What's up, RMers?

[kyonides]

Err, I was kidding, yamina-chan. I admit it, I have a weird sense of humor or no such sense at all...

What's this menu you've been talking about? What's its name, yamina?

[DerVVulfman]

Actually, it's one to split a party into smaller parties. Take for example the default party you get with RPGMaker XP. The script can let you split the party in twain, and have two parties: One of Aluxes and Gloria while the other is of Basil and Hilda. You should be able to toggle between the parties with a key unless that feature is disabled or turned off. And both parties would normally be able to use all items in the ITEM list. One of the original versions was posted by RPG Advocate and is in this forum.

Surely a better version could be made. However, I find that it's a little cheat that both parties can use all the items in the item bag. I mean party 1 finds a blessed blade and you switch to party 2, only so the hero in party 2 can equip the blade. The only way I see it working properly (without cheating like that) was if every actor has his/her own personal grab bag. But that would mean a lot o' code so each player has their own '$game_actor.gain_item(id,number) command.

---

In the meantime, another Lycan update.

One of the things I did with MrMo's ABS Ultimate was to enhance the visual accuracy of the characters when making an attack. This is a system I just coded back into the LycanABS.

In most ABSs made with the RPGMaker series, the player presses an attack key and the actual 'hit' takes place on the target. But at that same time the player character's animation only just begins. But it doesn't look right if the character only just started his swing but the target was already hit and knocked back. Hence, my delay system. It lets you put in a small timer value into the attacks so you press attack and the character begins his swing. After a little 'cycling' (hopefully timed to co-incide with the animations), the actual strike occurs.

Of course, there are default values if you don't want to bother, and setting the values to '0' lets it act like it would before I added the feature.

The next thing I did was to reintroduce compatibility and functionality of Near Fantastica's View Range system, or at least from Version 2 Beta that I worked on up. This lets the enemies see you as long as you're not behind a barrier like a wall. They will only see you if they're facing you and not hidden behind something solid enough to impede their vision. However, this feature can be disabled 'per enemy' so some enemies may ignore this feature altogether. It makes individual enemies visually detect their targets slower but more accurately, so adding an on/off switch for this was planned WAY ahead. ^_^

And one more thing added today was the friendly fire system. I had to make it work slightly different from the way I did it with MrMo's ABS because I included individual companion IDs into the hate group system. But now it's built into the Update_Hit method I created so ... one method rules them all. Works fine. If a player hits an enemy target that wasn't aggressive to the player because the player wasn't in the hate group, the player will find himself IN the enemy's hate group and now a viable target. Same goes for the companions.

Fun stuff.

Now I don't know what next to add. Treasure drop redux? Wall of flame effects? Automatic weapons? Splatter and gore?

[yamina-chan]

@DerW: are you trying to describe the script I was talking about in the first? If so, you've completely missunderstood what I was talking about aparently XD
Tough I agree with what you said about the party splitting and the each actor having their own inventory. (Which would be rather sweet, by the way)

@kyonides: I was talking about a script for a game that has only two characters. Most Menu scripts arround are for four (or more) characters, few are for three. It is quite rare to find one that works well with just two characters. I had one but it caused way to many bugs so it wasn't worth using in the long run.

[DerVVulfman]

Whoops. My bad. I just remembered that bit when someone else asked about party splitting and you helped out by mentioning that system. And I sure agree that individual bags per member would be good. Gotta set up a way to transfer from member to member though, right? Fun....

Now for the Lycan ABS update for the week. Yeaah.... like I'm likely to only talk about it once a week. It took a lot of effort to split up my ABS system so triggers and reactions have a scheduled delay. It may be pointless for those who wish to use it and not want a delay. Meh, they can just set the delay values to '0' if they want. I think the delay works great. If done right, it gives the game a more professional feel.

I added the Splatter and Gore feature that GI Jim / UnrivaledNeo requested some time ago. Now a blood spray can issue from a monster, greenish black blood spray from a zombie or dull white shards from a skeleton. On top of that, a ghost can die and leave a puddle of ectoplasm behind for a time. Oooo... pretty.

My enhanced treasure drop system has also been readded. Now an enemy can leave a corpse for you to search when it dies, or it drops off individual trinkets around where it dies. My personal favorite is how they drop from above like how the treasure drops in the old PC game, Diablo.

I finally added the automatic weapon system. It isn't much... but it's so much fun to fire 50 bullets in 5 seconds!

After that, I had an issue. I wanted to add my auto-attack system. This enabled you to click on an enemy to attack, and after he moves to the target... he starts to attack automatically until either the enemy or you die, or the enemy moves away from the attack. I wrote it initially for MrMo's and that used SDK version 1.5 But before you ask.... I am not switching over to the SDK. I... uh... just snagged the Game_Player class from it for a bit of a basis. It's hardly a big change to the Game_Player class code I wrote, but my code for Game_Player is pretty big for the pixelmovement system anyway.

And lastly, I started working on the Spell Barriers system today. It's an interesting system for those who don't know. If you want to throw up a wall of stone in front of you so dangerous foes have to wait, you can. You can also throw out a wave of flaming death and send it in front of you if you want to clean out a hallway full of ghouls. Whether the barrier is static or moving forward, whether it is solid or the player can walk through it, it is a difficult system to re-introduce. Well... not THAT hard. But I'm being careful and I'm trying to use a cleaner bit of coding than I had before.

Not bad, eh?

[KasperKalamity]

is there a way in xp to turn off the ability to save wherever? i want to make it so that you can only use 'save point crystals' at certain locations.

[DerVVulfman]

Heck yeah. Just make an event and create an 'event command' for 'Change Save Access...' . It's in the 1st page, 2nd column near the bottom.

[kyonides]

There's an event command that will disable the main menu and another one especifically to disable the save game feature. It won't stop you from saving at special places like save points.

[Samven]

Wrote about fiveish scenes over the weekend and uploaded them into my game now. Yaaaayy! 83

[kyonides]

I started working on the plot for a new project I'd name Hexmaster's Wish. The main protagonists are sofar Snuffy the lonely mage, Sneak the Infiltrator, Marquise Breil of Talid, Count Nil of Bergama and possibly the Philosopher's Stone itself (or that might just be a stupid joke, I'm not sure as of now). Sofar I can tell you that conquering the world or setting a bomb to destroy the whole planet or even rescuing the kidnapped princess are not an integral part of the project's plot or the main characters' ambitions or goals. To be honest with you guys, the Philosopher's Stone is not the ultimate goal. BTW, you may only control 1 or 2 characters at the same time.

[yamina-chan]

While the descussion about the VXAce Lite is still going I am not only tempted to create something with it's limits just to see how you can use tricks and creativity in your favour to use a little bit more then what is given, I have also decided to try out the Maker3D. I don't remember hearing of it untill I stumbled uppon it and I have yet to install it, but I am tempted. Should it work well enough...the price is at an affordable level. Holidays, approeach faster! I have much to try out!
XD

I have also started working on a sort of "Tips and Tricks" Demo for the XP featuring things that newbies (and experienced makers alike) might simply don't think of while making a game. I'll see where that'll lead.