At last the character with the most complicated and extensive systems is complete, I guess I can ease up a bit and get around to updating some scripts. Anyway let’s have a look at my progress since the last update.

Progress Report:

• Added different tiers and styles of attack. – Similar to Chrono Cross where you had three tiers of attack. I’ve expanded on it by having three styles, Power, Skill (multi-hitting) and Magic (which hits all enemies).
• Finished implementing the anti-grind code (a raising level cap)
• Completed coding the Monster Master class.
• Created the Monsters that can join you in battle but still some work to be done on them.

Credit to Holder for the Monster’s battlers.

I have updated Niall’s page with the information about his skills and resource.

So what we get to see here is a few battles and there are a few instances of the tiered attack system. Any how being as this update is meant to be about Niall let’s look at his skill system, resource and item restriction. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned the item restrictions before so I’ll just quickly summarise them, I’ve taken the idea from Phylomortis where each character had a restriction on item usage in battles. My reasoning is items can too easily turn a losing battle into a winning battle and I would rather careful planning and intelligent skill use turn the flow of battle. As such in battle each character will have a restriction placed on their item use. Some can have a positive effect on the items while at the same time restricting them.

Skill System

As a Monster Master Niall has the ability so summon one of his monsters to aid the party in battle. After a successful encounter against Monsters he has a chance to acquire a new monster. Niall has access to most of the skills his summoned monster has access to and if his Synchronisation is high enough then he has access to most of the skills that all his monsters have access to.

He can level his Monsters up which in turn allows them to learn more skills provided both Monster and Master with more skills to use in battle. Initially Niall can keep six monsters at any one time but this amount can be increased.

Resource

I wanted to keep Niall’s resource simple being as his complexity all comes from managing his monsters. Niall’s resource is called Synchro which represents how well he is synchronised with his monsters, using a skill his summoned monster has access to raises Synchro by 10% but using a skill the active monster doesn’t have access to lowers Synchro by 5%. Normally Niall only has access to his summoned Monster’s skills but when Synchro is 50% or more then he can access skills from all his monsters.

Item Restriction

Item x is Niall’s item restriction and is pretty straight forward, in each battle he is allowed to use x items. Initially this will be 1 but can be raised to 4 through equipping certain accessories.

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Welcome to another exciting instalment of my development log. Before I start getting into the characters and their systems I thought I would briefly look at the battle system I will be using. I’m going to carry on as though you’ve watched the video so you should probably watch it. As I said yesterday it is heavily inspired by Chrono Cross, I should probably have renamed MP to ST for the video but apparently I forgot. The way the battle system works is that every action costs a certain amount of ST and it recovers over time (or it will) and everyone else recovers 1.0 ST when you complete your action. There are a few bugs to finish ironing out, in fact inbetween the video uploading and me posting this I fixed a bug where if you had negative ST and were attacked you would recover all the way back to 0. No comments about the over powered nature of Sorcery, it will have a resource called Multiplier and Deluge will eventually require a highish Multiplier. The only current visual changes I have planned are shifting the character selection to the battlers and doing something to the battle log, though I’m not sure what.

Also the popups script shown in the video is Victor Saint’s script, I’m not fond of programming graphical scripts and his popups are just fantastic. So I’m using his script, no point in re-inventing the wheel.

I don’t usually mention what the other RPG Maker people are up to, I kind of figure you already know but I have to mention Kread-EX because Kread-EX has made a script virtually identical to one I had planned, Runic Enchantment. I was planning to make something similar as an add-on to my Individual Equipment script but now I don’t have to because Kread-EX has made a compatibility patch between the two scripts. Great work Kread-EX! Meaning you can individually Rune up each piece of equipment!

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So it’s Spring and it’s time to get to work on my RPG. It’s called A Monster Odyssey and I’ve made a page with a bit of back story and a few other things. Although there are nine playable characters (not counting monsters) you will never be able to get all nine in any one play through, one of my goals with each of the characters is to make them each play differently and develop differently. Hopefully I’m up to the challenge. Anyway for this first entry I thought I’d go through the games that I know consciously have influenced me with this game.

Final Fantasy XIII-2
This is one of the games I’m currently playing and I can’t believe I held off buying it now. It improves on XIII in all the ways that mattered to me. The main thing I’m taking from this is the monster fighting with the party mechanic.

Chrono Cross
The other game I’m really playing right now. I’m almost certainly going to be stealing a big chunk of it’s battle system. Part of my reason for having so many characters is this game, my personal opinion is that the ideal number of party members is two times the battle party size (take one if the main character can’t be removed from it). My battle party size is three plus one monster (I might decide to allow two monsters later on but currently I’m against it), so naturally I’ve thrown my own opinion out. Like Chrono Cross you will never ever have to recruit the random female that turns up out of nowhere (looking at you Kid).

A Blurred Line
Who isn’t influenced by this? While my story telling is no where near Lys’s level I hope to capture the same feeling of choices and uniqueness of each character. I do get the benefit from being able to use scripts to seamless systems rather than clunky event systems though.

Phylomortis: Avante Garde
Again this is more to do with unique character skill systems but I should warn you that I will be borrowing RPG Advocate’s stance on in battle item usage and approach. This was the game that convinced that it was worth upgrading to XP for the ability to script.

Master of the Wind and Kinetic Cipher
Put together purely because I would be saying the exact same thing for both of them, these two games have influenced all my ideas about dungeon design for years I can only hope to produce dungeons half as good.

Anyway now I’ve looked at my influences for this project I think I will look at why I’m pretending to myself that this game will ever see the light of day. I’ve never managed to stick with a game long enough in the past to even produce a demo (not as bad as it sounds, I’ve only tried a few times, certainly no more than 5 times where I got past the scripting). I think my problem has been that I’m very laid back and I’ve always let games slide until I just stop working on them. I’m going to try and stick to a schedule this time, my goal is a demo by the end of Spring, Tuesday the 19th of June. I’d like to think it’s realistic. However I think the main reason I stand a chance is that I’m a lot more mature since I last worked on a project. Anyway see you next update.

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