RPG Maker VX Ace Database Guide 0.6

Learn how to utilize the database to the fullest!
Approximately 65% complete.

Tab 1: Actors

The actor tab contains the data for characters that can become party members in your game.

Actor List: Choose an actor here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large this list is.
General Settings -

• Name: This is the name of the actor that is displayed in battle and in menus.
  
• Nickname: The nickname of an actor is displayed in the status screen of an actor.
  
• Class: Choose the class data to be used by the selected actor.
  
• Initial Level: This sets the default starting level for an actor when they join your party. (This can be overridden in events.)
  
• Max Level: This is the highest possible level the actor can reach.
  
• Description: This is text that is displayed on the bottom of the status screen.

Graphic: The left image is the down facing image from the group of images selected to use outside of battle to walk around in the world. The right image is the character's face image used in conversation windows and the menus.
Starting Equipement: Here you can define what item is equipped in each slot by default when an actor joins your party.
Features: See the "Features Window" section.
Note: Leave messages for yourself (or teammates if it's a bigger project) to make things easier to understand.

Tab 2: Classes

The classes tab allows you to modify what makes each class different from each other, including how quickly it levels, what stats go up, what skills are learned when reaching certain levels and more!

Class List: Choose a class to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large this list of classes is.
Name: This is simply the name of the class as it will appear in-game.
EXP Curve: This allows you to define how many experience points are needed to rise in level.
Parameter Curves: This allows you to define the rate at which a class's stats rise as they level up. By default values rise at a fixed rate, but you can create curves to allow slower or faster growth early on or later on, or even define the stats manually for each level.
Skills: This is where you choose what spells & skills your classes learn upon reaching certain levels.
Features: See the "Features Window" section.
Note: Leave messages for yourself (or teammates if it's a bigger project) to make things easier to understand.

Tab 3: Skills

The skills tab contains is where all the data gets put together to make any kind of magic or special attack you could ever want. Animations for skills are defined here, but refer to the "Animation Tab" to learn how to make them.

Skill List: Choose a skill here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large this list is.
General Settings:

• Name: This is what the skill is referred to as in-game.
  
• Icon: Here you choose the image that will represent the skill in-game.
  
• Description: Textual explanation of the skill seen in-game.
  
• Skill Type: Choose none, special, or magic. Defines what buffs/debuffs/features/effects will alter the performance of this skill.
  
• MP Cost: The base cost of MP a spell uses.
  
• TP Cost: The base cost of TP required to use a skill.
  
• Scope: This is where you define what your skill will target.
  
• Occasion: This defines if the skill should work in battle, in the menus, or both. Never is an option as well which could be used to show upcoming skills but keep them disabled.

Invocation:

• Speed: This value is applied to the agility of the character using it to determine turn order in battle. A slow character could use a skill with a high speed quickly and vice versa.
  
• Success%: This is the chance of success for the skill. (Not to be confused with chance to hit) If this fails, the skill won't even be attempted to be used.
  
• Repeats: This is how many times the effects of the skill are applied to the target.
  
• TP Gain: This defines the TP gained directly from using the skill in battle.
  
• Hit Type: This is where you choose whether the damage is physical, magical, or guaranteed hit to determine how the damage and hit chance is calculated.
  
• Animation: This is what animation plays when the skill is used in battle on an enemy. (No animations when used on allies)

Using Message: This is the text that displays when a character uses a skill. The buttons just input premade text.
Required Weapon: If a weapon is defined here then the skill can only be used when that weapon is equipped. If two are defined, one or the other must be equipped.
Damage:

• Type: Define whether the skill does HP/MP Damage, Recovery, or Drain.
  
• Element: Define a magic type, normal attack, none, or physical here to determine which stats should be used in a damage calculation.
  
• Formula: Click the "Quick" button and enter base damage, as well as optional physical and magical damage and click "OK". A formula will then be generated. Eventually you should be able familiarize yourself with the auto-generated formulas to make your own.
  
• Variance: This defines how random the damage will be based on this value (which is a %). If the formula generates a damage of 150 and the variance is 20, that means that the damage could be anywhere between 120 and 180 because 30 is 20% of 150.
  
• Critical: A simple yes or no to define whether critical hits are possible with the skill.

