GodSword

[XPhater]

No upload today, but a progress update.  Act 2 is roughly 33% done, but an issue has come up that has set things back a bit.

I'd originally intended to introduce Summon Monsters in Act 2, implemented via Gemstones that Magic Users could equip and then gain Summon Spells.  Kind of like a hybrid bastardization of Final Fantasy and Pokemon.  Thren would have a pocket full of empty Summon Gems that he would capture monster essence in after a boss fight or whatever.  Monsters would start as little baby monsters, grow as they level up, learn new skills, have different elemental properties, and eventually become large boss versions similar to the boss you defeated in order to gain them.  You could even assign AP to them at the Knight guy!

Everything works fine until you actually go to summon your new pet.  This is a combination of issues involving Yanfly State Animations, and Yanfly Party System.  For starters, whenever a battle is initiated, the Max Member Variable would go from 4 to 5, so that a free party slot would become available for your monster.  I have Yanfly Party System allowing the use of Formation Command starting in the Tombs area of Act 2.  This script doesn't shift active party members to fill empty slots; i.e. if you have a party of 4, and remove the 3rd member, the 4th member is still in slot 4, though in a battle scene they appear 3rd.  Once a monster is summoned, it fills the first empty Slot, in this example, Slot 3.  When this happens, the party member in Slot 4 shifts position onscreen, as the newly summoned Monster shoves him or her out of the way.

That looks wonky on its own, but if the shifted party member has a visible State Animation, it causes Yanfly State Animations to crash with a nilclass error.  So right now the decision must be made between:

Summon Monsters /OR/ Formation Command + State Animations

Since Formation Command and State Animations are both what I consider to be core features of a side-view battle system, Summon Monsters are getting sidelined, at least for the time being.  If the nilclass State Animations crash is ever resolved, or a way to have the Party System automatically shift actors up to fill empty Slots becomes possible, then Summon Monsters will return.

Since it doesn't look like this is going to make it in, I looked around for an alternative, and installed DoubleX Unison Skills.  Starting in Act 2, it will be possible to launch combination Spells utilizing 2 or more characters to cast more powerful spells.  I always liked this aspect of Phantasy Star IV, whereas characters onscreen cooperate in battle together, even though they don't alwasy get along outside of battle.  Another reason I like this sort of feature is that All Spells, by nature, are overpowered, but requiring multiple characters to perform them helps to balance them out.  Lastly, it's just fun to do them.

Since the installation of DoubleX Unison Skills will require a restart, I'm taking this opportunity to do some database reorganization.  Skills are grouped together a little bit differently, which will result in better grouping in battle menus.  I'm also considering a reorganization of Weapons and Armors.  Currently they are grouped in the database by Type; however, when you get to the Shop it can get confusing to understand what exactly you are selling, since a Tier 2 Heat Blade will appear higher up the list than a Tier 5 Broadsword, for example.  Grouping by Tier instead of Type would ensure that high Tier items are always at the top of the list, but this would be a pretty massive overhaul.  The next upload won't be available until I decide whether or not to do this.

 

[XPhater]

There's a lot packed into today's update, but a lot of it is under the hood.  It started with my planned Summon Monsters not getting along with Yanfly Party System and State Animations, causing a crash if a monster was summoned while a party member had a visible State Animation.  So I looked around for some other way to provide Ultimate Battle Options in the late game (planning ahead here) and decided on DoubleX Unison Skills.  You won't see any in the current playable portion of Act 2, but I plan to start introducing them about halfway through Act 2.  I've tested these in Newbie Lowbieland and they work great.  So we'll have those to look forward to!

This does, however, require a restart.  So I took this opportunity to do as much as possible with the systems themselves.  One of these projects was a massive Database reorganization.  Previously, Weapons and Armours were grouped together by type; All the Spellswords, then all the Broadswords, then all the Greatswords, etc.  While this made it convenient to design and balance them all, when you were ingame looking at the Shop or Equip menus, it could be hard to keep track of what was what.  I have now ordered them by Tier List, and subsequently by type, so that the best stuff is always at the top of your Shop or Equip lists!  This should make it much easier to tell at a glance what is worth keeping.  Do note, of course, that Accessories are still under main Armour pieces, so they will always be listed together independantly of Tier List.

