What's up, RMers?

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

I discovered that the Barehands script that allows you to add a base stat of Attack, Phys Defense, and Mag Defense based on the user's Strength, Dexterity, and Intellect respectively also allows to to break the 999 cap on those stats.

As such, it would be theoretically possible to have a 4 digit attack/def/mdef power.

[DerVVulfman]

Well, so far so good with Animated Battlers. Er, whoopsie in that I forgot exactly HOW the advanced poses-per-frame worked... But I re-learned what I did and got it working perfectly... for now. BUT... I still don't have the new step-forward-before-chanting option working yet.

And some Animated-Battlers scripts need some updating....

FORMATIONS relies upon the sideview mirror system.... A bit of a rewrite there. However, not all that hard to fix. Just a replacement of some values.

ADVANTAGES... uses some connective values to let animated battlers know if the enemies are BEHIND the heroes or vice versa.

And... WHOO... RitimKid's (or shockwave's) GOLDEN SUN BATTLE SYSTEM which lets Animated Battlers have a whole camera rotation system like Final Fantasy VII. It relies on some values whose names I changed in the updated Configuration system. I'll post a separate edit in his thread... he's been away for about 5 or so years. I also see he forgot to finish the switch that turns the camera system on/off... easy.

[kyonides]

I know this might be included in the long list of videos posted in What are youtubing? but this is actual game development made a videoclip so why wouldn't I post it here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm_6Gm9z6po

[DerVVulfman]

Dear lord, I have some freakin' old software that needs updating. Sure, I am tackling Animated Battlers since it hadn't been touched since the start of Obama's second term. But I have HELLA old software that I wrote for it and the default battlesystem, some untouched for over a decade.

Let's see what I've been working on, shall we?


Skill Casting Delay
Wow, I guess I did ignore this for a while. Last worked on in 2007, this script actually allows the game developer to make skills that take 1 or more turns to fully cast. Seen in systems like RTAB, ParaDog's system or the like, this one actually works for the default turn-based system. It was extremely sloppy in design, using global variables throughout.


Advantages!
Last worked on in 2011, not much needed to be worked upon with this one other than some adaptions for the revised value used to handle flipped/mirrored battler screens.


Battle Animation 'Flip' Control
Another golden oldie from 2007, this script literally flips that battle animations horizontally. If you have an animation of a fireball going left-to-right, flipping it will show the same fireball going right-to-left! It was based on the work of Dust Wind at his Wind Messer Website... (good luck finding it now). Not much needed reworking other than changing the same revised value from Animated Battlers. What sucks is that most of it happens to be direct edits to default scripts... dangit. But, it works without Animated Battlers and can work in the fieldmap. ^_^


A.J.'s Missile Command
Pretty old in itself, it was a 2009 request from . In general, it allows you to THROW OBJECTS AT THE TARGET IN BATTLE!!! Yep, this works with the default battlesystem, but it also works with Animated Battlers. A total disaster when I first wrote it, all actions froze until the missiles hit their target or rebounded back to the attacker. Yes, you can have a boomerang. There were flaws in the system, such as having the missiles begin at the 'Screen_X' position of the attacker... stupid if he steps forward before throwing a fireball spell. The dang fireball would appear behind him before zooming off! Yeah, that's been fixed AND figured out that I only needed one stupid like to have animations continue while the missiles fly.

MORE to fix....

[kyonides]

I have recently updated my KUnits Gosu project, yeah the one I have been working on thanks to Ruby and Gosu (a C++ library) via SDL2. I have successfully implemented some EventHandler module that would work a la Interpreter or Game_Interpreter, but I can assure you its code is completely original. Besides I added two more transition effects, now my project sports 4 of them, namely boxes, rectangles, slide and curtain. Yeah, all of them include the dreadful waterdrops of doom! (OK, they never kill anybody anyway... yet! ) I have also simplified or separated some scripts after Gosu rubygem reached version 0.14.0, only to be replaced by 0.14.3 in a matter of days.

The scripts ZIP file includes a kunits.so file where I have stored the CRuby version of the Rect and Viewport scripts, it is intended to work on Linux distros only. Even so you can open the main "load.rb" file via Notepad or Notepad++ and comment out (with a pound symbol #) the line requiring the SO file and uncommenting the lines requiring the "rect" and "viewport" files to make it work on Linux. Fine, the easiest way to let it run smoothly would be to replace the load.rb file with the load windows.rb file and rename it, guess what, load.rb just because. But the easiest way to make it run on Windows would be to open the game.rb file and edit the line number 9 and make it say...

