Hello. My friend and I decided to make a project in RPG Maker VX Ace. He has a fair understanding of Ruby as well as some battle related scripts. However, we were thinking of making a battle system that is away from the ones we have today (the one scripted by the famous scripters out there). We want to make our own. We were thinking of making a side view battle system of our own. However we are stuck on where to start to script it. As experienced RM users, how do battle systems work exactly?
Could you also give your opinions on the different battle systems and if SBS is too much for us, could you give us an idea of a much fair system we can develop?
The hardest part is getting started. It's smart to do some planning before hand. Plan out the battle phases if it's turn based, conditions if it's atb. Then just dive in. Get a background w/ character sprites going. Once you do that, everything will kinda come naturally. You'll start thinking, "welll, what's next" and as you slowly add it, a battle system will form :D
Yeah, the answer "how" totally depends on the type of system you are trying to implement. As was mentioned, typically any type of turn-based system can be broken into phases, similar to how the default system is, but as for any other kind, it is up to the designer.
Really, I wouldn't think of it as some special type of script, just think of it as any other scene, and write/design the script to flow as you would any other scene you were creating. If you have the design concept of what you are trying to accomplish, then simply stick to that and start creating it piece by piece to accomplish that goal.
Also think, Formulas.
if you come to think about it, most battle systems, if you take away all the eye candy, and the animations, and whatnot, in the end
you're left with cold hard equations and formulas.
while I haven't done any battle systems myself, I can still say parameters (such as HP, ATK, DEF, etc...) play a big role on this, before even
considering choosing what type of battle system you'd like to do, ask yourself this:
-how will I handle damage? how does a player's ATK and DEF affect the standard formula?
-how much can a player control on this system? can he move? is he stationary? is it on turns?
-how is a battle dissected? do enemies attack first? what is my priority at the start of the turn?
....the list goes on,
but if I were to choose an absolute starting point I'd say, WIN/LOSE conditions, when does a player win a battle, and when does he lose?
assuming that you're choosing the standard win/lose condition of having all members in one side have 0 HP, next would be, deciding how
to deal damage, selecting a standard formula, sticking to it and whatnot, then add conditions to it,
basically you gotta start from a very simplistic addition/subtraction system, then once you have stabilized it work your way up to the
details, from simple to complex, you get to decide as you build it.
If you decide to go the ATB route, you could try something like this:
# Create a parallel CP Thread
@cp_thread = Thread.new do
while @cancel != true
self.update
sleep(0.05)
end
end
Thank you for all your ideas. My friend and I talked about it and he said he wanted to do something like Asan Tear Battle System, however we want to tweak it so that it looks like Phantasy Star 4, where the battlers animate when they cast or attack spells, but that is where we are at lost. Are animations playing a big role in this system aside from the formulas?
From my experience with making a battle system, you should start by designing a few things beforehand. Let's start with the big picture:
- Are battles turn-based, time-based or a bit of both?
- What is the battle layout going to be like?
- How many playable characters and enemies can battles contain at once?
- Will the battle system be simple or more complex?
- Will battles use some sort of gimmick? (like reaction commands / QTE's and the Judgement Ring system)
Then, let's go to numbers:
- What stats are needed?
- What are the maximum values?
- How will the stats affect each other? (for example, enemy defence to hero strength during an attack)
- What other variables affect the stats? (like equipment, buffs and elemental resistances)
- What kinds of skills can playable characters and enemies use?
When I started actually making my CBS for RPG Maker 2003, I started it in this order:
1. Show HP and MP in the screen.
2. Set character stats.
3. Make algorithms.
4. Make enemy stats.
5. Make the battle menu.
6. Make abilities and their effects.
7. Add turns.
8. Add the possibility to win or lose.
As a final tip for the programming part... use a lot of objects.
For the love of Cthulhu,
use as many objects as fucking possible. It will make your life a lot easier.
This is of course just something that worked for me. I'm definitely not on expert so there are probably better ways to make a battle system.
That's a pretty good list lol.
Quote from: Zexion on January 26, 2015, 04:39:25 pm
That's a pretty good list lol.
Gee, you're making me blush... :shy:
Animations should be the least of your concerns--it's not difficult to write that up. If you're just going to modify an existing battle system, then most of what has been said here can be ignored as they have already been written up for you most likely.
Playing an animation would be as simple as finding the method where an attack/skill is used and playing an animation over the Sprite_Battler graphic while also setting the Sprite_Battler graphic invisible.
Thanks Ranquil and KK20, I appreciate all your help letting me understand such. I will relay this to my friend and see what we can do. I hope we can get the ball rolling once he sees the list :naughty: