Hello all. I will preface my request for help by saying that I am learning to script at the moment, and I plan to do most of the work myself, but I would just like some help to know where to start, or what the heck I need to do for this (and maybe some others) script.

For a game I am making, I want to make it so that the for each character, the secondary (shield by default) slot can have either a secondary piece of equipment, like a shield or pretty much anything, OR a second weapon. (This is to give a strategical decision to the player; I am using GTBS, and one way a player could use this is to have a melee and ranged weapon, or a staff and melee/ranged weapon, or two elemental weapons) During battle, the player could swap weapons, thus having the benefits of both alternately, but at the cost of not having any stat buffs from their secondary equipment.
(If you want me to explain better, please let me know)

I have looked around for dual wielding scripts to base this off of, but I literally have not found one that wasn't a dead link, so now I ask for help from you fine people. I could use a working dual wielding script, or some advice on what I need to change, or even ideas about what kind of methods to use. Though I am a good programmer for a couple other languages/programs, I don't know how RMXP is set up, really, but I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.


And for an added challenge, I'm trying to make a system with multiple-level skills for some skills, if you have any advice on that sort of thing. And there is one more thing, but it is a rather hefty question, so I'll save it for now.

Thanks in advance for any and all help, guys!

This might be more of a script request than script support question, unless you have a more specific direction you're heading. If you know ruby, then you probably already know that RGSS runs in a big loop, which runs smaller "scene" loops to display different parts of the game. Information about the game is stored in large game objects like game_actor or game_enemy. You will need to modify the equip and battle scenes, as well as add or modify variables in game_player to handle an extra weapon. If you are using GTBS, then the battle scene is defined by scene_battle_tbs. GubiD has done fantastic work putting together a complex AI simulator, but let me warn you in advance -- that scene is a labyrinth. My advice is to use this as an opportunity to learn RGSS and Ruby (if you can code in C++, prepare to be amazed at how much easier Ruby is). The only downside is that you might find out that you like Ruby as much or more than RMXP, and end up writing overly long responses to relatively simple requests, like this one, instead of working on you game. Feel free to message if you have specific questions about how stuff works in Ruby or RGSS.