an issue with the TP (which was what I was tinkering with when I nearly broke my own game).
Right now, I'm working on adding flavor text to objects and rewriting the script. There's not a lot of space to traverse at this point, so I'm trying to make the available space as interesting as possible.
Haven't been able to work on this since the lappy went bork, but I have some new ideas that are ripe for implementation.
Once the player gets through the first two to three mini-sections (one of which would be, essentially, a better version of what I've already made), you have some choice in what you do next. You'll have major missions, which will allow you to make allies with other guilds. You'll have story missions, which occur once every two or three major missions. And you'll have minor missions. The rewards are less for each individual mission than major missions, but you can do as many minor missions as you want between story missions, and rewards tend to stack over time.
In addition, I now have plans to tinker some more with the equipment. Each non-consumable item can now have a guild tag. PCs who share that tag get an extra bonus. On the flip side, each guild has another guild whose items they can't use.
...Man, I'm not english-ing efficiently right now.
Okay, so say there's an equipment called Boros Breastplate. On your standard PC, it buffs defense at the cost of debuffing magic attack. On a Boros PC, there's no magic attack debuff. And the equipment can't be equipped on Dimir PCs because their colors are in opposition.
It'll probably be easier to set a guild ban for each specific item. Each guild has three possible opposites, after all (Azorius, for example, is opposed by Gruul, Rakdos and Golgari)
School Theatre: Once I make new sprites, I should be able to publish the prologue. All five minutes worth of it.
Izzet Theatre: Postponed indefinitely. Stupid lousy MTG mechanics only make sense with planeswalkers. Translating all of that into mechanics that work with normal people is practically impossible, especially with the limited control I have over the mechanics in RPG Maker. So, maybe remake it with normal mechanics? Unwanted, but it might be what I'll need to resort to.
The five-minute demo should still be accessible if anybody wants to try it and cringe at how bad it is.
Writing:
Hank Anchorman and the Girl Who Talks to Plants: Somewhat serious short story about the social implications of a species becoming sentient. Currently about 30% done?
Faded Stars: The revision of my orphaned Touhou fanfiction. It's...it's fallen behind, let's be perfectly honest.
Music:
EP that I'm being unusually secretive about: About halfway done with the rough draft.
Now that concert #1 is over, I can get back to my EP project, which leads me to thinking about thematic material to extrapolate from.
It is about the sea and whales, obviously, but it is also about adventure, discovery and rebirth, in that order. Arguably, the latter themes are more important than the former. Anyone can make a song about whales. Anybody. Literally anybody. Just slap on some whale samples onto a generic beat. There. Whalesongsong. But interweaving deeper themes, that's a challenge. Especially with the tonal motif I'm trying to hammer into the ground, but let's not talk about that yet.
Anyways, as a result, I'm trying to draw from sources that are not normal sources. For example, do you know what I think of when I think adventure?
Frig, I did not expect anybody to actually play it.
Alright, here's the link. You should be okay'd to look at it.
That build is really outdated though. Like, so outdated that I've changed the protagonist since then. I'll try and finish up the necessary revisions and upload the current build. over Thanksgiving so you can see where I am right now rather than where I was literally months ago.
Managed to fix the conflicting plot lines bit, allowing me to finish most of the dialogue for the introduction. Or, the introduction to the introduction.
Also managed to crank out sprites that are suitable for the girl. Had to switch out the cornrows for a stylized buzzcut, but it'll do nicely. Jester's being uncooperative. Game Character Hub doesn't have Jester clothes, you see. But I think I have something workable coming up. I'll have to do the finishing touches in Paint.Net, but it'll do for a prototype.
Probably won't upload it until I get home. Internet service here is cruddy enough without putting that kind of strain on it. But when I do, it'll actually be complete.
I'm really impressed with the hairstyle for The Girl. Had to root around in the "male haircuts" section for it, because apparently no girl in RPGLand has ever had their hair short ever.
I'm really impressed with the hairstyle for The Girl. Had to root around in the "male haircuts" section for it, because apparently no girl in RPGLand has ever had their hair short ever.
I'm actually quite happy with the Girl's current style. It's not what I planned for, but it has a nice look to it. Like she means business without seeming too feminine.
If you could help with making an actual jester hat, we'd be in business. I'm okay with the turban, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a turban and not a proper jester hat.
The battle system's not implemented yet -- probably going to have to rehash the entire thing from scratch -- and a lot of stuff is unfinished, and the music is largely placeholder stuff, but at least you can get a feel for what we've got so far.
That's one of two things. If the words are getting cut off, then I misjudged the length of one of the text lines. The system doesn't indent them for you because [templates like that are forbidden], instead giving you a rough range in which your text might be too long.
If the bubbles themselves are decreasing in size, then it's a quirk of one of the mod scripts I added. I don't like it, but it's the only way I know to get those name bubbles.
This example wasn't that bad, it continues like this though, and soon whole words start being left out and I can't follow the story of a game I can't read >.>
So, the aforementioned mod also changes the font because of silly reasons. I manually changed it back to the default, but apparently that wasn't packaged with the compression, so it's now using Courier New, which is a notoriously wide font.
Have each step of a quest award a certain amount of an item, and then you take those items to the Move Tutor for moves, and use the Move Tutor to swap out moves you're not using. Battles aren't based around getting stronger; they're based on finding the right combination of moves.
And to ensure that your actions have consequences, certain moves can only be bought if you've been doing actions that promote that kind of action. If you spend all your time beating the crap out of foes and random people alike, you don't get to buy the fancy negotiation skill, and likewise, the peacemonger won't get the high-risk/high-reward attack move.
Clock found a bug in my "set The Girl to attack mode" button.
Realizing now that it would be better to set the button to lay out a hit in whichever direction The Girl is facing. Also, less troublesome than the label method I have set up now.
No idea how to do it though.
...Lain. In Lain's Horrible Adventure, there's a bit where you can equip a holy water bottle from the menu, and when you press A, it splashes holy water in front of you. Something like that'd work.
Comments
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Have each step of a quest award a certain amount of an item, and then you take those items to the Move Tutor for moves, and use the Move Tutor to swap out moves you're not using. Battles aren't based around getting stronger; they're based on finding the right combination of moves.
And to ensure that your actions have consequences, certain moves can only be bought if you've been doing actions that promote that kind of action. If you spend all your time beating the crap out of foes and random people alike, you don't get to buy the fancy negotiation skill, and likewise, the peacemonger won't get the high-risk/high-reward attack move.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead