"DBZ: Legend of the Super Saiyan" RPG system (not urgent)

[Conners]

I searched the forum, but couldn't find any topics related to the snes game, "Dragon Ball Z: Chou Saiya Densetsu (Legend of the Super Saiyan)". If you don't know what it is, there is a video of it here: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=C8uC9-ce8 ... re=related ___ There are more parts under "Related Videos" if you want to see more gameplay.
And you can get a "Let's Play" commentary, and look at the Fan-Translation, here: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=GU2K7IvenLw

Now, what I was wondering is, how hard would it be for a person to make a battle system like the one in this game? This was one of my most favourite games of all time, and I'd love to make an original story for the DBZ universe using this battle system, for my next RPG project. I use RPG Maker XP, by the way.

For anyone who is interested in the system and wants to try the game, PM me and I'll PM back details.

Features of the system include:

* Five cards with two 1 to Z ratings, the top rating for attack and the lower rating for defence.
* Different attack card, including KI cards which let you use special attacks.
* Favourite Cards which allow a character to attack all enemies instead of just one.
* BPs (Battle Powers, aka: Power Levels) listed along with a character's level. Battle Power raising by a determined amount with each level up.
* A system where Battle Power is used to determine characters' powers.
* Dodging attacks more than in most RPGs.
* If your BP is high enough, the chance to "Re-fight" an opponent who has just attacked you.
* With much higher BP, your character will sometimes attack more than once with a random card.
* Items that affect cards in various fashions.
* If your BP is MUCH higher, then sometimes the enemy's attack will be too weak and you'll take no damage whatsoever.

Other features that are good, but not totally necessary:

* Fight animations--see the videos. [A system of repeatedly using "Show Picture" perhaps...? Or a system of giving the sprites animations in combination with effects?]
* The out-of-combat ability to swap between flight and walking, as well as the ability to "Fast-Fly" which raises your speed but increases the chance of a random encounter.
* Blue health bars for characters and enemies. When lowered, the parts they previously filled are replaced with red bar.
* Enemy BPs showing up when you hold down a certain button during the action menu of combat (the menu that lets you choose, Attack, Item, Escape, etcetera.).
* Characters dying properly when dropped to 0 HP in combat. [Not much of a request since it could probably be done with a common event which removes them from the party when they reach 0 HP.]
* The ability to use such transformations as Oozaru (when saiyans look at the full moon, they turn into giant apes with ten times their original BP), Kaioken (you multiply your BP by an amount based on how good the KI card is), and Super Saiyan (you become the legendary super saiyan, ). Note that the multipliers/etcetera. and the BP sizes don't matter particularly from making the system's perspective--as long as the game creator can edit the numbers without too much trouble.
* Certain menu changes and other things.

I'm not planning on working on a DBZ RPG right away, or that soon really. If someone was interested enough that they could work on bits and pieces with the plan of finishing the system in X weeks, or Y months, then that would be fine--although if the system isn't too hard to do and can be done quickly, then that'd allow for more refining-time.


Thanks for reading.

 

[Conners]

According to my calendar it has been three days... so *bump*.

 

[Conners]

Three day bump again.

 

[tuti05]

i loved that game i hope someone helps you out. are you going to do a remake or dbz game with this"?

 

[Conners]

Yeah, I reckon it to be the best DBZ game made (the best RPG one certainly). If you can recommend anyone who might be interested, it'd be very helpful.

With this game, I was thinking of doing an original plot with original characters, rather than add another remake to the multitude (I'll make sure to squeeze in character appearances, of course). If I did get the system, thought, I would consider making a remake on top of that.

 

[Conners]

*Bump*. Would anyone be interested in just doing parts of the system...? If I get an offer from someone to do a part of this system, I'll change the main post so that it's a, "pick a part to design" type of a request.

 

[Conners]

*Bump* .....Can't think of anything interesting to comment. If it happens that my request is unclear, then I wouldn't mind being told so that I may correct the problem.

 

[tuti05]

bump, i'd like to see this system made myself

 

[Crazy Li]

Super Saiyajin Densetsu and those similar card-based NES DBZ games were really neat and original. I kinda would like to see this done as well. Problem is, you'll need a REALLY advanced scripter to get all of this done and the chances of someone with that skill taking interest may not be that great... :/

still, I wanna look over all the stuff you want and see how much of it I might be able to help with...

