Combat Text Crawl

[Emersomatic]

               Okay, so, just a warning: I'm the type of user who doesn't like having to deal with really big numbers, doesn't know programming jargon, and at the moment has very little interest in scripts. I use RMVX Ace since just after Xmas, '13, and so far I haven't coded a single thing into scripting since I have NO IDEA what ANYTHING does in the script.

               Also, I'm going on a bit of a rant here. I've marked its beginning and end, so feel free to skip it. On that note, if you do read it, you don't have to like my opinion, but you didn't have to read it in the first place. 

               That said, I do believe that I could learn programming language given enough time, but I'm planning on pitching a commercial idea for a game VERY soon, and I just don't have time to learn it in order to do something that I think should be very simple.

               The game I'm making does use the combat system, and while I have my own personal gripes with the artistic style of the default battlers, the concept of a completely first-person battle screen in a largely menu-based RPG, and the lack of character portraits for the party and pointers for targets, most of those issues I can probably set aside for now in order to deal with the big one.

----------------------------------------BEGINNING OF CRITICAL RANT-------------------------------------------

               See, the combat system is quite adequate for most RPGs, but there's one thing that's just unforgivable for several reasons: everything happens too fast for you to comprehend what's going on!

Reasons for Unforgivability: (in order of most forgivable first, to least forgivable last)

1: The numbers that the combat system deals in by default are very, VERY big numbers. It is impossible to watch the skill/item animation, and read the usage message to determine who's doing what, and read the number to notice what's happened, and interpret the number as a sentimental value; i.e. 100 damage = 'Well that was weak' and 2,500 damage = 'ZOMG critical hit!' Obviously you can work around this by just starting from scratch and manually changing all of the numbers for A) Character Stats, Enemy Stats, C) Stat Boosts from Weapons and Apparel, and D) Effects of Usable Items, to be much lower, like a tabletop game; i.e. 1 damage = 'Well that was weak' and 25 damage = 'ZOMG critical hit!' So I'm not quite as miffed about that as I could be, but that process is still pretty annoying, especially if your basic arithmetic skill isn't so good (like mine).

2: A Turn-Based RPG is NOT fast-paced! One of the main reasons people still play turn-based games (outside of the nostalgia crowd) is that they want something that's slow and decisive, not quick and flashy. I sympathize with these people and want the same thing. I want the fighting to be tense, a bit scary, and strategic without being too mathematical. Whoever decided that the text crawl should go by so damn fast obviously didn't think the whole thing through. They just thought, "Kids these days like things to be quick and hard to comprehend, right? We're being so hip and modern here! " -_- I know the ADD crowd is highly profitable, but RPGs are not made for people with short attention spans.

3: I can see no way of slowing it down without scripts. That's kind of a problem in the creation tool that people get because they want to make something in their own unique way. Why is there not just some option in the database menus to determine how quickly everything goes in battle? Why do I have to make a special request to the community in order to fix such a seemingly simple, yet principle issue?

Whooo. Okay, I really needed to get that out of my system. And before you send me those angry comments about how I'm a hater and just here to rage against something that's a great service to us lowly mortals and is totally flawless in every conceivable way and how I should be so grateful and blah blah blah, just let me say: No. I don't hate RM. I love the very notion of RM's existence. But it (or at least RMVX Ace) isn't exactly perfect, and yes, there are some deliberate choices in the design of the system which I do believe counteract the intention of the program, directly or otherwise. Such as the incredibly small screen sizes that you can have, among what's mentioned above.

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               Okay, so you might have figured out from ^^^^^ exactly what my problem is, but just in case you didn't read it, or want a specific instruction, basically I want there to be some dead space between one combat action and the next, so that the player can actually both watch the animation, and read the text crawl, as opposed to having everything flash by the screen so quickly that you can't even chose whether to watch the flashy animation or read what's supposedly happening.

               As stated before, I have absolutely no experience in scripting, and don't really have time to learn it either, so please don't just post a code all on its own with nothing else, or tell me technical jargon I won't even understand. I've only gotten a look at the script menu before chickening out, and need to know exactly where to put a code if you post an edited script or what to edit if you're just telling me to go find a number and change it. Also, I've already tried just putting the dead space in the animations themselves, and am dissatisfied with the results, so please don't waste typing time just to treat me like an idiot. Of course altering the animation had already occurred to me. Doing that just leaves an awkward pause between a hit animation and the damage effect, if you must know.