Skills received similar treatment; previously they were listed in order of FP cost; now that I can color code Skills by category, I have grouped many of them together, as per category.  Do note that, similarly to Accessories in the Armour list, Equip Skills are their own grouping, and will appear above any character-specific Skills.

Spellswords got a complete overhaul; many of them were combined, a few new ones were added, and Attack Ratings were increased across the board.  Dana can now equip all of them.

Gauntlets, Spellgloves, Spellshields, Bucklers, Bulwarks, and Spellsword wielded in offhand, all got direct comparisons and rebalances, to ensure that they all provide superiour advantages to their respective stats.  Spellshields are now the definitive MDF offhand, Spellgloves the definitive MAT offhand, Bucklers the definitive Phys DEF offhand, and so on, etc.

A handful of other scripts were installed, since the opportunity was here to do so.  Yanfly Lunatic Objects and the Give & Take Package were added, which allow battlers to steal buffs and states from each other.  Selene now gets an alternative to Purify, called Absolve.  Instead of purging the negative States and Debuffs from an ally, she can now take them upon herself.  She can then use her new spell Holy Blast to Purify herself by transferring all of her negative States and Debuffs onto her target!  And even receive a modest damage buff to the spell for each transferred State or Debuff.  At level 15 she learns Allabsolve, which no doubt will come in very handy.

Shan keeps the traditional Purify.  She also gets a similar spell to Holy Blast, called Soul Blast.  Shan can use this to Purify herself similarly to Holy Blast, but rather than transferring States like Selene, she gets a larger damage bonus for each Purified State.

Donna has received a few new abilities.  Cripple replaces Obliterate, which she will now learn along the way.  Most of her skills will be picked up as she levels.

Yanfly Hide Skills was added, to hide Unison Skills until they are available.  Given the potential for all kinds of combinations of characters who may or may not be in the Active Party at any given point in time thanks to the addition of Formation Command with Yanfly Party System, it was best to hide them to clear up Skill List clutter.

DisturbedInside's combination of Yanfly Status Menu with Tsukihime's Elements has been added, so you can see how fubar Elemental Attribute handling in VX Ace really is.  There is a minor bug with this script which was never resolved, and that is if you cycle through actors with pageup/pagedown, the Elements page doesn't clear itself and keeps stacking up until you exit the menus altogether.  I looked over the script and don't have the slightest idea how to fix this.

Zerbo Title Screen and Casper Game Info were added to spruce up the Title Screen with some extra options.  I have an idea of how to spruce it up a bit more; I'll play around with it a bit next week.  It's nothing major, but might look pretty nice.

On to the fun stuff!  Act 2 is roughly 1/3 of the way completed.  I've decided to go ahead and open it up to playable content, as a boon for having an update that requires a restart.  Of course, as this is a work in progress, everything is always subject to change!  But I will continue to keep the process as restart-free as possible.  That's why I did all this stuff at once.

At the end of Act 1, you will be reminded that, if you play past that point, be sure to save in another file location.  I don't expect savefiles past that point to become invalid, but Act 1 End has always been the safety cutoff point for progress updates, as a lot of stuff gets initialized at the start of an Act.  The end of Act 2 Sneak Peak is a good safety cutoff I suppose; my only concern is that Thren may not yet be fully fleshed out, and may get some more Skills added to his repertoire later.  A brief test, however, showed that any Skills added to a Class Skill List WILL be applied at Level Up, so long as a character has not yet reached that Level; so I don't see any real problem here.  He's got Skills allocated up to Level 19, and you may be 14-15 by the time you get to the end.  (He gets a Skill at 15 but it's not usable atm; that is fine it can be used later no problem).

