itch.io

Since I made the switch from frontview battle to sideview battle all of the monster graphics have been replaced to make sense visually and the sideview battlers Thalzon did are of higher quality.   Since it's now pulling from the 'sv_enemies' folder for encounters it doesn't play nice with old saves that were pulling from the 'enemies' folder which is a different folder it pulled frontview battlers from.   Since it was a big change structurally within the program itself it won't work with old saves unfortunately.    I should have noted this in the last update, sorry for my oversight on that, I'll edit to add that in.    

I ended up starting a new game  when I made the switch for my personal  Level 2 playthrough so I could try some different class builds and weapon/armor combos so I didn't catch that it wouldn't work with old saves right off.   

Going forward I don't intend to make any structural changes that will break old saves.   Thanks for the post and I apologize for the inconvenience.   

Thanks again for the support.  It motivates me to work on this more often and to try to make it the best I can.  

The idea for mixed class characters for your example is that you can place that 1 point in any of those each level.  So the mixing can already occur with those 4.  For instance I have a "Paladin" type character in one of my playthroughs and he alternates between Warrior Training and Mystic Training every other level so he can still be kind of tanky but also adept at healing using the SPI stat bonus that the Mystic Training gives him.  That's one example of a mix. but there are many other combinations possible.  

During some of my "blind" work that was never published I had experimented with just sticking all the stat gains to the 12 classes but it became very convoluted and most of them overlapped or some had to have too OP stat gains that the balance was terrible so I had to narrow it down and then had to devise a way to get stats to characters but to do it in a way that still gave them some freedom and not too rigid or not too "free" like the old way where you could break the game by distributing stats a certain way.   Long story short...the end result was this so I don't plan on adding more of the "trainings" as mixing those can still get the desired effect you're looking for like my Paladin example above.  When you start getting access to crafting "seeds" that will give you a more fine tuning options if you want to tighten things further.  

During my experiments I wanted to make the game as "Western" RPG as possible kind of like Pathfinder and games like that where you COULD steal from NPC's and such and have reputations with the different factions and key people but ultimately decided against it as it was a lot of extra eventing  and plugin work  and not to mention the insane amount of dialogue trees and in the end I wanted the game to be a little simpler overall but it definitely was considered at one point.    

Thanks again.

Thanks for giving it a go!   I do still appreciate comments and feedback so you can always say how you feel about it even if I don't end up changing much.  That being said though...I'm still tweaking things as I go along and each time I play through it I change a little here and there to tighten things up. so there will still be minor changes here and there throughout but nothing major will be changed (with MAYBE the exception of the battle system.)

 Keep in mind this is just the first floor so some of the classes that seem weak now will "blossom" and be useful later on, especially when enemies get to use more area control attacks, debuffs, and ailments.   There will also be more 'checks' for Decryption in further Levels.  The way it's "weighted" is that the beginning skills will be weaker overall and it builds to stronger and better skills over time.   That does remind me that I need to make a Skill Tree text file so people can plan their classes out.  I wanted to include one in game and I might still do that and put it in the 'Lore' Book.

It's kind of subtle but in general the first 3 classes are considered 'Warrior' types, the next 3 are considered 'Rogue' types, the next 3 are considered 'Mystic' types, and the last 3 are considered 'Scholar' types.     I do agree with your assessment that there can be better explanations for the way things work for the classes.  I'll likely add some more information in the 'Lore' Book about these things along with maybe a full Skill Tree for each class.  Not sure when that part will be done but maybe with the next update or the update after.

 I still do need to finish making hybrid skills as I'm not done with those yet but will make sure they are by the time Level 3 is done so people can go the paths to get the hybrid skills they want.      

Elementalist was a little tricky to work with because he uses the 6 'natural' elements,  so in order to make sure it's understood that they are on equal footing I had to have the option where they can learn all 6 in one 'chunk.'  If I spaced them out, but they have the same power, then it wouldn't make sense to have one take longer to learn than another.  I just left it open to where the player can choose which elements they want to learn first and last.  I could make it where some are stronger than others but with enemies having elemental weaknesses it would mess with that balance quite a bit.   

The way it's balanced now, although one can't tell from just playing Level 1 and not having access to the database, is that if a character focuses on one tree they will learn all the skills for that tree by the time they get to about Experience Level 28-32.  If they want to 'multiclass' then IF they get all the possible ways to get bonus LP throughout the game then they can learn all skills for 2 skill trees by the time they are about experience Level 48-50.  Level 50 is the max Experience Level in this game so it's theoretically possible to master 2 classes by the end of the game.  This does not take into account 'hybrid skills' yet so that will vary a bit as well and will likely need retweaked some later on.  

