Animation Action

[justpassingby]

Hello again. I thought I had it figured out but I was a fool.
It is about the Casting Magic Action.
Here is the scenario that I want to achieve and I don't think a script is needed but I am not sure:

1: Caster A's turn to select a move.
2: I decided to use skill and use a magical attack.
*3: Instead of just standing around with the default "Cast Magic" animation, I was thinking of Caster A standing at where he/she is and perform the casting animation.

*Here lies the problem. I thought that I had figured it out since I got the animation resources needed to do so. As stated, I was a fool. The moment I want to use any magical attacks or even cast "Heal/Cure", my character fades out, suddenly fades in while in the middle of the screen, casts the magic attack, fades out and suddenly back at his/her original battle position.

Long story short: How do I make my magic caster REMAIN standing at their battle position, perform the magic casting animation, magic successfully casts and turn ends in that order without fading in and out?

Here is the example of the magic casting resource I have:

  Celes Casting Magic.png (Size: 18 KB / Downloads: 6)

The four sprites above are "preparing the magic spell" and the four sprites below are "puts the magic spell to use".

[DerVVulfman]

• The player selects Celes to perform the Sanctified Undead spell against a zombie.
  
• When it is Celes's turn to perform 'any' action, she moves forward three steps and begins Chanting, a ball of light forming in her hand.
  
• After some time and some other actions by others in combat, the ball is fully formed.
  
• Celes, her chanting done and the ball fully formed, throws the ball of divine power towards the zombie.
  
• Celes then steps back to join the rest of the party.
  

That about sums it up? Definitely an issue with the 'sprite animation' system which controls sprite positioning as well as actions.

[justpassingby]

@DerVVulfman
Yes, something like that. I figured that Square-Enix used a similar engine to the RPG Maker Engines.
Is that achievable in RPXP? It is of course possible in MV due to them being Animated though what turned me away from MV is due to the battling character sprites. But with these resources, I might be able to do it. Maybe.
Not sure about VX Ace though.

[DerVVulfman]

I take it that you are using Vic's ACBS now, since he was initial ENGLISH support for the XP port from Tankentai's VX version. And it has similar 'options' to control sprite movement. So I'll first take a look at what character movement options he has available or how they can be programmed/added.

I added a casting option when I worked upon Minkoff's Animated Battlers years ago. However, the animation was that ...
Celes would begin her 'casting animation' first.
When it was PRIMED, she would step forward....
.... launch her attack....
.... then step back.

[justpassingby]

@DerVVulfman
Yes, I am. And I have to bash my own head three times because the original FFV and FFVI HAVE the magic casters chant their magic, others get their turns, the magic casters then step forward and cast their magic and then step back.
But I still need to know on what to do and how to pull it off.

[DerVVulfman]

Savvik: Humor. It is a difficult concept. It is not logical.
James T. Kirk: We learn by doing.

Have fun. Experiment. It's what I do. You may find a few entertaining pre-designed character move sets to use later.

[justpassingby]

@DerVVulfman
I'll be doing just that after office hours.
And if things don't work out at the end of the day, I'll hitch another ride on the Terminator's Motorbike back here.
I'll. Be. Back.

Edit: Things are going smoothly. For the animation part I mean. And no, not the skills part but the Battle Ready Position, Attack animation, etc. I still am getting used to positioning my characters in the right place for the skills animation.

[DerVVulfman]

Insofar as having Celes possibly standing around and chanting before unleashing holy hell.... You got CHANTING figured out?

The hard part is to make the character MOVE before switching over into the chanting pose, because the chanting pose is just a 'redefined' idle pose which is supposed to be frozen in place until the attack.

[justpassingby]

Insofar as having Celes possibly standing around and chanting before unleashing holy hell....   You got CHANTING figured out?  

The hard part is to make the character MOVE before switching over into the chanting pose, because the chanting pose is just a 'redefined' idle pose which is supposed to be frozen in place until the attack.

Not really.

For example:
Celes or whoever is my magic caster decides to perform their magical attack will have the animation of moving forward, do the chanting animation for a few frames, cast said magic, a separate target animation will happen (at least I hope it would as I have not tested that yet, just the magic casting animation), my magic caster then turns around and heads back to her original position and prepares to have another turn again.

Only flaw to that is the they do their magic casting on the same turn instead of waiting for a few more turns of chanting while the monsters and allies doing their things before the magic caster finally attacks.
So, no. I have not figured out how to do the actual chanting.

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

The closest thing that I could think of that might suit what you are looking for is DerVVulfman's Skill Casting Delay script.

Then I found out  it's only compatible with the default battle system.