This overhaul took the better part of a week to do and test, but I THINK I've got everything worked out.  Feel free to complain if something bothers you.

 

[XPhater]

Today's update includes numerous quality improvements which I noted during my most recent playtest:

-Bug Fix - Yanfly Enemy Levels: Yanfly's Script has an error mixing up Gold and Exp with each other.  This is now fixed!

-Bug Fix - Yanfly Lunatic States: Yanfly's Script has an error with Drain States stacking with non-Drain States.  This is now fixed!

-Bug Fix - Sale% was referencing a variable assigned to Selene's Level.  This is now fixed!

-Added a small addon by Blackmorning84 that shows Hit and Crit in the Yanfly Equip Window!

-Added Galv's Level Bonuses, a very short script that allows for certain equips to provide permanent stat bonuses if they are equipped at Level Up.  This does not require a restart.

-A new Gemstone type, GrowGem, has been added into the Database.  These are Gemstones that do not provide any immediate benefits, but if they are equipped at Level Up, bestow a permanent stat boost to the wearer.  These Gems are destroyed afterwards, so be selective who you give them to!  GrowGems will start appearing ingame after the Act 2 Breakpoint.

-Found a short addon by TheoAllen to Yanfly Victory Aftermath, which adds an icon to the Gold loot!

-Fixed issue with Fly handling at Breakpoint.  If you saved at Breakpoint, simply Activate the Save Crystal to fix Fly.

-The Boss Aibat now summons reinforcements via Force Action, so as to not interfere with his normal actions.

-While kicking Tessa's Head, the head kicker can now trade places with the button holders.

-In the Calhanna Streets of Act 2, Power will now allow you to set Selene's AP even though she is not currently in the party.

-Holy Force and Soul Force previously only gave +15% Heal Bonus to Shan and Selene.  Heal Spells have now received custom damage formulas to ensure that the bonus applies to ANY character who receives a heal from them.  Additionally, the damage formulas themselves has been revised to provide some modest scaling by including the caster's level into the equations.

-Regen's initial hit is now comparable to its tick amount.

-Aibats will now drop the Phat Lewt Item:  Ai of Bat, Value: 72G.

-The Demon Commander now uses (and drops) a Bronze Absclay instead of an Iron one.  (I actually stealth patched this several days ago, so it may not apply to your version).

-Increased Gold drops in the Ice Caves.

-Helmet and Offhand Armour Pieces have received a price cut.

-Rebalanced Broadswords, Greatswords, and Claymores, to promote greater diversity between them.

-The 100% Party Favour Bar buff to FP is now activated.  Characters and enemies with a full Favour Bar will now receive +25% MaxFP for the duration of Max Mode.  Additionally, FP Regen is increased by 10%.  What this all boils down to is that while in Max Mode, more powerful Skills will be easier to use, as having 7 or more Max FP will grant +2 per Turn, rather than +1.

-Have an Escape skill for Thren, but brief test showed some funky mechanics so I don't know if I'm going to implement it.  Out of about ten attempts, one of them said the party escaped, the battle music changed to the map music, but the battle did not end.  Unsure what exactly the issue was but that shouldn't have happened.  It was probably due to the Aibat event activating battle when it shares your coordinates.  It looks like the Escape Skill simply removes Party Members from the battle, then truncates it.  This is probably a Character Effects crash waiting to happen.  Additionally, if a character fails to be removed, they are on their own, and if they lose the battle, you get Game Over.  More testing will follow before I make a decision on this skill.

 

[XPhater]

I'm not dead yet!  But I have been sleeping a lot.  I ate half a turkey sandwich and an allergy pill, then next thing I knew it was 18 hours later and time to go to bed.

There's not a lot left on the Fix List, which means I can start putting more focus onto actual progression.  Something weird I have noticed about Mediafire, though, whenever I upload now it produces extra "patch files".  Does this mean you could simply download those instead of the main file?  That's great if so, but just today it made TWO patch files for one upload.  So I don't know WTF is up with any of that.  Then later I fixed a bug and reuploaded, and it didn't make ANY patch files.  The lack of control over it is what's really strange.