Yeah, I like the wandering merchants and knight/clerics too!  There will definitely be more types of those, and a neat one in store for Level 2 if you encounter it.  There will also be, like you stated, bandits (Syndicate heavies), that go through a process like what you envisioned.  They will be more saturated in the mid levels and there will be some story that explains why in a cutscene after Level 2.  

As of now Level 2 is about 75% (re)done so I'm hoping that Level 2 and the next update will be released within a week.  It SHOULDN'T break old saves but I'll know for sure when I play through it when it's complete.  

Thanks for playing and the feedback.  Take care. and have a good day

The missing bgm 's is embarrassing, sorry about that.   It's now fixed and a new version is up (or at least it will be in about 5 minutes from the time of this post.)

As far as skills....you start with 5 LP for each character and I purposely made it to where if you put 4 LP in any class it will automatically open up a skill that can be learned below it which also costs 1 LP so each character can learn 1 skill at the start of the game.  It won't give the skill to you automatically you have to learn it with the same process as putting points in it.  For instance if you put 4 LP in 'Soldier' class you'll notice that it opens up the skill "Power Strike" right below the +Soldier class/skill.  You would then put that last point on that skill to learn it.   

Thank you for playing and for the report.

Maze of the Lost MZ Rework 1.00 released!

Sounds like an awesome update.  I'll give it a try as soon as it's downloadable.  I see that it says "Pending" so assuming since the download is still at 9.2 that it's not technically released yet.  Glad you're still updating this plugin though.  It has come a long way since my purchase.   

Just a heads up the download files haven't been updated since 9.2 so I can't see the new changes.  It says updated 9 days ago in the description and I would like to see how it looks in the plugin manager before giving more feedback.

No prob!  I know pretty much everyone and their mom uses VisuStella stuff, myself included, and this would be a deal breaker for at least most of those people if at least the Core and the Tier 1 Free Plugins weren't compatible.  

I have yet to play around with other VisuStella Plugins to see if they play nice so just be aware that I'm only talking about the free ones being compatible but I think most of the rest SHOULD work as long as it doesn't mess too much with battles or things proximate to battles.  

v1.05 released (04/03/22)

-Changed a few texts around the whole game in general including some database descriptions, NPC texts, and fixed a few typos and text formatting.

-Re-inserted the "Special Random Battles" that occur at about a 5% ratio for each level and these range from random encounter shops, random encounter ambushes, and random encounter that heal the party or give items.   This was in a previous version (1.00 and 1.01 I believe) but was removed afterwards due to a discrepency but has been modified and improved and placed back in.

-Changed the way "Special Shops" work (and Lorelite and Medals in those shops.)  Should be better overall.

-The next small area after Level 6 (Mid-Camp) is now explorable and the cut off is now trying to descend to Level 7 from Mid-Camp.

-Fixed some inconsistencies in database in the enemies tab.

-Found a better workaround for a previous issue with having Medals and Lorelites not updating properly, I ended up removing the ability to get them from certain random encounters and stealing them from enemies but now they do update properly and will revert to also being able to get them from some random enemies and stealing them.

-The random but rare soft locks that were occuring in battle should now be fixed after a recent VS update.  Apparently it was an issue with the CTB system.

-Replaced the skill "Counter Break" with "Victory Aid."

-I know I'm forgetting a couple other small things.

Sorry it took so long for this update.  I was working a little bit on the sequel because I wanted to get a good base for it and I was also playing around with a Tactical Battle System I purchased from Synrec and I'm a sucker for TBS so that ate up some time, but now that I'm done working on the base for the sequel and I will now focus much more of the free time I have to finishing this as I want it out sometime this year.

Level 7 is an eventing nightmare and I wanted to be done with it by now but it will not be done till next update.  My goal is to get 1 Level done per month till the game is done.  So about 6 months is my goal to get this completed.

For the small handful of people who enjoy this game....thank you for playing, it means a lot to me!

Cool.  I will wait patiently for them.  I will try to only suggest things that I think many people would like, won't be too difficult, and that will increase your sales by having more options available to the player.  

Bug Report - Using a healing item causes a crash.  'Reference Error baseVal is not defined'  Looks like it's in rmmz managers.js:2031.

Specifically I made an herb recovery item that restores 10% + 30HP and tested it with both the formula box and the effects box (not at the same time) and used it in and out of battle and with only your plugin on and it still gives that error.  

Wow.  A lot of recent fixes lately, nice work.  I am really enjoying playing around with this.  

Bug Report - Ex-Parameter Counter Attack doesn't work.  Gave a piece of equipment +100% Counter Attack rate and no counters occur.

Suggestion - Can you make it to where the <Move Range: x> tag for Actors can also be used for Classes?  That would satiate the games that incorporate class changing of some sort and make movement dependent on class.

Just a heads up for those who were curious about this being compatible with VisuStella....I've so far tested the Core and the Tier 1 Free Plugins and have not run into any crashes or errors EXCEPT for the Battle Core in that there are no popups for anything but since the TBS is its own Battle System I doubt many would even want Battle Core to begin with.   I plan on testing it with more VisuStella stuff in the near future and will report my findings.

That's a great update and a lot of fixes.  Thank you.  I hope for the best for your Juno project because it looks pretty cool and I will definitely play that when it's out.

Hopefully I won't have to report too many more bugs so you can focus more on the game but I am thoroughly enjoying playing around with this TBS so I will probably still be bugging you at least a little haha.    

I actually used the male priest character (forgot his name) and he gave regen to himself and it seemingly restored HP at the start of his turn AND when his turn ended.  But I'm glad it looks like you figured the issue out and it will be fixed. Thanks for fixing that other one with the MP as well, that was definitely a big deal lol.  

A couple more bugs to report...

1.  There are no Regeneration Popups on the battlers.  Tried to make a regen skill and it refills the HP but it shows no number popup and sometimes it regens twice in one turn when it should only do it once.

2.  Made an enemy that has 50 MP and a skill that uses 40 MP, he shouldn't be able to use this skill more than once but he has an endless supply of it and just keeps spamming it.  He shouldn't be able to do that if he runs out of MP.

Ok yeah, I found it in the Plugin Parameters, I should have looked more closely.   Thanks.  

Sorry if I'm starting to be annoying but is there a way to disable all that stuff that's flying across the screen on the TBS Maps?  At first I thought it was a weather effect but it seems like it's something to do with the plugin itself and I'm not finding a way to turn it off,  Thanks.

Sounds good, thank you!  I'm going to do more experiments in the next coming days to see more of what this can do and start working on a scratch project with the plugin and I'll let you know how that goes as well most likely.  

Looking through the plugin notes more closely and exploring the database more in the Demo I noticed that there's no custom paramters for weapons/armor.  

Any chance you could add in ranges/area etc. for weapons like for skills?  This way someone can have a spear or whip weapon for instance able to go 2 tiles instead of just the 1.

Also maybe a way to equip a certain armor and increase move range.  I know there's a state for that but I think it would be more efficient to do it straight from the equipment itself rather than tying it to a passive state essentially, this way someone can equip 'move boots' or something that gives them +2 move range.  

Just some suggestions that would make the plugin even more versatile. Have a good day.

Just a heads up....when you change the 'Default Battle Turn Mode' to 'Turn'  you get a type error 'Cannot read property start of undefined' right after you place your characters in the battlefield.

This is easily the most versatile and feature heavy Skill Shop system I have ever seen for any RPG Maker.  Deserves an award.  Nice work.

1.  Yeah, pretty much.  The blue flame thing that you move around will depress the tile that is on but if anything has an area effect more than a single tile then it does not depress (or highlight) the other tiles it's supposed to effect.  

2.  Strange how it does it to me but not to you.  Glad you'll try update optimizations.  

3.  Yeah, there's a few different ways you could go about this so you have to weigh your options carefully to get what would be most effective for what you're trying to do.  I think your idea of the window popup showing up would be a good middle ground for it.  

I know getting the AI right was the problem a lot of other TBS creators had in the past as it was (according to them) very tedious and finnicky.  Hopefully that won't cause you too much stress.

You're welcome for the feedback.  I want this thing to be as good as it can be because I do really like TBS.  At least for a little while I'll keep testing the new demos to give more feedback.

I saw your profile pic and my goodness woman you are incredibly attractive......oh and your art is kinda nice too.

Definite improvements in the last update but there's still a couple issues.  So far I'm still just playing your demo so there's no other plugins but the TBS.

1. The issue I was talking about last time stll exists.  Maybe I didn't explain it well...basically what I was getting at is that any skill that has an area effect doesn't show an indicator for the area effect on the map itself.  I'm assuming you've played one of the Final Fantasy Tactics games.  In those games let's say you use the Fire Skill, when you first select the skill the range lights up (yours does this) and you then go and select where you want the skill to go (yours does this with the little blue fire thing) and it shows the area of effect (yours does NOT do this if it targets more than one square.)  This is what I was getting at.  The Fire skill in Final Fantasy Tactics after you select a target tile will then highlight the total area effected to give a visual indicator of where it will actually hit but with your you kinda have to guess.  

2.  For some reason when you use regular attack from the 2nd round and on the little blue flame thing moves suuuuppperrrr slow to the target area and soft freezes the game.  Not sure what that's about.  I tried it multiple times and it still does it.

3.  Sometimes the camera won't shift up to show the damage done if the skill has a high range.  Maybe some sort of camera moving mechanism to go to the target area?

All in all though I do like the direction it's going and it keeps getting better so I have no doubt it will be an epic system before too long.  

It wasn't specifically about auto-actors and auto-enemies.   It sounds like you knew what I was getting at on the second reply though.  Thanks for the quick reply and for adding that in 3.8, looking forward to it.  

Hi.  I think there's some issues with the targeting and damage area mechanics.  It seems like the <Damage Area:x> tag should show some sort of visual indicator (flashing or something) of the area that is going to be effected.  It does this for the range but not for the area.

For example in most TBS, you use a skill and get a visual of the range by either colored tiles or flashing tiles or something (yours does this) but let's say you have a skill that has an area of 1 (which in most would indicate and effect the square selected and one square on each side of it so a total of 5 squares are effected) it does not show this visually in yours.  

I tested this in your demo with no other plugins.  I tried changing the notetag of the Fire 1 skill and played with the <TBS Attack Pattern: type> and <Damage Area:> tags to see if there was a way to visually show this but it doesn't appear that it does this. and there's only a visual indicator for the range but not the area,

Hopefully that made sense.  

Picked up the plugin yesterday.  I'll do some experimentation with it over the next few days and see what other plugins it is compatible with. 

I read the disclaimer but hoping it at least works with basic visustella plugins but if not there's bound to be other plugins that will be compatible.

Nice work overall on the plugin and glad you're still working on it and squashing bugs.

Ok.  That's pretty cool then.   Glad that's an option.

According to your website explanation of the TBS, it seems when an attack or skill is used on an enemy it goes to the default sideview battle scene to do it.  Is there any way you could make that a toggleable option?  And then have another option where it just shows an animation and a damage/state popup on the map itself like how most of the other TBS's do?  

This would give more variety and option to the TBS battles for those who like the Fire Emblem way of doing it and those who like the FFT way of doing it.

What did you have in mind?  And what do you mean by more streamlined?

You're coming up with some good plugins that are versatile and powerful.  You're the first that I know of that made a TBS for MZ.

I'll most likely pick this up in the near future after I see how it develops over time.   Nice work.  Looking forward to seeing what else happens to this plugin.

Ok.  I might try to mess with some of the settings on it while I still have the demo to see if I can get it to work.   AVG is the only antivirus I like using or I would just use another one instead.

I really want to get this as I think you did a great job based on the demo and the game is fun but I have AVG Antivirus and the no sound thing is really killing it and is currently a deal breaker.  Has you or anyone found a way to get this to work with AVG?  If so I'll definitely pick this up.  

v1.04 released (12/19/21)...

-Fixed 2 small bugs on Level 5 that had to do with a Wall Notice and changed the Icon for 3 Notes in the Notebook to Paper Pages instead of Shovels.

-Changed the way that special 'Guards' behave and turned them into regular user only skills with a cooldown instead of having them replace other 'guards,' as that tended to cause issues in battle and in function altogether. This shouldn't cause any crashes with save games but there's a small chance it might.

-Removed 'stealable' Lorelite and Medals from certain enemies to avoid number discrepencies in what amount of each were reflected in menus. The numbers likely won't be corrected on save games but on new games it will be fixed.

Thanks for anyone who plays and supports the game!
 

Released v1.03 (12/07/21)

-Fixed Minimap skill use crash.

-Fixed 'createLinearGradient' canvassing issue that would trigger trying to Level up past Level 30.

-Fixed Nectar of Life failing to load SE.

-Fixed dialog of old lady quest in the Inn.  

-Added drops and 'steals' to Level 6 enemies (for some reason I totally missed this!)

Thanks for the speedy reply and bugfix!  I'll let you know if there's any further issues.  

Hi there.  Great plugin idea (along with your skill construct, just bought both today) and it works on a clean project just fine but it has compatibility issues with VisuStella plugins, even just the basic (core) ones.

I get the following crash when I try to check status from the main menu.

rmmz_managers.js:2030 ReferenceError: SynrecSCGmBattBseXparam is not defined

What I'm guessing is happening is that there's not a way for your plugin to graphically (textually) check an X-Param or S-Param if it's brought up in a menu.  I'm not an expert on these things or anything but it only does that when I would try to check the status menu that shows those things.  

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Released v 1.01 (11/17/21) and v 1.02 (11/18/21)

-Added options for Instant Text and Auto-Dash.

-Removed Teleportation bug to maps not in use.

-Fixed crash associated with viewing Perks.

-Fixed (probably) crash associated with Minimap Skill.

-Fixed (probably) crash associated with a Level 3 enemy.

-May have fixed Stun Lock issue but will likely need further testing to be sure.