How to Attack

I apologize for making the majority of my recent posts as walls of text, so to make it up, here's a small illustration of my progress.  Read more to see what this means:

When I first started the ABS, the attack speed of a character was linked to the character's animation_id (and ability to move for enemies).  While it does work, that does mean animations with less frames would fire more quickly, and it would also mean that a lot of work would have to go to the animation part of the database.

After the demo was posted, I changed a few things around.  One of those changes have become:  If you have enough MP, you can attack, and one stat determines the refill speed.  Enemies and followers also had another stat to determine when they could attack (so they won't spam attacks if they had loads of MP).  However, the problem with a resource-dependent system is in waiting for said resource to fill up, and I doubt people would run out and attack in.

So I figured that Attack with Enough MP can be boring.  My first idea was do Full Attack with Enough MP, meaning that you could attack before the MP filled up for less damage, but that could encourage players to button-mash their problems away.  Instead, I got the idea to Fill MP; Attacking while you don't have Enough MP will not deal damage or apply a state but instead will increase your MP, so you have the choice of running away until you fill up or "button mashing" to get that MP back faster while keeping the pace somewhat fair.  Enemies and followers do not button mash and will attack normally.

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I may need to fiddle with the code a bit more, but I did add in a few more features to validate a second demo.  For example, some enemies will drop new allies when defeated, so you could either rescue them or perhaps some foes will even become your allies.  I will also continue to add some more features before I start working on an actual game with this script, and hopefully I can implement ranged attacks by then.

Features added and tested since post:
-Damage formula updated and corrected.  Also added a notetag to adjust the damage from front-sides-rear.
-Gab window added after player attacks for damage.  Also added at enemy death if they provide any goodies.
-Tested damage through items/player skills, which goes to the map to deal damage.  A variable will now modify some of the details like damage and states inflicted.
-Experience is stored in a variable rather than applied directly.  Said variable will be applied for leveling at a camp.
-Floor Damage is now provided for followers and events.
-Bait created.  Using this range of items will case certain events to go towards a point rather than the player.