Well here's today's patch notes:

-Squashed a potential crash before it becomes an ingame issue:  When a DoubleX Confused actor uses a Skill that has the Galv <pfavour> notetags, it causes Yanfly Skill Effects to crash.  Yeah, I don't even know wtf those have to do with each other.  Removing the <pfavour> notetags stops the crash.  So Heal Skills won't add Party Favour now.  I'd considered the possibility of exchanging stock Heals for alternate pfavourless versions during affected battles, but that sort of inconsistency seems a bit unfair.  This wasn't an issue on the Trails because the Blindfold was auto-equipped to Shan, and it prevents Confusion.  The upside to this is that now we can throw in a random Harpy or two as the game progresses, rather than having them be a one-time only gimmick.

-Added Dekita's Battle Weather Effects.

-When using Fly on the Mountain Trail, the Snow weather effect was not turned off.  This is now fixed.

-Cleaned up Aibatt battle event processing, removing lines that had to do with Summon Monsters as added party members.

-A new Passive Skill, Bodyguard, has been added to characters who have the Substitute/Cover attribute.  Donna will get this skill added in an existing game by simply continuing along the path after Breakpoint.

-Slight revisions to a few lines of dialogue, to provide a better idea of things.

-Spotted Mushrooms, which raise a character's Max HP by +30, will now also fill it.

-Donna's Bronze Absclay was appearing as a Greatsword on her battler.  This is now fixed.

-Donna has received some additional utility on her special attacks.

-Added TheoAllen's Yanfly Victory Aftermath BGM Switcher, which assigns a variable to the Victory Music.  This allows for some scenes to have persistent BMGs, which play uninterrupted throughout battles and victories.

-Purchased the Rebel Rapture Music Pack by Murray Atkinson.  Some of his music is now used ingame.

-Kasthra's gag reel has been added to the Campfire scene.

As always, you can simply continue on with your existing Save File; there's nothing on the table now or in the future which would require a restart.

Since I'm not Fixing as much at this point, updates will be fewer and farther between.  Act 2 End will get an update, then probably each Act End after that.

 

[XPhater]

Minor update today fixes a few naggling issues.

- If using Fly at the top of the Mountain Trail, you could get stuck on the newly revised World Map.  This is now fixed.

- Iron Icesword was not appearing on Thren's battler sprite.  Now it does.

- Barlog was regening more HP than even I could outdamage.  This has been cut in half.

- Dialogue after the Barlog fight has been revised to advance the plot.

 

[XPhater]

This project isn't dead, but I did want to give an update on its status.  I've been getting radiation treatments, and that pretty much saps all of my energy.  Hopefully I'll be able to get back into the swing of things come summertime.

 

[XPhater]

Very small update today that addresses a couple minor issues that have been irking me:


-Characters who select 'Guard' for a turn will now remain in the Guard stance for the duration of the turn.


-Glavis now addresses the party in front of the Temple.


Neither of these require a restart.

 

[XPhater]

Radiation treatments are over!  That was some painful crap.  They injected it directly into my liver so I was Walk Like a Roman Candle for several months.  But summertime is here, and that means back to work!  Act 2 is approximately 2/3 completed.  I have a pretty good idea how to wrap this Act up, hopefully I can finish it by the end of summer.  In the meantime, here's today's update list:


-Yanfly Status Menu with Tsukihime's Elements by DisturbedInside has been fixed by The Black Swordsman!  The Elements Window no longer stacks infinitely upon itself!  Hooray!


-Updated DoubleX Unison Skills to the most recent version.


-Selene and Thren now gain access to a Unison Skill (Holy Storm) during the battle with Barlog.  A few more Unison Skills become available shortly thereafter.


