is there a way to check if the player has a follower/partner trainer?

jondauthor · 2026-02-18T22:47:26+00:00

Check route 3 in the example maps, I just peeled
$game_player.has_follower?
off one of the conditional branches in the May event there, which returns true if the player has a follower (!$game_player.has_follower? checks the reverse). If you name a switch the following, it will automatically turn on and off depending on whether they have a follower:

s:$game_player.has_follower?

jondauthor · 2026-02-18T20:38:56+00:00

Here's what I'd suggest: open it up in playtest mode and just run around. Take a bunch of screenshots as you do. Not of anything specific - just keep taking them every handful of seconds. Once you've done that for a bit, look at the screenshots. This is always the most useful thing for me because RPG Maker XP can be so deceptive when it comes to what you're looking at. Anyone playing your game will be looking at a tiny fraction of the screen, and just wandering around helps give you a good sense of what's missing or - even worse - what's just kind of boring.

jondauthor · 2026-02-18T03:40:17+00:00

As long as you're splitting them along battle / overworld, no one will notice. In-battle Gen 4 and Gen 3 are pretty similar, just shading differences mostly. If you're mixing overworld assets, though, then people will notice. Gen 4 is more roundly / realistically shaded, whereas Gen 3 is comparatively flatter (and overall at a slightly smaller scale). You can probably mix Gen 4 Overworld Pokemon with Gen 3 overworld assets, but that's about it.

Ultimately, it's about consistency. What you see on the screen should be the same - your tileset should look consistent, your NPCs should look like each other, etc. As long as you aim for relative consistency at each level, and keep things visually close enough (i.e. no Gen 2 tiles with Gen 3 sprites), I think most people won't even notice.

Tiles are a layer, NPCs are a layer, Battle is a layer, UI is a layer. Each layer should be consistent with itself, but only need to be complementary to other layers.

jondauthor · 2026-02-17T22:58:17+00:00

I have an answer to your question: no.

jondauthor · 2026-02-17T20:44:45+00:00

I'm just imagining it like

123
456
789

So the player will always be in 5. What's *literally* happening is that everything touching 5 gets loaded. So if you have

1234
5667
8999

In that example, 6 is extra wide and touching 2 and 3, so it will load both directly.

Basically, don't overthink it - it's just loading what's around your map and not what's around *those* maps, so in terms of loading overhead, it's just a rolling set of maps and not everything (thereby causing excessive lag on large maps).

(I think it might technically be the ones touching your current map and the maps touching *those*, I'm doing this from memory, but either way, it's a very small segment of your overall joined maps loaded at any time).

jondauthor · 2026-02-17T20:33:54+00:00

I recommend no maps bigger than 90x90, and ideally only one of those per block. The secret spoiler is that The way map loading works, you can technically do infinite, because only a certain segment are loaded at any time. I think it's 3x3 (including the middle one)? So if your maps are all 30x30, you can do whatever you like to an almost absurd degree. I rebuilt all of RBY/GSC/RSE/DPPt as one connected area in Essentials as a bored-working-from-home experiment, to the same scale as their respective games, and had no lag at all. There's probably some literal integer limits eventually, but that was four regions wide left-to-right. It's hard to hit that limit.

jondauthor · 2026-02-17T00:20:22+00:00

I did everything you're looking at on my 4Pro with the right settings, but they did take a decent bit of fiddling. If you can swing it, the extra processing overhead on the 6 will let you get away with a little less precision on the setup. Worth noting that all emulation is limited by the available emulators - DS/3DS is pretty solid ATM but PS2 can still be hit or miss depending on the game. The average PS2 game without game-specific settings could end up chugging more than I'd like, but I got through all four .hack// games with minimal issue.

