skill leveling

[Spirit]

this a idea that ca'me to me while playing my current favorite online game runescape.

would it be possible to include in rpg maker a skill system. such as the one fetured in rune scape? for those not familliar with the runscape system ill explain. to do certain actions your skill level will have to be above a set level such as for mining coal you have to be level thirty. i think you could do this in rpg m 3 by increaseing a variable every time you do something and then leveling up every so many exp/varaible 1 you obtain such as if someone wanted to track somthing he would have to have a set varaible, varaible 1 wich is how much exp you have witch effects varaible 2 wich is what level you are. to track the creature the person was trying to track variable two would have to be so high to resemble how hard the creature is to track

so, useing this method you could have a skill system for anything! including, digging, climbing, swiming, forgeing, searching, stealing, interagating, spoting, healing, jumping, herb picking, potion makeing, animal tracking, and animal riding or anything else you desire.

[Wavelength]

Re: skill leveling

Yes, this would be possible in any RPG Maker game. (Ursus Quest: Tree of Life did actually implement a simplified version of this using RM3.)

You'd be surprised how hard it is to get this kind of system right from a gameplay point of view, though--especially in a single-player game.

[Ωbright]

Re: skill leveling

For the most part, I think you can do this fairly easily in RM3. The problem might be skills which could be used in battle, versus skills which could be used via an event on a map. If you wanted the prior to work like the latter, it would be tricky, but possible. First though, you can't affect a variable directly using the default battle system (at least during the battle), so you can't do something like "cast HEAL 30 times to go to level 3 in HEAL". However, you CAN have NPC's or regular events which increase your heal skill variable by a certain amount, and also check your current heal skill value. If you have enough "heal EXP", you can learn the next level of the heal skill.

In the other case, it'd be fairly easy. All you would need is an NPC or event with a VC branch that checked your exp for a certain skill, and either gave you a fail due to too low exp in that skill, or a success due to your having enough exp in it.

One problem though, is there's no easy way for players to see what their exp is for any one skill, unless you hijack the player stats to represent those values...and then you'd have to do away with the default battle system all together. You can use INT with no problems, but that's just one skill to represent. It sounds like you'd need a LOT more than that.

[EDIT] And yes! I did this, kind of, in Tree of Life.

[Spirit]

Re: skill leveling

yes i think it would be hard to check your skill level but there is a way.
somwhere in the world you could include a npc that will tell you how experinced you are in a certain skill
the cook could tell your cooking the potionmaker could tell your potion skill and so on

[MagusMartovich]

Re: skill leveling

From the title I thought you were going for a fir 1 becomes fire 2 at level 4 kind of thing. I did something like that for RM1 but I could never get it to work right in 3.

[Ωbright]

Re: skill leveling

yes i think it would be hard to check your skill level but there is a way.
somwhere in the world you could include a npc that will tell you how experinced you are in a certain skill
the cook could tell your cooking the potionmaker could tell your potion skill and so on

Yes you could, but keep in mind that you would probably want to check your level, rather than your experience until the next level. If you had to obtain 50 experience points to level, you would need 50 text boxes just to display the value from 0-50. However, you could set it up so that it would tell you your level in a skill, and give different messages depending on what range your exp fell under. For instance, if it were in the 0-16 range you could say something like "You've got a long way to go until your next level!", and then something else for 17-32, and 33-50. Again, that's just an example based on if you had a skill levelup after every 50 points. Just adjust that for whatever scheme you want to use, if you want to use that idea.

And even if you only report the level, you'd need one text box per level...per skill, and text boxes eat up a LOT of data space. This is all still do-able though, but it might be better to max out the skill levels at 20 or something. Ultimately that's up to you, but the more text boxes that aren't totally necessary that you eliminate, the more space you'll have for maps, people, storytellers, dungeons, enemies...you get the picture.

[Perversion]

Re: skill leveling

The text boxes themselves are not going to be the major memory hog for this idea. It's all the val cond branches that those text boxes are contained within that are gonna suck up all of the memory.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: skill leveling

Is this going to be for out of battle skills only? (Walk up to "Rock" and attempt to "Mine Ore" and % chance for success/if success gain +1)

I was thinking you meant a skill progression system for magic/combat abilites.

If it is an out of battle only thing, couldn't you use the the same event on the world map to track use/success and have it annnounce when you level up? As its only the one event, it wouldn't eat up memory like multiple events and with just the one application of text over the different modes, you only have to type it all into the game the one time.

Might help.

[Ωbright]

Re: skill leveling

The text boxes themselves are not going to be the major memory hog for this idea. It's all the val cond branches that those text boxes are contained within that are gonna suck up all of the memory.

If you mean, as in "eats up way too many of your 50 lines of code per page", then yeah. But text boxes use the maximum amount of data, even if you only say "25" in it. VC branches just by themselves don't add too much to your overall data usage, but they're also worthless without something in them.

If it is an out of battle only thing, couldn't you use the the same event on the world map to track use/success and have it annnounce when you level up? As its only the one event, it wouldn't eat up memory like multiple events and with just the one application of text over the different modes, you only have to type it all into the game the one time.

Might help.

That's a good idea, you'd just need to copy that event on each map, or anywhere else where events might trigger it. Still way better than having to enter those lines for every single skill-related event. Also, you'd need for these events to communicate, so that changes you make in one are triggered in the others. Sounds tricky, but it can be done.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: skill leveling

Or link all abilities per character so if Joe is at lv3 and gains a level in Mining he'll also gain a level in Foraging.

OR have different characters be useful in dungeons or on the map itself so that interlinking isn't quite so tedious and complicated.