Effects: See the "Effects Window" section.
Note: Leave messages for yourself (or teammates if it's a bigger project) to make things easier to understand.

Tab 4: Items

The items tab contains the data that determines what will happen upon using items.

Item List: Choose an Item here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large this list is.
General Settings -

• Name: This is the name of the item that is displayed in battle and in menus.
  
• Icon: This is the image used to represent the item in menus.
  
• Description: This is text that is displayed when highlighting an item in the menus.
  
• Item Type: Choose item or key item here to determine which list the item appears in within the menus.
  
• Price: Setting the price to 0 prevents it from being available for shops, anything else defines how much the item will cost when being sold in a shop.
  
• Consume: Defines whether the item should be consumed after it is used or not.
  
• Scope: This defines who should be targeted when the item is used. (Or which targets are available to choose from.)
  
• Occasion: This defines whether the item is available in battle, the menu, both, or neither.

Invocation:

• Speed: This value is applied to the agility of the character using it to determine turn order in battle. A slow character could use an item with a high speed quickly and vice versa.
  
• Success%: This is the chance of success for the item. If it fails, the item isn't used.
  
• Repeats: This is how many times the effects of the item are applied to the target.
  
• TP Gain: This defines the TP gained directly from using the item in battle.
  
• Hit Type: This is where you choose whether the damage is physical, magical, or guaranteed hit to determine how the damage/healing and hit chance is calculated.
  
• Animation: This is what animation plays when the item is used in battle on an enemy.

Damage: Identical to the damage options on the "Skills Tab".
Effects: See the "Effects Window" section.
Note: Leave messages for yourself (or teammates if it's a bigger project) to make things easier to understand.

Tab 5: Weapons

The weapons tab contains the data for all of the weapons in the game and is where you go to add more.

Weapon List: Choose a weapon listed here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how long this list is.
General Settings:

• Name: The text displayed to represent the weapon in-game.
  
• Icon: The graphic used to represent the weapon in menus.
  
• Description: The text explaining details about the weapon in the menus.
  
• Weapon Type: This determines who can and can not equip the weapon.
  
• Price: Setting this to 0 prevents you from being able to sell a weapon in a shop. Otherwise, the weapon will sell for half of the price here.
  
• Animation: This is where you choose the animation that plays for normal attacks with this weapon.

Parameter Changes: The values set for each stat here are the amounts the stats will go up or down when a character equips the item.
Features: See the "Features Window" section.
Note: Leave messages for yourself (or teammates if it's a bigger project) to make things easier to understand.

Tab 6: Armors

This tab is practically identical to the "Weapons Tab" explained directly above this tab.

Tab 7: Enemies

The enemies tab is where you define all the stats, rewards, and actions that enemies take.

Enemy List: Choose an enemy here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large this list is.
General Settings:

• Name: This is simply the enemy's name that appears in-game.
  
• MHP: This is the Maximum Health Points of the enemy.
  
• MMP: This is the Maximum Magic Points of the enemy.
  
• ATK: This is the ATtacK stat of the enemy which primarily affects physical damage.
  
• DEF: This is the DEFense stat which primarily affects the amount of physical damage taken from the palyer.
  
• MAT: This is the Magic ATtack stat and contributes to all magic attack damage.
  
• MDF: This is the Magic DeFense stat and primarily reduces the amount of damage magic attacks are capable of inflicting.
  
• AGI: AGIlity primarily affects turn order, with the highest agility (after skill modifiers etc.) going first.
  
• LUK: LUcK affects at least the likelihood of status ailments being resisted.
  
• Graphic: Double clicking the graphic will open a window where you can change the picture of the enemy as well as the hue (tint). As you can see in this example picture I have changed the same blue slime picture to a red one just by changing this hue value.

Rewards: EXP and Gold values entered here define how much the enemy gives the player party when defeated in combat.
Drop Items: Here you can choose up to 3 items that can be dropped by a monster and the chance they have of dropping.
Action Patterns: Action patterns define different actions the enemy can take as well as their chance of occuring. There are also optional conditions which can be used to force enemies to do things on specific turns, when their HP or MP reaches a specified amount, when they are inflicted with a specific state (status ailment) when the party's level is a certain amount, or when a specific switch is on. Also, the rating number itself is somewhat irrelevant. What is important is how much lower the number is from the highest one and the highest one is used most often.
Features: See the "_ Window" section.
Note: Leave messages for yourself (or teammates if it's a bigger project) to make things easier to understand.

