"I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of His righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." - Isaiah 61:10
The DynWardrobe plugin is a plugin for the DynRPG project. If you've taken the time to download this plugin then odds are you're already familiar with DynRPG and how to use it, but just in case, you can find the main DynRPG website at http://rewtone.com/dynrpg/.
The DynWardrobe plugin allows the appearance of actors (aka heroes) in battle to be altered at run-time by layering multiple Animation2 sprites together according to which equipment the actor currently has. One or more Animation2s can be associated with any conceivable combination of actor appearances and equipment, and assigned to a practically unlimited number of layers both above and below the actors. Create Animation2s to show your actors' armor, helmet, weapon(s), shield, and accessories! Think outside the box and give your actors non-clothing equipment effects like animal companions, power auras, and status icons!
For those of you who prefer to dive right in and learn by doing with only occasional looks at the manual for reference, please at least read these vital notes.
To install DynWardrobe in an RPG Maker 2003 project:
In order to make use of DynWardrobe, you will need to make animations for the items which you wish to make visible on your actors. DynWardrobe uses the same Animation2 system in RPG Maker 2003 which is typically used for actor animations. See the RPG Maker 2003 help manual for directions on creating new Animation2s. iDraw3 is an excellent program for editing the sprite sheet image files used in RPG Maker 2003.
DynWardrobe cannot modify Animation2 poses of the "Battle Animation" animation type. It is possible to use battle animations for some of an actor's poses without adversely affecting the game, but such poses will be unmodified by DynWardrobe, even if other poses of the actor are modified. Any Animation2 poses used to modify an actor's appearance also must be of the "Character Pose" animation type.
A few Animation2s for made-up items are included in the DynWardrobe demo project as examples, but they are very limited in use. They were made to match only two of the actors in RPG Maker 2003's default RTP. If you were to try applying them to other actors, they would very likely look strange, because different actors have different physiques and animation movements. You will need to make Animation2s of your own to match the actors of your own project. Here are some important actor design considerations for projects using DynWardrobe:
Once you have Animation2s in your project ready to be used by DynWardrobe, you must create a DynWardrobe configuration for your project. The configuration holds information about which Animation2s are layered together in what order based on what items are equipped. You may find it a little complicated at first, but if you look carefully at the example data of the DynWardrobe project, hopefully you can get a feel for how it works.
To create DynWardrobe configuration data for your RPG Maker 2003 project, you will need to use the spreadsheet file DynWardrobe.xsl, found in the base folder of the DynWardrobe download archive. Note that DynWardrobe.xsl itself is not directly used by the DynWardrobe plugin and does not need to be included in your project's directory; rather, DynWardrobe.xsl is used to generate a comma-separated values (csv) file which is directly used by the DynWardrobe plugin. More on this in the Exporting section. In order to use DynWardrobe.xsl, you will need an editing program compatible with Microsoft Excel files. I recommend using either Microsoft Excel if you already have it, or OpenOffice Calc, which is part of the free OpenOffice suite.
Open DynWardrobe.xsl in the editor of your choice and take a look at the headings across the top of the sheet. The most important fields here are the Item IDs, Equipment Slot, Item Animation2 ID, Drawing Layer, and Actor Animation2 IDs columns. The Item Notes, Animation Notes, and Actor Notes columns are purely there to help you organize your configuration and have no effect on the behavior of the DynWardrobe plugin (although you must be careful to NOT put any commas in your notes!). Also, the Equipment Slot Names and everything to the right of it are used internally by DynWardrobe.xsl, and you do not need to put anything underneath them.
Each row of data underneath the headings creates an association for use by the DynWardrobe plugin. DynWardrobe is designed to allow any number of associations between items, actor appearances, and the sprites being added to the actor. It may take you a little while to grasp the way this works, but if you look carefully at the example data for the demo project, you should be able to get at least a basic idea of the system.