Core Battle System: This is gonna be the hardest part, really. There is so much involved in it and you'd need more battle phases than normal, I'd think. I'd imagine that it would take a complete rescripting of the Scene_Battle scripts, possibly extending them into another scene.
Having Selectable Cards Appear on screen: I could probably figure this much out... it doesn't seem TOO hard... it's just the notion of the selected card handling both the attack and defense on that turn that's really tricky. The card would just apply modifiers to the characters' core stats in the damage algorithm. I think I could re-write the battle algorithm to handle that just fine.
Card randomization: Just wanted to note that this part is easy enough to do.
Ki Cards: I think I could do that too. The ki cards could just trigger the built-in Skill menu that lets you choose from the character's skills, allowing them to perform anything they have enough ki for.
Favorite Cards: now that one might be difficult... how did that work in the game again? the cards had symbols in the certer, right? and every character had a symbol that triggered the attack-all? Well, if all the other stuff can be done, this is definately possible.
BP: That's just a stat... I can certainly modify a stat and incorporate it into the battle algorithm.
BP determining powers: you lost me on this one... are you talking about moves? they weren't just given to you by level?
Dodging attacks more than in most RPGs: Just an alteration to the way the battle is processed.
Counter-attacks: Can't say I know how to do one of those off-hand, much less conditionally like that.
Strong characters getting additional attacks: Another one that sounds tough to be, so I dunno if I could figure it out or not.
Items that affect cards: Definately possible.
Ineffective attacks: It's already possible to do 0 damage if the attacker's attack is way lower than the defense of the defender. In this system, BP would be affecting both damage dealt and received, so I'd imagine this would come with the system.

Fight animations: if you're prepared to make all the sprites needed to do the animations, I can make them animate on the battle field.
Flying: I've seen this done a LONG time ago in oldschool RM2k games. It has to be doable.
Health bars: If you mean for in-battle, I can do that.
Enemy BPs showing up: The exact implementation may need to be worked out, but the concept can be done.
Characters dying properly when dropped to 0 HP in combat: I just wanted to note that I hate when games do this with a passion >.@
Transformations: Power increases can be done by creating a state and setting the skill to invoke that state. (See RMXP default skills like "Sharp" for an example) The actual character sprite transformation, I can do too.
Custom Menu for the game: I'll admit right away that I don't know much about RGSS scripting... but what I have most familarity with is Menu creation. I can pretty much manipulate the game's menu to do anything needed. I can definately help you with that aspect.

 

[Conners]

I'm glad to have some interest taken up in the system by a scripter :D. I would like to stress once more that I do not plan on making the RPG right away, so I don't want you busting a gasket/whatever working too fast on this.

Replying to what appears to need a reply:

Core Battle System: It's interesting how hard menu editing can be. From a ignorant person's perspective, they'd think it would be one of the easiest parts (it might be with some programs, for all I know)...
Having Selectable Cards Appear on screen: You might want to check around for any, "Card Battle" systems. That way, you might be able to save yourself a few hours of work by asking the creator of the script for permission to modify a copy of his work. With the attack and defence values, it's as you say where they would merely modify your attack and defence statistics (Damage, To-Hit, etcetera.) with BP also modifying them.
Favourite Card: With the cards, it was basically:

(Z)--

| SS |

| SS |

|__(Z)

Top-Left Z = The attack value, which goes from one to seven stars, then a Z.

Bottom-Right Z = The defence value, which had a system of kanji in the games--but it could have stars for simplicity's sake (there was never any strategy in the defence because unless it was a Z, I had no idea as to how good it was...).

S = The Kanji symbol which took up most of the card (picture: [url=http://i.neoseeker.com/p/Games/Super_Nintendo/Action/Fighting/dragon_ball_z_chou_saiya_densetsu_import_profilelarge.jpg]http://i.neoseeker.com/p/Games/Super_Ni ... elarge.jpg[/url] ).

