Customizing the Battle System

I was starting to feel a bit burnt out, running circles around a few story related obstacles, so I decided to switched gears to something more technical, the battle system. At first, I was pretty intimidated with the complexities of RPG Maker MV's battle system; damage formulas, animations, player/enemy level balancing, etc. Rightfully so because although I got a good crash course on how damage formulas worked, here, I couldn't figure out a formula to make an ability that would use up a character's remaining HP (Down to 1 HP) to execute an attack that does damage based on the amount of spent HP.  I knew how to make the cost or the attack work on their own but not together. So I ended up making an attack that is based on the max amount of a player's HP and can only be used when your HP is almost full (99% to be more precise). Here's what it looks like so far:

Since deciding on wanting to put in a battle system, I knew one of the things I wanted to put in it were team up attacks like in Chrono Trigger, one of my favorite all time RPGs. I ran into a sweat inducing issue with Victor Engine and Yanfly plugins not working well together and causing error messages to pop up when trying to run the game. From what I read online, the simplest solution was just to stick to one set of plugins. After weighing the importance of the plugins I'm using, I had to make the tough call of sticking with Yanfly. This was a big problem for me because I was using the Fog and Overlay plugin for a scene in the train and I planned on using Victor's Cooperation Skills plugin for those team up attacks I was so excited to include. Two plugins that Yanfly didn't seem to have. Luckily, with enough digging, I managed to find plugins that worked  similarly and were compatible with Yanfly's plugins. Galv has an overlay plugin called "Layer Graphics" and Irina's "Unison Attack" plugin that worked specifically with Yanfly's plugins. Irina's plugin isn't free but I don't have a problem with that. It's a great investment.

It's no surprise the first two characters I want to showcase a team up attack with is Lily and Daphne. Here's what I made so far:

In case you haven't noticed, I also learned how to make the enemies appear as animated battler sprites. Something else I'm happy I was able to accomplish this week.

A lot of the visual stuff in the battle system (sprites, skill animation/vfx, and backdrops) are from default assets. Although I could still make my game with these default assets, this is something I really hope I can change to more original assets for this game. This is why I commissioned Turtleye_ to make less chibi looking versions of some of my characters. I'm hoping I can eventually get more detailed walking sprites, battler sprites, and VFXs when I get farther in development.