Small update.  Good news: the battle system will be bigger and better than I originally thought.  Here's what I'm doing.  I wanted to do something a little different. There will be no levelling up, only a battle count.  The hero has different attacks, depending on whether he has a gun and his battle count.  The monsters will each have their own attacks, the power of which depends roughly on the battle count.

Aaah nice to hear, I assume the lack of leveling up will still let you improve/master your character though, right? Also what will you make sure there won't be abuse of weak enemies to easily improve your chars? In Final Fantasy II for the NES you could get at 6000 HP early in the game

Ah ok, kinda like Final Fantasy 8, then. Just make sure that increasing your stats has a purpose in the game, such as the new attacks you are talking about or newer enemies being impossible to beat early in the game. In other words, just make sure someone can't simply escape every battle except bosses then go straight to the final battle without training himself.

Ah ok, I see. Sounds good then

That looks nice, Z.  The maps are all finished for this one, but I'll definitely be using that for IQ 2: Reality.  Shifted dual layers are kind of hard to edit in the program editor.