Mana Regen/burn skill

[Justfight]

Hi guys. Recently I've been trying to add a mana regen (regen other people but not himself) and mana burn skill to John. My approach is this:

1) Add a move to every character that regens mana. Got that to work.
2) Add an ik8 to the characters' standing, walking, running, etc, frames. Then to have a special body trigger it so it'll force the character to go to the mana regen skill.

First I add the special body to John's healing ball. Idea is to cast it and people will walk to receive it, then they will be forced to their mana regen skill frame. But for some reason the healing ball won't trigger the skill - My character just walked thru it and nothing happens. OK Plan B: I add the special body to a John move instead, so now John needs to actively find his friends and cast it on them. It kinda work, but with some problems: First, the character who's forced to the regen mana skill frame is snapped to John. Second, I used the "-mp on first frame of skill" method, but it seems it doesn't work when it's triggered by ik8.

I was going to implement a mana burn skill with a similar approach, but it seems this isn't the best way. Is there any other good method for doing this? Thanks in advance guys.

[STM1993]

The first method didn't work because ik8 only works on a type 0 bdy. The second method causes a snapback because ik8 also causes the object with ik8 to position its own centerx to the bdy character's centerx. The only alternative is to have John(or ball) directly catch a character, but make sure you use state 18 to allow catching friendly targets (and deal with the burning smoke by modifying broken_weapon.dat), and perhaps add another itr before this catching frame to push away enemies. Either way, you are forced to interfere your ally's actions.

I'm kinda sketchy with the details on how mp tag works, but I'm afraid it is not possible to directly give an ally mana unless you make the ally summon a beer and drink it, but it is still possible to burn an enemy's mana on his 2nd frame. Do note however, that using -mp tag to drain mana can cause the undesirable effect of making the enemy go back to next: 999 when he runs completely out of mana unless he has a hit_d: assigned.

[Justfight]

It seems the mana burn ball idea might still work (without looking weird). But one question, how do I make a ball type 0? Sorry if this is real basic stuff. Thanks!

[STM1993]

It seems the mana burn ball idea might still work (without looking weird). But one question, how do I make a ball type 0? Sorry if this is real basic stuff. Thanks!

You don't do that, because changing from type 3 to type 0 from the data.txt file would create a whole string of other problems. Its better to simply opoint John himself in a special inaccessible frame, like how Julian opoints himself for mirror image. However, the major downside is that the enemy AI will react to the "ball" as if it were a living character and you will see the "Com" at the bottom.

EDIT:
I have also occasionally encountered Julian's mirror image glitching into REAL Julians, not to mention an exploit where Rudolf can transform and turn the mirror images into real Julians. You can look here for a solution where you sever the link between the main character and clones, not use bdys that enemies can hit and you should also put dvy: 550 to prevent potential height-related glitches.

[Justfight]

Thanks a lot. I tried that method and got that to work! Now my John can really do something useful other than just throwing disks!

I do see the "COM" thing underneath the "ball", but I made the ball really short range so it only appear for like a second, so to make it less distracting. Anyway, the method worked. Thanks again.