TURBU

I’m working on the RPG Maker project importer and the TURBU editor at the same time. As I was writing a converter for skill settings records (the thing that decides when a character gains certain skills), I realized that what I was working on represented one of the major differences in design philosophy between RPG Maker and TURBU.

Here’s the skill settings screen for RPG Maker 2003:

It lets you pick a skill and decide whether or not the hero can use it, based on one factor: his level. This leads to a lot of complicated (and wasteful!) common events in projects that want to have skills associated with equipment instead.

TURBU will allow you to write your own algorithms for many in-game calculations. The skill decision is one of them. There will be a handful of premade functions for determining how skills get used. They give you four numbers to use, which you can name for convenience, and do whatever you want with them in order to determine the status of your skills. So if you want to base a skill on equipment, there will be a built-in algorithm for that, or you can design your own for greater customizability. For example, the following screenshot shows a skill that’s only available if you’ve got item #35 equipped, (presumably some kind of blade,) and your second hand is empty:

The importer will automatically set existing skills to the Level (default) algorithm, and the common event converter will scan for things that look like equipment/skill controllers and give you the option to automatically convert them into Skill Settings records on the Equipment (default) algorithm. Other things you’ll be able to customize include battle formulas, EXP requirement and stat curve generators, and probably plenty of other things as I think them up.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.