-When Donna uses Bolster to give Passivist to a party member, it will now function as though Passivist was still active on Donna.  With some setup, this allows Donna to Tank and DPS simultaneously.  Previously, the party member Passivist effect was missing.


-Chain Reflects of multi-hit spells will now play out a little slower, as I had to make the Reflecting actor return to origin after every Reflection; otherwise a Reflecting actor would become invalid for a queue'd Unison Skill, meaning the Unison Skill would never occur.  The difference is rather slight and doesn't really affect anything, but OCD players will notice.


-Mag Buff durations increased to 5 turns, in line with other buffs.


-User-only Mag Buffs have had their MP Cost reduced from 75 to 50.


-Swicord now performs a body slam at the end of Crusader Smite.


-Aibats in the final room of the Tombs are now more sociable.


-The Boss Aibat has received a slight buff.


-Thren's Skill "Draw Fire" has received a slight speed buff.


-Added a little bit more life to sprites in Act 2 cutscenes.


-Actors who join the party later will now receive some bonus AP, to put them in the same general ballpark as actors who have been present from the beginning.


-Since Summon Monsters are no-go, made a minor script change to allow for a 5th party member to show their caterpillar sprite.  Unfortunately this will require a restart, or else your 5th member is a ghost.


-Used the restart to make some slight adjustments in various scripts that nobody except me will even notice.


-Late Update:  The Unison Skill "Holy Fire" was still using some Wind animations.  This has been updated.

 

[XPhater]

It's been a rough year, but Act 2 is finally finished!  Act 3 wrote itself while I was in the shower, so after a summer break I should be able to get right back into it.  Here are today's patch notes:


-WINDOWS HATES ME!  TRIES TO RIP GODSWORD!!

I can't run anything in fullscreen mode anymore, or else the entire screen goes black and the only way to recover is to perform an improper shutdown.  I found that out during a recent playtest, and several files became corrupted.  Fortunately I was able to restore most of them from backup, but I lost a bit of work on the World Map, as well as some Tileset Passability Data.  I'll of course be able to make an approximation of what I had before, but if you saved on the World Map in the vicinity of the Campsite, I can't guarantee that you won't log in stuck inside a tree or something.  IF YOU SAVED ON THE WORLD MAP IN THE VICINITY OF THE CAMPSITE INTERMISSION, RETREAT BACK TO THE SNOWY PATH TOWARDS THE THIEVES' DEN BEFORE DOWNLOADING THIS UPDATE.  THE FIRST SNOW TILE IS FAR ENOUGH, AND YOU WILL BE SAFE FROM THE TREES.  And do report any funky monkey business you may happen to come across on the World Map, or tilesets in general.  Some of those became passable when they shouldn't be.  It's probably fine from backup but I'm paranoid.

-Included Yanfly Ace Region ID Battlebacks.

-Included a short script by Shaz to allow Events to move towards coordinates stored in variables.

-Included Yanfly Target Info.  Since The Black Swordsman blew up the Elements Page disposer, I'm finally starting to make sense of the way VXA handles Elemental Attributes.  Yanfly Target Info will hopefully assist players in similar fashion.  If not, it's still a handy developer tool anyway.  Talk to Wren in Trawla to procure a Mag that will grant access to the "Scan" Skill, which unlocks all available information about a scanned target enemy type.

-(None of these require a restart.)

-Speaking of Elements, now that things are starting to make sense, I've made a sweep through the database to update various skills and items.  It's still a bit of a mess as far as states and parameters are concerned, but it's starting to shape up.  Once Act 3 is underway, I'm going to chart out all this crap and revise some of it.

-Elemental bonuses have returned to weapons and buffs.

-Red Guards and Demon Captains in Act 2 can no longer be K.O.'d before activating Ardent Defender.

-Thren and Rhoda in Act 2 will now buff themselves upon joining the battle.

-Thren's Skill "Draw Fire" was not working on a few battles.  This has been fixed.

-As Mag Skills have had MP costs reduced and durations increased, buffs have been adjusted accordingly.

