Skill Trouble

[Tai_MT]

Milennin could probably accomplish that level up system in a couple ways.  Create a variable that tracks the level of the character as a common event, then have the common event upgrade the skill via another variable (you can add variables to damage formulas) or by removing the spell from the "learned" list and replacing it with the better one.  Or, maybe, depending on how the skills work or what the game is like, it could be handled with a script as well.

I don't know that I'd go with "spice up default skills" as a design decision.  If you use the default skills, you are handicapping yourself in a lot of ways.  If you use the default skills, you then have to balance all the gameplay around those skills.  Meanwhile, if you create the characters and classes and then add skills to them based upon their stats and roles, it'll be far easier to scale the game later.

However, one good thing you can do with the "default" skills is look through them for ideas.  How do they work, what are the damage formulas?  What are the animations like?  What do they do?  What kind of damage are you looking at?  The defaults are useful for those kinds of things.

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

There are a few tricks I use to ensure difference in skills. First, I think the more classes you have the fewer skills you should have. I.e. my game has 13 classes, each class has 7 skills.

Learn the commands/operations you can use within the damage formula. For instance, a knights skills may add status X and if a thief uses a skill on a foe inflicted with status X then it does more damage or inflict another status.

Try making skills that inflict status that will weaken the foe against other classes. For instance, a mage may stun a foe who then takes 300% damage from heavy hitter classes.

If you have a lot of character/class types, then try to be diverse with effects from skills. Make each one specialized and allow different classes to work well together while others may clash. This allows the player to customise the type of parties they want to play with.

 

[Milennin]

How did you do the skill level up system?  It's seeming more and more like an idea for my game.  I know all about RPGs though.  I've been playing them for around 10 years now.  I'm just really confused and stumped on how to make every skill for every class unique in some way to THAT specific class and without recycling animations/sounds too much.  I understand that there aren't enough resources out there to not recycle SOME sounds and animations, but I don't want a lot of recycling.  I think today I'm going to go through each class and change the skills.  Possibly implement a weapon system for skills to require a weapon.

I'm just wondering really how to spice up the default skills I guess.  I really don't know what I want haha.  

I can send an unencrypted file if anyone would be willing to help me out with that.  Possibly look at what I have and give ideas/suggestions.  I'd appreciate it a lot, but it's not required if you dont want to.

You have multiple versions of the same skill in the database. Call a common event at the end of each battle. If a character has reached a certain level, remove the current version of the skill, and add the new version.

For sound effects I use mostly RTP, but also some sounds from old games. You can get a lot of variety just by changing a sound's pitch too. Animations aren't too hard to create yourself in RM2K3. I guess it's a little more complicated in VXAce, but you do get more freedom (no colour limit, transparant PNGs). Even so, you can still achieve a lot by just playing around with the RTP graphics, you just have to be creative in the use of them.

But really, animations should be the least of your worries if you're still in the development stage. I'd worry about those once you get close to finishing the core of your game.

 

[WNxTyr4el]

Yeah I've just made a few today for practice. I'm getting REALLY good ideas for my next game. This one was kind of just pick up and go and put it together as you go along. Which, yes I know is a huge no no. I didn't plan a single thing. But as I'm doing this game I'm learning what works well and what doesn't. I've gone from a max level of 99 to a max level of 30. Not terrible but I'm almost done. Very linear story but some cool things here and there. I have great ideas for my next game though. Definitely going to start by deleting every class and making my own. Possibly even delete the entire skill database and make my own from scratch but use the default animations and make my own when I need to. I've got the basics of it down and found some good animations on this site. I think for my next game I'm going to have some classes have spells/skills that are simply...unique to that class. Like maybe a Necromancer that used death magic but damages himself (does that use scripts/events?). Or what I'll call an Azure Knight that can change the element of his blade and use different attacks with each element (taken from Crysalis). Those kinds of things. I don't want to use the default classes again. Maybe the default animations, but change the names so players who play this test game don't see the same thing too much.

 

[Chaos Avian]

If you really want to have a variety of skills and see how they play out, play/ look at the skill sets and lists from the Etrian Odyssey games. A lot of innovative ideas there.

 

[WNxTyr4el]

Never heard of them. Got a link?

 

[Chaos Avian]

Take a look at the classes for all 4 games, they all have something different to offer. Plus they use the learn and level up system via skill points.

http://etrian.wikia.com/wiki/Classes_%28Etrian_Odyssey_I%29

 

[WNxTyr4el]

That's really interesting...an SP System. Would one be able to implement that with say... Yanfly's Class Script?

 

[Chaos Avian]

I would say it's more Yanfly's Learn Skills and JP scripts. As for skill upgrades, you can go for what Tai_MT if you want a non-script route. But if you are looking for a script, try this one made by Kread-EX http://grimoirecastle.wordpress.com/rgss3-scripts/gameplay-scripts/skill-upgrade/

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

you can learn skills using JP by using yanfly's JP and skill learning scripts... but I don't think he has that for skill leveling

 

[WNxTyr4el]

Fantastic! That's a keeper for the next game then! Idk if this is the place to discuss it but how would balancing work with that type of system? In terms of enemy strength I mean

 

[Chaos Avian]

Ridiculously hard enemies that you need specific strategies to beat them. And bosses can wreck you.

Jokes aside, balancing is very difficult but what I mentioned above is exactly how Etrian Odyssey goes about their stuff xD It depends on how hard you want your games to be. Despite the heavy emphasis on skills is your game story, character or story based? That could help you on how intend to go about balancing.

 

[WNxTyr4el]

Ridiculously hard enemies that you need specific strategies to beat them. And bosses can wreck you.

Jokes aside, balancing is very difficult but what I mentioned above is exactly how Etrian Odyssey goes about their stuff xD It depends on how hard you want your games to be. Despite the heavy emphasis on skills is your game story, character or story based? That could help you on how intend to go about balancing.

I'd definitely want it to be story based.  I didn't plan out my current story and it sucks.  It's definitely easy to tell.  But then again, I didn't want to make my dream game anyway.  I'm going to plan out my next one...skills, story, characters, everything.  Is there a template for that?  I don't like the RPG Maker one.

And yeah, that's how I'm going to do my next game as well.  Going to use Yanfly's Battle System + Yami's Battle Symphony + Yanfly's Class System + Yanfly's JP System.  I think it'll make for a good game...but then again, that's all dependent on me

 

[WNxTyr4el]

I was thinking more about skills today and came up with a question. Once a character reaches max level, what incentive is there to use older skills that were unlocked at lower levels? They wouldn't do much damage because the base number on a level 10 skill wouldn't be as high as say a level 50 skill. So how is this remedied? I'd like all my skills to be useful in the game even at later levels. Just having a hard time figuring out how to accomplish that. I liked the idea of making triggers of skills or maybe even implementing a chain skill system (Yanfly) but that still wouldn't give players incentive to use lower level skills

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Well, you can opt not to make the damage of the higher spells, much higher... like, the stat based formula stays the same for all skills, only the base increases... combining that with the increased skill costs (like mp and such), then you could encourage them to use the lower skills if the higher ones aren't needed... it all boils down to cost-benefit ratio of each skill... keeping the max mp to a low value might also help on that...

 

[WNxTyr4el]

Thats a good point. I'm going to be implementing the Yanfly Skill Restrictions script and I think that could help a little. Just trying to think of ideas and get them down to come back to.