Well, everyone mostly knows about the different types of battle systems. Default which is just pictures of your character and the monster and little animations for damage and spells taking place between them. The next, the one I'm using is the side view battle. Sprites for both sides, they move to attack and little animations for the attacks and spells. 3rd (the one I want to do) is side view battle, but the sprites actually have weapons in their hands, animation for dashing forwards, backwards, to the target, animation of them actually swinging and using the weapons, animation for them summoning spells. The fourth one I'm not going to try, but that's more or like Ragnorock Online, where its a free range battle system and you can fight wherever you are.

My idea is to add something to that. Say that your character swings the sword and attacks- but before the damage hits, with timing you can press a button when prompted and deal extra damage, or use an ability. Like for Instance, Shinoski, my main character has his sword equipped with a lightning ability and swings, but before he deals damage you can press a button that allows the sword to do lightning elemental damage. Which makes a chain attack. Regular damage (button pressed) lightning 1 (button pressed) lightning 2 (button pressed) lightning three (button pressed) ultimate attack.

Is this possible? And how can you do such a thing?

Could anyone point me in the right direction or is some one kind enough to help at least offer some good advice? I think that something like that would make a game more enjoyable.

Sounds like SMRPG or Paper Mario to me. Try asking the creators of that Starlite World Mario game or whatever it's called. It's made with RMXP.

You could make a side-view CBS. Then, instead of the way you would program a usual fight command, just show an animation of the character swinging a sword, do a wait X for however long it takes to swing a sword X, use an input command, only give the player like a 0.1 or 0.2 second window to press the key, determine if a key was pressed during that window, calculate and display physical damage, if a key was pressed then display a lightning battle animation, calculate and display the lightning damage. If you can make a side-view CBS, then you are also capable of doing this. If you aren't capable of making a side-view CBS, then maybe you should stick to a DBS and focus on making other aspects of the game good.

Well I am currently using a script similar to that shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVUgqwsRPzY A friend of mine also told me I should try a program out called Aces Hud script.

Tanketai's RMXP Sideview Battle script does everything your third system idea does.

The thing is if you want to program something in to hit a button before attacking for bonus damage or combos you'll have to get a scripter to link that into the system and expand on it. I don't think it'd be difficult for a scripter to do, but it's a lot of code to have to go through for any scripter you ask, and fairly advanced coding as well.

Yeah, while I can see how I could put it together in pseudo-code, the actual coding process can take a while.

It's a cute idea, mind you, but I feel that if you're going to start doing this kind of implementation, you need to go more robust than just detect for a single button. Mario RPG even had multiple button pressing schemes for different moves.

Hmn. Well okay. I will take your word for it. Note that this is my first game that I am trying to put together. Just that I have some ideas that I would like incorporated into it.

Doing spriting is one thing, doing the coding and programing is another. I've looked around on here and followed some tutorials on youtube, but they never really go really in depth.

Another idea would be not a battle system, but an event. Perhaps you can do this in a cut scene or after wining a battle.

Its going to take place during the opening level. Your high up on some cliffs fighting. Basically have people fall off the cliffs to their deaths, or disappear half way down.

Well I have been working hard on the game so far. Going to post some screen shots of the levels. Yet I'm kinda still having a hard time with the battles and scripting. I have looked around, but perhaps not hard enough but I haven't seen any really in depth tutorials on how to do things like what I'd like to do. I'm more of a hands on learner, and can follow directions well, so precise step by step directions work better for me then what other people could do just fine with. Is there anyone that can help me on this? An experienced programmer/coder?

~Merged double post. Please wait 72 hours before posting twice in a row. -Harryb412