maybe you should add that the player can get complete team data and battle against this team?It'll give Pokémon and items only, which I assume is fine for everyone.
Several tips (and the entire "Make backups" section), are more related to general game making than Essentials use. But I approve any "make backups" reminder.There's another guide called "How to use Essentials", but it's not been made yet. It will include basic information such as how/when to make backups, how to record what you've done (so you can upgrade more easily), and so on.
That's not what I'd call a Mystery Gift, though. Its use would be limited too, since only the game's owner (i.e. who can edit the uploaded file) would be able to create the teams. It's not a feature I'll bother creating.
Good points. I've added a couple of sections to the guide.Several tips (and the entire "Make backups" section), are more related to general game making than Essentials use. But I approve any "make backups" reminder.
There two way to start making backups. The first is understanding the backup importance reading guides/other people tips (like me now). The second is being traumatized by losing your files.
And I suggest you to add in the start something like: Before you starts, it is strong recommended that you made some tests with RPG Maker XP interface and events commands (specially switches, variables and conditional branches) before starting Essentials. I suggest to try to discover at least 90% of events commands. After this, starting Essentials, take a good look in example maps before starting you project.
That kind of feature can be devised by whoever wants to use it. It's very similar to how my Mystery Gift system will work, which is a place to start.well you could call it "Mystery Battle" or something like this... :P
and that it is limited is an advantage and not otherwise!
this way you can avoid the spamming of 6x magicarp teams and you have full control about the strength of the team...
you could also add restrictions to the players team!
for example level cap or a banned pokemon list... ;)
i thought if you already redo the mystery gift system you could add "easy multiplayer features" as well... (at least its easier then doing an actual real time battle...)
but its your decision so do as you like... ^^
Good points. I've added a couple of sections to the guide.
That kind of feature can be devised by whoever wants to use it. It's very similar to how my Mystery Gift system will work, which is a place to start.
However, I think this kind of thing should be usable by all players, not just the game's maker (it allows more variety), which means it would only work if it read local files rather than online ones. I believe Raptor does this, and failing a MySQL alternative, I think it's the best method. It could of course be improved a bit to read multiple files at once and let the player choose/delete opponents.
I don't know, I may add something like this (Raptor-style) eventually. A basic version only. It doesn't seem too difficult. Don't let my saying "maybe" stop you from trying to do it yourself, though.
You could make trade like in raptor, it would be cool to have something like that and not everyone can make a system like that, also you could made battle in the same way. :)
I can point dozens, maybe hundreds of features that Essentials had and aren't Essentials. The project is going to be an easy use, complete and useful tool for making pokémon games, but some features are added because they are useful and nice, specially while the project was under Poccil management.If a developer wants to have trading and battling, they can do it themselves. Keep in mind that this is Pokemon Essentials. All those multiplayer features are not essential to make a game. You can play a Pokemon game without ever trading with others. While they are nice, there are other things that do take priority.
I can point dozens, maybe hundreds of features that Essentials had and aren't Essentials. The project is going to be an easy use, complete and useful tool for making pokémon games, but some features are added because they are useful and nice, specially while the project was under Poccil management.
Sure, that may be true. I'm just saying, that if you do want the extra features that aren't in the kit, a developer should go through the effort to try to make it themselves. But pestering Maruno to do all the heavy lifting for things they personally want, is a bit selfish, considering the large amount of good work Maruno is putting into this kit already. I feel that we get more and more people who just want more and more ambitious systems, functions, etc, but don't want to be bothered to learn, and put work into it.
That's general advice and common sense. The guide is about using Essentials, which resource-hunting isn't. And before you say "neither is saying you should keep backups", I'll point out that every section of the guide has some information specifically about Essentials (e.g. that you can consider a fresh version to be your first backup, which people may not realise).How about tips for resource hunting in the guide? Something like "Search for a resource before making it, avoid rework." and "with the Essentials resources on the web, is easy to port some of gen 2/4/5 graphics to essentials, gen 5 pokémon and animated sprites.".
I agree. When Maruno took over Essentials my first request was to fix the Battle Tower and Hall of Fame, mostly for my use. I end up doing both myself and now they are in Essentials.Sure, that may be true. I'm just saying, that if you do want the extra features that aren't in the kit, a developer should go through the effort to try to make it themselves. But pestering Maruno to do all the heavy lifting for things they personally want, is a bit selfish, considering the large amount of good work Maruno is putting into this kit already. I feel that we get more and more people who just want more and more ambitious systems, functions, etc, but don't want to be bothered to learn, and put work into it.
I think that isn't hard to do using serialization on trainer object and, maybe, a cryptography algorithm (like Vigenère) to don't allow for a player (not the developer) easily edit a virtual trainer.I should weigh in at this point.
Yes, I want Essentials to contain everything needed to make a Pokémon game. Not necessarily a great game, but definitely a complete one. Anything beyond that is up to the user to do themselves. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much at that stage already (minus a few move effects, etc.).
On the other hand, there are a range of completely unnecessary features I'd like to see in Essentials - trading, swarming Pokémon, dongle encounters, more mini-games, Virtual Trainers (battling other players' teams as mentioned above), multiple save support, a Radio app, improved dungeon maps, a customisable time system, and so on and so forth. However, they aren't quite as important as getting what exists to work properly, which is what I mostly work on.
In the specific case of Virtual Trainers (you come up with a better name!), I've considered the suggestion and decided it would be better if it worked a little differently (i.e. put the teams in a folder rather than download them). This alteration makes the feature almost completely unrelated to the Mystery Gift - the only similar part is saving Pokémon details to a text file, but even that will end up being remarkably different for reasons of purpose and efficiency. That means it's a separate feature, and one I won't look at at the moment. It's an interesting idea, though, and I'd like to see someone have a go at it (or even think in depth about it) and see what they come up with.
Maybe it's a good sign that people are asking (demanding?) hugely complicated features like online battles and trading. It means there aren't many bugs and vital things for them to complain about instead.
Yes, but some people are lacking common sense. And I saw several people preferring others kits because Essentials has gen 3 graphics. They didn't realise that isn't hard to port some resources to Essentials.That's general advice and common sense. The guide is about using Essentials, which resource-hunting isn't. And before you say "neither is saying you should keep backups", I'll point out that every section of the guide has some information specifically about Essentials (e.g. that you can consider a fresh version to be your first backup, which people may not realise).
Besides, resource-hunting is about changing Essentials, not about using it, and tilesets/charsets is an RMXP thing.
Although Essentials is by definition a part of every game, and should focus on features that fit in the majority of games, what you suggest is a reasonable idea.Like I said before, when people are suggesting things in Essentials, they need to think "Which features in Essentials can better fit on my game" rather than "Which features in Essentials can better fit in majority of games".
Certainly it's not difficult to make the data-saving and -loading work. The majority of the effort goes into doing things with that information, like creating new screens (e.g. a list of trainers), events which showcase the feature, and so on.I think that isn't hard to do using serialization on trainer object and, maybe, a cryptography algorithm (like Vigenère) to don't allow for a player (not the developer) easily edit a virtual trainer.
- Battle Simulation (i like this one best... ^^)(e.g. Virtual Trainers - please give me a better name for this feature!).
Yes, but some people are lacking common sense. And I saw several people preferring others kits because Essentials has gen 3 graphics. They didn't realize that isn't hard to port some resources to Essentials.
- Battle Simulation (i like this one best... ^^)
- Mystery Battle
- Mystery Trainer
- Mystery Challenge
- Challenge Mode
- VS. Battle
- VS. Trainer
- VS. Mode
thats all for now i think...
maybe you will like one... ;)