[MZ] JABS - J's Action Battle System

Jragyn · 2021-01-01T02:40:43+0900

JABS - J's Action Battle System J / JE / Jragyn v3.2.1 Introduction Using this engine will enable you, the RM dev, to create a game where battles take place in real-time on the map between the player (with their allies if they wish) and the enemy. Interactions between enemies are by-design expected to be fast paced, no more than 5-10 seconds at most, allowing for development of zelda-like games from the SNES era. This was largely inspired by Blizzard's ABS (BlizzABS / BABS, for XP) and Moghunter's ABS (XAS / Chrono Engine, for XP+/MV). Features JABS stands for J's Action Battle System. (Clever, huh?) Enemy battlers can be created via events w/ specific comments. Enemy battlers will follow their configured AI (that you decide with comments). Enemies can have default parameters to reduce the overhead for enemy creation. Ally battlers will follow their designated AI mode (changeable via menu and tags). Ally AI is a separate plugin and can be disabled if a solo game is desired. Ally AI can be toggled with switches and by enabling/disabling followers via event command. An aggro system that works for both enemies and allies(if used). Aggro is based on damage dealt (all kinds), and is configurable. Tags are used on skills to allow for creation of things like aggro-generating or reduction. Tags are used on states to enable aggro multipliers (positive or negative) or aggro locks. Basic 8-directional movement (doesn't support 8-dir character sheets though). The demo has DOES have an adapter plugin that enables Cyclone-Movement to grant pseudo pixel movement as well. Crude animation support. Animation as in, changing of the character sheet to something else for a short duration to give the illusion of animation. I am no sprite artist and opted against commissioning folks for assets just for testing this functionality, so it may be kinda glitchy. When I get my hands on the type of assets I'm looking for, I will revisit this. Spoiler: plugins I wrote and included that aren't JABS but do make JABS a little bit better It is important to note that these plugins may not be flawless! They were built by me and for me, but I figure folks may want a bit more detail about them here. Most all the plugins should have usage details in the plugin description. Use with caution! Click to expand... This comes with a bundle of plugins that are designed as "extensions" of JABS: AllyAi: enables allies/followers to fight alongside the player. InputManager: a plugin that translates button/key input to JABS actions. This is effectively a sample for how to build your own input mappers for JABS should you want to change your input layout or what have you. Diagonals: enables 8-directions for actions (such as a fireball). The "Diagonals" plugin may get removed when a more complete integration with Cyclone-Movement is built. Click to expand... CycloneAdapter: a plugin that fixes some of the quirks with how Cyclone-Movement works in the context of JABS. This should be disabled if not using Cyclone-Movement. If you find that the game feels non-performant, it may be a result of too many enemies/allies on the map that are all trying to calculate proper move routes. Pixel movement is expensive when combined with constant calculation of where to go. As such, if you find that it is causing lag, consider reducing the number of enemies/allies on a single map, consider reducing the number of steps per tile (in the Cyclone-Movement plugin parameters), and/or disable the pixel movement altogether (along with the CycloneAdapter plugin). JABS by itself still supports 8-directional movement for enemies/allies/actions via the Diagonals plugin above. Click to expand... Speed: enables the ability to set custom move speeds across the database and/or for events. Timing: enables cooldown reduction and the like. Charge: enables charging a skill one or many times to release and perform a different skill. DangerIndicator: enables little icons that show up near enemy battlers that indicate how dangerous they are to the player based on magic formulas. HUD: enables a display of various useful information, broken into four parts starting with the manager as the main J-HUD. Party Frame: enables the display of various player and party information like hp/mp and such. Target Frame: enables the display of various enemy information like hp/mp and other notes of interest. Input Frame: enables the display of the currently equipped skill slots, such as for the mainhand or combat skills. Click to expand... CMS: a custom menu system that slightly modifies parts of the main menu that gives greater detail selectively supporting the "more data" feature. Equip: a modification of the equip scene to reveal changes and allow access to "more data". Status: a modification of the status screen to give insight into all standard parameters (base/ex/sp) and some custom parameters for JABS. Skill: a modification of the skill scene to show more JABS-related data. Click to expand... Log: a log wind…

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Started by Jragyn Dec 31, 2020, 05:40 PM 521 posts Page 2 of 27 View original ↗

Nat0327

#21 Jan 9, 2021, 06:39 PM Source

Jragyn said:
Understandably, I'd say its a pretty low likelihood that I'll go backwards to do much more for QABS, especially since the dev for it (Q? Quasi? idk) fell silent and I think he moved onto just non-RM development for games and stuff (the fate of most RM developers it seems these days).
Yeah, Quxios/Quasi left RPG Maker altogether. However, LunaTechs is working on updating the Qplugins and bringing them to MZ.
Jragyn

#22 Jan 11, 2021, 01:13 PM Source

Sleepy Kitten Games said:
Yeah, Quxios/Quasi left RPG Maker altogether. However, LunaTechs is working on updating the Qplugins and bringing them to MZ.
Oh yeah?
I leveraged one of the patterns I saw in Q's custom movespeed to give the decimal-precision movespeed functionality found in JABS (see enemy notes for <ms:3.6> or something as example) and also the "dodge" functionality I built out.