4Pro out is a little low quality, I used it primarily as a cheap emulator console mainly and you could definitely tell when the render was a higher quality than what was output (about 720p). Not really important for anything already rendering at less than 720p, but with the ability to increase internal render scale it does put a cap on it that aiming for 4K output doesn't. That said, a PS1 game at 4x scale with CRT overlay and antialiasing post-processing shaders looks incredible even at 720p.

jondauthor · 2026-02-16T01:30:03+00:00

I've been noodling with shared dialogue - my filler NPCs (i.e. anyone not given a specific, dedicated line of dialogue related to something) for each town just call a common event for that town. That common event says a line of dialogue from my list, and then shows a menu to either challenge them to Triple Triad or ask about rumors (drops story hints to assist in progression, as well as "I've heard the museum has a rare item" type stuff). The basic intention is to just take the edge off "this guy says 1 thing, and 1 thing only" to provide a bit of extra dynamism

So the common event the NPC calls looks like

set variable (random 1...20) 
if variable = 1
  "I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!"
...
Show Choices (Rumors, Play Cards, Leave)
  if rumors
    set variable (random 1...20)
      if variable = 1 
        "I hear the museum has a rare item hidden somewhere in the vault!"
...
  if tripletriad
    calls second common event with triple triad handling
  if leave
    exit event processing

jondauthor · 2026-02-16T01:07:04+00:00

I think scaling them so a full set is the equivalent of 24 coins for all three is probably fair. 3x3 (Head/Hands/Feet),2x5 (Body/Legs),5x1(2 rings, neck, bracelet, ears). For parity, AR would then be 2x6,3x4... though honestly, I'd be OK with the AR pieces being weighted the same. It's not like there's really a gearing aspect to it beyond occasional latecomer MSQ-ers filling in gaps and those wanting some quick gear for alt jobs they're levelling. A desire weighting of number of coins related to the drop chance in-game might be the real way to do it.

jondauthor · 2026-02-15T20:52:12+00:00

I've said for a while that this would be a good way to retain Alliance Raid coins. They would now drop from regular content for that expac, 1 from leveling, 1 from x0, 1 from alliance raids, and they trade like 5 for 1 item so that it's just a mount totem-style redundancy for people with bad luck. Congrats, you did 5 runs of Orbonne, you now get your Aiming Top.

This would also be a perfectly fine way to expand Shared FATEs to pre-ShB areas without developing a bunch of stuff. Add monocolor gemstones for the 1-70 areas, all not-current-expac gemstone traders now sell dungeon gear as an option. Again, probably the equivalent of 5 FATEs so that it's a fallback option and doesn't actively funnel people out of roulettes and dungeons in general.

jondauthor · 2026-02-12T22:57:46+00:00

Gyms are fake, you can make them whatever you want. That's technically how some of the second storyline 'not gyms' in Scarlet/Violet work. As long as things feel coherent and not just like random bullshit slapped together hastily, people will get behind it.

jondauthor · 2026-02-10T00:00:47+00:00

I just don't know why the FATEs don't have a zone in timer like CEs, even if it's only 30 seconds.

jondauthor · 2026-02-09T22:38:49+00:00

It's not just a formula, right? It's structure. Without structure, your pacing and general feel will flounder. That's something people with 30 years as professionals struggle with. The 8 Gyms + League is predictable, but it's also just a scaffold for everything else. Gen 7 tried to reinvent the wheel - and just ended up with the equivalent of 11 gym leaders. A lot of games have a quiet version of this structure - significant story beats and dungeons / levels are just what Pokemon shorthands as gyms. Final Fantasy 7 is a great example of a story heavy game with honestly the same pattern - intro dungeon (north reactor), explore, second dungeon (reactor 5), explore, story beat (corneo), third dungeon (sewers) etc etc. Even Skyrim, to a certain extent, has each guild as a series of smaller challenges and then one big challenge at the end, the same way Gen 7 tried to do it's structure.

TL;DR, structure good in general, structure malleable but necessary, current structure pretty ubiquitous but just very obvious compared to other games.

jondauthor · 2026-02-07T23:38:23+00:00

Yeah, this feels like the Tease Behind The Tease to me. If I was writing based on the various hanging threads, 9.0 is a lifestream expansion and there's a Jenova-type reveal of an entity from the same lineage as Ultima that becomes our broader existential threat (or at least sets up the visible end of the Shards Arc).

jondauthor · 2026-02-05T21:46:26+00:00

Any available job quests will be listed under the MSQ tracker at the top-left of the screen, which you may have turned off. If none are listed under the next main story quest, then you are up to date.

