Cool things you can do with the OHR battle engine

Here is a topic for listing neat tricks you can pull off with the OHR's built-in battle engine!

We've been talking a lot about FF6 lately (mostly in IRC, but also a little here), so I'll start this thread off with a list of what can and can't be done in terms of FF6 abilities.


Morph - You can fake all but the visuals. Unfortunately, the visuals are a key part.

Steal - Steal items
Capture - Steal items

Dance - Instead-chaining

Tools - Yes and no. Pretty straightforward skillset. You can't reproduce Confusion or the scaling Poison, though, not to mention Air Anchor..

Blitz - The OHR is unlikely to support the key inputs for this. If you don't care about that, then the Blitz skillset is easy to reproduce.

Throw - I'm pretty sure item-based skills are working now

Runic - Another skill that is unlikely to be supported anytime soon. (Update: JSH points out that you can make Runic set a tag that all spells check for when cast. The behavior still isn't all there - if not triggered, Runic usually lasts until Celes acts again, which is a very difficult behavior to replicate.)

SwdTech - As with Blitz, the gauge can't be reproduced, but the skillset is easy to reproduce.

Leap - Attacks that set tags + Flee battle when used
Rage - Instead-chaining

Sketch - You can fake this with spawning. (A lot of work for a mediocre skill, but it's doable.)
Control - Unfortunately, this is not as easy.

Lore - Attacks that set tags. Some of the individual skills don't transfer well (Dischord comes to mind).

Slot - You can reproduce all of it except the actual slots.
GP Toss - To reproduce the exact mechanics behind GP Toss, you'll need a different version of the attack for each level. Possible, but it's a high overhead-to-payoff ratio.

Mimic - Another skill that's not likely to be supported anytime soon. You might be able to fake this with chaining, but it would be more trouble than it's worth.
[Gogo] - You can sort of fake Gogo's equip-a-skill ability by creating a hundred different versions of him... but IIRC heroes are still capped, and this would be way, way more work than it's worth regardless.

[Umaro] - You can fake Umaro decently, but he'll still be able to use items at the start of the battle. (Removing the Item command on a per-hero basis has been a long-requested feature, wink wink)


Add your own neat tricks!

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

i'll try to recreate some skills to.

x fight~if you have to ask about this one, i'll smack you.

mix/combine~items that have tags, plotscript that "teaches spell" when appropriate items are in possession, and attacks costing the appropriate items.

animals~this one is obvious too. "random effects" style spell menu, like Woo in Walthros.

FF5 style dance~see above.

FF6 style "limit breaks"~chain normal attacks using the percentage option condition with HP as the stat value. you'd probably need to have each character use their own unique weapons for this, though...

passive skills~this is sort of doable if you'd like to sacrifice an enemy slot to make it work, plus the "order" or "team" option, unless you wanted to create an extra element specifically for this. say, for example, you wanted to have the hero "Rob Schneider" have an "evade" skill like the samurai in FF5. first, you would need to create a plotscript to check if "Rob Schneider" has learned "evade". then, have the plotscript set a tag signifying that he has learned it (this part might be easier if you're using a custom level up and skill system, considering you'd use a tag anyway to "learn" an ability). after that, place an invisible "enemy" in every formation with an attack that does nothing but kill itself normally, and "instead-chains" to an attack that only boosts "Rob Schneider"'s evasion using the "do not target hero slot x" bitsets, or the party if you're using an "element" to target "Rob Schneider". also, this way pretty much only works for skills that are active throughout the entire battle, not skills that auto-cast when hit or when near-death.

bloodlust style evasion command~have an attack target the caster, reducing the character's speed stat to 0 and boosting evasion while turning on a tag. have all of the enemies attacks chain to another attack under the condition that the evasion tag is on, and restore the characters evasion to normal while turning the tag back off. this is another ability that is very limited, unless you created seperate tags for each user. at least i THINK this is how OnlyOneInAll did it.