The characters had the symbol of their favourite card right under their character portrait during battles (remember that I posted some youtube links which can show you the game if you're a bit fuzzy on details).
BP: I'll need to work out what sort of formula we're going for. Deep down, I'd like to add something complicated and fancy like a system where your BP drops as you use up KI and health--but don't worry about that unless you yourself are interested in it.
BP Determining Powers: Yeah, I guess I did word that awkwardly. I meant a system where BP is the main stat which has influence over all your other stats and everything battle-related (like with Luck in most RPGs, only more so).
Dodging attacks more than in most RPGs: This is mostly just setting it up so that everyone's To-Hit stat is low and their Dodge stat is high, or something similar. With attacks like beams and other skills, we can just set their Accuracy low (you can already do this).
Counter-attacks: We can probably find a script that does counter-attacks to use as a basis.
Strong characters getting additional attacks: Having little knowledge of scripting, I'm often unsure as to which things are very difficult, and which things are easy. Hopefully, by the time everything within our abilities is sorted out, more scipters will look into this thread and give a hand to work out the tougher problems.
Ineffective attacks: It'd be good if we could do an animation like in the game, where the enemy character is hit, but they only go a foot back. The one who did the attack then has an exclamation bubble burst up over their head, and text says, "X is undamaged by the attack," or something like that.

Fight animations: I'm friends with several spriters, and there are tons of DBZ sprites already made, so we should be good in this retrospect (on the subject of me doing sprites: My 13-year-old sister would do a better job--though she is a talented artist).
Flying Heh, thinking on it, it might even be easy in consideration (there are probably similar scripts we could base this off, like one which switches you to a vehicle).
Health bars: Yep, I mean in-battle. Health bars weren't available in the out-of-battle menus, so we might as well not bother with that.
Enemy BPs showing up: Good to hear :D! Hmmm... How hard would it be to make it that the BPs only show up if you have a scouter equipped (or someone with "Sense" in the party)?
Characters dying properly when dropped to 0 HP in combat: ...Come to think of it, considering I mostly played the game on an emulator where you can save and load every four seconds, this thing would suck without saving and loading... Forget I asked for this.
Transformations: Good to hear! The question we'll have to ask later, however, is what sort of multipliers will we want (10x for Oozaru in the show... which is a lot O_O).
Custom Menu for the game: Menus exactly like the game would probably just be awkward (I hate having to go into a menu just to Look at something...). We would, however, either need a mini-menu for accessing the main status menu, so as to put Fly down as an option, or to make Fly accessible at the push of one of the keys.

Thanks very much for showing interest and offering to help me :D. And thanks tuti05 for the bump which may very well have brought you here XD.
Besides ideas and writing, I'm afraid my skills will probably not be of much use to you besides access to spriters. Of course, they probably wouldn't be too pleased if I stopped working on my current project which they're interested in--so it's a better idea if we leave the spriting till later (one of the questions I'm asking myself is: What sprite style and portrait style do I wan to go for...? There are hundreds of rips and customs already done, so it makes the decision harder than if it were being done from scratch).

Contact me if there's anything I might be able to help with :cheers:.

 

[Crazy Li]

hehe, luckily I had a defense strategy because I know my numbers in Japanese :p

never pick a 1-line card

1. 一 (ichi)
2. 二 (ni)
3. 三 (san)
4. å›› (shi)
5. 五 (go)
6. å…­ (roku)
7. 七 (shichi)

I also tried to look for the t-looking one :p but anyway, enough about Japanese.

I've seen a card battle system done once before, but it was in a Japanese game, so I can't exactly ask for the script... >.> but I can still try to decompile the game and look at what was done and see if I can figure it out.

Also, I guess I wasn't clear what I meant on core battle system... editing menus is a breeze. but it's putting everything together. you have to figure out how to make the system acknowledge actions based upon randomly-generated cards instead of menu commands, make some cards actually initiate menu commands, re-code the way battles are executed (both player and enemies have cards that determine their attack/defense powers for every round and that keeps changing). not sure if I'm clear about what I mean... but there's a lot of stuff being put together and altering the way the game actually handles its battle phases. I could probably figure out how to do a lot of it... but I've just begun working with RGSS and trying to learn how it works recently, so I can't say how much I know.

Either way, it's good that you're not in a rush. I can work on something simple and learn as I go along.

As for BP, I pretty much figured it would have heavy influence over all other stats.

For dodging, you've pretty much got it. Just some simple modifications.

Changing the animation when damage is 0 is possible. I just need an if statement in there.

I dun care who's actually making the sprites, the important part is that they're there. The base sprites would just be the walking sprites, reused as the battlers and then for all the additional actions that are needed, you would just need additional sprites that match the map sprite style.

BP on scouter: There are a couple options here:

1. Make an item named "Scouter" and don't make it expendable. Have it activate a switch or something when used and that switch would show the BP. It could just be something in your inventory.
2. If you REALLY want it to be an equipped accessory, I guess you could do it that way, but we'd need a lot of case statements to check for it being equipped.