               The most important part of my request is that I'd like to know how to change the combat speed myself, whether that's by giving me code to copy & paste, or fool-proof instructions on what to change in the script, I need to know how to find it, because in the copypasta case, your interpretation of 'comprehensible' is probably different from mine, especially with my custom text crawl messages.

               Now, I really don't want to clutter the forums with my topic, so as soon as my issue is resolved, I'd like for this topic to be open for discussion about whatever the community sees fit. As long as it somehow traces back to Combat Text Crawl, I guess. Point being, as soon as I get my slower combat, you guys can do whatever you want with this topic.

                                                               Thank you for your time,

                                                                                           -- Maddock

               AND FOR THE TL;DR-ERS:

                                   Screw you. You're not fit to help someone if you don't even have the patience to hear out their problems.

 

[Kyutaru]

Easiest way to customize the combat is by using Yami's Battle Symphony.  It allows you to create custom animations for every skill in the game if you so choose, and you can time the animations more properly.  You have full control of the animation through simple notetag coding which you can learn from reading his manual.  He even includes a few examples that are each like five seconds long.

The issue with doing what you want is the complexity of the animations isn't something newbies or soloers are going to want to tackle.  High end RPGs have extremely detailed animations with hundreds of frames, some lasting entire minutes or longer.  Things like Limit Breaks especially become lengthy and time expensive to produce, yet without them you'll have useless dead space.  What really adds the most minutes though are enemy attacks.  Every enemy in a typical modern RPG has a fully animated attack sequence while enemies in RPG Maker are pictures that don't even move.  Making a custom animation for every single enemy attack is possible and easy with Battle Symphony, but you can also just make your own animations and assign them to the enemy skills.  Trouble here is you will require an animator because enemies don't have bone structures or models that you can manipulate in RPG Maker.  So virtually every DECENT animation you make will be enemy specific and useless for other enemies.  You can stick with the style of animation that comes default in the game, but there's only so many flashy light effects you can do in the span of an enemy's attack before the player gets bored.

Sorry if this wasn't the answer you were hoping for, but controlling the animations is your best way of extending battle time.  I would also advise getting rid of the stupid damage text messages and replacing them with Yanfly's Battle Engine which will float the damage over the enemy's head instead.  It does the same for status effects and elemental weaknesses so it delivers the information more directly than a crummy damage log box.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@Kyutaru - Nah, easiest way is Yanfly's... You can even use it without setting up, so it is EASIER... hahahaha


1) It deals BIG numbers because your formulas result to that. if you want smaller numbers: either change the formulas, or make your units have really low stats... Now if you do find that tedious, uhm, Welcome to Game Development... Game Development is a tedious process bro, and database is a huge part of your game... and really, if you want a full customized game, you will probably not use any of the default database entries... so I don't see the problem there


2 and 3) oh well... yeah. but then again, as I always like to say, Scripting is part of the default features of the engine... don't shy away.


anyway, I'd just like to say this again: Welcome to the tedious and super time-consuming world of Game Development

 

[Emersomatic]

Easiest way to customize the combat is by using Yami's Battle Symphony.  It allows you to create custom animations for every skill in the game if you so choose, and you can time the animations more properly.  You have full control of the animation through simple notetag coding which you can learn from reading his manual.  He even includes a few examples that are each like five seconds long.

VV

 ... Also, I've already tried just putting the dead space in the animations themselves, and am dissatisfied with the results, ... Of course altering the animation had already occurred to me. Doing that just leaves an awkward pause between a hit animation and the damage effect...

Additionally to ^^, if I put the dead space before the rest of the animation, that means that the text would appear for a few seconds, and then the animation would play normally, like the default. That's not what I want.

Let me try to illustrate a bit better:

By default the combat animations go like this, using the animation "Slash Physical" for example: "Previous move ends, Text appears, Slash anim, Damage anim, Next move."

I want this process to slow down a bit, so that there is a delay at the end of each move in a round. Altering the animations (as far as the default database menu goes) results in poorly-placed delays.

If I put empty frames onto the end of each animation, that leaves a bizarre pause between the "slash" animation and the animation of the enemy flashing to imply that they received damage, so it goes "Previous move ends, Text appears, Slash anim, Pause, Damage anim, Next move."