-Tweaked the Symphony Tags in several Skills.

-Ribbons have had their price increased to 500G.

-A new Accessory Shop will appear starting in Act 2.  This is where you can buy Gemstones, Ribbons, other misc Accessories, and get additional Gemstone Slots installed to your Armor.

-Unison Skill "Lightning Storm" has a new Avatar.

-Unison Skill "Holy Fire" has a new Avatar.

-To make Unison Skills more interesting, all Unison Skills will now include a chance to inflict Parameter and Ex-Parameter Debuffs on affected targets.  Currently I have all enemies set to 20% Success Rate, on all Parameters, across the board.  This is something I will be keeping a close eye on, as stacking many debuffs in a short timespan can cripple enemies, and Unison Skills hit multiple times.  Stack Limit is 2 though, so it shouldn't be too drastic.

-Selene's Skill "Starcross" does not invoke Popups over Party Members that it heals, as the heal comes from a Custom Damage Formula rather than an Attribute in the Skills Database.  To compensate for this, I made some little green plus symbols, which will animate over Party Members via Symphony Tags.  They won't tell you how much was healed, but will, at least, provide a visual representation that heals did occur.

-Donna's buffs "Passivist" and "Aggressivist" will no longer cancel each other.

-Miri's Skill "Vengeant Slash" has received a level*25 max damage bonus to its damage formula.

-Shocked, Smashed, and Bleeding states now have their own icons and animations.

-Selene's version of Revival is now Revival+, and adds HP Regen 1 to the Revived party member.

-Selene's Skills "Absolve" and "Allabsolve" will now remove Confusion from the target without giving it to herself.  They will now also remove Stuns.

-Leigha's Skill "F.Attack", in addition to being more powerful on Burning enemies, will now also inflict the "Combustion" State, which will make affected enemies more susceptible to Fire damage and effects.

-Fixed an issue hopefully with some Skills being Counter Attacked at the end when they shouldn't be.

-Key Item "Element Chart" has received a makeover.

-Parameter Buffs and Debuffs have received revised icons in the style of other icons.  This makes them easier to read.

-Treasure Chests in the Thieves' Den won't give you as much bonus Fire Resist gear now.  It was really making Barlog too easy to defeat.  Additionally, some weapons and armors have been adjusted in the Database.  This won't have any lasting repercussions, but if you've already opened those chests, the gear you looted may turn into a different version.

-Barlog has been rebalanced, to make him more challenging.

-Harpies now attack with a Bite animation.  Om nom nom!

-Made a small change to Party Favour, which has a significant impact on the way it functions.  When either team fills up to MAX MODE, the opposing team's meter will no longer get reset to 0.  The upside to this is that enemy MAX MODE isn't quite as punishing, since you can still attain your own MAX MODE to help you live through it.  The downside is that your own MAX MODE will likewise, no longer reset the enemy meter, so you will have to deal with enemy MAX in some cases where you otherwise wouldn't have.  If you are able to maintain a consistent offense, you can still keep their meter in check.  Some playtests have proven this new functionality to be much more fun.

-Set Yanfly Engine to allow you to unequip weapons when no replacement weapon is available.  When I first started messing with various dual-wield and offhand scripts and settings, this would sometimes allow you to equip unintentional Main+Offhand combinations.  I think I've got this sorted, as I haven't been able to replicate that presently, but keep an eye on this.  (Ingame example would be Thren with a Katana Mainhand and a Spellshield Offhand, which shouldn't be possible.)  The benefit of this is that you can more freely exchange setups on characters such as Thren whose Offhand equipment options change depending upon what is in their Mainhand.

-In the final boss battle of Act 2, party members join in progress.  Depending on where you have them slotted in Yanfly Party System, this can cause some members to get shoved around on the battle screen.  This is the type of situation which caused the Summon Monsters to be scrapped, because when a monster was summoned, if a party member with a visible State Animation got shoved, the game would crash with a nilclass error.  Fortunately, it seems this only happens with monsters, as part of their summon involved changing the max party member variable from 4 to 5, during the battle scene.  When it's a party member doing the shoving, with no party member variable reassignment surgery, no crash occurs.  But keep an eye on this, and file a complaint if it does occur.

