Post by Chirutai in Occasional Battler Flipbooks MV + MZ comments

Occasional Battler Flipbooks MV + MZ » Comments

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Hi! I am thinking of buying this plugin and grabbing its dependency, but I am trying to figure out if it would be an answer to my need.

What I would like to do is have my battlers play different animations based on what skill is used on them, and also based on their identity. For example, if the warrior is kicked in the gut, he is going to play an animation of grabbing his stomach in pain, if he is punches in the face, he would grab his cheek, etc. And if it happens to the mage, then it's the mage doing that instead.

I would of course like to use sprites I have specially made for it (such as frames of the warrior reacting to the kick, etc. as single pictures or as spritesheets), and not be limited to 3 frames animations.

I would also like to use it for animations when the battler uses a skill. For example when using a taunt with the warrior, I could have a sprite of him giving the middle finger, etc.

I currently awkwardly made stuff work by cheating with hiding actors and playing animations on the hidden actors using Yanfly's action sequences, but I am looking for a better solution.

Would this plugin be suitable for my needs? Or am I totally misunderstanding what it does?

I am using MV by the way.

Tamschi163 days ago(+1)

Occasional Battler Flipbooks doesn’t have detailed filters, so it can’t distinguish different skills or items.

For reactions, you’ll likely want Battler Reaction Flipbooks instead, which does have that kind of very fine-grained control. (See the screenshots there.)

I haven’t implemented a “Battler Action Flipbooks” layer, mainly because nobody nudged me to make it. These fine-grained animation controller plugins are a ton of work, and admittedly I wasn’t too motivated since I didn’t get any sales at the time 🥲
(I think it’s mainly because you need quite a bit of custom spritework to make use of them, and most RPG Maker games just aren’t that high-budget. I’m also really not good at marketing, though.)

If you don’t want to wait for me to make the latter (I can’t offer an ETA, but I’ll keep in mind that there’s interest after all), you may be able to make your own control layer on top of Battler Flipbooks Core, which contains all the resource management and scheduling logic for this plugin series. I have an example here: https://github.com/Tamschi/rpg-maker-plugin-templates-cc0/blob/develop/Battler_Flipbooks_LAYER.js

Sorry, that’s probably not the answer you were hoping for. There may be a way to use Action Sequences to (conveniently) control Battler Flipbooks animations, but that plugin maker team is a bit hostile to other people making compatible plugins so I haven’t looked into it. Is that something you’d be interested in for the skill animations?

Chirutai163 days ago

Thank you for your quick and thorough answer!

I am currently still prototyping the combat and exploring solutions, so a lot of things remain on the table. Since I cannot make my own plugins and have only a basic understanding of javascript, I am trying to find the best compromise between my initial vision and what is possible.

If Battle Reaction Flipbooks allow me to have specific skills trigger specific animations from the target on hit, without any frame limit, it's already a lot. Having a "Battle Action Flipbooks" plugin would be great, but I can probably make due without it.

I do have a few additional questions:

- Do you have something similar for states? For example loop a specific animation while the character is idle, but under a specific state (such as charmed, poisoned, etc.)

- I might need to have the animation used when reacting to the skill depend on some other variables (such as what the character has equipped, or because I might swap the battler spritesheet in specific conditions and the animations should match the current battler spritesheet), is that possible?

- And lastly, how hard is it to make use of your plugins for someone who is not particularly well-versed in javascript? I am used to mostly do basic stuff like make script calls, use notetags (like action sequences), create folders and put the right assets at the right format in them...

Sorry for all the questions, I feel like there is a good chance your plugins might be the solution I am looking for, but I am trying to get a good understanding of what can be done with them as I cannot do extensive manual tweaks on my own!

Tamschi163 days ago (3 edits) (+1)

If Battle Reaction Flipbooks allow me to have specific skills trigger specific animations from the target on hit, without any frame limit, it’s already a lot. […]

That’s correct. There are no frame- or animation-count limits (beyond how many you can load into memory at once).
If certain animations can occur only in few battles (for example due to a specific boss’s attacks), you should use the “Filter subject?” condition for them though, as that avoids preloading them elsewhere.

I do have a few additional questions:

Do you have something similar for states? For example loop a specific animation while the character is idle, but under a specific state (such as charmed, poisoned, etc.)

