Unka Josh

How about the option to add critical hit animations, custom Collapse animations, and the ability to have battlers move on the screen as a default?

Uh, that's backwards. Either that, or we already did it by legalizing interracial marriages. All this would be is removing a set of divisions among citizens. That's not anything even remotely like what you described. At all. In any way. I mean, seriously. When interracial marriages were legalized, it wasn't by popular vote. Desegregation? Not a popular vote. See the trend here? It's human rights. Human rights are not something that you decide by popular vote-- that's why we have the First Amendment. And the right for two consenting adults to be married is a basic human right. Furthermore, it's the only instance of contract law where the gender (and, until relatively recently, race) of the participants was a factor. Basically, what you described is, in fact, the position that the opponents of gay marriage are taking.

Kinsey's oft-maligned research came up with results that were really pretty sensible. He put forth the idea that sexuality is complicated. Works for me-- I can totally buy that it's a sliding scale, and all that. Now, I'm pretty much 95% attracted to women, but hey. That's just me. I have my own complications and kinks. Far be it for me to judge somebody else's tastes. Besides, my wife's tastes are different, and, well, broader than mine. Or, to put it another way, we can both appreciate some of the same people. And that's a good thing.

I'd have to disagree with you about the popular-vote thing, actually. I mean, mixed-race marriages weren't legalized by popular vote. That's a human rights issue, right there. Same principle.

From the folks that I've talked to who are in Emily's shoes-- such as wicked-cool anime director Jan Scott-Frazier-- I'm inclined to believe how these folks describe it. I mean, there's too much consistency. Besides, why not accept things? There's too much chaos and destruction in the world to worry about the little things. Why sweat the small stuff? Emily, if you say you're female, you're female. See? Simple.

I would love to see an RPG maker with all of the features of both. And maybe some of the features that were in 2003 that they removed, too...

There really isn't anything that would change that unless you've been using some scripts that changed it. Ah, are you sure that your attacks are causing any damage?

Incidentally, you can use something similar to have the kinds of enemies you face be different in different terrains-- you have all the enemies set to "Appear Halfway," and on turn 0 you bring in the enemies appropriate to the terrain using Conditional Branches checking the Terrain Tag.

See, this is why I complain about Enterbrain's add-two-features-remove-two-features policies. In XP, this could be done very easily with Terrain Tags. But VX doesn't have those. So you're going to need to either get a script for this, or you're going to need to border your forest tiles with events that turn encounters on and off, which is a pain, as too many events on a map can cause serious lag.

You totally don't need a script for this. All that you'd need is, say, a common event, perhaps called by a hotkey or an item. (If it's all the same to you, go with the item-- the hotkey needs a parallel process common event, and those can cause lag.) The common event would have a whole bunch of conditional branches, which would check for the variables or switches associated with your quests. They'd then Show Text depending on the status of those quests. Actually very simple. Was that clear enough? If not, let me know, and I'll mock up an example.

If you just want a simple quest, you don't need any kind of script at all. A passing knowledge of how to use switches and page conditions will get you through a lot-- variables are good, too. I'm not sure what you'd need a script for, actually-- maybe if you wanted a hotkey to pull up a current quests window, but that's about it. And, come to think of it, you could do that with a common event...

I wonder how expansion packs for Playstation game would work, anyway? It's not like the PSOne or 2 has a hard drive to store it on, or anything. Anyway, I've written games in RPG Maker 1 and 3. (Had issues with 2 due to the absolutely terrible documentation.) Here's my capsule: RPGMaker 1: Actually kinda like RMXP, or perhaps closer to one of the older Enterbrain products. Creates a classic 2-D 16-bit game. It even had an art program built in so that you could make your own custom graphics. Buuuuut.... As far as Animations go, you had a very limited set of options. It was workable, but if you were going away from a generic fantasy game, your choices became a lot more limited. Screen Animations were separate, and even more limited. And worst of all: Those custom graphics did not combine well with a PSOne memory card. Those things had sixteen blocks, if you recall. The game itself would take up at least three-- more likely ten or so. And each graphic that you imported was one full block. There's a lot of other touches that demonstrate that this thing was kinda rushed out-- the "Demo Mode" of the art program, the way that you entered the art program (which really should have been on another disc), the art program's lack of digital controls for the colors... lots of touches. RPGMaker 2: Flexible. Versatile. Poorly documented. There was an entire section of options that the documentation actually told you not to use, and didn't provide any instructions for. The Hell? If I'd had more time and energy available to me when I got this, I might have figured it out... and done something with the Attack of the Fisher-Price People, because that's what the character graphics looked like. RPGMaker 3: The pretty, shiny 3-D one. Very simple to use. Also possessed of a very cool "Cutscene Mode," where big 2-D cell graphics of the characters could be moved around, not unlike Disgaia. Your options, however, were so limited in some areas that it was absolutely insane. You picked graphics from a limited pool--- acceptable for a console maker, but frustrating. Especially the portraits. There were over a hundred portraits! But not really. There were seven different "Art Styles," only one of which bore any resemblance to the 3-D graphics, and some of which looked, frankly, really stupid. There weren't any different facial expressions available, so those cool cutscenes were actually pretty limited, too. And speaking of those limited graphics... you had a limited selection of animations and monsters, and you basically couldn't customize anything. Fine. But the character graphics... amazingly limited. You wanted a female spellcaster? I hope you like nuns or hunchbacked old witches, because that's what the game gives you! If you were willing to work within the limitations of the engine, though, it was simple to use and could do some cool tricks. But RMXP has spoiled me for ever going back to my console makers.

Plus whatever else you can come up with-- I'd like to learn to script a bit more, as I have another battle system in mind, where each action determines how long until you can take your next one. (Basically, the TTRPG Feng Shui's initiative system.)

The background can be any color, but you don't want them to be any color that you've used in the battler, which is why you sometimes find them in vivid shades of green or pink. You left-click the background from the resource manager, when you import the image into your game. (In RMXP, it's the "Materialbase," or F10.)

It's also because, basically, every manga ever is ripping of Osamu Tezuka, and he was influenced by Disney. Really.