-Thren learns "Escape" at Level 20.  When I first made this Skill last year, there was one occurance while fighting Aibats where one party member failed to escape, was defeated by the bats, and got Game Over.  That made me paranoid and I didn't give him the skill.  I did a bunch of running around with this Skill the other day and I cannot get that to happen again, so I am tentatively giving it to him for now.  It could have just been some weird playtesting bug, such as Yanfly Engine F8 instant win then I twitch hit the Enter Key and crash the game, but be sure to complain if this happens to you.

-Considering making the main Shop NPCs (Arshes, Eli, and Rita) purchase-only, and adding a "Stock NPC" to Arshes Arsenal who would buy all of your used items.  This would free up clutter in the main Shop inventories, and if you ever wanted to buy something back, you would know where to find it, as that would be the only NPC you could sell to.  I'm unsure if this would be a convenience or an inconvenience, so no decision has been made on this.

-I gotta give props to DoubleX, during a recent playtest a Confused Leigha tricked a not-Confused Selene into helping her cast a Unison Holy Fire on their own Party.  That was pretty funny.

 

[XPhater]

Found a crash today, so I'm uploading an update.  If Thren had a single plain Katana equipped with no offhand, he was missing the battler sprite and would crash the game.  I've added the missing sprite so everything should be fine now.


Also included with this update:


-Staff weapons now give a modest amount of +Fire Affinity.


-Combustion had no duration, and would last forever.  This has been fixed.


-Donna's Skill "Slaggage" was only giving her 10% of her Max HP on the final hit.  This has been corrected to 20% as intended.


-Holy Force and Soul Force have increased their MAT bonus from 5% to 10%.


-Barlog now has a face icon to match his sprite.


-Fixed a possible crash due to Thren missing a single-wield katana battler sprite.


-Thren's M.Atk now has the standard S.Atk 35% chance for a combo.


-Reduced the FP Cost of Whiskey Flame Tornado from 4 FP per Actor to 2 FP per Actor.


-Finished the town of Trawla.  There is now a villager house that you can enter.

 

[XPhater]

Between the cold weather, arthritis, cancer, and the crazy woman off her meds again, it's been a rough past few months.  I did manage to squeeze in some updates, Act 3 is around halfway done, and ends on a "Midseason Finale" I guess we will call it.  I don't know when I will have the time and energy to work on this in the immediate future, so I figured it's been sitting like this long enough.


Extra special thanks to RAD who lives up to his namesake by assisting with the resolution of several nagging bugs and issues.  The Whine List is getting pretty small now, thanks buddy!


Well I reinstalled Windows last month, Godsword is on a different drive so it shouldn't have been affected, but you never know disk defrag might have other plans.  I don't think there's anything wrong with it but do feel free to complain if you can't find a Skill Trainer or something.


Noteworthy Patch Notes:


-Fixed an issue which was preventing you from moving a Required Actor around in Formation Command due to a crash with Galv's Character Effects, by adding 1 line of code suggested by Rad.


-Fixed an issue with character reflections in Galv's Character Effects showing for Actors who have been removed from the Active Party, by adding 3 lines of code suggested by Rad.


-Fixed an issue with Symphony Notetags not removing States, by adding a Remove State Alias suggested by Rad.


-Fixed an issue with Enemies set to "Appear Halfway" facing the wrong direction until the next turn.


-Fixed an issue with Mags not displaying on Actors who join a battle after it has started.


-Fixed two issues where Counter Attacks and Magic Reflections would prevent the casting of Unison Skills.


-Updated DoubleX Confusion Edit to v1.02e.


-The Gem and Accessory Shop is now Purchase-only.  This is because Limited Stock Items were appearing in the Shop List underneath any junk you might have sold to her.  If you've sold her any junk in the past, simply buy it back to clear this up.


