What does it mean?

[thisisthedark]

1. What do the intellect and agility parameters mean?
2. What does it mean with "attack/intelligence influence" and "variance" under the Skill tab of the database?
3. What do the transparent and flying monster effects do?
4. Could you give a basic rundown on how to adjust the experience curve?
5. I am unclear on what data is storred in the following folders: Backdrop, Battle2, Frame, Panorama, Picture. Could you explain them?
6. How would I go about customizing my party menu? I've heard you can do it.

That's it for now. Hah. :)

[BlueCube]

Lots of questions. Ready, go!

1) Intellect = Magic Attack. Agility = Speed (for the time bar) and dodging ability (low agility people have a hard time hitting high agility things)

2) Attack/Intelligence influence = Having a lot of attack/intelligence would affect the damage, if the influence is high. Uses include:

Bolt Magic -> high int, zero attack
Bug Stomper (A physical attack that targets bugs) -> zero int, high attack
Bolt Sword -> med int, high attack

Variance is a bit different - it basically makes the damage more.. variable. The influences will REALLY affect the damage if this is high. Say your Bolt magic is set to do 100 damage. The variance is at the highest, so the damage might be 50-150, depending on your magic abilities (because only the intelligence influence is selected) and a large random factor.

Influence also has another effect besides damage - they can be affected by conditions! Say you have a Silence condition, that prevents all skills with 5 or more intellect influence. This would "silence" your Bolt skill (10 influence) but not your Bolt Sword (4 influence) or your Bug Stomper (0 influence). This also can affect Attack influence as well, with the same effect.

3) Transparent should be obvious - it just makes the monster somewhat see-through. Flying just makes the monster "hover" up and down during battle. This doesn't affect the monster's abilities in any way that I can tell.

4) Ugh, I hate this system too.

Primary - a static number to start off with, added directly to the next level's EXP requirements.

Secondary - a number that's multiplied by the current level. This has the biggest effect, obviously (because it's multiplied)

Tertiary - Same as Primary. Why they didn't combine this with Primary is beyond me, because it's just added as well and is completely unaffected by the other two.

To simplify - Primary will make it so that there's a definite change between levels (if you set it to 100, you're guaranteed that you'll need at least 100 EXP for each level). Secondary is the major experience curve - this'll make each level jump up more, so that it takes a lot more to go from level 50->51 than from 2->3. Tertiary should be avoided unless you need more than 2000 of primary.

Let's do some number crunching (yay for algebra). This shows the difference between

-----

1 primary, 1 secondary, 0 tertiary

To get to level 2, you'll need (1 + (level 1 * 1)) = 2 more EXP, 2 EXP total.
To get to level 3, you'll need (1 + (level 2 * 1)) = 3 more EXP, 5 EXP total.
To get to level 4, you'll need (1 + (level 3 * 1)) = 4 more EXP, 9 EXP total.
The "curve" should be obvious here.

----

5 primary, 10 secondary, 0 tertiary

To get to level 2, you'll need (5 + (level 1 * 10)) = 15 EXP, 15 EXP total.
To get to level 3, you'll need (5 + (level 2 * 10)) = 25 EXP, 40 EXP total.
To get to level 4, you'll need (5 + (level 3 * 10)) = 35 EXP, 75 EXP total.
Again, obvious curve.

Need more explanation? Tell me.

-----------------------

5) Backdrop = the battle background, while you're fighting.
Battle2 = Larger battle animations (like the Bolt/Sword/Ice/etc animations, but these cells can be larger - 128x128 pixels instead of 96x96.)
Frame = Basically an image that goes directly on top of your screen, no matter where you are. It's the standard "full screen" size of 320x240. You can give a game a cool border, or just stick a copyright notice on the screen. (Don't forget transparency!!)
Panorama = used for the Parallax backgrounds for maps. (Basically a layer behind the lower layer)
Picture = A.. err.. picture. You can stick pretty much anything here, like a map or a location name that fades in/out when you enter an area, whatever you like. Mess around with this using the Picture event commands. Still has the 256 color limitation, obviously.

6) Go into the system 2 tab in the Database and look on the left side. I'm sure you can figure it out from there. If you want to change the names themselves (like the "Item" menu to a "Stuff" menu), you'll want to go into the Strings tab, tab 5.

---------------

Might have to add this stuff to the Random Information thread later.

Added "condition" information on the Variances.