Yal's Monster Collector Engine

Both of these will need you to track some additional data, I think two global arrays with AMP_PARTYSIZE_ACTIVE slots will be enough: global.party_was_in_battle and global.party_last_move_selected.

• In obj_battlecontrol's create event, fill these both with 0's in all slots.
• For only earning EXP in battle:
  • In obj_battlecontrol's step event bcontrolstate_WIN_STEP section, change "if(amp_has_monster(exp_monster)){" to "if(amp_has_monster(exp_monster) && global.party_was_in_battle[exp_monster]){"
  • In obj_battlemonster's step event after the "//Monster's been seen in battle! Add to list." comment, add "if(amp_id < AMP_PARTYSIZE_ACTIVE){global.party_was_in_battle[amp_id] = true;}"

• For remembering the last move selected:
  • In mev_battle_attack_select, right at the top add "global.party_last_move_selected[obj_battlecontrol.action_monster.amp_id] = menuvalue_x + 2*menuvalue_y"
  • In mev_battle_attack, at the end of the "if(validmoves > 0)" block somewhere, append a switch state like

if(obj_battlecontrol.action_monster.amp_id < AMP_PARTYSIZE_ACTIVE){
switch(global.party_last_move_selected[obj_battlecontrol.action_monster.amp_id]){
  case 0:
    menuvalue_x = 0
    menuvalue_y = 0
  break;
  case 1:
    menuvalue_x = 1
    menuvalue_y = 0
  break
  case 2:
    menuvalue_x = 0
    menuvalue_y = 1
  break
  case 3:
    menuvalue_x = 1
    menuvalue_y = 1
  break
}
}

Easiest way would probably be to edit cis_intro_part2 and swap out the cc_intro_startermonsterselect / nickname logic; rather than making a monster choice menu and wait for your input, the startermonsterselect script would instead fill your party with the monsters you want:

var amp = amp_get_new_party_id();
amp_generate_monster(amp,monster_id,level)

First get the ID of the first empty slot in the party, then generate a monster there using its species and level, repeat as many times as you want. There's matching get-first-free-slot functions for the boxes and the temporary enemy slots, too.

To go through every monster like this, rather than hardcoding the monster_id you could loop from 0 to MONSTER_MAX.

Also note that if you really want the player to have every monster in the party, you probably want to increase PARTYSIZE_ACTIVE from 6.

Hi Yal! me again.. I've gotten things going and I'm almost there where this works but now I can't seem to figure out how to add a room in the indoors room.  There is no code in the door object and i can't find the script that gives x and y coordinates for the indoors room.  The purely script based engine is very hard to get used to. I'm used to engines with more object based code than scripting.    I also added another tile set for the indoors and the engine crushed it.  Is the room getting resized upon output?

global.monsters_caught and global.monsters_seen are arrays of booleans, which means each slot is true if you have caught/seen that monster and false otherwise. In this case you'd just want to carry over the counter itself, since it's the monster ID - so menuvalue_y for the currently hovered item (since it's a vertical menu).

Also, in the moncyclopedia when setting up the events (ggui_menu_region statement) you'll see we give every line a NONE event (which means nothing happens if you press the "accept" button with it highlighted), for your case you'd maybe want to make this conditional - if the monster is available for purchase (global.monsters_caught[d] is true) you'll set up a shop event (which e.g. checks if you can afford the monster and if so proceeds, carrying over the current menu's menuvalue_y as the monster ID the next-level menu refers to), if it's not available (e.g. you haven't caught it yet) you create a NONE event instead.

You'll need to change the mev_terminal_grab script a bit. This line

if(amp_read_var(AMP_FIRST_ACTIVE,amp_MONID) == NONE){

should be changed to

if(amp_read_var(AMP_FIRST_ACTIVE,amp_MONID) == NONE || amp_read_var(AMP_FIRST_ACTIVE + 1,amp_MONID) == NONE){

and now emptying either of the first two slots in the party (by going below 2 party members) should cancel the operation.

(Also, you probably want to update the message that is printed when this happens to read "2 monsters" instead of "1 monster", a little further down in the script)

gguielt_CURRSPRITE element type (added with ggui_element_sprite_current script) is the icon sprite of the currently hovered item in the menu, this is what you want to use here.

Since the data is filled into the menu using ggui_menu_add_option_text it fills the sprite data with NONE, but you could copy ggui_menu_add_option_text and create a new script ggui_menu_add_option_text_and_sprite that also fills the sprite/image data (the two arguments to ggui_fill_meta that are set to NONE within ggui_menu_add_option_text) using two new arguments at the end, and then use that instead in mev_battle_attack. (There's already the _icontext and _gridimage helper scripts that fills the sprite data, but they also set up the elements so that the image is used directly there in the body of the menu, which isn't what you want for this - we want this new script that fills the icon data but doesn't use it yet)

Interestingly, the problem does not occur if the battle is a hoard battle... Hmm.. There must be something I need to fix with 1 v 1 battles I think

Let's start with the easy bit, animated sprites. Just create a GGUI sprite element with the subimage set to -1, and it should work (draw_sprite uses the current animation subimage of the object if you draw a sprite with subimage -1, and sprite elements are drawn with draw_sprite passing through all parameters as-is). Potentially you might need to give the menu object an animated sprite as well (by assigning sprite_index) but I think it'll work even without it.