I also looked to his "colliders" as a possible solution for custom hitboxes, but opted for something... a bit lighter instead.
Killerslash

#23 Jan 11, 2021, 01:55 PM Source

I would like to ask you
When I make party member (like 2, 3, 4), does it support you?; because moghunter only did ABS single actor, not a party member.
If you can make party member support like this
I will be happy.
Jragyn

#24 Jan 11, 2021, 05:19 PM Source

Killerslash said:
I would like to ask you
When I make party member (like 2, 3, 4), does it support you?; because moghunter only did ABS single actor, not a party member.
If you can make party member support like this
I will be happy.

As of version 1.xx, party members are not supported (they may visually exist, but the engine ignores followers for any ABS interaction).

However, I designed much of the framework with teams in mind (including party members acting as allies), akin to what is depicted in the video you've provided. I have it on my list of things to accomplish for 2.xx: completed battler AI, team functionality, ally/follower battler support, etc., among other things.

As far as timing is concerned, I'm hoping to have that functionality working to some extent and released by the end of the month, but... I haven't started work on it actively yet, so I'm not 100% sure.

Maybe I'll spin up a board for folks to view so they can see feature progress & what is already implemented vs what is coming down the pipeline...
Killerslash

#25 Jan 11, 2021, 05:34 PM Source

Jragyn said:
As of version 1.xx, party members are not supported (they may visually exist, but the engine ignores followers for any ABS interaction).

However, I designed much of the framework with teams in mind (including party members acting as allies), akin to what is depicted in the video you've provided. I have it on my list of things to accomplish for 2.xx: completed battler AI, team functionality, ally/follower battler support, etc., among other things.

As far as timing is concerned, I'm hoping to have that functionality working to some extent and released by the end of the month, but... I haven't started work on it actively yet, so I'm not 100% sure.

Maybe I'll spin up a board for folks to view so they can see feature progress & what is already implemented vs what is coming down the pipeline...
I see...
I am sure that you can figure it out, good luck, and thanks for answering.
Rose Guardian

#26 Jan 12, 2021, 08:34 PM Source

I like this Action Battle System, but it won't let me save my game after putting it in my project. What I am doing wrong? I want people to be able to always save in my game.
Jragyn

#27 Jan 12, 2021, 09:58 PM Source

Rose Guardian said:
I like this Action Battle System, but it won't let me save my game after putting it in my project. What I am doing wrong? I want people to be able to always save in my game.

This functionality is tied to the RPG Maker Configuration itself. I know that I disabled the auto-save functionality for the project, but you may need to probe around for other settings/configurations that are affecting it.

For reference, JABS does not mess with the save functionality at all, but... yanfly's core engine might?
(I had it in the project for other reasons)
Rose Guardian

#28 Jan 12, 2021, 11:33 PM Source

The problem is if I remove the plugins you just mentioned the yanfly ones it messes up the message box. If I turn off the text log plugin it just gives me an error. I don't know what to do.
Jragyn

#29 Jan 12, 2021, 11:39 PM Source

Rose Guardian said:
The problem is if I remove the plugins you just mentioned the yanfly ones it messes up the message box. If I turn off the text log plugin it just gives me an error. I don't know what to do.
To be honest, I haven't tried to save stuff very much (considering im just locally developing it and haven't needed to persist any data between code changes).

I'll have to toy with it and see what the problem is.

Is it greyed out?
Option missing from the menu?
The save file is not created (and thus not loadable) on-save?
Does it work in the test-bed project that I've provided?

Saving is pretty important, and so I'll want to include this fix in the next release proper if I'm expecting anyone to leverage JABS.
Rose Guardian

#30 Jan 12, 2021, 11:48 PM Source

It brings up the save menu but doesn't let you save is what I meant. Also this what happens without the yanfly plugins with the messages. Its probably an glitch with the textlog plugin. Can't remove it or I get an error.

I am glad you made this plugin. ABS's are hard to program. So its likely some glitches happen. Anyway keep up the good work. I'll check back when you have the next update. :)
Jragyn

#31 Jan 13, 2021, 12:40 AM Source

Rose Guardian said:
It brings up the save menu but doesn't let you save is what I meant. Also this what happens without the yanfly plugins with the messages. Its probably an glitch with the textlog plugin. Can't remove it or I get an error.

I am glad you made this plugin. ABS's are hard to program. So its likely some glitches happen. Anyway keep up the good work. I'll check back when you have the next update. :)

I appreciate your understanding.
I recall when I first started using RM and discovered the concept of scripts/plugins... I was mindblown by how much goes into it. Now that I'm a developer that stares at code all dang day long, my biggest gripe is that it hurts my delicate coder feelings that javascript is so limited in the context of file placement (I'd normally break up the file into multiple files for organizational purposes, but plugins appear to be designed for being all-in-one).

