Looking for a hand with status effects.

[fuzzehpolarbear]

So I'm trying to create a specific type of status effect for my game, and the idea is roughly this:

Say my character has a skill whereby he rips his face off and vomits maggots on an enemy. These maggots have the faces of Gary Busey and Janet Reno for males and females respectively. For obvious reasons, this has a 100% chance of granting a fear/terrified effect, for let's say 3-5 turns.

Now what I'm trying to do is have a chance (we'll say 50/50 for the sake of argument) that an enemy afflicted by fear will be unable to act on their turn until the effect ends or is dispelled/removed. So coin flip, heads they can act, tails they cannot. 

I assume this is going to require the usage of some kind of notetaggy script. If somebody could link me to such a thing I will give them a complimentary polar bearing (that is where I wander over to you and gently bump my head against you for a while, then go tobogganing down a snowy embankment nearby). Bonus points if the script in question was created by somebody who doesn't give a goat's scrotes if it's used in a commercial game so long as they're properly credited. Because I highly doubt I'm ever going to get this thing to the point where it'd be sellworthy, but you know, just in case I do I want to be able to. 

 

[Kes]

No script, but ordinary database work.

Create a state 'Fear' in the States tab.  Set scope to one enemy, and duration 3-5 turns.  Effect, character cannot move.

Create skill.  In Effects apply 'Fear' with a success rate of 50%

As this is such a basic question, could I suggest you take a bit of time to work through this thread

Spending some time on this now will save you a huge amount of time and frustration in the future.

 

[Rikifive]

I think he wants a state, that has 50% chance to prevent enemy from attacking, not to have 50% chance on inflicting that state.

 

[Dirge]

Actually, ksjp, I don't think that's quite what OP is going for.

If I understand correctly, he's aiming to have the attack always apply the "Fear" state:

Lasts 3-5 turns. While the state is active, on each turn, there is a 50% chance the feared enemy can't act.

Not the same as having a 50% success chance at applying the state itself initially. Sadly, no solution pops into mind at the moment.

EDIT: Rikifive ninja'd me!

 

[Kes]

Same difference and this way was suggested because as far as I know there is no way to affect the enemy's skill directly except perhaps through a complex damage formula put into every enemy skill.

 If there is a 50% chance that the state will be inflicted, that is the same as a 50% chance that the enemy cannot attack (cannot act/move)  How the player perceives it is up to the OP.  The battle message could be "The enemy is too afraid to attack".

Edit:

That damage formula would have to be something along the lines of

If the state is present, then random variable 0-1.  If 0, then do nothing, if 1 then normal damage formula.

Hmm I might go away and think exactly how to do that.  But is the OP prepared to put that into every single enemy skill?

 

[Rikifive]

I think you'll need to set a battle event for that, which would look for that state and use variable to randomize if he can act or not while under that state.

 

[Kes]

Damage formula idea won't work easily.  I can do it so that if the state is present, and if the random roll is  more than 50%, normal action done; if 50% or less, zero damage is done - but there is no way via the damage formula to prevent the enemy from acting except by adding the paralysis state for one turn.  I don't have access to Ace at the moment, so I can't test this, but it would be something like this, with the Fear state ID as 100 for the sake of example

if b.state?(100); if rand(100)<51; then; b.add_state(7, 1); end; end; normal_damage_formula_here

 

[TheRiotInside]

Could you do a gross hard edit to the scripts themselves that checks for the state and does the rand(100) roll for the current active member, skipping over the action processing if it's over 50? Probably not ideal, but possible?

 

[Kes]

@theRiotInside

As (I think) the OP only wants this for one actor, doing a rand roll for "the current active member" isn't what s/he wants.  And I think (though I am not sure) that what you're suggesting would require editing to more than one default script.

But perhaps we should wait for the OP to return (ah, the bane of differing work schedules/time zones) and comment on the ideas so far, and perhaps clarify, if needed.

 

[Uzuki]

The way I've done it was to use Victor's State Auto Apply script. Basically you create the Paralyze state, then make a dummy state and it will randomly place either one on the person inflicted with paralyze. Unfortunately a lot of scripts conflict with Victor's so you'll have to pick and choose what scripts you want.

