Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

[Dunmer999]

I don't know if anyone's thought of this before. But in this game I've started, the hero is pretty normal and non-magical. I was planning on having him and other non-magical characters learn ****ty spells at certain levels. But I came up with a better idea, a way to buy spells like in Final Fantasy XII.
The way I made this work is with some ideas I got from this website's forums. So thank you people. The spell shops are custom shops where you can buy treasures. An auto event with different modes(the modes are changed during purchase) scans for the treasure(a different treasure in each mode), takes it away, and your character learns a spell they'd otherwise learn at level 99. It's pretty simple, and so much better than just learning spells by leveling.

[Deeth Irteen]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

I've thought of doing this once. But I prefer a materia-style system, to be honest.

[Ωbright]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

That sounds like a cool idea, but how are you tracking your gold? Because if you don't track it, players will be able to buy all skills from the beginning, because there's no way to check whether they have enough gold or not.

[Dunmer999]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

Well, right now the only person I'm making games for is my brother. I like sharing experiences and watching, especially things I make. He won't cheat. I'll have to make things more hard-wired if I ever make a game good enough to release. So can someone show me a link to a Materia system? Sounds like a cool idea.
Also, why did it auto put "Materia system" in red? That's weird.
Never Mind. I think it's because I was searching for "Materia system".

[Manji]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

That sounds like a cool idea, but how are you tracking your gold? Because if you don't track it, players will be able to buy all skills from the beginning, because there's no way to check whether they have enough gold or not.

actually i was wondering this exact thing. i wanted to make 'custom' shop, like you would just be able to buy items from a regular event character or object, but i didn't see a way to have the game check if i had any gold left or not. so i could just buy an item endlessly and have no way to prevent this from happening?

[Wavelength]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

actually i was wondering this exact thing. i wanted to make 'custom' shop, like you would just be able to buy items from a regular event character or object, but i didn't see a way to have the game check if i had any gold left or not. so i could just buy an item endlessly and have no way to prevent this from happening?

That's right. What you'd have to do is track the player's Gold using variables, which means that every possible way to earn Gold needs to be customized in some way or another. That's not necessarily as bad as it sounds - Obright pioneered a way to use Treasures to allow this to mesh with things like random battles - but if you want to track the player's Gold, you're talking a decent time and Data Usage commitment. If you want to know more, I could go into the nitty-gritty of it.

I had to do something very similar in my (cancelled) RM3 game Panacea, to track your resources so you couldn't do Item Creation endlessly without the raw materials to buy the items, as well as to track your Gold so you could buy these resources at custom shops.

[Manji]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

That's right. What you'd have to do is track the player's Gold using variables, which means that every possible way to earn Gold needs to be customized in some way or another. That's not necessarily as bad as it sounds - Obright pioneered a way to use Treasures to allow this to mesh with things like random battles - but if you want to track the player's Gold, you're talking a decent time and Data Usage commitment. If you want to know more, I could go into the nitty-gritty of it.

I had to do something very similar in my (cancelled) RM3 game Panacea, to track your resources so you couldn't do Item Creation endlessly without the raw materials to buy the items, as well as to track your Gold so you could buy these resources at custom shops.

yes please i would like to know more. i hit a brick wall when i didn't see an easy way to track gold and it made me stop making my game. i'm used to rpg maker 2 where i didn't feel limited at all.

[Wavelength]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

OK, there are two main approaches to this. The first is a little simpler, and should usually require less DU and fewer event slots on your map, but requires you to avoid using pretty much all "default" stuff that affects the party's Gold. The second requires more events and eats more DU, but allows you to keep more default setups such as Random Battles and Treasure Chests.

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Approach 1:

This approach involves making a custom version of everything that's going to affect Gold, and track your party's Gold in the background using a variable. Let's say you want to use Shared Variable 1 for the party's Gold.

