Post by derekofcourse in Yal's Monster Collector Engine comments

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Hi Yal! Hope you've been well. Any ideas on the best way to implement a "totem" system?

Basically, certain moves create totems - essentially a temporary, targetable object that gives buffs, etc until they are destroyed.

I thought the best way would be to add them to the Dex .Then have them sent out, then destroy the instance when they reach 0 HP or at the end of battle.

I'm not sure how to approach adding a temporary mons to the battlefield (also considering the opposing team could use this move!) I'm thinking the move would have to temporarily increase the max team size to work.

Any thoughts are appreciated :)

Yal1 year ago (4 edits)

Good job sticking with the project for 6 months! I'm used to people giving up much sooner but seems you're one of those rare determined people that actually finishes their games ^__^

Your analysis is pretty much correct!

Adding temporary mons would be pretty easy, as you can see in obj_battlecontrol's step event ctst_ACTIONSELECT block, it loops over all existing monster objects when building the list of who gets to act, so just creating instances should work. You should add a new "is_totem" variable to the battlemonster object so that totems are treated differently, though (it's always false, but when creating a new instance for a totem, you'll set it to true after creating it).

You might wanna do some changes in obj_battlemonster's bmonsterstate_DIE to change the KO messages for totems (and delete the object if dead - an empty slot currently still is a monster object!) so they're not around when the ctst_REINFORCEMENTS step happens, or that team will be able to send in additional monsters to take the place of any destroyed totems, turning it into a permanent team size upgrade for that battle.

You will also need to change this block:

default:
    //Most ailments don't bypass action input, so let's go do that.
    if(next.side == side_PLAYER){
        substate = bcontrolstate_ACTIONSELECT_PLAYER
    }
    else{
        substate = bcontrolstate_ACTIONSELECT_ENEMY
    }
break

Totems should always go to bcontrolstate_ACTIONSELECT_ENEMY (automatically select), regardless of if they're player or enemy. (Unless you want players to be able to control what their totems do, of course - I'm just interpreting your description as totems being kinda passive/automatic)

Their buffs could be implemented as new moves with the appropriate target range set up (e.g. movetarg_ALLALLY to buff all allies), then you have the new totem species learn the buff-moves it should provide at level NONE (i.e., always knows them).

Since all monster stats are read from the AMP and the battlemonster objects just have a pointer to that (rather than having their own stat variables), I'd say you could put totem data in the "enemy" section of the AMP (since that's temporary data which gets cleared after a battle) - just run amp_get_new_enemy_id / amp_generate_monster using the totem species for this. You just need to manually free up slots again (with amp_clear_monster) when a totem is destroyed so you don't run out of slots entirely if a long battle has many totems created and destroyed.

derekofcourse1 year ago

Thanks so much Yal! I am still familiarizing myself with the engine, but as i've taken your above advice into action, I realize I may be in over my head with a this rather complicated totem mechanic and may need to revisit it later. BUT if you have time, these are a few things I'm running into:

- Not sure where in the init moves to put amp_generate_monster(1,monster_totem_1,1)

I've tried placing it in a few of the argument fields there with no success. Maybe I need to create a "status" with 100% acc and code it to create totems that way?

- I have tested forcing a mon to appear in battle by just doing a press key event in obj_battle_control. I can't get it to pop in a duo battle (with one mon on my team) but it will pop into my party (and can be swapped into lol) I wonder if creating a designated slot for totems might be the way to go, unless I'm missing something which is likely lol.

Thanks a bunch as usual!!

Yal1 year ago

The easiest way to do really weird things that doesn't fit into the standard move data would be to hijack the "aniobject" argument (mvd_ANIMATIONOBJECT slot of move data). It's intended to be used just for visual effect controllers, but nothing's stopping you from creating an object which in turn sets up a totem, or does other weird stuff (a boss could have a move that plays a cutscene, for instance). The only thing to keep in mind is that it needs to be a child of parent_battleeffect if you want the battle to pause until the object is destroyed (i.e. it's gonna be around for more than one frame). Do the behavior you want to achieve in the step event, since we set some variables after creating it (and thus they're not accessible in the create event).

Also the code you're running is probably not doing what you think you're doing...

The function is amp_generate_monster(slot,species,level). First argument is slot, if you just put an "1" there it's always going to overwrite whatever's in the second party slot (array numbering starts at 0 in Game Maker). You want to ask the engine for an unoccupied slot, so you probably want

var slot = amp_get_new_enemy_id();
amp_generate_monster(slot, monster_totem_1, 1)
var totem = instance_create_depth(xx,yy,dd,obj_battlemonster)
totem.amp_id = slot
totem.name = monster_get_name(totem.amp_id)
totem.sprite_index = monster_get_battlesprite(totem.amp_id)

xx, yy and dd are the X, Y and depth values to create the totem on, you'd have to compute them somehow. For this you could use the fact that effect object you created has a variable "user" set by the battle controller, which is the ID of whoever ran this move, so if you e.g. want the totem to spawn in front of the user, you'd do something like:

var xx, yy, dd;
xx = user.x + user.sprite_width*0.5
yy = user.y + 10
dd = user.depth + (user.side == side_ENEMY)? -10 : 10;

(potentially you might also wanna use the "target" variable which is the move's target, e.g. if you could create a totem that affects someone else in a multibattle)

itch.io

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