Code:

require './load windows'

Remember that I cannot distribute the music I use to test my game on my box so you will have to create your own audio directory and place a bgm directory where you can store you favorite music or soundtracks. Then you'd have to open almost all of the scripts found in lib/setup and replace the strings in the corresponding BGM Constant to reflect your very own music taste.   Some day I will get some FOSS music so you can playtest my demo at will without worrying sick for its audible part, he, he.

[DerVVulfman]

NOTICED .... a glitch in Animated Battlers. Oopsie? Apparently the z-Depth feature which controls layering (if you draw a battler over another) was borked. You wouldn't really notice if the system had the battlers move at a fast pace across the screen for their attacks. But slowed down, the incorrect overlap between battlers of different heights and how they were rendered was noticeable.

It took some effort to get it gauged properly. It had to do with differences between sprite or spritesheet sizes. So now, its fixed.

Now time to test it with the other battlesystems in my collection.

[kyonides]

Uploading videoclips can be time consuming, especially if it tells you it might take over 20 minutes to finish the process... I know it's worth the effort, but I seriously think it's boring. What should I do for the meanwhile? Play solitaire on my PC or cellphone? I hope people appreciate the effort I made by improving my KUnits Gosu. It would be good to hear somebody installed Ruby on their PC's...

[kyonides]

I wonder if I might get an original werewolf character sprite that's not been ripped off from any existing videogame. I've been thinking about making a werewolf become the owner of a local tavern that might be called the Fang Happy Wolf tavern. I am planning to use it in my KUnits Gosu project.

[DerVVulfman]

ROFL!   


Well, I'm still working on Animated Battlers, and hooooo-boy did I have some fun stuff to doublecheck.

As you might have read, I had a z-Depth glitch which made attackers draw themselves underneath their target instead of overlapping them.   It was a pesky but easy fix, only requiring a single line involving the refreshing of the battle screen.

But when I began testing battle-systems, I found some rather fun things.

Would you believe not all timer bar scripts work 'clean'?  In most battle-systems, you would assume that hitting [ESC/CANCEL] in an item select or skill select menu would tell the battle-system that you've chosen NOT to use an item or skill, right?  Nope.  Some battle-systems forget to clean up after themselves and assume you've chosen to use said attack.  And if the timer system's clock finished counting down for item/skill use, you're gonna find your battler is using that attack even when you tried to cancel!  

Animated Battlers to the rescue!  This is not a bug with Animated Battlers, but Animated Battlers now include a feature where hitting ESC/Cancel in those options resets your battler to a 'do-nothing' setting.  So if the timer runs out, you don't waste a skill or item you didn't want to waste.  It doesn't hamper any other battle-system that I've tested (yet), so... "It's a good thing" - Martha Stewart

Now there were a couple of novel little bugs that did appear after all these years.  Apparently, it has been a while since I tested Animated Battlers to see how it reacts if an enemy 'Escapes'.  *KE-RASH*  It required me to come up with a new method to test for the battler's 'Hidden' flag.  And this required minor additions to a couple of classes and a couple bypasses in my Scene_Battle code.  Strangely enough, I also discovered that one of the battle-systems I've been testing doesn't allow enemies to escape.  Wha???  I guess the coder forgot that some monsters might be giant chickens.  *BOK BOK!*

And it has been a long time since I tested Animated Battlers with any large party script like Fomar0153's (a personal favorite).  Well, a routine I added that allowed redrawing of the actors, storing their values for the battle screen, and halting it from repeating to prevent lag..... had a bug which caused a crash if the size of the party had changed between battles.  If you had a battle that began with three heroes, and then had a battle with four heroes... *BOOM*  I had to re-address the safeguard that prevented lagging to test if there was any difference in party sizes.  But re-address it I did, and that feature is now fixed.

Meanwhile, I have tested Animated Battlers as it now exists with the following battle-systems:

1.  The Action Cost System by Fomar0153:  Simple but effective.  As your AT bar grows, the options in your Action window become enabled.  Adjustable in the simple config module.  But to my surprise, enemies will not 'escape' from battle.
   
2. Syvkal's Agility Based Battle:  Based on XRXS's (or fukuyama's) BP 1, it works fairly well and has a more detailed configuration section.  There is a section in the script so you can add additional AT bar costs for skills of your choice.  The only issue is the Battle Report script that he had in the original demo.  I might look for a replacement or 'fixed' version as the current version crashes when you exit the report.
   
3. An edit of MakirouAru's ATB:  Also based on XRXS's / fukuyama's work, this is a version I cleaned up and provided a couple of fixes. 
   
