[XP] Blizz-ABS

[Hellfire Dragon]

@Blizz no you see I want, like an arrow to shoot out but I don't want the characters to animate... for now anyway until I get some charset for that, but that won't be for a while...

EDIT: I just realized, arrows/other trowing weapons don't have anything to do with those animations setting do they?

[Blizzard]

Since when are projectile sprites action sprites? EDIT: Correct.

@Makasu: Yeah, I know. But you can't separate the attack on critters and enemies. You have to be able to either attack critters along with enemies or not at all. Removing the 3 from that array will make the player unable to attack passive critters.
The positions of the HUD elements are defined in the method "create_positions" (part 3, line 4850). The "draw_SOMETHING" methods handle the drawing of those elements. The main calls for those methods are in the method "update". There are also a few minor calls like "draw_basic" which draw the static template on the sprite first.

[Makasu]

Okay I get what you're saying now. But lets say there is text on the critter. How would I go about making it work so that if I press the action button it would display the text? Or is that not possible?

[Blizzard]

Not yet. So far enemies and critter's event codes are run upon death. I will add custom triggers in Blizz-ABS v2.0. Then you will be able to use any of the 5 default triggers and additional triggers like "on death", "on weapon (ID) use", "on skill (ID) use", "on item (ID) use", "on status (ID) inflict" and a few others if more come to my mind.

I'm also playing with the idea to implement a full custom alignment system which can be configured by the user. i.e. you can create "guards" which will attack you if you attack "NPCs". Or "Defenders" which will attack enemies on sight. In fact this would open a big range of possibilities like creating 3 (or even more) differently aligned groups which attack each other one of them being the player and his party. The main problem here is not the system itself but how to make it work in the configuration application so it can be configured with maximum ease. I would, of course, leave the currently existing 5 groups (party, enemies, critters, aggressive critters, lifeless objects) as default configuration.

[Makasu]

Alrighty! Thanks for the response. Greatly appreciated. But is it true that we have to wait two months for 2.0 to release? :[ but I guess great things take time eh? Hah.

[Blizzard]

I have to find a new flat right now and right after a job. I also want to finish the beta of my game, the new skin for the forum and the homepage. In around 4 weeks I have college exams again which is practically the time where I never do anything besides college. So yes, don't expect anything within the next 2 (probably 3? >.< ) months.

[Hellfire Dragon]

Since when are projectile sprites action sprites? EDIT: Correct.

...

Well I'm getting confused. Okay, the projectiles aren't showing up, that's what I meant in the first place...

[Blizzard]

Have you tried the example game yet? It has normally working projectile sprites.

[Aqua]

The Manual: ShowHide

The spritesets for non-consuming, self-consuming and returning projectile weapons need to be named the same as the weapon's icon file. Spritesets are auto-animated all the time.


example:

icon file name - FlameBow.png
projectile spriteset name - FlameBow.png

Are you sure you have them named like that?

[Hellfire Dragon]

@Blizz&Aqua
Yes

[Makasu]

Okay one more question is there a way to slow down the enemy speed?

I mean I don't want them to have the same speed as the player for like a zombie I'm making. Is this a possible feature?

EDIT:
Nevermind I got it. My mistake.

[winkio]

I'm getting an error when my enemies have the Action's attribute enabled.  it says:

In Blizz ABS v1.99 Part 2: line 3151(may not be the same line as the original, because I've done a ton of edits, although not with the AI)

undefined method 'hp' for nil:NilClass

For reference, here are lines around 3151:

# find all allies in memory
      ai.mem.each {|a| allies.push(a[0]) if positive.include?(a[0].AI_data.basic)}
      # find all enemies in memory
      ai.mem.each {|a| enemies.push(a[0]) if negative.include?(a[0].AI_data.basic)}
      # find all allies who need healing
      to_heal = allies.find_all {|b| b.battler.hp < b.battler.maxhp}
      # if decided to heal
      if (heal.size > 0 && to_heal.size > 0 && (ai.healer || rand(3) == 0) &&
          rand(5) == 0)

line 3151 is:     to_heal = allies.find_all {|b| b.battler.hp < b.battler.maxhp}

I get this error when I am fighting a group of 2 or more enemies, and one of them dies.  this happens about 70% of the time.
So basically, the update of you AI is trying to see if it can heal any allies, then crashes when it finds a dead ally.


Also, I tried redownloading to see if I had the latest fix, but the file is corrupted again :/

[Blizzard]

I will look into that. It's possible that the enemy AI doesn't remove dead allies when the player kills them.

[Joe Rockhead]

Great ideas Blizz - I can already think of tons of killer uses for those features. Have you ever played any of the Fallout games? I really liked the Karma/Reputation system they used. Karma was similar to Alignment except it was measured more like hit points which could be lost or gained.

