What type of level-up system to use...

[PhotonWeapon]

Okay, I really want to get this game (or at least its demo) done, but before I can do that I'd need a power-up system to go by (not the old-fashioned "gain EXP to level-up and learn new skills!" way). I was thinking of a Power-up Points (PP... need to come up with better abbreviations than that) kind of system. Either that or Saga-style (stats increase randomly after battle). There's two ways I could do the PP method:

1. Each stat has its own PP (Max HP, Max MP, Attack, Defense, Mind, Speed), and each character in the party gains them after most battles, but only a few (sometimes they won't gain a Stat PP). This will be via variables. You then go to a menu and use the PP to raise its corresponding stat; it won't work if there's 0 PP of course. And of course, I will set limits to how many of a stat's PP can be carried at once.

2. Characters have general Power-up Points that is used to raise any of his/her stats. So if it's 0, you can't raise a stat at all. Again, PP amount that can be carried at once will be limited.

3. Bah... just do Saga-style!

I don't know which to do, actually (might lean toward #1 or 2 or #3 will be too, too much work). What do you guys suggest?

[celticshiva]

Hm.. first of all, I want to make sure by 'Saga-style' you mean Square's SaGa video game series, of which only the two SaGa Frontier games came to America under that name (the gameboy ones were titled Final Fantasy Adventure in America). The other definition would be a legend in which case it makes no sence at all.

#1 is pretty tedious. If each stat has their own PP and you have to manually level them players would get annoyed.

#2 is ok but you have to worry about balance. You should consider what would happen to your battles if the player decides to max out only one stat (ie: str). If you arn't careful players may max out strength and kill enemies in short order.

Now 'Saga-style' seemed pretty random to me, so I propose a fourth option, which is a variant of #1. Of course, this option may be what you were thinking of for #3, but you didn't elaborate so..

4. Each stat has their own PP (Max HP, Max MP, Attack, Defense, Mind, Speed) and each character in the party gains them after most battles, but only a few (sometimes they won't gain a Stat PP). This will be via variables. Then when the character reachers a certain value, the stat is AUTOMATICALLY incremented.

This way works the best because you don't have to create a menu at all, the player dosn't have to do a 'tedious' task of manually powering up their characters. At least.. I find that tedious.. I don't know about other people. Plus you can maintain balance easier as you can control where the pps go.

I had these options go through my head to when I was planning Gemini Rising. For my game, I decided to go with a variant of #4 where the PPs are gained through battle actions (I have a Custom Battle System so I can add them when the player chooses Attack, Magic etc). However, characters also have a modifier which effects how fast they gain PP. Some characters get more Str and other characters get more Magic bonuses.

Anyways, I hope my rambling helps you at all.. its late at night so I'm a tad inchoherent.

[PhotonWeapon]

Hmm, yes, I had a feeling the manual power-up would be very tedious. And you're right about the balance. I just didn't want the typical "Fight to gain EXP to level up" method. It's not as... interesting (even though it's the easiest to do).

When I said Saga-style I meant like Romancing Saga 3 and Saga Frontier.

Your #4 sounds very good and interesting (and it saves a lot of headaches). I, too, thought of modifying how fast a stat grows depending on the character (makes sense, after all...).

It's too bad there's no battle fork condition that says, "If (hero) attacks," action-dependent conditions would've been so much easier. Oh well. Thanks CelticShiva, you really helped out a lot!

[celticshiva]

Yeah. If you're up for it, you might want to make a CBS (which is what I'm doing).

HOWEVER you don't need to. Final Fantasy: Endless Nova had a really good system for levelling up that is very SaGa style, its based on random increments rather than set level of PP, which makes it hard to balance. My characters in that game right now one of my 'mages' has over 150 hp whereas my 'fighter' has about 80. It used the DBS but I guess it stores stuff in variables that it checks afterwards. You might want to download it and take a look at some of the code. As long as you don't copy outright, it would be a good place to start looking. The code in that game is well commented so everything you have questions about should be easy to find. Plus its a great game that's worth playing regardless.

[~*Dari]

This is just my opinion, so don't mind me much.

Honestly, I completely and totally HATED Final Fantasy: Endless Nova's system of leveling up. If I fight a battle in a game, then darn it, I want credit for it. It seemed like I fought battles and fought battles and fought battles, and anything rarely came of it. And when it did, it just wasn't enough to keep the monsters from being too much to fight.

[glow=red,2,300]~*Dari[/glow]

[PhotonWeapon]

Actually, I've played Final Fantasy: Endless Nova, and beat it about two months ago. I'm afraid Dari is right, the creator of that game made powering-up way too difficult. By the time I reached the final boss nobody had over 200 HP, which made survival near-impossible (if not impossible). In fact, I barely survived most of the boss battles because of low HP. I had to manually go into RM2K and set up an event that increases my Max HP to at least a bit over the final boss's strongest attacks, and gave myself some heal-everyone items, just so I could *survive*. It was ridiculous -- I'd rather not use that coding, though I applaude the creator for his effort and hard-work in the coding; I don't think I'd have *that* much patience.

And I'd rather stick to the DBS anyway; I don't know how to do codings for CBS, and I'd rather not learn -- it takes up too much time and energy, and I'm hella busy already. I'll just use the auto-Pp system like you suggested. Thanks again, though.

