Like Paper Mario and Super Mario RPG (But not in M&L), Starlite Worlds will give the player the ability to defend attacks on the fly. This is called "Guarding" which is can be used in conjunction with the "Defend" command. Guarding, however, is a simple button press timed before the damage pops up and does not take your turn to do.

Normal Guard
The basic guard. There is a 4 frame window after the impact of a hit to guard an attack. You cannot hold A before the window or else the guard won't work. If you press A in the last 3 frames, this will be a Normal Guard. It reduces the damage recieved by a slight amount. Your hero will flash green and a sound will play letting you know you succeeded.

Super Guard
An advanced guard. There is a 1 frame window of opportunity to pull it off. If you are successful, a sound will play and your hero will flash cyan. The damage received will be reduced greatly.

Starlite Guard
Although not available in the first several hours of the game, Starlite Guard can be a rather important ability. You gain it from getting a Starlite Crystal like getting a Sage Move from a Sage in SS. However, it's not something you simply select from a list of skills during battle. It's an added layer of functionality to the battle system itself.

In order to use the Starlite Guard right click on the hero you want to use it on. Right click on the hero before the enemies attack damages you. It's not a matter of timing, you can just hold down right click on the hero of your choosing while the enemy attacks you. A sound will play letting you know it was successful, and the enemies attack will be reduced. It takes about half of 1 Starlite Point (think Star Power in Paper Mario 1 & 2) but reduces the damage taken by 25%.

Things to Note:
-For multi-hit attacks, Starlite Guard is calculated for each individual hit. In other words, if a monster hits you four times, you need 2 whole Starlte Points to guard the entire thing.
-If an enemy hits multiple hero's multiple times, you can switch between who you want to Starlite Guard by simply moving your mouse to the other hero and holding the right click button.
-Starlte Guard's effect will be added to a Super or Ultra guard
-Generally, the guard window for skills is after impact but before the damage pops. It'd be worth it to practice getting into the rhythm of guarding attacks
-For multi-hit attacks, Normal, Super or Starlite guarding doesn't cover all of the hits! You got to keep on doing it.

*No longer called Super/Ultra, now will be Normal/Super to make it sound more like PM

so this is some sort of evasion system?

Kinda. Originally it took a full Starlite Point, and it made the enemy attack miss. However, we decided it should be balanced a little more since you don't really have to time it. We made it take less and do less so you could use it more often.

well, that's good, even though i could have wanted an evasion system, a completely one, but good work anyways. i am sorta trying to achieve the evasion.

I added two more types of guard. This way, timing is involved, and it's more or less like Paper Mario & Super Mario RPG for SNES. You can Super Guard an attack, Ultra Guard it, or Starlite Guard it.

so, how did you managed to do the action command after the impact?

It was simple actually. In one of the damage deciding methods (set_skill_hit_value) it calls a custom function I made. That function does a "for" loop for 5 frames. It returns the frame number of when you pushed the "X" button (A on the keyboard). It'll return 0 if the "for" loop finishes and you didn't push anything. There is also a wait(1) in that loop.

Using the frame data from the method call, you can decide how to use it.

well, well, so you can just make that if you press in that frames you specify, you can make it so you evade, just putting @missed = true, right?

Yea.

okay, i think i get it so it's like:

def set_skill_hit_value(user, skill, effective)
evade_method
if @pressed? == true
@evaded = true
else
atk_hit = DAMAGE_ALGORITHM_TYPE > 1 ? user.agi : user.dex
eva = 8 * self.agi / atk_hit + self.eva
hit = self.damage < 0 ? 100 : 100 - eva * skill.eva_f / 100
hit = self.cant_evade? ? 100 : hit
hit_result = (rand(100) < hit)
@evaded = true unless hit_result
effective |= hit < 100
return effective
end
end

def evade method
@pressed? = false
if Input::trigger?(Input::X)
@pressed? = true
else
@wait_count = 1
end

the evade method could continue but i was too lazy, anyways, am i right?