WO2

I have a few questions:

1) With Reflect Abilities on a status effect, is there a way to make the reflect happen using a % chance or a formula? Or to be able to reflect only specific ability types.
I know you can mark an ability as "reflectable" or not but if I want to have one "Reflect" status reflect only magic and a "Deflect" status reflect abilities marked as projectiles I can't find a way to do it.

2) When using Block Status Value changes to a status value like HP, is there a way to have it only activate when struck by certain ability types?
I use ability types and secondary types a lot to differentiate physical/magical/melee/ranged abilities.

3) When using a research list to learn abilities, how do you display the pre-requisite skills as well as the item/status value costs in the text of a HUD?

For instance, if I'm learning Fire 2 and it learning it requires:
- 50 AP
- Fire 1 Learned
- 1x Fire Crystal

At the moment the only displays the 50 AP and the Fire Crystal and there doesn't seem to be a way of listing which skills are also necessary for the skill to be learnable. I'd like to be able to list them all in a single description/HUD on my List View Research.

4) Is it also possible when listing items used in a for a Research List to display the item quantity needed and the quantity the player has (as you can in the crafting menu within the 3D playground.).

gamingislove

1) No, the built in reflect will simply reflect abilities that are marked as reflectable, so no chance or other conditions are involved in there.
An alternative would be using conditions on target status changes checking for a status effect being applied - you'd have to set up the target status changes twice, once with the effect not applied condition and once with the effect applied condition and switching user/target.

2) No, you can only block status changes in general (either all or only positive or negative changes).
Again, conditions on target status changes could be used here, i.e. only use them when the effect isn't applied, otherwise it'd block the damage (i.e. not happening at all).

3) Research items can override the content of their researched thing, e.g. override the description (which can also include the original description) and add that information there.

4) That's handled by the Use Cost Display settings in UI > Text Display Settings. The Item Cost Text (or Equipment Cost Text, etc.) has text codes to show the inventory quantity.

WO2

Got it, thanks for the help.

WO2

Hello,

1) If I use the Set Locked Field Leader to be a specific combatant but don't force him/her to be locked into the party itself, starting a turn-based battle or switching a combatant out mid battle leaves the player behind on the field and let's you control them still.

My switch/battle schematics are default.

Is there a good way to avoid this? I'm using conditional prefabs:
The "Battle" prefab requires the combatant to be In battle and the regular prefab requires the inverse.

This normally isn't an issue, I could initiate battles/switch party members in/out of battle without a problem before, it's only when I lock the combatant with Set Locked Field Leader.

Checking for In Battle only checks if that combatant itself is in the active battle party and there doesn't seem to be a condition to check if there's an ongoing battle at all or that the game state = battle.


2) I've been using an edited duplicate of the Hunt Move AI to allow NPCs to walk around randomly.

However when I interact with the NPCs sometimes they can wander off to reach their last intended waypoint even when the Move AI is set to block at the start of their dialogue schematic. This can still occur when I manually set their Move AI to idle in their dialogue schematic.

Sometimes this can also happen with the default Hunt Move AI
when a battle is initiated and the monster should be in the correct place due to Place at Spots in the battle schematic. Instead it tries to reach its last intended waypoint.

It doesn't happen every time but it happens most often when an NPC is spoken to/a battle begins whilst the NPC/monster is still moving. As far as I'm aware I haven't modified the move AIs at all so I'm not sure what's causing this issue.

gamingislove

1) A locked field leader is a somewhat special case.

First of all, when starting battle where the field leader isn't part of the battle group, you'll need to destroy the player in the battle start schematic if you want it to be gone. You can use a Destroy Object node using the Player object for this.

In your switch schematics, i.e. the Retreat Animation schematics, also use a Destroy Object node using the Player object before the Calculate node. This makes sure the player is removed before adding the new combatant.

2) Are you blocking the move AI of the specific game object of the NPC or move AI in general? Did a quick test with blocking the NPC alone and didn't run into this so far.

This is most likely coming from the movement component of the combatant, i.e. what's actually handling the movement. What movement component setup are you using?
You could check the state of the NPC/combatant's move AI via the inspector of the game object. If it's still moving when it's blocked it's a strong hint to the movement component still moving although it was told to stop.

WO2

1) I've used Is Locked Battle Member, Is Ork Player and Is Battle Member checks to ensure that the field leader is destroyed when they're not in the active party but isn't destroyed if they're in the party but not as the leader.

I'm not sure if there's a quicker way of running these checks as who the Locked Field Leader will be will vary throughout the game, but the process does work.

However my switch retreat schematic doesn't destroy the Locked Field Leader when they are in the leader slot or when they aren't.


Here is my switch retreat schematic:


2) Currently the NPCs are just reskinned and non-hostile versions of the enemies from the 3D playground.


I was using Block Move AI with Machine Object as the target. In this example the NPC moves mid dialogue during a sequence of Show Dialogue nodes to get to their waypoint despite their Move AI being set to blocked. I believe this is because of the 5-10 second delay in their Idle Schematic.


The interaction machine does have Object Turn set to both Starting Object and Machine Object but I don't know if that's relevant.