Tab 8: Troops

The troops tab contains the data for all possible enemy layouts for encounters.

_ List: Choose a troop here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large this list is.
General Settings:

• Name: This name is not seen in-game and is only to help you keep track of your troops.
  
• Autoname: Fills the "Name" field, described above, with a name based solely on the enemies in your troop.
  
• Change Battleback: Change the background image displayed on this window. This has no in-game effect.
  
• Battle Test...: Start up a mock battle with the currently chosen troop to ensure it works as intended.
  
• <Add: This button places the currently highlighted enemy type into your troop.
  
• Remove>: Click a picture of an enemy to enable this button and click the button to delete an enemy from your troop.
  
• Clear: Removes all curently placed enemys from your troop.
  
• Arrange: Places enemies evenly on the disposition view.
  
• Disposition View: This is the name for the battle screen display. Click an enemy and drag them to move them in 8 pixel increments. Holding ALT will allow 2-pixel increments. Right click an enemy and choose "appear halfway" for them to appear transparent.

Battle Event: This section allows you to create events specific to battles with certain troops. Changing the "Span" dropdown allows the event to run at the beginning of battle (Battle), the beginning of every turn (Turn), or continuously as long as the conditions are met (Moment).

Tab 9: States

The states tab contains all status ailment, passive buff, and death data.

_ List: Choose a state here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how many entries this list has.
General Settings:

• Name: The name of the currently selected state/status ailment.
  
• Icon: The in-game image representing your selected state.
  
• Restriction: The chosen option here will not be possible in battle by the character inflicted with this state.
  
• Priority: This number only affects the order of state icons for characters afflicted with multiple states. If two have the same priority, the one which appears in the states list first is given higher priority.
  Removal Conditions
  
  • Remove at Battle End: Defines whether the status ailment persists after the battle it was caused in or not.
    
  • Remove by Restriction: If checked, the restriction is removed when the state is removed.
    
  • Auto-removal Timing: Here you can define a range of turns for the state to automatically be removed.
    
  • Remove by Damage: Define the chance that any amount of damage will have at removing the state.
    
  • Remove by Walking: Defines how many steps can be walked to remove the state.
    Messages: This is the text displayed in battle when an character/enemy receive the state; when the state persists onto the next turn; and when the state is removed. These are all optional.
  Features: See the "Features Window" section.
  Note: Leave messages for yourself (or teammates if it's a bigger project) to make things easier to understand.

Tab 10: Animations

The animations tab is where you go to create custom animations for your spells and skills!

Animations List: Choose an animation here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large the list of animations is.
General Settings -

• Name: This is the name for your animation and is not seen in-game.
  
• Graphic: This is where you can choose up to two image sets to utilize for your animation.
  
• Position: Where the animation is anchored to when played. If you choose "Screen" the animation will not be anchored to a specific enemy and may not display as if it is hitting your foe. This is primarily available for skills intended to damage all foes.
  
• Max#: The number of frames used for this animation. By default there are 15 frames displayed a second, so 150 frames would be a 10 second animation.

SE and Flash Timing: Here you define which frame # sound effects and screen/character flashes occur on and for how long. If your ability rained 10 fireballs down on enemies, you could define a sound to play for each of the explosions when the fireballs hit the ground, for example, and the screen to flash each time.
Frame List: This is the list of numbers. Clicking one allows you to modify what displays on that frame.
Change Target: This changes the enemy displayed in the animation preview.
Paste Last: Copies the frame previous to the currently selected one and pastes it in the current one. For example, when working on a new animation and finishing the first frame, clicking this button when starting frame 2 will give you an exact duplicate of frame 1 to work off of.
Image Bar(Bottom): This is where you choose what image you want to place in a frame.
------Work In Progress------

Tab 11: Tilesets

Tab 12: Common Events

The common events tab contains events (Covered in the Beginner Guide on Steam) which are used commonly and stored here so that they can easily be accessed instead of being copied and pasted.

Common Event List: Choose an event here to modify it's data.
Change Maximum: This button allows you to define how large this list of events.
General Settings -

• Name: Simply what you wish to refer to this common event as.
  
