Okay, well I haven't been progressing in development of my game, Lucid Awakening, because I've been working on a skill system. I made a demo of a very beta-ish version of the skill system.

Let me try to explain it. It is a mix of 3 things: the Talents from World of Warcraft, the License Board from Final Fantasy 12, and the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy 10.


-Each character has their own "board" or whatever you want to call it.

-We will use Zeth as an example. He is a mage type character, and he's the one that the demo is based off of. So far he will just have 2 different "paths" of skill learning. I call them the Elemental and Arcane path.

-The first skill on the Elemental path is Fire 1. This is the only skill available at the start of the Elemental path. There are two squares diagonally adjacent to Fire 1, but you can't see what they are. When you put the cursor over Fire 1 and push confirm, a dialogue box pops up that gives the name of the skill (Fire 1), the AP cost (10 AP), and a description of what the skill does ("Deal light fire damage to one enemy").

-The two adjacent tiles start flashing, and you can see what appears to be an Earth symbol on one, and a Water symbol on the other.

-You gain AP from killing monsters (mostly just 1 AP from each). So say you have like 50 AP.

-You choose "Learn this ability" from the choice box that comes up after the previous dialogue box comes up. You learn Fire 1, and the skills Earth 1 and Water 1 become available to learn. The first 4 skills are in a diamond shape with Wind 1 at the bottom, which you can only see/learn once you have learned either Earth 1 or Water 1.

-The "path" continues with a square of the level 2 Elemental spells, and another diamond with the level 3 Elemental spells further down. There are also a few stat boosts (MP +, INT +) between each set of Elemental spells.

-The other path (Arcane...not in the demo) has 3 different levels of Dark, Ice, and Lighting; along with more stat boosts in between them.


You can go between paths at any time. It is not like a class choosing system. You can spend your AP any way you want; you could evenly distribute between paths, but then you wouldn't get the more powerful ones as early on as if you focused on just one. This is how the system is dynamic and different.


Another example of someone's paths, are Ariana. She (so far) has one path that has status effect spells that cause damage and a status effect to one enemy; a path that has spells that put status effects on all enemies, but don't do damage; and a path that has a few healing spells and status healing spells. You can see how this could, again, be dynamic and interesting. (She is probably actually a better example of how interesting this system could get than Zeth).

You are free to look at how I did it (it is COMPLETELY event based...no scripts at all...well except for the message system). If your version isn't compatible, just make a new project in RMXP, and replace the Graphic and Data folders in the new project with the ones from my demo, it should work then. I would really prefer if no one would steal my idea (unless you get permission from me first)...although once you see the coding I have to do for the system...I really doubt you'll want to use it lol. It's SORT of just "copy and paste," but not nearly as much as I had originally hoped. It is very, VERY tedious...and sometimes just annoying to do it. But yeah. It shouldn't be too long before I'm done with all the characters...maybe 2 months I would guess. But of course this means I won't be progressing in my game, but you'll live .

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Okay. I know it is really ugly, and doesn't have a good interface. That's why I need the help of some people. Here is what I would need to make it look a LOT better:

1. Some kind of cursor...at the moment I am using a butterfly lol. I want like a pulsing or rotating square (maybe light blue) that would fit around the skill tiles with space around it (the square be bigger than the skill tiles).

2. Diagonal and straight lines. I am not exactly sure how they would make them fit right, but I guess the person making the lines would need the demo, and would have to go in and test different lengths and angles until it looked just right. I would want them to reach from the edge of the one, to the edge of the other. And there would need to be a few different angles of diagonal lines because some tiles are spaced differently.

3. A "locked skill" tile. I need a tile the same size and style as all the other skill tiles, but have some kind of seal on it. Right now they are just a blank white tile, but it would be nice if the ones you can't see what skill are yet would have like maybe a raised, metallic looking square that would be there.

4. A nice background panorama for the skill trees. I wouldn't need a different one for each character...just a nice background for the thing. Or you know what? Maybe it could just be a tileset so I could build it how I wanted it; also that way the background wouldn't move when the cursor moves around the map. Maybe like a nice chess board type thing with runes and stuff I could mess around with and put around the different paths or something.


So, if anyone would be willing to do any of this, or knows of some already existing stuff, please let me know.

...Bump?

look good, but I get an SDK error.

Given your description, this reminds me of FFX's License Grid:

The grid:
-There is a square for every piece of equipment and ability in the game
-All characters use the same grid
-The grid is divided into eight 'sectors' - the bottom half of the grid features weapon and armor sectors is divided into four sections for weapons and armors, and the top half of the grid features magic, passive abilities, techniques, and accessories.

Using it:
-Characters gain LP by defeating enemies
-On the grid, you can 'purchase' a square using LP, but only if it is adjacent to a square you already have.
-Once you purchase that skill, you can then purchase any skill next to that.

