Attacks that only succeed against low health targets?

[Foxley]

Hi there, I'm looking into trying my hand at developing an OHRRPGCE game after having not used it in many years.

There's a certain game mechanic I want to use though, where there are instant death/OHKO attacks that only succeed against targets with critical/near-dead HP, both enemies and heroes. I've been looking through attack options and the plotscript dictionary and have some vague idea on how it might be possible, but I was hoping someone else more familiar with the engine's newer capabilities (I haven't used it regularly since 2001 or so) could give me some hints.

So far my only good guess is that you could get max HP and divide it by current HP using 'get hero stat' and if it's below a percentage then you could set an 'instakillable' tag. Thing is, I'm not sure how robust in-battle plotscripting is nowadays, and if it would respond immediately to conditions like that. I did notice there's a "% attacker stat </>" field in attack chains, but unfortunately the idea I have would need to use the target's HP as a conditional, not the attacker's.

Anyhow: any advice or help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[Jack]

Thing is, I'm not sure how robust in-battle plotscripting is nowadays...

Pretty non-existent, actually.

I wanna say using HP as the DEF stat could be a viable option, but i'm not sure if it reads the current or max (which would be the deciding factor in whether or not it works).

[Meowskivich]

Hi there, I'm looking into trying my hand at developing an OHRRPGCE game after having not used it in many years.

There's a certain game mechanic I want to use though, where there are instant death/OHKO attacks that only succeed against targets with critical/near-dead HP, both enemies and heroes. I've been looking through attack options and the plotscript dictionary and have some vague idea on how it might be possible, but I was hoping someone else more familiar with the engine's newer capabilities (I haven't used it regularly since 2001 or so) could give me some hints.

So far my only good guess is that you could get max HP and divide it by current HP using 'get hero stat' and if it's below a percentage then you could set an 'instakillable' tag. Thing is, I'm not sure how robust in-battle plotscripting is nowadays, and if it would respond immediately to conditions like that. I did notice there's a "% attacker stat </>" field in attack chains, but unfortunately the idea I have would need to use the target's HP as a conditional, not the attacker's.

Anyhow: any advice or help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Of the top of my head, what I can say is a way to do it for foes.
Step one - have two versions of the foe
Step two - create a move that the foe will use near death to transform them into the secondary foe form
Step three - create an element pertaining to the low-health death skill
Step four - make the secondary monster vulnerable to it, and the primary immune to it.

I'm sure there's other ways of doing this, but that's just off the top of my head.

[Valigarmander]

I've wondered about this as well.

I've pondered the possibility of a Pokeball-style aim math, where the hit % is inversely proportionate the target's current HP % (so an attack against a target with full health will always miss; against a target with half health will hit half of the time; against a target with 20% will hit 4 out of 5 times; and so on).

[TMC]

Heh, it must be shocking to someone who's been away 12 years that we still don't have battle scripting.

I did notice there's a "% attacker stat </>" field in attack chains, but unfortunately the idea I have would need to use the target's HP as a conditional, not the attacker's.

Actually, you can also set attack chaining conditionals based on the target's stats instead of the attacker's.

I wanna say using HP as the DEF stat could be a viable option, but i'm not sure if it reads the current or max (which would be the deciding factor in whether or not it works).

Current values of stats are always used for everything, unless it explicitly says otherwise.

[Foxley]

Actually, you can also set attack chaining conditionals based on the target's stats instead of the attacker's.

Oh snap, really? I must have missed that somewhere. At the risk of asking the completely obvious, would you mind telling me where that option is and how it's configured?

And a big thank you to everyone who has replied thus far, much appreciated!

[TMC]

Oh, it's only available in nightlies; I didn't realise. (Get them from the Downloads page).

[Meowskivich]

Oh, it's only available in nightlies; I didn't realise. (Get them from the Downloads page).

I AWAIT THE COOKIEMONSTER RELEASE OF THE OHRRPGCE WITH EAGERNESS NOW.

[Foxley]

Oh, it's only available in nightlies; I didn't realise. (Get them from the Downloads page).

Nice, thank you. I'm going to put that chain conditional to the test when I get some free time, maybe before work tomorrow, and see if it behaves in a way that'll prove useful.

Also, since that's a nightly, does this mean that the next stable release will have this feature? And if so, should I hold off on developing the battle aspects of the game until the next release is out, due to possible compatibility conflicts between the current nightly and the next stable release?

[TMC]

Yes, the next stable version will have it. Compatibility problems between nightly builds aren't really more common than between two stable releases; incompatible changes between nightlies are almost never made intentionally. It's bugs that you have to worry about. If there's a problem or we're forced to change something, we try to mention it in IMPORTANT-nightly.txt (shown at the bottom of http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/nightly/)

[Foxley]

It works! Awesome. Thanks for all the help, everyone.