If I put the empty frames at the beginning of each animation, that leaves a pause at the beginning of each turn, resulting in a "Previous move ends, Text appears, Pause, Slash anim, Damage anim, Next move." This does allow the player to read the text, but only before the animation plays, which is just odd. I want the move to start with the animation, not end with it. What I think would work best is a 1-2 second delay at the end of each move: "Previous move ends, Text appears, Slash anim, Damage anim, Pause, Next move" or "Previous move ends, Text appears, Pause, Slash anim, Damage anim, Pause, Next move." Unfortunately the only way to do that without a script to force a delay at the end of a move, would be to add dead space onto the end of the enemy damage animation, and I don't think there's any way to do that in RMVX's basic menu.

Sorry I wasn't a bit more descriptive with that part.

The issue with doing what you want is the complexity of the animations isn't something newbies or soloers are going to want to tackle.

Actually, I'm not planning on soloing it, As I've said, right now I'm just pitching the idea, and then I'll be looking for a team to overhaul the art, animation and sound. I'm spending enough time writing the story, designing maps, and managing enemies, skills & items. I've decided this game is going to be the big break through the glass ceiling, and while there will be smaller, less ambitious games in the meantime to get attention in the gaming community (they'll all be non-commercial though), I still want to keep that distinctively tense pace I described in all the games I do on RM.

 

High end RPGs have extremely detailed animations with hundreds of frames, some lasting entire minutes or longer.  Things like Limit Breaks especially become lengthy and time expensive to produce, yet without them you'll have useless dead space.  What really adds the most minutes though are enemy attacks.

I understand the assumption that I'm trying to replicate the Golden Age of Final Fantasy, but it's not that kind of ambitious project. I don't want to ramble too long, so I'll summarize it like this: the game(s) I'm trying to make are Low Fantasy, not High Fantasy. Although I may end up trying a Supers game in addition to that, which would probably require said team of artists and programmers.

 

Sorry if this wasn't the answer you were hoping for, but controlling the animations is your best way of extending battle time

I don't want to make the battles longer; I want to make them slower. They're not too short by default; they're too fast by default. I don't want to sound smarmy, but I'm just not sure anyone else understands what I'm trying to say.

 

I would also advise getting rid of the stupid damage text messages and replacing them with Yanfly's Battle Engine which will float the damage over the enemy's head instead.  It does the same for status effects and elemental weaknesses so it delivers the information more directly than a crummy damage log box.

Huh. That actually sounds like a really good mod. I'll definitely check that out. Thanks. 

1) It deals BIG numbers because your formulas result to that. if you want smaller numbers: either change the formulas, or make your units have really low stats... Now if you do find that tedious, uhm, Welcome to Game Development... Game Development is a tedious process bro, and database is a huge part of your game... and really, if you want a full customized game, you will probably not use any of the default database entries... so I don't see the problem there

VV

Obviously you can work around this ... So I'm not quite as miffed about that as I could be, but that process is still pretty annoying, especially if your basic arithmetic skill isn't so good (like mine).

To clarify, I put that reason first because I know it's just whining about something I can easily fix myself, but it couldn't hurt to at least address it. Sorry.

 

Again, I know that I could learn programming, but right now I just want a quick fix for a small issue.

 

[Kyutaru]

VV
Additionally to ^^, if I put the dead space before the rest of the animation, that means that the text would appear for a few seconds, and then the animation would play normally, like the default. That's not what I want.

Hahaha!  I know that, man, that's why I suggested Yami's Battle Symphony.  You think I didn't read your trial of adding dead space?  Symphony tags don't use the existing animations, they're an entirely new KIND of animation process.  You have full control over WHEN the damage is dealt, WHEN the text floats, and even IF it floats at all.  Everything you said afterwords is just evidence that you need to try animating with Symphony tags, it'll solve your problem.  Heck, you can do the entire animation and then play the damage five seconds LATER if you wanted.  Or do the damage at the beginning followed by insane combo animation graphics.  Or time it to each hit.  It's completely up to your skill at timing frames.
With mastery over the Symphony tags, you can also slow down, speed up, complicate, or simplify combat.  I didn't suggest you were trying for Golden Age Final Fantasy's over the top moves, I'm just saying that animations are what slow down combat, even the simplest kind where an enemy runs up and smacks the hero in the face.  Most RPGs now, that would take at least 2 seconds minimum, completely animated, giving the player plenty of time to "realize" what just happened.  The Yanfly Battle Engine floating damage is also a staple of modern rpgs and you can control how long the text lasts.

 

[Emersomatic]

I do intend to try the mod you mentioned. It's just that my schedule's been unexpectedly packed in the past few days. Still, thanks for the reference.