srand(time(0))

took some compy time, worked death into actionrpg. next up will be healing, as a necessary function for prevention of death. i'll probably go with a health potion as a means to acheive that end, because i can have enemies drop them eventually so you can replenish your stock.

also grabbed a playstation emulator (ePSXe) and tried out ff tactics on it. smooth, pretty sprites, at the price of occasional pausing. i don't mind the pausing since its a turn-based game. i tried using a savestate, and it got me back in fine, but the music breaks and sounds like loud white noise. if a battle is going particularly well and i have to get up for some reason, i'll make use of it and just turn down the volume. thanks again, viridian. the only thing i could whine about would be the lack of an easy way to skip frames between choosing actions. its the only way i get through rpgs in emulators, its too slow the regular way.