What's up, RMers?

[DerVVulfman]

One of the things I wondered about the Battle System paperdoll script was...  .... Can the enemies use paperdoll graphics?      And I decided to say... YES!

Now the problem was... HOW?  I figured I needed to mimic how I allowed map events to have equipment attached with Ah-sung's Paperdoll.  And that I felt was going to be extremely problematic.   First, you would need to have the change occur according to a schedule within the TROOPS database.  That way enemies could equip or change gear according to a schedule.  And since that is controlled by the Scene_Battle update method which is nothing but a LOOP.... and the Interpreter's update method which is a loop in a freakin loop... I feared I was toast.

But then, I tried to attach code before Scene_Battle's update method executed, and I found I could garner THIS!!!!!!

• The top red box shows I can get the contents of the TROOP commands per page.
  
• The middle blue box ... I just cleaned up the routines, one action per line... easier to read.
  
• The bottom green box... the actual troop commands.  In fact, you can see that the acquired contents is in the same order as the troop commands that are supplied.

AKA... VICTORY!!!

But the focus is on the commands specific to the paperdoll system and the changing of the equipment.



And apparently, acquiring the actual content is possible....

As I stated, I am using comments much like the Paperdoll system.  But here, I have one line per object which includes the 'Trigger' word... Brenda in this instance.   The currently shown statement is "Brenda|1|1|3" which means...

• Brenda:  first entry saying... I'm a Paperdoll command!!!!
  
• 1:  The second entry saying (I belong to battler#1 in the current TROOP.  NOT the enemy ID in the database.
  
• 1:  The third entry saying... I go in slot #1 (the weapon slot)
  
• 3:  The fourth and last entry saying... I am item ID #3.  Being a weapon, it would be the Steel Sword.

So yep, there IS a plan.  And the format for the comments have been thought out.

But what if a designer wanted to add multiple pieces of gear?  And what if multiple battlers were going to have the paperdoll effect?

Well....  hehehe...  It looks like I already thought about that, and the green box below now shows three pieces of gear being added, two for one battler, and one for a second battler.



As you can see, I can even properly sort the data by the battler ID and the weapon slots.  Even better, though you cannot see it, is that I can remove duplicate entries.  So if I set battler #5 to use a broad sword, and then set battler #5 to use a broad sword.... again... the system isn't STUPID!

Now the above example 'may' appear to have an error.  But not necessarily.  You may see that Battler #1 is assigning an ID of 4 to equipment slot #0.  And true, there is no equipment slot 0.  BUT... Slot 0 is designated the 'BODY' slot.  By default, the slot assumed an equipment value of 0.  BUT, if the game developer so decided that he could swap the body graphic with something in the Graphics\Paperdoll folder, said capability is actually there!!!!

So....  I have two more things to work on for this capability to continue.

1.  The actual implementation of the paperdoll overlay on enemy sprites.  This should not be hard as most of the Ah-Sung modules seem to work or are compatible.
   
2. This currently doesn't account for [Enemy Transform] which allows the battler to change its current graphics.
   

Other than that, a basis for the Brenda rewrite is coming along nicely.