Hi! So in the spirit of this game jam, I’m using the followers mechanic in a way it really wasn’t intended: to turn the party into a segmented snake, like the classic arcade game. So far it’s working great, except for an issue where the animations don’t always all start at the same time, so the ‘snake’ ends up looking disjointed as different segments move out of sync. (Unlike the arcade game, to be clear, the segments wiggle back and forth as you move.) It’s inconsistent, though – sometimes it’s in perfect sync, but there’s always a chance that it gets jumbled whenever I start moving after idling for a bit.

I’m guessing it’s because the game engine starts the animation of the followers at slightly different times, or something? It probably starts them moving one after another, and there’s enough of a time gap between them that one follower might be on its second or third frame before the one behind it has even started. I don’t know how it’s all implemented, so I’d need to check and see if that’s the case.

My simple fix of resetting the frame number of each follower to match the player at certain points (using a plugin to target individual followers) didn’t seem to have any effect, so I might need to look into the core RPG Maker code and see where follower movement is managed. Before I waste too much time, though, doea anyone have any advice or potential fixes? I have a lot I want to get done and not enough time to do it all, at least not if I spend too much time on this aspect.

I’m using RPG Maker MV 1.6.1 on Linux (so switching to another version of RPG Maker is not desirable, as I want to stay on Linux). Even just pointing out the line number(s) and the .js file that I want to look at would be a huge help, as I couldn’t find anything helpful with a quick skim. I’m a programmer and I don’t mind diving deep into the code, but I’m still very unfamiliar with gamedev specifically, so I don’t quite know what to look for. (And the relative lack of comments doesn’t help.)

I GOT IT! Took quite a while to find the spot that needed changing, but the code itself is tiny.

Game_Follower.prototype.increaseSteps = function() {
    Game_CharacterBase.prototype.increaseSteps.call(this);
    this._pattern = $gamePlayer._pattern;
};