Feature Mechanic: Assign Artes and Battle Grid Test

Assign Artes

Now that I have an effective way to separate passive skills with normal skills, and to hide certain skills from menu itself, I can finally implement the Equip Battle Skills plugin. The way it works is simple, each character is allowed to have four artes (not tied to their own category, like Piper's Forms) that they can carry into battle. At the start, every one will be able to equip up to four artes, which is the standard for most Tales games.

Also, as mentioned before, I do want to include ways of increasing the amount of artes a character can equip at once. I haven't decided if it would be skill based, equipment based, or if it's a party wide key item. Whatever I think would be the most fair way to do it.

Regardless, I feel that a maximum of 8 arte slots per character will be possible. In some games, while you have four to use with ease, they also include extra slots that can be used as shortcuts and have other characters use what you want them to use. Of course with how RPG Maker works, I don't think I can do that here, so this would just be extra slots for a single character. In general, with how many artes I'm hoping to have, and the battle system I'm hoping to utilize, this will provide reason to come in prepared with whatever artes you think you need. On that note...

Battle Grid System

Recently, VisuStella released their last batch of plugins and one of them was for a Battle Grid System. The way it works, I can set up a grid that both party and enemy battlers can use. From there, battlers are easily set up on whatever spot/node that is available. Before, I had to use a free plugin to alter where the party members can stand, and then use the editor to carefully place where the enemies go. This would take care of that issue for me and all I would really need to do is make sure they are set up properly in DragonBones...and maybe offset them in the engine.

According to VisuStella, this plugin allows characters to move from node to node, be able to perform actions based on which where they are, and even apply field effects on certain nodes. This will definitely be handy when I get around to working on Vera. At the moment, I need to get artes working with this new setup, since they were made with the original setup in mind. If I can get acquainted with the system, I can very well come up with some interesting artes down the line.  The experiments I could conduct, the possibilities that can arise,

Wrap-Up

Now that the plugins function to where I can use them, I may or may not make my update deadline since I'm gonna need to ensure that all the currently available artes (party and enemy based) work. If it goes well, I can proceed with the usual playtest.