I figured I could squeeze in a topic here that assists in the help of understanding the PC makers. I just recently started building a little something in VX, but I will not divulge details. Anyway, here I will share tidbits of info about VX or XP, and will take questions if help is necessary.
First off, we know battle is important in RPGs. Well, of course, damage is given, considering you're beating each others' brains out, but how do we set damage to our liking? Well, instead of tweaking so much your stats, take a look in the Ruby Script. Yes, a lot of it is hard to really understand, but it's easy to find what you're looking for. For my current project, I'm trying to use physical attack based skills, kinda like in the Tales series. Well, at a certain point with the damage algorithm, my regular attacks will out do the skills. I want my skills to always be more important than a regular attack and do more damage. Let's use Tales of Symphonia as an example. Say Lloyd's regular attack does 70-80 damage. His Demon Fang attack will amount to about 100-120, somewhere in that range. As he progresses in strength through the game, Demon Fang still does more damage, but later in the game, it becomes less of a necessity as you have much stronger techs.
So, how do we do that? First, you create your skill, whereas the first skill we learn will be called Cross Cut. Now, instead of actually giving it an actual damage value, we're going to work with our Attack-F value. This is a multiplier (percentage... whatever) for your skill, much like Spirit-F. Let's say I want it at 40 (which for my purpose, it would represent 140% of normal attack damage). Here's a way to make it clearer:
This is how I set my skill up. Now, I'm going to alter may damage algorithm for normal attacks and special attacks. Here is where you go to do that. Go into the Script Editor and go to Game_Battler and find these lines:
Code:
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# * Calculation of Damage From Normal Attack
# attacker : Attacker
# The results are substituted for @hp_damage
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
def make_attack_damage_value(attacker)
damage = attacker.atk * 4 - self.def * 3 # base calculation
Here you can edit the attack multiplier and the defense multiplier to determine damage done to you and by you. And then to edit your special attacks to always do more damage than your regular attacks, come here:
Code:
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# * Calculation of Damage Caused by Skills or Items
# user : User of skill or item
# obj : Skill or item (for normal attacks, this is nil)
# The results are substituted for @hp_damage or @mp_damage.
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
def make_obj_damage_value(user, obj)
damage = obj.base_damage # get base damage
if damage > 0 # a positive number?
damage += user.atk * 10 * obj.atk_f / 100 # Attack F of the user
damage += user.spi * 2 * obj.spi_f / 100 # Spirit F of the user
Here you can edit the multiplier for your special attacks to determine how much more damage they will do. Just remember that your Attack-F is important as well. Hope this helps some of you.
EDIT: Okay, I tested this a little bit more, and I'm having an issue with enemies with higher defense. Shoulda known to test that first, but I will be fiddling more to see how to remedy this. Basically, my special attack is still doing the appropriate amount of damage it should... but it's not taking into account the defense of the creature. I will get back to everyone on it when I figure it out.
EDIT2: Okay, it still works, but you have to tweak it to your liking to make it do the damage you want but keep it over a normal attack.