Thanks to both of you for your advice!

Thanks for your suggestions!

It's difficult to tell from these screenshot and your project file is inaccessible. But I would change the way the whole thing is triggered.

I've changed the accessibility on the file, if that helps.

That "Else Trigger once" event probably won't work correctly because numberMagic is a local non-static variable, it gets reset at the end of every tick. (unless it's inside a function)

That part of the code seems to be working alright. That is, it skips over the magic resolution step if no characters are using magic. It's when characters are actually using magic that I run into various problems. Do you think it's still likely that the non-static variable is causing problems? Any idea how?

Be very careful with Trigger Once condition, it can cause all kinds of problems when used incorrectly.

Yeah, I'm kind of fumbling in the dark, doing guesswork based on other projects I'm learning from. What is the correct way to use "Trigger Once"?

Also instead of "waits" I suggest using Timer behavior - it gives you much better control, you can pause/cancel it, run different timers per each instance, and you can use "On timer" event to schedule the next action.

This seems like a good suggestion. I will look into it.

As you mentioned in the post, this way of making it will get overblown when you add detail and many things happening at once with many instances. You need more control over the gameplay and since it's JRPG I would create a turn system in an array. For each action you can add the person's turn to a new row and then run each row in order and pop off the top row when it's done. This also provides visibility of what's happening. Within the row you can include things like the target UID, even the damage calculated so you can see it before it's acted out.

I haven't used arrays much before. Can you give an example of how you might organize one in this case?

I would probably do something like this:

Another aspect of the problem is that I have a hard time understanding which conditions and actions in Construct allow me to express logical structures like this. I've reviewed the documentation pretty extensively, but many of the explanations given seem to rely on prior knowledge of programming, which I don't really have.

If you have suggestions about conditions that would allow the system to ask "is X pending", that would be a great boon to me.

Your code seems to be ok up till the phase where you do the attacks. But I can't place what's amiss at that point. As you stated you have a lot of variables for the state, and it's tricky to debug where the logic error is.

A slightly different way to go about it could be to have a single state variable to organize the different steps. I guess this is called a state machine.

Anyways here's an example made from the free version. Although that probably made the events a bit odd looking in spots to get it to fit.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ugfnxtiht6kijgrqtqyq3/rpgBattle.c3p?rlkey=2igmwxg0953vcbqrv4vmf0stl&dl=0

Could be useful for ideas possibly.

Wow, this seems like it will be super useful! Thanks for putting it together. I will be using it to study up!

The biggest obstacle seems to be in telling the compiler that one phase has ended, and another ought to begin. The first phase runs fine, but I can't get it to move on to the second phase in a way that handles multiple contingencies (ie both player and AI select Fight OR player selects Fight and AI selects Block).

Thanks for your response!

Usually you loop through a given path in json to find what you're looking for. Then when it matches, you use that path to look up the rest of the keys you're interested in at that path.

What might that look like in terms of conditions and actions in construct?

The most efficient way to me is to organize it so that order doesn't matter. You can have all sorts of different json files, and they can all be loaded into memory/parsed at the start of the game, so that you have access to all the data given you know the path or key/attribute you're looking for. Just imagine if all the files were "included" into your project as one file.

I don't think the order matters. I've been operating from the assumption that once I parse a new AJAX.LastData, the previous AJAX.LastData is no longer accessible. But maybe that's not correct?

I normally don't have the game modify json files, only json that is loaded into memory. Considering all the files are loaded into memory and the file that they came from is not relevant, then they don't really need to talk to each other. If you need to write back to the json file, then write whatever is relevant.

Gotcha. Thanks again!

Thanks for your reply!

I suggest you get rid of the array and change your JSON to this:

{

"Skills": { "Punch": {"baseDamage":1 }, "Kick": {"baseDamage":2 } }

Does your recommendation hold if each skill has multiple keys associated with it? Base damage, energy cost, etc.? If so, would you mind explaining what the purpose of an array is, if each element can hold multiple key:attribute pairs of different types?

2. I have lots of separate JSON objects in my project and load data into them at the beginning of the game with multiple AJAX requests.

So if I parse Ajax.LastData, it remains parsed?

3. There are no built-in ways to sync data between different JSON objects, you will have to do this with code. For example, instead of directly changing damage value in JSON1, make a function "UpdateDamage", which will change it in both JSON1 and JSON2.

Thanks again for your responses. I hope my mismanagement of terminology is understandable, and not too cringy!

Hi!

I've been learning about implementing JSON in Construct 3. I've read the manual, and done a little study on the wider web, but a few things still aren't clear to me.

1) If I have an array in JSON which is, in turn, comprised of multiple key:attribute pairs, is there a way to use a given attribute to call for attributes of other keys within the same element of the array? For example, let's my JSON describes the parameters for a bunch of skills that the player can use. It looks something like:

{

"Skills": [ { "Name":"Punch", "baseDamage":1 }, { "Name":"Kick", "baseDamage":2 } ]

}

How do I tell Construct that when the player selects the skill named "Punch", it should use 1 in subsequent damage calculations, vs. 2 when the Skill is named "Kick"?

2)What is the most efficient way to incorporate data from different JSON files into the same project? For example, skill data (names, damage, etc.) vs. enemy data (HP, attacks, etc.). I've seen an example where, I think, someone shifted AJAX.LastData to an array object as part of setup, then used AJAX to request the second JSON file, and parsed that with the JSON object. But I'm not sure whether that's the best way, or if I'm even understanding that process correctly.

3) Related to Question 2, is there a way to make multiple JSON files talk to each other? So if data pulled from one JSON fulfills certain conditions, data in another file is altered?

Thanks in advance for any help. Let me know if I can supply more information to aid in your response(s).

A delayed thanks for your response!