Sense would hafta work like way #2 only because of your skill system. If skills could always be selected (like in normal games), it coulda just been a skill that can be used to see BP, kinda like Scan (FF)/Inspect (Tales)

I think I wanna start on a menu just because that's what I'm most comfortable working with. If you can come up with exactly what you want in terms of layout and appearance, I can probably throw something together for you. Let me know what you're looking for.

As for sprite style, that would be up to what your spriters can do and what you think looks good. I personally can't do custom styles that well, but that's not really relevent if I'm not touching the sprites. I only know how to modify RTP character set graphics myself, though.

And after all this talk, you make me wanna go back and re-play those games. Not so much the one in your topic title... but actually, the NES ones for some reason. By DBZ3, it does go further into the story (Android Saga, if I remember right) than SSJ Densetsu did.

 

[Conners]

I remember reading a walkthrough to try and work it out (working out 1 to three was easy enough). Even so, I can't say the defence part was ever extremely useful to me. We should certainly trade the kanji for stars like with the attack for simplicity (the symbols could stay as is).

(and, and, BTW, I use "nana" for seven :biggrin

Doesn't bother me too much decompiling their game for scripts. But I guess we would still put them in the credits?

Hmm... Hopefully that Japanese Card Battle game will have the scripts you need.
With the attack and defence for each round, could we do this with states? Like, a state that lasts for one turn, which raises your attack and defence by an amount based on the cards (or not at all if you got ones).

It'll take me a while to finish my current RPG as is, so I don't want this system to be done quickly and be expected to make the another RPG at the same time :tongue:.

Hmmm... I guess it'd be not too hard to make a system where your BP raises with each fight (health and KI would level up when you reach certain amounts of BP, I guess)? They used a system like this for the nes DBZ games.

Thought dodging would be easy enough (it might take a bit of tinkering to get it just-right, however...).

Good to have someone with such broad knowledge of scripting interested in my project XD.

I was thinking of having two separate styles for the sprites and walk-abouts. The reason being that we'll need a lot of sprites for combat, the way I was planning it, and a simpler style would probably make it easier to mass-produce.

Hmm... Making it so that the players have to buy a scouter would probably be good--it'd make things more fun. The problem is if you have to go into the item menu and use it constantly... I guess it wouldn't.
I guess equipping it isn't really so important. However, a scouter would have a positive effect in battle where it allows you to better keep track of your enemies... I might have two types of scouter items, an accessory which raises your dodge and hit stats slightly (your scouter's "tracker" engine), and an item which allows you to see Battle Powers (your scouter's "scanner" engine).

Couldn't we do sense by just having a conditional branch like, "Only when Sensing-Character is in the party"? It could activate the same thing scouters do. Though I don't think I'll include so much in the line of sensing characters in my RPG--it makes scouters sort of useless unless we can think of something extra they tell you (like maybe the enemy's health in numbers rather than a bar, or their BP shows up during the fighting rather than just in the menus... that's how scouters worked in the game).

As I say, an orange border with... I guess it's more of a parchment-colour background. Like this dialogue box only for menus (the question then is whether we want the dialogue boxes to look the same):

When we get further into things and are thinking about doing the battle animations, I'll post a request in the art thread about help with deciding on the styles of sprites for the RPG.

Yeah, I liked DBZ3... It had an amazing system for over-world combat, where the characters' sprites fly about and fight each other without input, and would occasionally throw small blast-sprites around! I LOVED IT!!! Do remember this? IF so, how tough would it be to make something similar for this system (there might be a setting in options that dictates whether you want random encounters dealt with this way for the player)?


Oh yeah, I think there's some things I forgot to mention with the system.

* Attack-order decided by the attack value of cards, the player's characters going first in the event of a tie (or it being decided randomly).
This could be changed around a bit, so that it's the total value of your card which decides it (aka: four-star attack, four-star defence card goes before six-star attack, one-star defence card).

* A "Special" option for the battle screen, when conditions are met for something beyond the norm (example: The full moon is out, your saiyans can look at the moon).
There's a Dynamic-Time-System I'm going to use for my current RPG we could probably work in with the moon thing.

* Special scripting for certain characters, sometimes under conditions.
Example1: A saiyan who has become an Oozaru (great ape) has a large chance of ignoring what you say and attacking with a random card.
Example2: When a friend's health is low, Gohan/other-character will get angry, increasing their BP.
Example3: Vegeta/other-character refuses to be ordered around, and will sometimes send in a different character to perform whatever action--not taking part himself.