• Trigger: Define whether the event should trigger automatically (Autorun) where it must be completed before another event is executed, or run automatically side by side other events. (Parallel Process) Note: If Parallel Process is chosen and the condition switch is not turned off at the end of the event, it will run over and over continuously forever until the switch is turned off.
  
• Condition Switch: Used in conjuntion with Autorun or Parallel process from the "Trigger" option explained above. When chosen switch is turned "On" then the event will be allowed to run.

Contents: This is where you place the events themselves. See the Beginner Guide on Steam for extensive explanations of your options here.

Tab 13: System

Tab 14: Terms

Features Window

Rate Tab

• Element Rate: Modifies the % of damage taken by types of damage.
  
  
• Debuff Rate: Modifies the chance that a stat will be successfully debuffed.
  
  
• State Rate: Modifies the chance that status ailments will take effect.
  
  
• State Resist: Defines status ailment immunities. Characters immune to death can't die.

Param Tab

• Parameter: Modifies the chosen base stat by a %. (HP, MP, ATK, Etc.)
  
  
• Ex-Parameter: Add the chosen % to a background stat. (Hit, Crit, Regen, Evasion, Etc.)
  
  
• Sp-Paramete:r Modifies the chosen special parameter by a &. (MP Cost/XP Gain/Guard Rate Etc.)

Attack Tab

• Atk Element: Defines the element that a normal attack has.
  
• Atk State: Defines the rate at which a status ailment will occur alongside a normal attack.
  
  
• Atk Speed: This value is added to agility to determine attack order in battle.
  
• Atk Times+: Defines a number of attacks to add to the normal attack. (+9 would result in 10 attacks)

Skill Tab

• Add Skill Type: Add the "Magic" or "Special" command to battle.
  
• Seal Skill Type: Remove the "Magic" or "Special" command from battle.
  
• Add Skill: Allow the chosen skill/spell for battle.
  
• Seal Skill: Remove the chosen skill/spell from battle.

Equip Tab

• Equip Weapon: Simply define a weapon to equip.
  
• Equip Armor: Simply define an armor to equip.
  
• Fix Equip: Lock a specified equipment slot preventing it from being removed.
  
• Seal Equip: Prevent things from being equipped to a slot type.
  
• Slot Type: For enabling the use of 2 weapons (dual wielding).

Other Tab

• Action Times+: Define the chance an additional action can be taken per turn in battle. (Using this feature 5 times allows for
  5 extra turns for example)
  
• Special Flag:
  
  • Auto Battle: Character battles on his
    own without command input.
    
  • Guard: Reduces damage.
    
  • Substitute: This character will take damage for allies with less HP when
    they are hit.
    
  • Preserve TP: Allows accumulated TP to persist to the next battle.
• Collapse Effect: Define the way an enemy disappears when it is defeated. (Enemies Only)
  
• Party Ability: Set passive party abilities (Actors Only)
  
  • Encounter Half: Encounter enemies half as often as usual for the area you are in.
    
  • Encounter None: Encounter no enemies in the area you're in.
    
  • Cancel Surprise: Prevent enemies from acting first in battle.
    
  • Raise Preemptive: Increase the odds your party will act first in battle.
    
  • Gold Double: Double the amount of gold you receive in battle.
    
  • Drop Item Double: Double the amount of items you receive from enemies.

Effects Window

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[Bollehopp]

There is nothing about tilesets.

[roninator2]

Your information on the features is not correct.
1. The weapons and armor may have the same features, but they perform differently. You would have no use for an attack state on an armor. The element rate adds to defense for armor and attack for weapons.
2. The skills and items are different and are called effects. I guess you haven't finished making this to talk about them.
3. More details for the sections would help better. Just showing a picture for Tilesets is not helpful to people who don't know how to assemble the graphics for the tilesets, how each layer behaves and the options for the tiles such as ladder or above player.

Keep going and this will be a great guide.

[Julius X5]

I'm about to make a game that looks like a pokemon gen 5 game with all this information

[Bangafat]

My database still have Japanese/China font (idk) ..how to translate it?

[Donny Pie]

This is helpful. But you should really add the basic use of parameters/conditional switches. That was a newbie problem I ran into.

[Shubel Morgan]

Good job. I was about to do this, but you beat me to it.