Same situation as with “Battler Action Flipbooks”, unfortunately, but may be a bit easier to make since I wouldn’t have to deal with battle phases 🤔
I’ll see what I can do, but please don’t take that into account right now since I don’t know when I’ll be able to focus on it.

If having only one entrance animation and idle loop is okay for now, Battler Entrance Flipbooks will do that.

I might need to have the animation used when reacting to the skill depend on some other variables (such as what the character has equipped, or because I might swap the battler spritesheet in specific conditions and the animations should match the current battler spritesheet), is that possible?

Yes. Not in terms of current spritesheet directly, but equipment, states and switches are all available as built-in conditions. (You can use the free-form “JS condition” to check the spritesheet, but that requires a little bit of JS and engine knowledge.)

You can also filter by how much damage was incurred (absolutely or as percentage of HP) or how effective the attack was, and such.

And lastly, how hard is it to make use of your plugins for someone who is not particularly well-versed in javascript? I am used to mostly do basic stuff like make script calls, use notetags (like action sequences), create folders and put the right assets at the right format in them…

Technically you don’t have to touch the keyboard at all to set up the reactions you mentioned. Everything is configured using structured plugin parameters and will use the appropriate picker where available. You can also choose to use text-mode entry for each parameter, of course.

You can define your own note tag in “skills w/ note tag” too, which is likely more convenient than selecting each individual skill. (Also possible for actors/enemies that react or are the attacker!)

All parameters come with descriptions explaining what they do.

There are some advanced features like “flipbook tags” that you can use to make animations conditional on other animations just before, which might be a little more difficult to get into.
For example, you can use that to show progressively worse crumple animations for each hit in a multi-hit combo or animate differently when the party gangs up on an enemy and slices and kicks them in quick succession (or vice versa).

Tamschi163 days ago(+1)

Ah, one thing to note though:

When used on already-animated battlers (like actors, by default), those will remain in spritesheet mode. I haven’t touched this project in a few years, I think it would be easy to make a small snippet that changes that to “whole image” during animations, if you want.

That way, you wouldn’t have to copy the entire sprite sheet for each animation frame.

Chirutai163 days ago

I see, I think using spritesheets is fine, it makes for less files anyway, which is probably better for the overall project.

It seems like this would allow me to do quite a lot (although I might still have to use my "trick" of hiding actors and using the built-in animation system to fake-out the states). I will most likely be buying this very soon, I do have a few things to sort out first.

Do you have bundles available, if so, do you recommend any specific combo of flipbook plugins for my needs? I understand what the reaction one does well now, but is occasional battlers redundant with the reaction plugin for all practical purposes, or is there value in owning both?

The sound effect one seems fairly straightforward, I guess I would use it to add sound effects to the animations, but it seems it needs both core plugins to work? (flipbook core and event core)

Tamschi163 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

[…], it makes for less files anyway.

In this case not, no. Battler Flipbooks swaps out the whole image per animation frame, so you can’t have multiple frames in the same file. (There’s no image part picker UI I could use in the parameters.)

There is one bundle that combines Entrance and Occasional flipbooks with Sound Effect Events. That’s effectively 20% off for that combination.

That said, Entrance Flipbooks wouldn’t work for you since you want the state to be visible, and Sound Effect Events is trickier to use since it requires note tag scripting in the flipbooks. (I can’t make that easier in the plugin parameters, unfortunately.)

For your purposes, I would start with just Battler Reaction Flipbooks and see how it goes. Occasional Battler Flipbooks is something you may want to consider for custom collapse animations or basic enemy attack animations (if you currently use plain non-animated enemies).

Let me know if you need help with anything! I’m currently a bit too busy to make entire plugins, but I can still provide support for the existing ones.

Chirutai163 days ago(+1)

Oh, ok! I do use animated actors for both friends and foes currently.

Thank you for the offer, I will reach out if I run into any issue I cannot solve on my own.

Tamschi163 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

I just updated the core and all layer plugins with a new ‘Framing’ parameter, since it was a small change.

This now allows you to use Single-image PNGs as animation frames on spritesheet battlers (default for new and newly edited flipbooks). Make sure to load the flipbooks layers after anything else that animates battlers to give them priority!

You can also set it to Unchanged (it’s a drop-down) to keep framing effects visible for that flipbook. That includes the default boss collapse animation, for example.

Chirutai163 days ago

That sounds great, thank you! I will make sure to explore that when I get into it and start experimenting with the plugins!

itch.io

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