Showing acquired "traits" in the menu

What I'd like to do in my game is have different "traits" get associated with the character over time.  So, for example, they may reach level 5 and get the trait "Novice".  They may kill a tiger and get the trait "Tiger Killer".  You get the idea.

The trouble I'm having is figuring out how to display this potentially long list of traits in the menu somewhere.  I want them to be able to go into the menu, and move the cursor over different traits and get some text associated with it, but I don't want it to, say, show up in the skills list (and the list would be too long to just include in the status screen somehow).

Can anyone suggest a good way to do this?

You'll need to request a script for this. Anything that manipulates the default menu requires a script.

Thanks.  I'll have to figure out where to do that!

A workaround, which might be a bit cumbersome, and not give you the 'look' that you want is to use Yanfly's Status Menu script.  That has a dynamic biography screen as part of the Status screen, which you could use to update traits.  Each trait would have a short description.

EDIT

If you're interested you can find it here

https://github.com/Archeia/YEARepo/blob/master/Menu/Ace_Status_Menu.rb

I would probably make a second version of the Skills menu that would be used to show Traits (and add "Traits" as a new option on the main ESC menu, which is easy).  It requires low to intermediate Ruby skills.  The easier but longer way to do it is to make the Traits skills of a certain skill type, but introduce checks to both the Traits screen and the Skills screen so that they only show Traits or Skills, respectively.  The harder but cleaner and quicker way to do it is to reprogram the copied Skills window to look through the array (or list) of traits that the character has, and write those traits to the window as if they were skills (even though they're not).

If you don't have the skills to do this yourself, hopefully you can find someone who will.  I don't have the time right now, since - although somewhat easy as far as Ruby mods go - it's also fairly time-consuming.  I could help you through hang-ups but I don't have the time to write it all for you.  If you can't find anyone, make the rest of your game, and come back to this cool additional feature at the end.

I've moved this thread to RGSSx Script Support. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.


How are you giving them these "traits"? Are they states? Something you're writing yourself?

At the moment, it's a bit ill-defined, but I don't think any of them would be states.  I'll give a few examples:

* After defeating a tiger boss, I want the player to be able to see that this character is a "Tiger Killer", and have the ability to see some associated text describing how this was acquired (I imagine it working similarly to how a skill has descriptive text).  There is no change to stats or combat formulas or anything like that, just the trait now being in the trait list.

* After joining the thieves guild, the character has the trait "Thief", with associated descriptive text.  He also gets a small boost to all gold accumulated through combat.  I imagine this as a permanent feature added to the character at the same time that the trait shows up in the traits list.  Presumably, that would be handled by some other process (TBD).

* When reaching level 5, the character gets the "Novice" trait, and a switch is changed so that NPCs give different responses.  I don't want to get hung up on the details of a switch versus just checking the character level since this isn't fully fleshed out, I just wanted to give you an idea of what I'm planning.  The main point is that various events occur that would add text items to a character's list of traits and other permanent changes to the character may occur at the same time, but don't need to be tied to this whole trait list management thing (unless it's super easy, of course!).

Are you using key items? You could implement each of these things as key items, which would allow them to be viewed in the items list, and you could have a 2-line description against each. For the thief getting extra gold through combat, that would be a state that has the 'double gold' feature added (though if you don't want it doubled, you'd need a script change anyway).


If it's more complicated than that, I think you would need to have a custom script written, if you can't find an existing one that will do it for you.