4. The Active Time Battle by ParaDog:  As comprehensive as any by XRXS, the system uses a vertical-list battlesystatus window akin to Final Fantasy's.  And a detailed list where you can set AT action costs.  But this demo includes an additional script by ParaDog where you can make a skill take extra time to cast 'after' being selected, much like spell preparation.  Oh, and this demo includes Fomar0153's Large Party script for testing.  At one point, my personal game was to use this system.
   
5. The SoulRage System by Blizzard:  Rather entertaining, you receive AT points in battle, but enough to allow you to use a Soul Rage skill instead of a normal skill.   One could consider it akin to a Final fantasy Limit Break.
   
6. The XRXS65 CT system by XRXS (fukuyama):  This demo includes his Command Window Addon and CP Synthesized Order Gauge for a fairly entertaining experience.  The gauge iis one of icons that travel a bar with the battler about to act reaching the end before the others.
   
7. RTAB by Cogwheel:  Okay, I mentioned earlier that I was working on the rework of Animated Battlers with RTAB.  But there are many addons by Cogwheel that I do need to test.
   

And I haven't touched the battle-systems by Trickster ... yet.

[DerVVulfman]

Okay... I still didn't touch the five battle-systems by Trickster.... yet. However, I did have to spend some time with two fairly good sized demos.

The RTAB demo I have includes over a dozen different scripts and systems other than Animated Battlers and the RTAB battle-system itself. Oh, it's been a while since I tried the demo, and didn't remember how to configure some of the custom scripts. One requires that you alter the flash effect of battle animations for extra damage options. Another required a special setting that needed to be turned on as the author didn't know how to detect RTAB. And ... wow, I think I need to replace the 10+ year old copy of Limit Break with the new one I just updated.

And for those who think the camera system in RTAB makes a mess of Animated Battler's sideview system... AnimBat will now automatically turn the camera system off. It knows how, and this feature will not interfere with Animated Battlers working with the Golden Sun system.

Sorry.... RTAB and Shockwave's Golden Sun system are incompatible as both use a 'camera' variable within Scene_Battle. And Golden Sun has its own aliases within Scene_Battle incompatible with RTAB.

After that, I decided to venture into the realm of another expertly packed battle-system that uses Animated Battlers for its visual effects. And trust me, this one is packed and visually appealing. The actual code of this battle-system does access the configuration values within Animated Battlers, so my current changes will not work with his demo... not unless the demo itself is altered.

Fortunately, he is still active and I know exactly what needs altering. Heck, it's just two configuration values he accessed.

Now for questions.......

It has been over a decade since Minkoff had last touched Animated Battlers. To be specific, June 2006 (I still have a copy of the original demo). Since latter 2006, I had been the custodian. And when I last talked to Minkoff, he laughed that I still kept his name attached to the demo for all these years. That was in 2010. And Animated Battlers' code is now totally different from the original, the names of a couple methods notwithstanding.

So... Does anyone have any thoughts on a new 'NAME' for Animated Battlers?

And while I am currently having all configuration values stored within a 'Minkoff' module (like below), any thoughts for a different name for the module?

Code:

module Minkoff


  #==========================================================================
  # HASH ARRAY INITIALIZATION:  DO NOT TOUCH
  #==========================================================================
  POSES, FRAMES, SPEED, RUSH_SPEED, LOW_HP_PERCENT      = {}, {}, {}, {}, {}
  #==========================================================================


  #==========================================================================
  #   ****                    GENERAL CONTROLS                       ****   #
  #==========================================================================

  # * Default Battler Style Switches
  #--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  #
  DEFAULT_ENEMY           = false   # If true, these switches allows the use
  DEFAULT_ACTOR           = false   # of default battlers for actors/enemies
  DEFAULT_ENEMY_ID        = [3]     # Ids of enemies using default battlers
  DEFAULT_ACTOR_ID        = [1]     # Ids of actors using default battlers
  DEFAULT_COLLAPSE_ACTOR  = false   # If true, restores the old 'red fade'
  DEFAULT_COLLAPSE_ENEMY  = false   #   collapse effect (using spritesheets)


  # * Animation Frames and Animation Speed
  #--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  #
  SPEED[0]                = 4       # Animation speed per frame (1-9, 1=slowest)
  SPEED[7]                = 3       # Gloria's animation speed is slower
  RUSH_SPEED[0]           = 1.5     # Melee/Skill/Item motion speed
  RUSH_SPEED[2]           = 0.75    # Basil runs slowly
  RUSH_SPEED[-1]          = 2.0     # Ghosts move fast
  POSES[0]                = 11      # Number of poses (stances) in the template
  POSES[-1]               = 4       # Ghost has 4 poses
  POSES[2]                = 4       # Basil has 4 poses
  FRAMES[0]               = 4       # Maximum number of frames in each pose

(etc).....