How would one go about these things, would you say?

 

[tuti05]

i just played the game with a translated rom :p

 

[Conners]

That's good. Any insightful comments you'd like to make after playing the game?

 

[Crazy Li]

To stay truer to the original system, why not use actual numerals for the defense part instead of mirroring the attack's stars. We can just have it show 1-7 or Z in English numbering as opposed to the kanji.

Good idea about the states. I didn't consider doing it this way. That might just work.

Also, you make a good point on the conditional sensing thing. That might make things easier to work in.

I'll have to look back at those additional things later. They look tough.

But when you mentioned the Vegita ignoring your command thing, it really made me laugh because I still remember the first time he did that on me. Just going "I don't want to!" and ignoring my command for him.

But to make up for it, he would randomly stop enemies from escaping which was just badass.

 

[Conners]

Yeah, that'd make it easier to tell which was which too.

It's amazing how sometimes you can be the expert on X, and know every angle of it, and then someone untrained can come up and suggest something you had never considered (have had that happen with my writing, on occasion).

Above statement.

I was afraid they might be tough to do.

Heh, I think I laughed too the first time :haha:.

Yeah... that WAS badass! We need to have that in, too (I'm planning to have five-year-old Kid Vegeta as a character who joins your party temporarily.... he's still kickass and likely to be stronger than your characters, though).

On a side-note, I found some portraits that could be useful here: http://charas-project.net/resources.php
I'll see if I can find any sprites while I'm at it.

EDIT: Better news still... I found some good rips of the DBZ sprites from the GBA game: http://charas-project.net/resources.php
The best news, however, is that I found rips of DBZ Super Saiya Densetsu Battle Sprites: http://charas-project.net/resources.php

Combine that with the fact those neat full-detail pictures they had of the characters when they pulled off signature moves are available, and we have quite a discovery on our hands (I'm hoping that the look of the battle sprites will be easier for spriters to copy).

 

[Crazy Li]

that site you linked to seems to do RM2k/2k3 sprite style which doesn't work for RMXP... but maybe there's some useful resources there still.

I decided to try and make a windowskin to the coloring you wanted. I didn't know what text to display for the screenshot, so I just typed what your screenshot said xp

let me know what you think.

 

[Conners]

Don't all sprites work for XP regardless of size, though (just consider the size of the ogre sprites and the tininess of the butterflies)? I don't know much about the system, but I thought it wouldn't matter about the size.
You'd think the battle sprites form Super Saiya Densetsu would work fine anyway... so there must be some useful resources there.

It looks great! I guess it'll work OK with the portraits system? If so, then it'll be perfect.

 

[Crazy Li]

RM2k spritesheets are fundamentally different and would have to be adapated to work on XP. It can be done and it's not that tough... but it's kinda of a pain the more you hafta convert. Plus they're so tiny in comparison...

but to give you an idea, RM2K (and 2k3) work by having 8 rows by 12 columns to a spritesheet. Within that sheet, each 3x4 row is one character's sprite data (so there can be 8 characters to a whole sheet). The size is uniform and the program picks out the frame by the exact height/width dimensions on the sheet (24x32 if I remember correctly). you had 4 directions and 3 frames for the walking (right foot forward, neutral, and left foot forward).

RMXP has just 1 character per spritesheet for one and it's 4x4 instead. The animation just goes 1,2,3,4 instead of 1,2,3,2 which allows you to have an extra frame of movement (useful for flying creatures). so the RM2k sprites are missing a frame for one (but frame 1 can technically be copied to frame 3 and 3 moved to 4). And the frame selection is a height/width that is a percentage of the overall image size as opposed to a defined dimmention set (which is how you can use sprites of any size in XP).

another problem I've seen with rips made to 2K sheets is that they sometimes scale them down to fit in the size limit, whereas that wouldn't have been needed for XP, so it might be better to get fresh rips if you were gonna litterally use a game's graphics. gsarchives might be a good place to start.

as for the portraits system, do you mean putting the face of the character in the text box? I know there are message system scripts that add that function onto XP that we can work with for that.

 

[Conners]

...Sounds too complicated for me, certainly. A spriter could probably fix that up fine, though.


With the portraits, I was talking about a script I have which adds the portrait to outside and ontop of the very right of the text box.

           PPP

 _________PPP

[ttttt ttt. ]

[___________]

P = Portrait. t = Text.