As for enemy combatants occasionally doing it at the start of a battle they're still set as the defaults from the 3D playground.


3) Hopefully just a quick question.
If an enemy has 300 HP and I do 1000 damage to it, my damage flying text shows 300 damage rather than the actual 1000 damage I did. How do I set it to show the full damage done?
I know this is an option I just can't seem to find it.

gamingislove

1) Is Locked Battle Member is something different than locked field leader - it refers to a battle member that can't be switched out.
So, checking Is ORK Player and Is Battle Member is enough.

For the switch schematic it's actually enough to use Destroy Object with the Machine Object to ensure it's destroyed regardless of who it was (so change that from using Player object to Machine Object). Works fine on my end, independent of if it's the battle leader or not.

2) Ah, idle schematics at waypoints - yeah, there seems to be an issue, continuing the path even if the move AI is blocked.
Will fix that in the next update.

3) There is the Use Real Change setting in your status value's flying text settings for that.

WO2

1) Strangely SwitchRetreat just refuses to destroy the player/machine object at all.

I've checked that the correct schematic is called.

(Images broken)
Here is how I've set up their Conditional Prefabs

(Images broken)
Their character controller setup is disabled normally on battle/switch when not the Locked Field leader.

2 &3) Perfect, thank you.

gamingislove

1) None of the images seem to be working or they have been removed.
Anyway, destroying the game object is pretty straight forward - it'll be destroyed, so conditional prefabs have no impact on that.

WO2

Not sure what happened to the images. I'll remove the links for now.

However I'm not sure why SwitchRetreat doesn't destroy the Locked Field Leader. It is triggering, I checked the correct schematic is attached and added a console log after the machine object is supposed to be destroyed.

My Field leader simply steps back and is fully controllable as they're not considered In battle according to the Combatant Component Script so it defaults to their player prefab via the conditional prefabs and only does so if they're a Locked Field Leader and are switched out of the active party mid-battle.

gamingislove

Hm, are player controls blocked during battle (see your battle system's setup)? In that case, the controls should not become active - which would hint at the battle ending ...

I could check it out if you can send me a Unity test project with your setup.

WO2

@gamingislove
Test project sent.
Forgot to mention in the e-mail but the Unity version is 2022.3.9f1.

WO2

1) I have a ring menu for selecting field skills which are a subtype of abilities. Currently it displays the abilities of the user/combatant. (Using a Multi Content part.)

Is it possible to set it to "pool" all field skills together (from different party members) without having to select a user? Currently there are a handful of unique field skills spread across a couple of characters that don't cost MP/any resource to use.

It'd be easier to just group them together in a single ring menu rather than having to switch to the specific party member but I can't find a way of doing that.

gamingislove

1) Hm, no, not directly.
You could set up multiple menu screens, each for different users and open them together via a schematic (i.e. non-single screen setup).

An alternative is using group abilities for those field skills instead. That way all group members will have access to them and can display them. The schematics of those abilities can be set up to use a specific combatant of the group for doing animations, etc.

Another alternative (and probably the best) is to use group shortcut slots, i.e. you can add abilities from different combatants to them and display/use them.

WO2

1) Regarding group abilities:
Is the group-wide learning one time or constant?
If a combatant learns a group ability and a different combatant later joins the party for the first time, do they also learn the ability or did they miss their chance to learn it?

I have a functional method using group abilities for Field Skills with the requirement for using them requires the original combatant to be in the battle/group. I can also create schematics to remove them should the owner not be in the party.

2) Group Shortcuts:
I'm not entirely sure how these work or how to implement them despite the documentation. I end up getting confused by the different UI boxes and HUD types available and which are needed and where.

I've been able to create a menu using Multi Slot with a slot set to Slot Type: Shortcut Slot and Group Shortcut ticked. It allows only one specific ability type (Field Skills, which is a hidden type).

However it initially shows Slot 0 and is empty until I select a field skill to put in it. What should I do to have it not display the type (as these shortcuts will only be for field skills) and automatically assigned to each available shortcut slot so that pressing them activates the relevant skill?

My intent is this:
- Press a button/key to call a menu
- Ring of available field skill shortcuts automatically assigned
- Press them to activate the field skill (and close the menu)

Hopefully you can shed some light on this as shortcut UI is something I've consistently struggled to understand.

3) I have an enemy set to counter-attack with an AoE ability but the ability only targets the person who attacked them. Is it possible for the counter-attack to hit the entire party? The ability set as its counter override is an enemy group target attack.

gamingislove

1) Group abilities are stored on the group, i.e. every combatant joining it will have access to it.

2) Basically enable Group Shortcut wherever using them, i.e. in the HUD, in UI > Shortcut Settings for auto or default assignments, in menu screens, in nodes, etc.

E.g. set up default assignments in UI > Shortcut Settings for those field skills on group shortcut slots and they should be automatically set up at the start of the game.
Keep in mind to also use the Keep Unavailable setting in the shortcut settings to keep the assignment even if the ability isn't yet available (e.g. not learned).

3) If it's an AoE ability, it should use the Affect Range settings to also hit combatants around the target. Group target abilities aren't really AoE, they can just target multiple combatants at once - and counters only target the one that attacked.