Now for "certain items with a different color": It's a bit unclear what you mean by "items" here? Items in the inventory or GGUI elements?

The idea with (Scrollable) Arbitrary Text elements is that you have a text field that reads data from the currently highlighted menu item rather than being a preset text (they're "arbitrary" as opposed to the Description field which originally was the only per-element-changeable text, and hardcoded text strings - I added the arbitrary text fields because I realized sometimes you need more than one per-element text field).

So basically, the element itself has no text, just a reference to the Arbitrary Text Array for that menu. But the Arbitrary Text Element owns the formatting (font, color, alignment) so by default, it can't change depending on what's highlighted - you'll need to make a new type of element which accesses an array of both text and formatting information (studying how gguielt_ARBTEXT works internally and copying the behavior for a new gguielt_ARBTEXTWITHFORMATTING might help here - you'd use an array similar to menu_arbtxt but rather than just storing text, you'd store a tuple [text, font, color, halign, valign]).

But if you just want different fields to be different colors (e.g. HP is red, money is yellow) it's very simple, use ggui_element_text_settings to change formatting parameters (all further text elements are created using these settings until you change them again).

Good job sticking with the project for 6 months! I'm used to people giving up much sooner but seems you're one of those rare determined people that actually finishes their games ^__^

Your analysis is pretty much correct!

Adding temporary mons would be pretty easy, as you can see in obj_battlecontrol's step event ctst_ACTIONSELECT block, it loops over all existing monster objects when building the list of who gets to act, so just creating instances should work. You should add a new "is_totem" variable to the battlemonster object so that totems are treated differently, though (it's always false, but when creating a new instance for a totem, you'll set it to true after creating it).

You might wanna do some changes in obj_battlemonster's bmonsterstate_DIE  to change the KO messages for totems (and delete the object if dead - an empty slot currently still is a monster object!) so they're not around when the ctst_REINFORCEMENTS step happens, or that team will be able to send in additional monsters to take the place of any destroyed totems, turning it into a permanent team size upgrade for that battle.

You will also need to change this block:

default:
    //Most ailments don't bypass action input, so let's go do that.
    if(next.side == side_PLAYER){
        substate = bcontrolstate_ACTIONSELECT_PLAYER
    }
    else{
        substate = bcontrolstate_ACTIONSELECT_ENEMY
    }
break

Totems should always go to bcontrolstate_ACTIONSELECT_ENEMY (automatically select), regardless of if they're player or enemy. (Unless you want players to be able to control what their totems do, of course - I'm just interpreting your description as totems being kinda passive/automatic)

Their buffs could be implemented as new moves with the appropriate target range set up (e.g. movetarg_ALLALLY to buff all allies), then you have the new totem species learn the buff-moves it should provide at level NONE (i.e., always knows them).

Since all monster stats are read from the AMP and the battlemonster objects just have a pointer to that (rather than having their own stat variables), I'd say you could put totem data in the "enemy" section of the AMP (since that's temporary data which gets cleared after a battle) - just run amp_get_new_enemy_id / amp_generate_monster using the totem species for this. You just need to manually free up slots again (with amp_clear_monster) when a totem is destroyed so you don't run out of slots entirely if a long battle has many totems created and destroyed.

Let's start with the easy part, how to enable the mouse cursor. Open the Game Options, then Windows, then the Graphics tab and check this box:

(if you want to draw your own cursor you could draw a sprite at the built-in variables mouse_x, mouse_y - each of the control objects could do this)

Having actual mouse control is considerably more complicated but I think something like this would be the easiest way:

• Edit ggui_menu_handle to comment out all the keyboard controls
• Add a new loop that goes through all frames and does something like this:

if(active){
for(c = 0; c < ggui_frames;c++){
  if(mouse_x > ggui_frame_l[c] && mouse_x < ggui_frame_l[c] + ggui_frame_w[ c]){
  if(mouse_y > ggui_frame_t[c] && mouse_x < ggui_frame_t[c] + ggui_frame_h[ c]){
     //We're in this frame, select it
     for(var d = 0; d < menu_w; d++){
     for(var e = 0; e < menu_h; e++){
         if(menu_frame[d,e] == c){
             menuvalue_x = d; menuvalue_y = e;
             if(mouse_check_button_pressed(mb_left)){
               //Clicked something! Run the regular "A button" code
               if(menu_event[menuvalue_x,menuvalue_y] != NONE){
                   sfx(snd_menu_ok)
                   script_execute(menu_event[menuvalue_x,menuvalue_y])
               }
               else{
                   sfx(snd_menu_buzzer)
               }
             }
             break; //End when we find the first frame that matches
         }
     }
     }
  }
  }
}
}

Now this will remove the "cancel button" option you had before but you could solve that by adding a "X" button in the top right corner. (You still need to preallocate enough menu options for all buttons but since the player needs to physically hover them you could put any "padding" buttons offscreen if you need to allocate more buttons than you'd physically use)

(actually maybe it would be easier to handle the X button out of GGUI entirely - just draw a "close" button at the top-right of every menu frame and check if you're in the top right 16x16 pixels of the menu in the Mouse Left Released event, if so destroy the instance and don't even check for frames)

There's more stuff you could do here, like playing the "menu move" sound when you detect that you changed either menuvalue_x or menuvalue_y, but this should be a good starting point.

I was wondering is there a PDF for it or just reference the features mentioned to edit it & thank you