Summon Buddies

[MagusMartovich]

I wasn't able to find this as an ability. Is there any way to create skills that allow characters to summon minions? I have a couple of weak melee characters who would benefit from having a friend to help out.

Being able to generate an NPC helper, would also allow for extra turns once there is a prty of 4, so you get 5 turns instead of the regular 4.

If there is no way to make "real" summons, is there a way to make NPC characters that assist the player in battles? I could write that a minion was summoned or whatever and have it explained as to why it was present and also why it goes away when the final party is assembled.

[Wavelength]

Re: Summon Buddies

I wasn't able to find this as an ability. Is there any way to create skills that allow characters to summon minions? I have a couple of weak melee characters who would benefit from having a friend to help out.

I do think there's a way to do this but offhand I'm not entirely sure what it is. Perhaps there's an "Add Party Member" command? (After the battle, and possibly if the summon dies, you'd have to trigger the "Remove Party Member" command.)

Ryner did this in his XP game; Fushigi Renamon could "draw" different summons who acted as an extra character. This was very, very cool.

Being able to generate an NPC helper, would also allow for extra turns once there is a prty of 4, so you get 5 turns instead of the regular 4.

Now, to get a true fifth character, you'd probably have to do a lot of code modification, and that's a level I'm still at least a couple months away from being able to help with. If your system has 3 characters in battle, the 4th shouldn't be too hard to add. The 5th might be, because, for example, you'd need to change all the 4-spot arrays in the code.

I was actually thinking about the same thing last night, since I plan to give a couple characters summons, and I'm still not sure whether a 3-person or 4-person battle system works best for my game. If I go with a 4-character system, and can't figure out how to add true extra characters, I will probably have events in battle where you can command the "summon" to attack enemies in different ways each turn via a choice branch. The summon won't be targetable by enemies; they can't kill it but it can't tank for you.

If there is no way to make "real" summons, is there a way to make NPC characters that assist the player in battles? I could write that a minion was summoned or whatever and have it explained as to why it was present and also why it goes away when the final party is assembled.

Do you mean like Dark Cloud 2-style passive benefits? Yeah, this is do-able.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Summon Buddies

So, I understand how to add "real" playable characters (add character like you said) but was looking at a traditional "summoner" class as a real possibility for at least one character. I was thinking along the lines of the Druid/Necromancer from Diablo II or (to a lesser extent) Navi/Tatl from the Zelda series.

I'm already running into balance issues with my mages. Early game they can't survive even small conflicts and any advantage spell I give them becomes crazy overpowered. I was thinking a summonable tank spell to add an additional target/extra damage per turn because even just 1 extra member gets my mages through. Its really just a question of survivability and like I said I can create a "dud" character for this end, but I would rather ave it be computer controlled, as opposed to player controlled. To add to the feel.

[Wavelength]

Re: Summon Buddies

I was thinking a summonable tank spell to add an additional target/extra damage per turn because even just 1 extra member gets my mages through. Its really just a question of survivability and like I said I can create a "dud" character for this end, but I would rather ave it be computer controlled, as opposed to player controlled. To add to the feel.

You could use the "Force Action" command on the NPC ally, maybe have it run once per turn whenever the summon is present in the battle. I haven't actually used this as of yet, but in theory I imagine it would do what you need it to.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Summon Buddies

Where would I put the Force Action? Would it still function with random battles?

[Wavelength]

Re: Summon Buddies

Where would I put the Force Action? Would it still function with random battles?

The good news is that it doesn't require you to touch the code. (EDIT: and yes, it works with random battles, because you can script on the Troop level if you want rather than the Event level).

You'd put it inside battle (troop) scripts in the database, and have it run in the event that a certain switch is on (which you can easily toggle as part of a Common Event that the Summon Spell automatically calls). Well, since you'd need to add it to every enemy troop in your game, I guess the smarter way to do it would be to put the Force Action section inside another Common Event, and have each enemy troop page call that Common Event while the switch is on.

So you'd have a page in each battle which says "While Switch 10 is ON, call Common Event 20" (the numbers are, of course, arbitrary). You'd set up your Summon Spell to activate Common Event 21, which adds the 4th (NPC) character to your battle party (if you want to make it a 5th character, that might also be possible by choosing "Immediately" in the Force Actions options; I'm not sure), as well as set Switch 10 to ON. Finally, Common Event 20 would be the Force Actions script, which maybe runs through a random number generator, and uses a Conditional Branch to pick one of three possible actions to Force on the NPC's next turn as a result of the random number.

