How do Battle Flags in the Enemy Editor work?

[Rodak]

Congratulations on the upgrade Doan! Being among the many, many people who get up at a quarter of 4 in the morning, I ran into the upgrade in progress on Satruday Morning. I woke up early today (3:00 AM Sunday) and the upgrade is done. We'll see if it is any better... (I know I almost always hate software upgrades where I work, they take away more stuff than they add).

Anyway, back to business. In my game I have a couple of classes of Mage that required the creation of new Magic Properties. Thus, I renamed a few of the unnamed properties and was going to set battle flags (enemy editor/advanced tab/flag) so I could display messages if, for example, the enemy is immune to "I-Ain't-Sayin-Yet" Magic.

But when I read the Help File on that page it seemed to contradict itself. I quote:

"Here you set the default flags that are unique to this Enemy. These flag statuses are not automatically set to the Enemy. If you wish to utilize these flag settings, Script commands must be used."

Is it just me, or does that not contradict itself?

Does that mean that if there is some system event set to trigger when a flag goes off (like an indirect effect, get it?... "status"... indirect effect... I dunno) that you must still check first? That is not a problem.

All I want to do is set four of these to act as markers (in conjunction with the Instig Side Flag {if I am learning the battle system properly}) for script branch conditions in a modified battle messages script just so I can let the player know about enemy weaknesses and resistances when the spells are used. One for strong against "I-Ain't-Sayin'-Yet", one for weak against "I-Ain't-Sayin'-Yet", and two for the other, equally unmentionable, properties.

I think that will work, but I have learned that I can save enormous headaches if I just ask here and move on to something else (like setting resistances and weaknesses to these in every enemy).

That is not to imply I am trying to avoid work, just trying to avoid wasted effort. If somebody knows the answer, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.

Peace.

[Deleted]

I've been wondering myself if the weapon and magic properties take effect automatically, or if they're a part of the default battle formula script that I'll have to check and sort on my own in my battle formula scripts. I'll test it today and get back to you on it. Hopefully it goes automatically, which would be very cool.

For battle flags on enemies, all I could think of as uses are to turn them On when they're of a certain status (which I don't really see a point of), or to give them inherent statuses such as disallowing status effects to hit on a boss (while allowing them to hit his two cronies on each side of him) (in which you can also use the default 'Event Battle' flag or a custom 'Boss Battle' flag, but that disallow his cronies of getting afflicted with status effects too), or also tracking whether that enemy's item's been stolen or not for a custom steal ability. The battle flags tend to be pretty pointless and unneccessary in my eyes though, but it is nice they're there to use for the purposes above.

[Deleted]

I tested out my theory and learned a lot:

The default battle formula script DOES factor in Weapon and Magic Resists.

It does not do it on its own however; it is in the default battle formula script, and so I made that part on my own for my formula.

This is what I did to add it to mine:

Put this portion of scripting in your battle formula script
-after calculating 'Damage Total'
-before displaying 'Damage Total'
-before subtracting 'Damage Total' from target's 'Hit Points'
(same location as you would put a Critical Rate damage increaser or slight damage randomizer)

For sorting out whether to use var29 'Target Resist W' (Weapon Resist) or var 30 'Target Resist M' (Magic Resist), I Load: Direct Effect Info and sort the 'Direct Effect' variable to find whether the action ensuing was a 'Normal Attack' Direct Effect (Weapon Resist) or -not- a 'Normal Attack' Direct Effect (Magic Resist). What others do here can vary, and your values for the 'Direct Effect' variable will vary immensely from mine, but at first thought this was my solution.

Tempvariablex = 100 - var29 'Target Resist W'
OR Tempvariablex = 100 - var30 'Target Resist M'

'Damage Total' = 'Damage Total' x Tempvariablex
'Damage Total' = 'Damage Total' / 100

Note: The last line's'100' can be altered to allow for greater variances in Property-Damage-increasing, like changing this 100 to 50 would make a value of -100 in the Property Resist section of a Party Member or Enemy increase damage to 400% instead of 200%)

My undeniable proof that this worked when I did it was this:

Party Member's 'Fire' Magic Resist is 100 (minimum damage) and 'Phys' Weapon Resist is -100 (maximum damage).

Before adding script portion enemy does ~16 damage on normal attack and ~24 damage on fire-magic attack.

After adding script portion enemy does ~34 damage on normal attack and 1 damage on fire-magic attack.

I'll add this to my tutorial thing.

[Rodak]

Thanks A Lot! And I say that with both serious and sarcastic overtones.

Seriously, because that is very useful information. I am sure it will simplify things.

Sarcastically, because I have been avoiding modifying the battle formula by tweaking weapon and magic power and properties rather that study the battle formula. Toldja I think Backwards!

I hope you realize how much work you've made for me!!

Great Job, anyway!

Well, the sun is finally up over here and that is my cue to put my toys away and go do some housework. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm still unclear if those flag turn on for each individual enemy so I can make my messages though. Maybe I'll just test it later. It would be nice to tell floks about strengths and weaknesses to their particular magics. Especially since I am not using any pre-set classes and there is not any switching of classes in my game. Just 4 never seen before classes, which I am sure nobody will want to ever see again! Remember, I started this game as a personal project, before I knew about people sharing games and it's content is... well... weird.

Peace.

[Dungeon Warden]

Resistances are set when an attack hits a target. The flags are variables are based on the type of attack property used. Only that property is loaded and checked. It shouldn't be hard to display a message saying how resistant the target is to a particular type of attack by using the property's resistance value for the target (var29-30).

[Rodak]

I wish I were young again. I should have remembered those variables and knew that they would be better than flags.

I was just trying to think of a use for those flags in the enemy editor instead of trying to solve a problem efficiently!

Don't ever get old.

Now where's that geritol...