Pretty much the same basic system. Xenosaga Episode III had a similar method - each character had to pay AP for four basic abilities, then you had two 'Paths' (Each had a different theme, such as 'Blocker', 'Counterattacks', 'Magic User', 'Attacker', etc.). On each path was a series of skill sets, and each skill set had 4 abilities in it that all had to be purchased befor eyou could move onto the next section on the Path.

And heck, Xenosaga Episode I was -REALLY- like this. A couple different paths that each led to different spells you could learn. The difference was that you could also pay half the cost of a spell you've already learned to teach it to another character.

Still, nice of you to give a good example of how to do this correctly. Excluding, of course, the part where you get a blaring SDK error saying "Failed to create bitmap" o-o

Lol sorry about that...I dunno what could be wrong with the demo. And I don't feel like messing with that right now lol so...just read the description, don't do the demo .

Oh, and just so you don't think I'm copying off of Xenosaga, I've never played any of them .

Here are characters' skill trees I have in mind:
-Damian: 1. Buffs (one ally); 2. Buffs (all allies); 3. Attack skills
-Ariana: 1. Status effects (one enemy); 2. Status effects (all enemies); 3. Status healing/a few healing spells
-Zeth: 1. Elemental; 2. Arcane
-Aiden: 1. Defense boosts (stuff like protect, shell); 2. Maybe attacks?
-Garett: 1. Specific species-killing skills; 2. Arrow techniques (maybe)

Also I have another character (Glow), but I'm not quite sure what to do with him. I am thinking he will be a Blue Mage, which would mean he would get all his skills from monsters and a skill tree wouldn't be needed. But I realized I don't have anyone who can learn all the levels of healing spells, so I think he will be able to learn monster skills, and have a skill tree containing 1. Healing; 2. Astral (star/holy attack magic)

Oh, I didn't think you were - just that I've seen stuff like that in all kinds of games. Other games like Diablo II have also had skill learning trees, but it's still a really good system.

My suggestion for your blue mage is this - have him have normal skill trees for monster magic (Maybe divide it into offensive, restorative, and defensive monster moves?), -but-, also make it so that his tree only allows you to purchase skills if you've also defeated a particular kind of enemy or boss?

Yeah that could work. Mm...that sounds like more confusing switches and variables I'm gonna have to use LOL! But I still need a healer now. I suppose he could learn all the healing spells from monsters...that WOULD be kind of a deviation from the norm in RPG's. But I also guess I could just have an extra skill tree that is normal for healing spells.

Well, the reason I suggested what I did is that you don't really want one character to have a huge variety more moves than any other character does - in that case, it tends to make them 'uber' and it becomes a little unbalanced. But if you don't plan to have a lot of monster spells he can learn, then go ahead.

Is there a way to use something like one of the Blue Mage learning scripts, and instead of learning a skill, it would like turn on a switch or something?

Yeah. The change should be fairly obvious if you're doing Blue Magic by Events, but if you're doing it by a universal script, then... things are a little different. You'll have to inquire on the proper boards there - I'm no good at all with Ruby Scripting.

Hmm, doesn't work for me. Comes up and freezes.

Yeah...someone else said it does that. I dunno what's wrong, I took the link off.

You could just download my game (link's in my sig)...it's in the latest version I just put up.

I have noted that a lot of the games created with rpgmaker have interesting conceptual plots, however some of them fail to meet the expectations that the majority of the players hope for... and this is mostly considering the potential that the game could reach if things are done the right way... get to know lucid awakening, a game with a lot of potential in front of it

Fist of the Northstar: Ken's Rage, or by it's Japanese name, Hokuto Musou.

Done pretty much the EXACT same way. Having said that, it worked beautifully there, so I'm sure yours should come out nice too.

Re: Blue Mage issue

there are several ways to tackle it.

1. do it your initial suggestion, no tree, just learn from monsters.

This has the effect that whether you like it or not, his growth will be far more locked step than the rest of the crew, simply because what he can learn is very much limited by what's around him. That is totally fine, mind you, it's just a deviation from your own system.

2. learn by categories

split the different monsters into their types and level. Divvying up special abilities that make a monster really awesome into further skills. i.e. you first have to learn the "level 1 blue magic" skill to open up the various types of first level blue magic. However, open that up only let's you learn level 1 blue magic. you still need to invest in a specific type of blue magic. i.e. pick up the young drake's fire breath spell after you've picked up level 1 blue magic. Obviously, the problem with this is that you effectively take away the whole "learn by taking a hit" kind of feel to the blue mage.

3. learn by category, but also, you gotta pay.

This is basically Garlyle suggested. Learn by category, but you still need to acquire the monster tech yourself. This will still maintain the "flavor" of the blue mage, without completely divorcing him from your skill mechanic. Actually, when you really think about it, while he might need to go grab spells from monster, it doesn't mean all of his skills need to come that way. Some of skills might not be actual spells anyway. he might pick up a constitution bonus skill that gives him extra hit points, or a combat casting skill that makes his spells faster, etc.

It's a great idea but it's definitely been done before, so I wouldn't say that. Anywho, best wishes for your project.