Characters started at zero which is neither positive nor negative - i,e, neutral. When the character does something that could be considered unlawful or evil Karma points are extracted. When Karma goes below zero and becomes a negative number this effects how various NPCs react. Townsfolk tend to have more positive Karma and thus react negatively to negative Karma while Raiders, Slavers and Criminal elements tend to have more negative Karma and thus react negatively to a positive Karma.

Then there is Reputation which is more specific. Naturally the stigma of negative reputations are nearly impossible to get rid of. For example if the character kills a child in a town he earns the reputation as a child-killer and the extreme hatred that reputation carries with it follows the character everywhere he or she goes like a curse. There are positive reputations as well like Heavy Weight champion of the New Reno boxing circuit or Saviour of the wasteland.

Word of the character's celebrity or heroic status travels fast. But while it can open many doors for the character that would otherwise remain closed it too can also be a curse as the character's anonymity is comprimised thus making it much harder to blend in to a crowd or go unnoticed when situations demand a low profile. I never tried to lose a good reputation so I don't know if that is possible or how difficult it would be. But that is of course up to the game designer in this case.

Obviously Critters or creatures of extremely low intelligence would remain neutral as far as Karma is concerned and the character's karma or rep would have no effect on the critter's reaction no matter how positive or negative.

Not yet. So far enemies and critter's event codes are run upon death. I will add custom triggers in Blizz-ABS v2.0. Then you will be able to use any of the 5 default triggers and additional triggers like "on death", "on weapon (ID) use", "on skill (ID) use", "on item (ID) use", "on status (ID) inflict" and a few others if more come to my mind.

I'm also playing with the idea to implement a full custom alignment system which can be configured by the user. i.e. you can create "guards" which will attack you if you attack "NPCs". Or "Defenders" which will attack enemies on sight. In fact this would open a big range of possibilities like creating 3 (or even more) differently aligned groups which attack each other one of them being the player and his party. The main problem here is not the system itself but how to make it work in the configuration application so it can be configured with maximum ease. I would, of course, leave the currently existing 5 groups (party, enemies, critters, aggressive critters, lifeless objects) as default configuration.

[Blizzard]

My system would actually be more advanced and different. It would feature more than just "good and evil" as you can make 10 different groups hating each other. But on the other side you wouldn't have stuff like reputation, although I think the system could be enhanced in some way to support it. In any case if I ever make this, it will be after v2.0.

[Makasu]

Just out of curiosity [[off topic]] have you happened to glance at the newest version of XAS 3.0 ? I figured it would give you some ideas of things you could add in 2.0 if possible. So just a heads up you should look into it!

http://www.atelier-rgss.com/Index.html

I'm not sure how links work here.

[Joe Rockhead]

I am stuck. I've been trying to do something using Blizz-enabled events [enemies] that normally would be a simple matter in RMXP. All I want to do is have an event using the Blizz /e[ID] syntax but somehow keep Blizz from activatating it until another event turns a certain trigger on. For the trigger I need to use a non-Blizz event that only looks like the enemy but its really just to hold some text and some conditional q&a stuff before triggering the enemy to appear and self-destructing.

My attempts so far have failed. Seems like I tried everything but every time Blizz seems to override the condition I set on an enemy and goes ahead and gives it life before the trigger event has a chance to be triggered. I must be missing something. Probably something really simple right under my nose I'm sure.

Also when you set an event to erase itself at the end of its processing does any triggers it turned on before that stay turned on?

[Shadonking]

do not give the event an id of an enemy, just call it some thing else and in the manual you can find a extra feature there to change names of events in game.

you can use this to rename the event into an enemy within the game.

i havnt got the manual on me at the moment but im sure you can find it in there if you look.

example of how it wounld work.

you have named an event statue so it will not be an enemy but if you click it you can have messages and all the other things events do but at the end of the event proccess there could be a call script part in there (i think that is what it uses) to run the part of blizzards script that changes a certian events name from statue to monster/e[ID] making it into an enemy.

i hope that made sense.

[Joe Rockhead]

Awesome! Yep, made perfect sense. I was certain there was something like that in there I just needed to know what to look for. Thank you so much. 

[Joe Rockhead]

Aha! There it is. It's in section 3.2.12. Renaming Events

Spoiler: ShowHide

In Blizz-ABS you can rename events during the game and apply different behavior with just one command. To rename an event, simply use a Call Script Event Command wih the following syntax:
$game_map.rename_event(EVENT_ID, 'NEW_NAME')
EVENT_ID is the ID of the event that should be renamed, NEW_NAME is the new name of the event which's effect will be applied to the event immediately. Keep in mind that you have to use \\ (double backslash) if you want \ (backslash) to appear in the event's name. i.e. suddenly turning an event into an enemy would need a new name looking like '\\e[45]'. Keep in mind that those renamings are temporary and reset after you re-enter the map.

A search tool built into the HTML Help File would be nice. I didn't think of looking under Utilities for it until it was the last place to look.