[celticshiva]

Heheh.. well y'see.. the trick is in that game was to heal every other battle.. not in battle =Z. If you are at full health at the end of battle you don't get points for it (unless you were at very little health.

So first couple of battles, don't heal.. and you'll gain HP then in a battle where you start the battle at very little life, heal, and you get vitality.

Also, I'm not saying to copy the system exactly. Look at it, see what you can do to improve it to your game, and go from there.

[PhotonWeapon]

Well, what if I modified the chances of the stats being raised, or how much the stat is increased depending on the character?

This could still be slight trouble, because the player can simply fight the weakest enemies and still be able to raise attack and magic and stuff. Of course, there are ways to solve that problem...

[celticshiva]

Hm.. I think you can have a script at the start of a battle (that triggers on the first turn, and make sure it turns itself off) that checks the stats of the hero and the stats of the enemy.. if its too weak you can turn a switch on that gives no stat bonuses.

I havn't played around much with the DBS so I'm not sure.

[PhotonWeapon]

Sounds similar to one of the ideas I was thinking.

Another idea would be that if the hero's stats is at a certain average (average out all the four stats <Atk, Def, Mag, Spd>), change the Monster Party to something stronger than the old, so that the new monsters would at least be able to put up a fight.

[~*Dari]

This pertains to the FF:Endless Nova system.

...All right, tell me who else is going to figure that out? To be perfectly honest, I'm a moron when it comes to RPG games. I'm more concerned with seeing the unfolding storyline than levelling up and getting stronger. Many RPGs have pissed me off because I needed to be at a certain level to beat such-and-such monster(s) and I couldn't get past to see the storyline unfold. Battles, especially random encounters, should be just that--random. In other words, to me they're just stop-offs in the storyline.

[glow=red,2,300]~*Dari[/glow]

[celticshiva]

I can agree with that Dari.. I hate it when the diffictuly in battle spikes too much. Its the reason I never finished FFIX. I'm in a place where the monsters either cast status effects on you every turn or they absorb 1500 HP each round (I only have 2000 hp with the exception of the main char who has 3000...) Talk about anoying.. and these are your random monsters.. if it was a boss i'd understand.

Photon Weapon - yes that would work too. Then you'd almost have something like FFVIII going =).

[PhotonWeapon]

Heh heh, yeah. Of all the Active Time Battles in Final Fantasy, FFIX had the worst. I swear almost every enemy attacks 2-3 times before my characters do *anything*!

BTW, CelticShiva, for your Pp idea, does each character have his/her own stat Pp variable (i.e. AlexAttackPp, CarolMagicPp, etc.), or do *only* the stats themselves have Pp variables (i.e. MaxHPPp, AttackPp, etc., not AlexAttackPp)?

Hmm, I wonder if things would be easier if I do like FF: Endless Nova, except change how you raise the stats and the chances of it being increased. Like for Defense and Magic you must lose 25% HP and MP respectively, instead of regaining almost all HP and MP. Not sure about Speed, though...

[celticshiva]

PhotonWeapon said:

Heh heh, yeah. Of all the Active Time Battles in Final Fantasy, FFIX had the worst. I swear almost every enemy attacks 2-3 times before my characters do *anything*!

Ugh.. Exactly.

PhotonWeapon said:

BTW, CelticShiva, for your Pp idea, does each character have his/her own stat Pp variable (i.e. AlexAttackPp, CarolMagicPp, etc.), or do *only* the stats themselves have Pp variables (i.e. MaxHPPp, AttackPp, etc., not AlexAttackPp)?

Well its your game so its up to you. MY game each character has their own point track for each stat.

I'll give you a rundown of the way my game does stats, it may give you some ideas. Bear in mind I use a CBS, so not all of this will work with the DBS.

Lets use Strength as an example. Whenever a character's Strength is checked (usually for some sort of physical attack) the character gets 3 points into that stat's PP. Now, Brock's primary stat is strength.. so he actually gets 4 instead. Beryl on the other hand has Strength as a weaker trait, so she'd only get 2.

In addition to that, there is a variable for 'everyone's strength'. That gets 1 point every time anyone uses strength. This way characters who never actually use their strength stat get some points.

Then there is a variable for 'generic' bonus. This bonus applies to all stats. It also gets 1 point. This way, every time anything is done, the other stats increase a little too, which prevents the characters from being too skewed to one side. There is a generic stat bonus both for the character and for the party.

Now.. I have a parallel process that awards the party 'generic' bonus into all characters that are in the party and have more than 0 hp. This is awareded into the characters 'generic' bonus.

Then the generic bonus is applied to all character's stat bonus. If the stat is a primary trait.. I multiply the generic bonus by 1.3 before adding it.. if its a sub trait I multiply it by .6 before adding it.

Now.. the stat actually increases when the character has a point total of 100x their current stat. So if a character has 13 strength, they need 1300 points to raise their strength. This seems like a lot but it adds up very quickly.

I know this seems complicated but its simpler than it sounds ^-^.

[PhotonWeaponcantsignin]

Yeeowch... Some of that stuff I CAN'T do with the DBS... you're right.

But multiply 100x current stat? Hmmm. It might give me an idea....