-General Shop Cleanup:  At the start of a new Act, obsolete Weapons, Armors, and Items from the previous Act will now be deleted from the Weapon and Armor Shops.  You probably wouldn't buy them back by then anyway.


-Increased Elemental Affinities on all weapons.


-Katanas have received a slight Attack increase.


-Thren's Skill "Smoke Dud" Hit Rate Debuff "Blind" has been increased from -25% to -35%.


-Unison Skill "Lightning Storm" is now called "Thunder Colt" and has a new Avatar.


-Fixed an issue where Grow Gems on the World Map may not work as intended.  World Map battles were not gathering character level information, and so it was possible for a character to absorb multiple Grow Gems in succession once that character had levelled up on the World Map.


-Tier 3 Mag Skills have been added.  These are passive buffs to the Mag's owner.


-Donna can no longer equip the Smart Mag, as there was no reason for her to do so.


-Jedos can no longer equip the Stubborn Mag.


-Thren can now equip the Stalwart Mag.


-Actors who are in your Party, but are not in the Battle Group, will now appear as Events in the Accessory Shop.  This is to resolve a minor cosmetic issue where Party Members could speak and interact with the Gemstone Cutter from outer space or wherever.


-Fixed an issue where character sprites in Formation Command would not display while on the World Map.


-Wrote a Script Module which, in conjunction with the Common Event, will now handle the assignment of Battler Sprites to Actors beginning in Act 2.  Note that if a character goes into battle with no weapon equipped at all, they will turn into a Slime.  This was originally done simply to test that all of the checks were working, but it amuses me so I am leaving it in.


-Revised Elemental Buffs, Weapons, Armors, Spellgems, Blast Spells, and Unison Spells, to better represent their respective Elements and related Attributes.


-Recategorized a few Sword types in the Database, omitting categories that have since become obsolete.  Weapon Skills will now require an appropriate weapon to be equipped for their use.  I don't think this will mess anything up.


-Made hill tiles on the World Map impassible because I didn't feel like putting mountains everywhere.


-Updated the Readme file with pertinent Elemental Affinity information.


New upload to fix a few things that slipped through, I apparently forgot a comment hash in one of Rad's Symphony fixes which can cause a crash, World Map sprites would sometimes carry into towns, and I left 3 test NPCs standing around in the desert where you could see them, they've now migrated south.


Also the last hit of Thren's Blade Dance is now a bellyflop.


LATE UPDATE:  I found out what the issue with Thren's Escape Skill is.  This even occurs in a brand new project.  What happens is when an actor uses a Skill that invokes Party Escape, only the living members actually escape, so that you are left with a dead party, and get Game Over.  The solution to this is actually quite simple:  Rather than having the Skill invoke Party Escape, instead have it call a Common Event that simply says Abort Battle.


Now if that's all the Escape Skill does, it will work, of course, but you'll be casting a blank spell at your party and will get spammed with FAILED popups since there was no actual spell effect.  To fix this, you can just set an invisible State to be applied, with 100% success, which will eliminate the FAILED popups.  I've already used a so-called "Anti-Fail State" in a few other cases as well, and it was certainly useful here.


So if you encounter that issue in your own VX Ace projects (and you will) that's how you can fix it.

 

[XPhater]

Hmm looks like I accidentally broke the Battler Sheet Updater on the World Map.  It's no biggie, just if you change weapon equips on the World Map your battler sprites won't update.  It will be fixed in the next update.


EDIT:  Ok it's fixed.


Other minor tweaks included with this fix:


-Donna's Skill "Passivist" will now grant immunity to Stuns.

-Donna's Skill "Bolster" will now also transfer Thunder Force.


-Selene's Act 2+ Battler Sprite will now pound her fist at the ground when she is K.O.d in battle.


-Tweaked Thren's Belly Flop to be more Belly Floppy.


-A minor dialogue adjustment which occured to me this morning.