I would like to make my own battle system. How can I start?
First, you need to understand that writing complex scripts is just like programming. HamsterSpeak is far more limited than other "real" programming languages, so writing your own complete battle system in plotscripting is a little like riding down a six lane freeway on a bicycle.
Advanced plotscripting will be much easier if you already know how to program in a real programming language.
Read the Plotscripting Tutorial and the Plotscripting Dictionary. You will need a good understanding of the following things:
- Variables, both local, global, and read global/write global
- NPC and/or tile manipulation, and likely strings
- Player input (key is pressed), on key press scripts and their percularities
Search the game lists for examples. There are several plotscripted battle engines you can look at. For your convenience, there is a list of games with unique battle systems
Finally, you will need to comminicate with other plotscripters in the forums or on IRC Chat. Unfortunately, asking on any of the community sites how to create a battle engine, and you will recieve responses like "If you need to be told how to do it, you can't do it yet.", which are very unhelpful... but absolutely true. Instead, ask very specific questions like:
Good Question Example: I am making a battle engine, and I have my heroes and enemies on the screen as NPCs, and I understand how to make a loop that checks for keypresses, but my menu's don't work well. I am using text boxes, is there a better way to do menus? Here is my script so far [post script]
If you ask a question like that, you are more likely to get answers than if you just ask "How do I make menus in my battlle script?"