Hey everyone,

This is Neel writing. Hope you've been doing well. I'm pleased to announce the release version of a brand new plugin: Souls Status Bars!

I've been a big fan of how newer RPGs are handling Status Effects where their application is a bit more reliable to where you can build strategies around them. This approach relies less on the roll of the die (though that can still be fun) and adds more transparency so the player knows when or if the Status Effect is going to land before they make the decision to use those skills. While there are many RPGs that adopt this approach, this plugin follows the model that we see in From Software RPGs such as Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring and even some that take inspiration from that style of game such as Code Vein and Lies of P.

The basic idea of the plugin is that we change the random-roll model that States are applied by in default RPG Maker to one where applying the State always succeeds however it instead adds its Rate value to the target. This is represented in the UI as a bar which starts at 0 and ends at a maximum threshold which can be set by the designer. When this bar hits its max threshold, the State is then applied to the Actor. You an see in the GIF above how the skill Death Lightning fills the target's bar for the Curse state and once it is full, the target is Cursed. 

Once the State is applied it will behave based on how the rules on its State Page have outlined (such as being Removed in a number of turns or by damage). You can also remove the State by lowering the bar value to 0 in which case the State will fall off the target. Just as a Skill or Item's Add State added the Rate  value to the bar, its Remove State Effect will subtract its Rate value from the bar. And in case you need to quickly inflict or remove a State, we have Notetags which let you automatically fill or clear a State Bar.

Building on top of this, both Actors and Enemies can have any number of States building up on them allowing you to make Skills and Items that work by manipulating those values. You can change an Actor and Enemy's max thresholds using Notetags, but for Actors you get to put those Notetags on equipment so various Weapons and Armor can determine their ability to ward off a certain Status Effect longer by raising the max threshold. By adding the Attack States trait to a Weapon, you can inflict State buildup using the Attack command which allows for increased design space for those weapons such as implementing a Stagger mechanic.

Not only are these State values changed when the Actors or Enemies use Skills or Items, they can change on their own accord as well. By giving a State Notetags, you can have it buildup or decay its value at the end of each turn (during the Regenerate step of the turn order) on the Actor that has a State. This can allow you to make States that buildup or decay other States such as Curse/Bless in the Demo Projects or even create Field Effects where one Status buildups on all members of a Battle each turn because of the environment (e.g. Poison buildup while a fight happens in a Poison Swamp).

... and all of that is just the beginning! There is so much more I want to build on top of this foundation so you can create interesting battles and dungeons in your RPGs using this Status buildup system. Here are a couple features you can look forward to in future updates:

• Formula Entry for Status Buildup/Decay and Max Thresholds (so you can tie an Actor's stats and other variables into buildup/decay)
• Dynamic Max Thresholds (so you can swap Equips gain States mid-battle or and it can change your threshold to certain Statuses)
• On-Map Status Buildup (State values will carry over between Map and Battle with map tiles and events being able to change them)
• ... and hopefully much much more ...

As with all of our new releases, we are hoping to make a Week 1 Patch to accommodate the immediate bugs and difficulties that users report in. Please feel free to share your thoughts on the plugin with us either on the Store Page comment section or on the Community Discord. You feedback will be key to the improvement we want to make to its going forward!

Special Thanks to all our wonderful Patrons with whose support this has been possible:

Alchemist's Chronicle

Winston Lewis III

James Hyatt

Crazy GameMaster

iF4DED

John Smith

NickSav

Vibrant Fervor

Shane Dunn

Adam Dachis

Bbunsik

David Phillips

Ecilla

Harry L.

Johnathan De

Kakeru

Mustache

Reiko Lupus

Tristana

James Gallager

Siabo

Twilight Ranger

If you like the work that we do and would like to support it, we would recommend pledging to our Patreon if you haven't already. We have started to do monthly streams where we go over topics in plugin development and it's been highly productive ... and a lot of fun :)

Cheers,

Neel