Either way, I'll take a look at this and see what the problem is.

As I mentioned, I developed all the plugins to work in tandem with eachother, but when it comes to the windows/sprites of RMMZ, I'm a lot less... talented (why the JABS quick menu looks so dang boring and feels clumsy). I'll also look into seeing what happens when you disable the log window, I thought I removed the dependency JABS had on it when I extracted it to it's own plugin... but who knows? I probably just missed something.
I'll post back here when I have a solution (which may be "just wait till 2.00").

Thank you for finding this defect! That is why I posted it publicly: so I could gain external and unbiased help from consumers! :D
Jragyn

#32 Jan 13, 2021, 01:48 AM Source

Rose Guardian said:
It brings up the save menu but doesn't let you save is what I meant.

After analyzing the code, I determined what the problem was: bad programming. It lead to the inability to save (and honestly probably will improve performance once I fix it).
The fix is a fair bit of shuffling of code all around the engine, so I'd recommend you hold till the v2.00+ release proper to utilize JABS (not to say you can't get used to it now if you're interested!).
Mysticphoenix

#33 Jan 14, 2021, 05:23 AM Source

I have been searching for ABS since MZ launched, and this is the first ABS that I have found so far. Thank you for contributing good scripts to the MZ community.
Jragyn

#34 Jan 16, 2021, 08:26 PM Source

I've officially pushed version 2.00 out for public consumption. See my second post (immediately after the main post) for details on what changed and what was added.

For @Rose Guardian , I would like to call out that I found and fixed the save dilemma you ran into. Sorry about that! (pretty embarrassing...)
Killerslash

#35 Jan 16, 2021, 09:05 PM Source

Since I don't have MZ version, I would like to ask you something:

1) Does it player do a combo attack? Like 3 hits or 4 or 5.
2) Is it similar moghunter abs? Like Hookshot, boomerang, etc...

I would like to know when I make another game.
Jragyn

#36 Jan 16, 2021, 09:28 PM Source
Killerslash said:
Since I don't have MZ version, I would like to ask you something:

1) Does it player do a combo attack? Like 3 hits or 4 or 5.
2) Is it similar moghunter abs? Like Hookshot, boomerang, etc...

I would like to know when I make another game.

No problem pal.
- 1) A player can perform "combo" attacks.
  
  Additionally, single attacks (combo or not) can hit multiple times (everyone's definition of "combo" differs a bit).
  
  "combo" attacks by default require landing the hit (so you must land combo-skill-1 to follow-up with combo-skill-2, and subsequently combo-skill-3). However, I did add note tags for allowing you to freely spam combo skills if you want weapons that do that (see spear/gun in the demo).
- 2) I built JABS using moghunter's XAS/Chrono Engine (the ABS side of Chrono Engine) and blizzard's ABSas inspiration.
  
  Regarding tool functionality (what moghunter categorizes "hookshot" or "boomerang" as), I've built the framework for such functionality, but haven't taken the time yet to implement specifically those two tools.
  
  "tools" in the context of JABS refers to a specific skill slot that has it's own cooldown, that can be filled with consumable items like potions, or in the future, non-consumable items that perform specific actions like hookshots or boomerangs. Like I said though, no premade tool functionality is currently available out-of-the-box.
Also, the demo I built is simply the project itself that I used to develop JABS, not a published executable that can be run without the rpg maker. If you think it'd be valuable to have an executable for giving it a test run outside of the editor, let me know and I'll see if I can spin one up (for windows).
Killerslash

#37 Jan 17, 2021, 10:16 AM Source

That's really nice.
Thank you for answering.
Killerslash

#38 Feb 2, 2021, 07:25 PM Source

When you press shift button, the player will run like default (walk).
But when I press shift button, the sprite will change just like the image.
Just like moghunter did https://atelierrgss.wordpress.com/rmv-character-poses/
So I don't know if you make it or not, but someday I will download it MZ version when I done my first game project.
Jragyn

#39 Feb 3, 2021, 02:48 AM Source

I am unsure if you're asking me to make it so that the player runs when pressing shift (instead of holding in place and defending), or if you're asking me to make it so that the player's sprite changes while they are dashing (There is no hold-to-dash when using JABS outside of mobility skills).

Currently, by leveraging the "poseAnimation" function, you can allow skills to temporarily change charactersheet for a specified duration. I believe I have that in the (not super up-to-date) wiki I link to on this thread's original post.
Mysticphoenix

#40 Feb 7, 2021, 03:31 AM Source

Error after I loaded my saved game. This only occur when I save the game in a map that contains enemies. But when I save the game in an enemy-free map, this error will not appeared (see attachment).
Please help.
Everything is fine now, only save/load system that matters.
P.S. I used the latest version from Jan 17

=====================================
Another bug : My character must always wear armor 0008:Cloth Tunic. If taken the cloth tunic off, he will disappear when he starts to walk. (speed boost tag bug??)
Please check that out too, thank you!