What's up, RMers?

[KasperKalamity]

put out a demo last week, and my testers already managed to find out how to break it xD

[DerVVulfman]

Hey! It's the resident werewolf giving another Lycan ABS Update, calling in from work. Yep, I've been called in to work today....

I did some work before I was called in, and managed to add a 'command call' system to my new Action Battle System similar to what I did with MrMo's ABS Ultimate. That means, I can make script calls to a particular enemy event and make it move about and attack how I program it to respond. It can perform detection calls, read its HP and SP points and force it to do attacks. Not many beginners can use this system, but someone intrepid could craft an intelligent AI system for an enemy boss with this.

I also added a revised version of Dalissa's Battlecry code, one that is a bit cleaner than the original I crafted. I haven't added random calls... or maybe just 'AS YET' added randomness.... but it's in there. Now, your characters can cry out when killed, when hit and/or when performing a melee, missile, skill or item attack.

Not much left to add before a demo (I hope). BUT... I need to get some cool graphics and haunted midis for a Halloween release (if I can get it done before Halloween).

[kyonides]

I guess I already started the development stage of my newest project Hexmaster's Wish, but I'm sure it won't be ready before December 2012 or even January 2013. Anyway, it should be a trilogy or tetralogy, each part should not need more than 80 MB of disk space. Thus we'd make sure that each part shouldn't take more than 10 or 15 minutes to be completed. BTW, the game's first chapter would be named The March.

[DerVVulfman]

Hi Ho! It's Kermit the Vampire Frog here! Let us give a warm and welcome Muppet Show greeting to that Resident Werewolf we all know... DerVVulfman!

*DerVVulfman strolls in.*
*DerVVulfman trips and lands face first on the stage*

"...ow"

*DerVVulfman looks around the room.*

Who put a green rag doll in the middle of the floor!

*Kermit groans.*

Thank you... thank you... thank you... Thank you one and all. It's a pleasure to be here.

Seriously? A frog M.C.? That's all we can afford?

*Cough*

Well ladies and gentlemen, it's time for a new Lycan update. The battlesystem's basics are relatively done. Besides working on a new ABS that replicates every feature that MrMo's original ABS v 4.5 has, it now includes most of the features I wrote for his system.

Not long Monday night, I finished the adaption of Jessie's Spell Barriers, my system that lets you create a spell that can create a wall of stone or moving wall of flame. A fairly fun spell if you want to torch up all the enemies in a corridor with one shot. It's different from the system I added to skill and weapon missiles that let the bullets or magic blasts spread out in a cone. Instead, the barriers system creates a solid wall of a fairly fixed width with the only thing preventing the wall's creation are objects in the way. That means, if you wanted to make a 7 tile wide wall within a 5 tile wide corridor, it will only make it 5 tiles wide. Enemies and companions that are in the way will block you too.

Tuesday, I kinda got called into work, but not before I inserted my battle cries system. I know I mentioned it the last time. But to be truthful, it took less time than before since I have all the player and enemy 'struck' actions within one simple method and the combat death in another. The method one configures the individual cries per character is different than it was in the MrMo system as it's been streamlined. I did not include randomness to the cries, so a mummy being hit will only issue one groan effect. So... no current surprise there. But once I get everything fixed up, it shouldn't take much effort to create a second system that allows for multiple random cries for each effect.

When I got home, I began more work on CSS decoding. Fun stuff. No... really... Ask Metal! I really tore into it.

But the next morning, I began working on one of my favorite systems... Landmines.

I began with an early version that was in the original MrMo ABS 4.5 demo that I've been hosting. But Marissa's Landmines did not account for some things and what I crafted within the ABS Ultimate worked much better. However, what I crafted within ABS Ultimate wasn't fully compatible because that version relied on a totally different combat missile system than what I made for Lycan. It didn't get done overnight. This time, it took a couple days as I performed one helluva rewrite on the Landmines system which, by chance, made it even smaller and more reliable than before. I had issues with the 'sensitive' landmines system that let you actually SHOOT the mine to set it off. The death triggering system didn't want it to die. Well... who DOES? It didn't. took some time, but I got it going just fine.

I went back and covered a few little issues involving the party rotation system. Nothing really big except handling of party rotation when you leave a party member on another map, alive or dead. Though he wasn't on the map, he would flare up with a 'collapse' effect for a short time when rotating. Because of that, I needed a little quick-check system so I can more easily identify which member was the party leader without messing up the map spriteset, so I quickly sketched up a mini-hud. Nothing fancy... just the name of the party leader in the corner. Once I got that done, the party member flaring issue was a quick fix. After that, I went back to the barriers system and made sure that solid barriers remain solid even if they're drawn over the corpses of invisible party companions. It was a bit of an annoyance walking through a brick wall because it was drawn where a party member died and vanished.

After that, I added compatability with my own Minimap system, including party members both alive and dead, issuing different graphics for the dead ones in the map. And it didn't take that long to have graphics for both treasure and barrer effects to show in the minimap too. I could create more effects for the minimap, adding graphics for missiles. But since they fly across the screen, why bother?

Then I felt it was time to add other things. Wyatt/Como's BattleMusic script for MrMo's ABS wasn't fully complete until I figured out the last bit that was missing. And even then, he said it was fine for anyone to use it. He didn't really care if anyone used it or not. Now how's THAT for a nice attitude? So, this simple system has been added too. And with that, you can have the music change from the field music to that of a more ominous tone as you would within some of the Elder Scrolls games.

There are more things that I plan to add, more adaptions and a few more rewrites as well as some script cleaning. But I have the basic systems of MrMo's Ultimate rewritten without the inherit flaw that I found within MrMo's original ABS that neither I nor anyone else I know had noticed until now.

[Samven]

Speaking of event systems, I discovered a fairly cool way to do costumes easily in RPG Maker VX Ace. Dunno if it'll work for the others but I assume it will as it's just kinda sorta... eventing... XD

I'll be sure to post it up soon!

[KasperKalamity]

there's nothing better than smoking a bunch of dope, and going on a long meaningless walk through the forest preserve to make you want to rewrite your entire game with all the new ideas you had.

[Samven]

Loads of final level work yaaayywhoooo!!!! >833

[Kain Nobel]

The only thing that sucks about deep testing is I keep getting what I'm looking for ; bugs! I keep catching and documenting little things as I go, I'll have to return later and button things up.

[DerVVulfman]

Haven't seen that till your post.

Well, I'm working on a help doc for the Lycan ABS. OMG! Shortest Lycan ABS Update ever!

[kyonides]

The only update I enjoyed reading! Hehehe!

I finished working on a party split script but I still need ideas to make it look better than it is now. It's a windows-sprites combo which doesn't make me feel OK about it.