 

[fuzzehpolarbear]

Hey guys, I'm going to test some of this today, but before I did I just wanted to thank everybody for tossing their suggestions in here. 

For confirmation's sake, yes, I had intended the "fear" state to apply with 100% probability, and for the effect of that state to be a 50/50 chance that the enemy could or could not act each round the effect was active on them. So it's not the probability of the state applying itself that I need help with, so much as adding a probability that it may or may not have its intended effect each round while it's applied to an enemy. 

 

[fuzzehpolarbear]

Alright, been through some testing. 

1. Tried to do a nesting state kind of thing (I created the "fear" effect and then a sub effect "fear paralysis" (I could have just used regular paralysis for testing purposes but I wanted to be fancy lol), the idea being maybe I could have the state fear inflict fear paralysis at a 50/50 chance), but it seems that a state cannot apply another state at a percentage chance, only increase the chance of a state being applied successfully. Also tried atkstate, but that doesn't seem to work either (seems like it just adds the effect to regular attacks, which I am totally going to make use of now that I know about it but is sadly unhelpful in the current predicament). 

2. Attempted to apply ksjp's formula in several different ways. Firstly as an amendment to the damage line of the "fear" skill (with status numbers changed appropriately). Did not appear to have any effect. Secondly as part of a common event which would be called when the fear skill was used (the engine REALLY did not like that, I don't feel like damage formula skills were intended to go under the advanced-script section, but I figured it was worth a try lol). I believe he mentioned this is something that would have to be added to the enemy's skills rather than the fear skill itself, though, so my bad on that one lol. As for adding something to every single enemy skill, oh jeeze man lol. I'm not super lazy or anything, I plan on adding all kinds of complexity to this game, but that sounds like it'd be more trouble than this particular effect is worth. 

3. On rikifive's suggestion, tried to create a conditional common event relying on a "fear switch". IE: if the fear switch is on (which the fear skill would do), then random variable 0-1, then if 1 apply paralysis to target battler. Unfortunately, it seems that while this is almost viable, a state applied via a common event can only be applied to battlers in numbered order (battler 1, battler 2, battler 3, etc), or to every battler in the fight, not to a specific target. On that note, I am kind of surprised it's not possible to use events to target a specific target in battle, that seems like a thing that'd be really useful to be able to do. I know events more often than not take place outside of battle, but still. 

4. On Uzuki's suggestion, took a look at Victor's script. Unfortunately, it does not seem to play nicely with Yanfly's Ace Battle Engine, which I am pretty set on using because it is freakin' awesome. 

5. To TheRiotInside, I have a confession to make: I am almost a total noob when it comes to any kind of actual scripting/programming. I think the furthest I ever got was Dragonspeak, which isn't exactly complex. I wouldn't even know where to begin looking. I am not entirely adverse to learning, however. I've actually been looking for a scripting tutorial for Ace but so far have not been able to find one (which is weird, because normally my googlefu is pretty strong). Either way, it may not necessarily solve this problem, but if you have a good Ace scripting tutorial on hand that you wanted to fling at my face, that would be awesome!

Haven't been able to make it work yet. The search continues. 

 

[Kes]

fuzzehpolarbear, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.

If you want to add something, just edit your previous post.

Okay, a few things.  Victor's scripts will never play nicely with Yanfly scripts, so don't even think of trying it.

As you described this skill as being used by "one of my characters" the damage formula should not be going into any of the enemy skills.

I'll try and be as specific as I can.

Skill one - this is the skill which casts the Fear state.  It does nothing else.  You have to inflict the state first, otherwise nothing happens.  All it does is call up the state.  The state is set to 'one enemy', duration 4 turns (to account for the turn in which it is inflicted.  If it last too long, change that to 3 turns).  It does nothing else at all.

In your character's skills (all of them, but only this character's skills, because you don't want all the party to be able to do this, only this character) your damage formula needs to read like this (and I'm using the default damage attack as an illustration)

if b.state?(100); if rand(100)<51; then; b.add_state(7, 1); end; end; a.atk * 4 - b.def * 2

What this is doing is checking if state 100 (Fear) is inflicted on this particular target.  It then does the random roll.  If the target has the state and the random roll is above 50 then it adds paralysis for one turn i.e. the target cannot attack.  If the target does not have the state or it is 50 or less, then the normal damage is done.