There very well might be a more elegant way to accomplish this, but if so, I've yet to think of it.

(Unless you only want the Summon available in certain battles, then it would be much easier to pull off, because you could actually create it as an "enemy" that only attacks your enemies...)

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Summon Buddies

So then my "Earth Golem" summon is an enemy monster that needs to be part of all the groups of monsters I fight? I just want to make sure I understand correctly.

Does it need to be on the group? Like if I'm fighting against 3 ghosts do I make the troop 3 Ghosts and 1 Earth Golem?

[Wavelength]

Re: Summon Buddies

So then my "Earth Golem" summon is an enemy monster that needs to be part of all the groups of monsters I fight? I just want to make sure I understand correctly.

Does it need to be on the group? Like if I'm fighting against 3 ghosts do I make the troop 3 Ghosts and 1 Earth Golem?

That's only true if you're using that workaround I proposed in parentheses at the bottom of my last post. It grants you far less flexibility but has some benefits (such as an automatic AI, and allows you to easily use 4 normal actors).

If you're using the main approach I described, you can just use an actor that appears whenever you use the summon skill. The reason I mention enemy troops is because that is where you set the normal event processing inside battle.

There are Event Pages you can add to each Troop, so although you won't need to add the Earth Golem to the enemy Troop, you will need to add an Event Page that, for example, runs only when the "Earth Golem" switch has been turned ON, and runs a Common Event that Forces the Earth Golem (who is temporarily in YOUR party) to take a certain Action.

This is something I've wanted to try out anyhow so if there's still anything up in the air at the end of the week, I'll implement it and let you know how I got it to work.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Summon Buddies

Ok, so what I do is make a spell "summon" and have a switch say "01" and then on the troops page if 01 is on then such and such will happen, during the fight, once per turn, correct? That's hot.

As a bit of a side question, is there any way for players to change their party line up? Say they don't like "Bob" in the lead and they want "May" instead? Thanks Wave!

[Wavelength]

Re: Summon Buddies

Ok, so what I do is make a spell "summon" and have a switch say "01" and then on the troops page if 01 is on then such and such will happen, during the fight, once per turn, correct? That's hot.

Yup!

As a bit of a side question, is there any way for players to change their party line up? Say they don't like "Bob" in the lead and they want "May" instead? Thanks Wave!

Definitely a way to do this but I'm not 100% sure how. Probably via creative use of "Change Party Member"; I assume the first character in your lineup is the one in the lead, so you'd need to remove everyone and then add them back in a certain order. You also might be able to fake it using "Change Actor Graphic".

There's also some good scripts out there to show all of your party members (they will follow you around "caterpillar" style); one of them is contained in Blizzard's Tons of Add-Ons pack.

No problem! Very fun to discuss the ways to do stuff with this program and I'm learning too as we go through it.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Summon Buddies

A lot of the individual parts of Blizard's add-ons are things I'd be interested in but idk if I want all of them. At the same time, I do want to learn how to tweak the program itself, so tacking a bunch of additional line of coding in isn't exactly going to simplify things.

I have a few things on my XP plate right now to play with, and I'm sure I'll be busy for the next month (or at least the weekend) and I'll keep that link in mind just in case I get lazy. I think we all have that habit from time to time.

[Wavelength]

Re: Summon Buddies

A lot of the individual parts of Blizard's add-ons are things I'd be interested in but idk if I want all of them. At the same time, I do want to learn how to tweak the program itself, so tacking a bunch of additional line of coding in isn't exactly going to simplify things.

I have a few things on my XP plate right now to play with, and I'm sure I'll be busy for the next month (or at least the weekend) and I'll keep that link in mind just in case I get lazy. I think we all have that habit from time to time.

You can turn ON or OFF any feature in the pack which is pretty neat.

I totally feel the same way that you do! I'd much rather do it myself than take it from someone else (even if they're willing to let me take it). Some of those items though are things that would take me months to learn how to code, or days to figure out decent coordinates and distances to use. Right now I'm keeping two copies of my game, one without any add-ons and one with.

I'm probably gonna have a lot of time to play around with stuff during this long weekend (since anywhere you try to travel around DC is gonna mean really bad traffic on a holiday weekend). Can't wait...