Custom Skill Notetags

Using notetags to make custom skills (by TomatoRadio)

Only the usage of notetags in skills will be covered here, as the rest is focused on base RPG Maker MV.

General Parameter Notetags

These notetags can be added to skills to make small functional or aesthetic changes. These can be placed anywhere in the Notes tab, but are usually placed at the top for organization.

<BattleLogType: string> This notetag determines what text to display from a .js file called Custom Battle Action Text.js. Personally I prefer using a different way of displaying text, but this can be used for basic attacks where you just want "User attacks Target!" In this case just add "<BattleLogType: ATTACK>"

<AntiFail> Some skills do things other than heal or harm a friend or foe, but RPG Maker MV might still show a "It had no effect" message. This disables that.

<HideInMenu> Self-Explanatory. Hides it from the skill equip menu. Use this for your Basic Attacks and Follow-Ups.

<Enemy or Actor Select> The emotion skills, Sad Poem, Pep Talk, Annoy, and Massage, can be used on both friends and foes. This is achieved with this Notetag.

Action Sequence Notetags

These notetags can be added to skills to add extra flairs to the skill in the Notes Coding. All of these must be placed before and after their contained code, with the closing version having a / in front of the name like this </Target Action>

<Setup Action> The earliest of the 4. This happens before any juice is consumed, so things like User animations and other "setup actions" will usually occur here.

<Whole Action> This occurs right before the main action, and applies its effects to all targets simultaneously. However, it does this in a bit of an odd way. It calculates the action for one target, and then dupes the results onto everyone else. This can cause some issues for effects that are based on target-by-target variables like their level of buff or debuff.

<Target Action> In my opinion, the better Whole Action. Occurs exactly as the main action effect will occur, and works its effects on each target individually. So things like attack animations and state changes should occur here. However unlike Whole Action, you can visually seMake sure that if you use Target Action, you must define when the skill's main action occurs. This is done with the line "action effect," which can be placed multiple times if you want the move to activate multiple times, like Red Hands.

<Follow/Finish Action> Two rarely used aftermath sections. These are used for times where a closing action needs to occur that isn't part of the target action. I don’t know the difference between Follow and Finish but Finish comes after Follow if both are used.

Action Sequences

NOTE: Y in all of these contexts is what the action is targeting. This can be filled in with a frankly overwhelming amount of options. The important ones are user, target, actors, and enemies. These should hopefully be self-explanatory. Once again, Yanfly’s page for the plugin lists all your options.

add state x: y Adds the specified state to the target.

remove state x: y Adds the specified state from the target.

animation x: y Plays the specified animation. Y is where the animation will play.

wait for animation Waits for all animations to end before proceeding. Can sometimes be a bit buggy.

wait: # Waits the set number of frames before continuing. RPG Maker MV runs at 60fps, so wait: 60 will wait for one second.

HP ± x: y(, show) Adds or subtracts the specified heart from the target. If show is placed after the target, the damage popup will be displayed. Percentages may be used.

MP ± x: y(, show) Adds or subtracts the specified juice from the target. If show is placed after the target, the damage popup will be displayed. Percentages may be used.

Text Notetag

The "eval:" notetag can be added to skills to execute JavaScript, but it is mainly used in OMORI to display text. Like this:

eval: BattleManager._logWindow.push("addText", `${user.name()} hypes up ${target.name()}!`)

This is a line from a mod I'm working on, but that's not important. What is important is that this is all you need to display detailed text in OMORI's battle box. The red text is what's actually shown in game, with the user and target name's being self-explanatory. Since it's part of the Notes coding, you can determine when in the skill it plays, and have if and then statements change the line used. It's rather versatile and simple.

Eval Notetags

These are some other Notetag Headers that can be added to Skills. Unlike the Action Sequences, these use pure JavaScript, so be aware of that.

<Custom Requirement> This sets any extra requirements for a skill to be usable. This does NOT prevent the player from selecting it, but will stop the skill’s execution during their turn. This is done by the boolean "value" that determines if a skill can be performed or not. This is mainly used for Follow-Ups, which check if the recipient is dead.

Follow-Ups

Follow-Ups, as to be expected, work quite differently from all the other skills in OMORI. This will explain how to set them up.

All Tiers Of The Follow-Up

In OMORI, your follow-ups get stronger after hitting specific story beats. These upgrades to your follow-ups are separate skills in the Database, and as such you need to have a "Pre-Skill" that checks what skill should be used, and then activates that skill. In OMORI, these are called Checks.

Before the Checks actually determine what skill to use, they have a <Custom Requirement> notetag that checks to see if the party members involved in the follow-up are dead. This will lock the skill if they are dead. You can just copy paste that requirement from a pre-existing check.

Now for the actual Check. This is done by activating a Common Event from the Effect section. This Common Event will then go through an if-else chain to see if the player has met the story beat needed for a specific tier, if they have, it uses the Force Action event on the Party Member to use the actual Follow-Up on the Last Target. It roughly looks like,

If : StoryBeat2 is on

Force Action : Basil, Vent 3, Last Target

jump to label: stop

end

Else :

If : StoryBeat1 is on

Force Action : Basil, Vent 2, Last Target

jump to label: stop

end

Else:

Force Action : Basil, Vent 1, Last Target

end

label : stop

However, if your follow-ups don’t get stronger over time (for example Basil in the console version, due to only being accessible on One Day Left, after both story beats) then you don’t need these Checks.

Attaching The Follow-Ups To Your Attacks

Now we're done with the annoying and tedious part. The rest is easy.

To attach your follow-ups, you have to add this Notetag to your basic attack for all 3 follow-ups it has.

<ChainSkill: #, direction> The # gets replaced with the ID of the Check, not any of the actual Follow-Ups. The direction is what arrow key has to be pressed to activate the Follow-up. up, down, left, and right.

Follow-Up Notetags

<ChainSkillIcon: #> This determines what image to use for the Follow-Up bubble. You can see them in img/system/ACS_Bubble.png. If you're adding new Follow-Ups, refer to the Sprites & Art page for adding new Follow-Up bubbles. What I didn't mention there is how they are indexed. It's the same as most images in OMORI, starting at 0, left-to-right, top-to-bottom.

<ChainSkill[Name of a followup]> I don't know what exactly these do, but I recommend just setting them to the Follow-Up that uses that slot normally. So for example, Basil's comfort follow-up is his down follow-up, and he takes Kel's place in the battle menu, so I'd set Comfort to <ChainSkillPassToOmori>

<EnergyCost: #> Self Explanatory. All but Release Energy cost 3 energy, with Release energy costing 10, but you can set them all to whatever you like(Within reason. I don't know what would happen if you set one to 0 or anything above 10, probably works as expected, but just be ready if something goes wrong).

<HideInMenu> Not Follow-Up specific but make sure they don't show in the skill menu.