Is that exactly what you want to happen?  If not, please specify exactly what needs to change.

 

[TheRiotInside]

@ksjp17: I'm pretty sure you're still misunderstanding what they want here. Think of the Pokemon games' Paralysis state. If that state is on someone, they have a 25% chance of not being able to perform an action during their turn. It has nothing to do with a specific actor attacking a target with the state on, which you seem to be trying to do.

Your solution would only make a target with the state applied to it have a % chance of not acting whenever that same actor who put the state on in the first place attacks the target again. They seem to want a state that passively prevents acting when applied. Who applies the state and who attacks the target afterwards is completely irrelevant.

It's just like a Paralysis state that, instead of preventing action completely for a set number of turns, it has a % chance of doing so each turn instead. None of this character-specific attacking nonsense, just a Paralysis state minding its own business with a <100% chance of activating each turn instead of 100%.

 

[Kes]

@theRiotInside

Like huge swathes of the world's population, I have never played a Pokemen game in my life, so have no idea how any state in it works.  This is why we always tell people to describe what they want without using game X as the descriptor - no one can rely on others having played the same games as they have.

I'm sorry you see the formula as 'nonsense', 

If what you describe is accurate, then what's needed is something like Yanfly's Passive skills script which will apply a passive skill with the desired effects.

 

[bgillisp]

If you want a paralysis type state to have a % chance of applying when it is inflicted on someone, *but* you want it to apply after turn selection, ksjp17's solution will work. You just have to apply it to all skills that can be used first. What will happen is it will let paralyzed characters still select an action to take, but there is an x% chance that they will not perform their action due to the paralysis. This is exactly like how Persona Q does paralysis, and many Shim Megami games (no idea about Pokémon because just like ksjp17, I haven't played those games either).

However, if you want a paralyzed person to not even be able to select an action with x%, then that is going to take something completely different, probably a script, and it will have to overwrite how actions are selected in battle (so it might not be compatible with other battle system scripts).

 

[Dalamar]

Give all the enemies a skill that is only used when the fear state is on them that causes them to do nothing for a turn.

 

[fuzzehpolarbear]

Apologies for the double post, didn't know it was heavily frowned upon. I will avoid posting back to back in future, aside from cases where I might need to bump a thread (which I'll do with a simple "bump"). 

TheRiotInside is precisely correct as to what I'm looking for the skill to do. 

Dalamar, I'm not sure that'll work. I've got the skill creation interface open here, and while I may be able to add a skill that enemies would use if they had fear applied to them (which would call a common event), this leaves me at being unable to specify a target other than enemies "in a row" (enemy 1, 2, 3, etc, no "the target" or "the caster"). Even if it were possible to do a "force action", I'd like them to be able to act as normal if the coin lands on the other side, which I don't think would be possible using this method. 

ksjp, I went ahead and looked at Yanfly's passive script, and while I may totally make use of it, I'm not sure it solves this particular issue. I'd have to be able to create a state that could call a common event (which it seems can be done with skills but not states) that would do something like: if target is afflicted with fear, random 0-1, if 1 then target cannot move, if 0 target acts as normal (which just doesn't seem to be possible with common state calling due to their nature of being unable to apply to a certain target). As far as my particular wording, I was only doing the one character thing as an example. I'd like to make this a thing that any character can use, including enemies, and which can be applied by items, basically I'm looking to create a state that will have a place in the whole of the game world. 

 

[Kes]

Just clarifying:

You want this state to be applied by a skill and by an item

This skill and/or item is available to all actors and all enemies

You want this state to correctly identify if the actor or enemy is afflicted with Fear

If yes, random roll 0-1

If 1, actor or enemy cannot move (I think your use of the word 'target' is potentially misleading.  It is not the 'target' of the actor/enemy who can/cannot move, but the actor/enemy who is afflicted who can/cannot move.. That is to say, using damage formula terms, it is 'a' who cannot move, not 'b')

I think you're going to need to ask for a custom script.

 

[Dalamar]

Sorry if I wasn't clearer earlier, you create a skill for the actor to use that causes the fear state.  You create a skill the scope of which is none and it does nothing.  Then in the enemies tab you give all the enemies that aren't immune to fear the skill that does nothing.