i would say random, to save on speed, especially if you're gonna have scrolling. Have a number be set randomly in a variable when the map engine is first ran, then after each battle, and have this number be decreased by 1 every step, to trigger a battle when it reaches 0

providing they aren't too frequent. I saw some calc rpgs where you get battles every step or two

yeah it gets frustrating at times, especially when you play on a real console and when your mom tells you to stop playing because you were on video games for too long, and the save point is 10 minutes away. Lost lot of progress this way back in the days

Final Fantasy for calcs was a bit like this. The first version even had a bug that allowed a fight to occur even if you didn't even moved one single step after another fight

Oh, one thing though: If the enemies doesn't move at all, like in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, then you could always have this though. Mystic Quest was similar to Zelda II and Ultima games or Lufia II with the fact you see enemies on the map when moving around, the only difference being that they didn't move at all

You could have them stored directly into the map and change the matrix var when they are killed. Don't have the only reappear when exiting the entire dungeon though if you do that, because i found this a bit too easy in Mystic Quest and it was annoying to level up since you had to exit the dungeon everytime

Yeah, the last thing kevin mentioned sounded cool..But maybe like pokemon NPCs were, have them on the map and make if you walk in their view the battle starts...But Random is faster and easier to accomplish.

im actually shooting for something like that. some enemies you can see, but they don't even look like enemies at first, you'll just know them eventually if you come back around. sometimes they wont be there, sometimes they will. it all depends on whether or not you want to have the "random crawl" feel to it or if you want to have events that deal with location. I'd say if you're shooting for speed/space, do it random, otherwise there's a lot more coding to be done. If you *ARE* going to have it so you can see the enemies, it might be a cool idea to make them harder to spot...

Interesting, quite similar too

I like the main maping, where the whole area moves.