You'll need to use events to trigger battles rather than the standard random battle setup (one good way to do this is to have Touch events in your dungeon with the Invisible model) Don't award any Gold in battle; increment the party's Gold (if they win the battle) using an Event instead, based on the monsters they beat. Increment Shared Variable 1 by the same amount. The nice thing about this is that you can easily change other data at the same time, if you have other custom battle-related systems.

Instead of default Treasure Chests, use events and give them the Treasure Chest model. If there's Gold in a treasure chest, increase the party's Gold via event and increase Shared Var 1 by the same amount.

Now, for Shops and Inns, including the ones you want to sell "irregular" stuff like Spells in, make them using Event Commands. The basic setup would be, have a Message/Decision Branch asking what the player wants to buy ("What would you like to buy? 1) Fire Spell 100G 2) Ice Spell 100G 3) Earth Spell 300G 4) Air Spell 500G"), and under each one, have a Value-Conditional Branch that checks the value of Shared Var 1. If it's greater than or equal to the cost of the spell, subtract the cost of the spell from both the player's Gold and from SV1, and immediately have the player learn the spell - no Treasure processing necessary. (Might also be worth checking whether the player already knows the spell - let me know if you need to know how to do this.) If Shared Var 1 is LESS than the cost of the spell, do nothing to Gold or SV1 and don't teach the player the spell - instead have a message that says "You don't have enough Gold!" In the case of Inns, same kind of setup, but with HP/MP/Status Restoration instead of teaching a Spell.

Essentially, every time your Gold goes up or down, a variable does the same thing. This works because the game allows you to check the value of a variable (but not your actual Gold) as a condition for a variable.

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Approach 2:

This approach involves using Treasure items that the player can temporarily receive in lieu of actual Gold. Auto Events on each map where you can gain Gold will immediately convert that Treasure Item into Gold and can increment the Gold-tracking Variable at the same time they do so. Obright implemented something very similar into his games, and did so brilliantly, so hopefully he'll chime in if I missed anything!

In this approach, you can use standard random battles and treasure events, or customize them (as in Approach 1), or mix and match. When the player defeats an enemy party or finds a Treasure Chest, do not give them actual Gold (therefore all monsters should still carry 0 Gold), but instead give them a Treasure Item (the monster party should drop it at a 100% rate, or whatever rate you want if you don't always want the player to receive Gold in that battle). The Treasure Item might be called "100 Gold" to let the player know he won 100G in that battle.

Now, set up an Auto Event on the map with the condition "Has Treasure - 100 Gold". The Auto Event should increase your Gold by 100, increase Shared Var 1 by 100, and then remove the "100 Gold" treasure from your party. Because SV1 was increased the same way the party's Gold was, you will be able to check against it later.

From there, it's the same as approach 1. Create custom Shops and Inns that ask what you want to do, and right before giving you an item or teaching you a skill or healing you, check the value of SV1 and make sure it's higher than the cost of the item or service. Then, if the player successfully bought the item, lower Gold and SV1 by the amount that it cost.

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Let me know if anything is unclear and I'll try to explain it better!

One more thing - if you're planning to use this technique pretty rarely, and don't like losing the custom shops, etc., then what you can do is have "two currencies", maybe the standard "Gold" plus "Skill Points". Gold would be used for the normal Items (in shops), Inns, etc., and "Skill Points" could be used for buying skills. Obtain the Skill Points as I've mentioned in either of the two methods, but use only Shared Variable 1 to track it rather than the player's Gold display. Don't use a variable to track Gold at all. In the skill shops, check against the value of that variable. The only problem is that the player won't be able to see the number of Skill Points he's earned, although there are ways around this (you could have an event that tells you approximately how many Skill Points you have based on Val-Cond branches, or you could 'hijack' the Intelligence stat and raise or lower that to represent the player's Skill Points, since INT is not relevant for player-controlled characters.)

Hope you've found this helpful!

[Manji]

Re: Wanna buy Spells from a shop?

wow thank you. i will definitely be trying some of these things when i get more time. very helpful.