The Item IDs field holds the database reference number(s) of the item(s) involved in an association. In other words, these are the items you are interested in giving an appearance on your actors' battle sprites. Most of the time you would probably only want to have one item in a given association, but there are some situations where you might want to associate more than one item with a particular Animation2, such as if there are multiple items that look the same (really small ones like rings might), have components that look the same (like a belt which fastens something onto the actor's back), or are used not to show the item itself, but some common bit of visual info (like a status icon). It's also possible to enter 0 as an ID number to signify that this association should include cases where no item is equipped to the relevant equipment slot. The DynWardrobe demo project, for example, uses this to show the anime-style hair spikes of the actor Zack if he is not wearing a helmet, but eliminate them otherwise (so that they do not show up sticking out past the helmet). To list multiple numbers, put a ; (NOT a comma!) in between each number, for example "1;3;6" without the quotes.
The Equipment Slot field holds the name of the equipment slot into which the item(s) must be equipped in order to activate the association. Primarily this is important to distinguish between animations used for weapons equipped in the primary weapon slot and weapons equipped in the secondary weapon or "shield" slot. If you click on a cell in the Equipment Slot column, a downward arrow button should appear next to it; click on that button and a drop-down menu will appear with the available equipment slot options.
The Item Animation2 ID holds the database reference number of the Animation2 being added to the actor's battle animations due to this association. In other words, it's the appearance (or part of it) of the item equipped to the actor. This field MUST hold only a single number.
The Drawing Layer field holds the layer on which the Item Animaton2 is drawn when constructing an actor's battle animations. Layers are drawn from low to high, with higher layers overwriting lower ones. In other words, in the end the lower layers will appear to be "behind" the higher ones.
The Drawing Layer can be any number between –32,768 and 32,767. 0 is the layer on which the base animation frames of the actor itself is drawn, so any associations with a Drawing Layer below 0 (negative numbers) will cause the item's Animation2 to be drawn "behind" the actor's base Animation2. Associations with a Drawing Layer of 0 or more will be drawn in front of the actor's base Animation2.
It is allowable to have multiple associations that use the same layer, although it is good practice to try and keep things separate as much as possible. The DynWardrobe plugin decides what order to draw animations in based on the following hierarchy:
The Actor Animation2 IDs field holds the database reference number(s) of the Animation2 being used as the base for a particular actor. In other words, it's what the actor itself looks like before DynWardrobe makes any modifications. The Actor Animation2 IDs field exists because you may well want to give a particular item different animations when equipped to different actors -- for example, a helmet would need different animations to sit properly on the head of a tall actor versus a short actor. See the Making Item Animations section for more about this. To list multiple numbers, put a ; (NOT a comma!) in between each number, for example "1;3;6" without the quotes.
Once you have filled out DynWardrobe.xsl with the needed associations for your project, you will need to export the data to a comma-separated values (csv) file for the DynWardrobe plugin to use. Make sure to save any changes to your DynWardrobe.xsl file before exporting. Follow the directions below according to which editor you are using.
Note: These instructions are for exporting in Excel 2013. Different versions of Excel may not work precisely the same.
Note: These instructions are for exporting in OpenOffice 4.1.2. Different versions of OpenOffice may not work precisely the same.
Comment commands are the primary way for RPG Maker 2003 scripting in-game to communicate with DynRPG plugins. To make a comment command in RPG Maker 2003, use the Insert Comment event command option in the scripting of an event and put the appropriate text within the comment. DynWardrobe has only one very simple comment command.
The @dynwardrobe_update command causes the DynWardrobe plugin to update the battle appearances of all actors currently in the party. You should use this command immediately after changing the equipment of any actor in the party during battle, or after adding an actor to the party during battle. Using it outside of battle is unnecessary, as DynWardrobe will automatically update actor appearances at the start of battle.
The source code for the DynWardrobe plugin is provided in the DynPlugins/DynWardrobe folder of the DynWardrobe demo project. Feel free to modify the plugin to suit your purposes, release alternate versions, use snippets of code in other projects, etc. Some credit to Aubrey the Bard would be appreciated if you use a significant portion of the source code, but I won't make a big deal out of it. Instructions for creating DynRPG plugins can be found on the Getting Started page of the DynRPG website.
I would be glad to hear about bug reports for this plugin, projects in which it is being used, comments and criticisms, suggestions for future plugins, etc. Here are some ways to contact me:
v1.0 (01/06/2016):