Help me developing a (semi) perma death system

[Siggi Windklotz]

Hi there,
I had this Idea about using a perma death system in my next game. But it's not about deleting your save game in case of a game over but more about loosing your party members if they die once. But should the main character die, it's game over. If you ever played Fire Emblem you probably know what mean.

The thing is, I'm not talented at coding, so I want to keep things simple. I want the game to remove killed party members after the battle and activate a switch that marks the death of said character. A death of the main character should trigger an instant game over, even if the battle is still going.

As a bonus, I might want to show a little cutscene after the main character has perished instead of the normal game over screen, but that's not top priority for me right now.

Anyway, thanks for reading my request, I would really apriciate any help.

[XIIIthHarbinger]

No coding required, this all just basic eventing.

What you need to do is have a common event, that runs as a parallel process attached to all troop events, with multiple conditional branches.

Each potential party member will require their own condtional branch, that upon the actor having the state "Death" or whatever you are calling it applied to them, have them removed from the party.

& a conditional branch for the main character, that upon the main character having the state "Death" or whatever you are calling it, trigger the "gameover" sequence.

[Caethyril]

^ As above, just to elaborate:

• I'd recommend using something like Yanfly's Base Troop Events plugin[yanfly.moe] so you only have to make the troop event(s) once. Just a convenience thing. =)
  
  
• Note there is a difference between troop events (defined on the Troops tab of the database), common events (Common Events tab) and map events...
  
  
• For checking player death, you can use a troop event with Condition: Turn 1*X (i.e. every turn) and Span: Turn or Moment, depending on how immediately you want the battle to end when the player dies (Moment acts much like a parallel event). Then, in that event, just check whether the main character has the death state and if so: Game Over. Or possibly Abort Battle then some little cutscene, whatever you like really. =D
  
  
• Parallel common events don't run in battle, so you can just make a common event with Parallel trigger to check for and remove any dead party members. Optionally, you could streamline it a bit more by turning it off when it's not needed. Try making a troop event with Condition: Turn 0 and Span: Battle (i.e. run once at start of battle). In this troop event, just turn on the switch associated with your "remove dead party members" common event. Then at the end of the common event (running in parallel) switch that switch off. This means the event should run once after each battle, rather than constantly in the background...probably not very noticeable performance-wise, but it's good practice.

[Siggi Windklotz]

Thanks for the quick answers, that really helped me and it was easier than expected. There is still one tiny detail that bothers me. If the whole group dies, or the main character is alone to begin with, I still get the normal game over event. Is there a way to give my event a higher priority than game over or disabeling it completely?

[XIIIthHarbinger]

You need to use visual encounters, or have a "Battle Processing" event attached to wandering events without character iamges.

Check the box "Can Lose" when you program the event, then have what you want to happen instead of a standard game over attached to that condition.

[Siggi Windklotz]

I just tried that, it spawed the entire group with 1hp each on the map again. The usual "Your team has been whiped out" text showed and ended the battle before my custom event got triggered.

[kittylitterproduction]

Use Himeworks' End Phase Triggers

[XIIIthHarbinger]

Strange,

The events that you programmed to happen should have taken effect upon the lose of your party.

So none of the characters stayed dead?

What exactly dothe events you have programmed in say?

[Siggi Windklotz]

Right now i have two events. The troop event that gets triggered if the main character's HP reach 0, which shows a custom defeat message and ends the battle. Then there is a field event that moves the player to another map, where the game over cutscene takes place. At the end of that the game returns to main menu. Also it removes all dead characters from your group and activates a switch (so other events know that the character is dead). This would explain why no character gets removed if"can't loose" is checked.

The plugin kittylitterproduction recommended brought me a step forward, the Troop event works now as it should. However, I still get the ususal Game Over Screen right after that. I could ofcourse change that by modifying the troop event to activate a switch and healing the Main Character, so he doesn't trigger the vanilla game over. Also I should create a new game over event that gets triggered by that very switch.

Edit: just tried this and everything works as I intended now! Thank you all for your help and patience I really appreciate it!