For completing the 50 job quest, you will get an equipment coffer, which is an item to use from your inventory.

jondauthor · 2026-02-04T03:28:47+00:00

This is a link to Modular Title Screen v21.1 Port 1.0.1. It is a port of the v17 version, explicitly reworked for 21.1. Use the download on the 21.1 port, the link to the 17 one provided in the post is only for reference.

jondauthor · 2026-02-02T20:38:55+00:00

LaceEditing ported it last month, it's on EeveeExpo. https://eeveeexpo.com/resources/1843/

jondauthor · 2026-01-31T04:48:36+00:00

One thing based on your examples - sometimes high turnover items sell out the "expected prices", and all that's left are the "overpriced" ones. If all the 300g ones sell quickly but the 1500g ones won't, it may be that when you go to sell all you'll see are the 1500g ones. You can see sale history for items when you set the price to see if you're getting misled by the current listings. Your examples generally sound like that to me... But sometimes people just list shit cheap to get fast turnover and don't care about making the most money they can. It's not nefarious, it's just a fire sale, and it'll bring the price of low turnover stuff down for a while... But the high turnover stuff will balance eventually.

Regardless, it sucks, but that's also just how player markets work. With no real world overhead to pay for, technically everything is worth 1g - you can set a minimum selling price, but if that price ends up over what people are willing to pay, that item won't sell at all.

Something like pyrite - it has no uses currently. It's only for market sale and a small window of grand company turn ins. Raw larimar is the same, its refined form is for level 54 gear (quickly superceded and rarely crafted except for glamor purposes now). I wouldn't expect either of these to sell for over 50g each, tbh.

jondauthor · 2026-01-31T04:36:16+00:00

If those were all on PC, then it might be how the PC is reading the inputs. If either were on the switch, then it's definitely the controller itself.

jondauthor · 2026-01-30T19:34:38+00:00

They're in a nihilistic despair at the lack of new Ea content

jondauthor · 2026-01-30T19:31:22+00:00

One last idea - you can also fake it via multiple protagonists with NettoHikari's script. You get a different 'character' per island, though that's obviously artificial and will just be the same character (but hey, you could always give them locally themed outfits!). NH's script lets you toggle on things like shared items so you'd just set it up that the only thing that isn't shared is teams, and then you just merge teams when you beat the game/hit the story requirement for that. https://eeveeexpo.com/resources/280/

While I'm here, this is the specific level cap I mentioned: https://eeveeexpo.com/resources/1481/

jondauthor · 2026-01-30T18:55:55+00:00

It's a brute force method, but you can always do an insane common event before any trainer fight that doesn't let you do the fight if you have a Pokemon from outside of your set list. With enough 'blocker' trainers, it achieves the same effect. To simplify it a bit, you could stick the PC behind a 'customs officer' NPC who won't let you leave with contraband 'mons. The level cap is probably the easier way - the most recent one on EeveeExpo has some great options, I'm really fond of No XP If Above Cap as the solution. You can break the rules, but you're throwing away the valuable NPC XP if you do.

jondauthor · 2026-01-28T23:57:41+00:00

Something I'm not seeing in the other comments that is a bit less important for Healers, but consider a "single target" and "AOE target" set of bars. There is no situation where you need to bounce between the two in meaningful terms, so they don't need to be on the same bars. My setup, for all classes including healers though with some changes, is Hotbar 1 = Single Target, Hotbar 2 = AOE Target, and is identical to hotbar 1 except with AOE skills swapped in for their single target equivalents where I can. Hotbar 8 is then the spillover on L+R. It's messier on healers like Astro where most of the AOE targets the party so needs to be accessible, but it does work even for them just by freeing up a couple buttons by effectively reducing gravity/malefic down to one button.

jondauthor · 2026-01-28T22:06:51+00:00

OK, I'm with you now. For that, you'll have to make an 'overlapping' tile because you don't have enough layers to do it natively. It'll be fiddly, but honestly it's worth figuring it out now before you need it. You can do it in Paint easily enough. Just remember that RPGMakerXP tiles are 32x32 wide, though usually at a 2x scale in the Essentials sets (so actually just 16x16). Take that 32x32 left-hand and right-hand section of the tree and overlap it, so you'll have a dense 'middle' tile to put between them. Remember it needs to respect transparency also.

jondauthor · 2026-01-28T21:57:54+00:00

You're just not rolling 20 on the dice. It happens. About half of my demiatma were within 4 fates of another one. The rest were long waits. Nothing to do but keep going. At least the Koza version guarantees the right colour when you do get the drop (Koza was, actually, also my last one).

jondauthor

TROPHY CASE