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Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy... So here's some lunchmeat... Sandwich, maybe?

I actually had these in my fangame contest entry that didn't go anywhere, along with regular critical hits.

The regular attack instead-chained to a critical hit 10% of the time, which then instead-chained to a desperation attack whenever the user's HP was below 13%.

So normally, Mario could get a regular double-damage critical 10% of the time. If he was down to 12% of his HP or less, though, he would instead get a special attack that did about triple the usual damage, ignored most of the target's defense ("Blunt" damage formula), and had an elemental type that did extra damage against rock-based enemies. Basically a supercharged version of the "punch bricks to break them" ability he always has.

Making them only work for the right characters can be done a couple of different ways. The simplest would be to make everyone only use one type of weapon (which also means having a different kind of "fists" item for everyone), so each weapon type only ever chains to that character's move.

You could also pull it off by making multiple versions of each weapon in the item list (one for each hero who can equip that weapon) and do some instead-of-battle/after-battle script weirdness to switch them around so that everyone is equipped with their version of the weapon before battles (so they will get their own desperation moves and not somebody else's), as well as making sure that everyone's weapons are back to the "default" version after battle (so that they don't randomly go into different piles when unequipped.) This would take up a ton of items and attacks, of course, but since you can add more items and I don't think anyone's ever hit the limit on attacks, it's definitely doable (just very time-consuming.)

Also, giving the desperation move's instead-chain the "Attacker must know chained attack" bitset should prevent enemies that use the same physical attacks as your weapons from ever using someone else's desperation move... though this does mean you can't use all four spell lists. You'll have to put the desperation attack they will be able to use in a blank (not even spaces; just leave it blank like it is by default) spell list, and have them learn it at level 0 (or later if you want them to not have access to this attack early on.)
Spell lists with a completely blank title never show up in-game, so you won't be able to just pick the attack out of the menu and use it that way, but at the same time the game should count it for the "must know chained attack" bitset.
Of course, I never got around to testing this, so it's possible that it doesn't really work. It should, though, unless "must know chained attack" ignores blank-titled spell lists or something.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

I'd like to point out that, years ago, I tried a Rage battle command. Its purpose was simple: it would smash a certain enemy with enhanced power until it was dead. After that, something unusual happened: My raging hero started attacking his allies!
I can only remember one thing distinctively: The rager would always beat down on the first enemy available, and then go for his allies. I kept it in Viridia's game file, so I should go and figure out what in the world I did to make him behave this way. (It seemed like a unique quirk for a battle command, so I left it in. Great choice against lone monsters and bosses.)

Twin attacks
I had a Twin command in OHRer's Noel, but it was needlessly complicated and pretty buggy. Nowadays, there is a better way.

The Twin command has its roots in Final Fantasy 4's twins, Palom and Porom. If you had one of them use it, both of them would stop what they were doing and charge up a powerful attack. The ability couldn't be used if one of the twins was unavailable for some reason (mute, dead, etc.).

Of course, there's no innate support for this in the OHR battle engine. What you'll need to do instead is require both participants to use their Twin command. When the second Twin command is used, the attack is launched.

Here's how it works behind the scenes:

Twin: If tag X = on, instead-chain to SuperMagic; else set tag X = on and non-blocking chain to Untwin
Untwin: After a reasonable delay, set tag X = off
SuperMagic: (insert effect here)

You can also give Twin to more than two attackers. In OHRer's Noel, the Twin attack that you performed depended on which two heroes used the ability. In this case, you'll want a separate tag for each hero and the chaining becomes more complicated.

The only other thing to remember is that you should set your tags off after each battle.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Maybe I should turn this into a featurette series for Hamsterspeak

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Definitely.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

[Stun Target]
[Give Target silly high speed buff]
[Poison/Regen Target]

*Watch Target get damaged/healed mad quick*

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♪♪♪ Du du duuuu ♪♪♪