+++ DYNRPG - THE RM2K3 PLUGIN SDK +++

Hmmmm... I think what I want really, is not so much faster ATB at all (if anything, I found even trying to make monster and hero about equal if anything it feels too fast, but then I set it to 600). I liked the way turn-based worked. But... I discovered it didn't work correctly with DynRPG. I had David replacing the rpg2003.exe (no problem), and then I tried to run it and either none of my plugins seemed to work or it caused an actual crash on startup.

Basically, I want a sort of "pause" between monster and hero battler sequences. I sort of got something similar by doing this.

Would it be possible to write a code that turns off a switch if any party member attacks and on if the monster attacks (currently, I'd have to write this for each party member, then each battle event, resulting in ((286 battle events x 9 characters) + 344 monsters, or 2918 redundant code strings)). The switch would be called TurnEnd, and would basically create a gap where monsters would not attack (Switch ON TurnEnd as Precondition, Do Nothing) until any party member attacks. I'd say would probably do it, but I have a few problems working with battle code (as in, I'm scared to death of it).

I'm gonna check out that code, and see if it helps any.

I figured out the solution to the problem without a plugin.

Turn 7x or so:
If Turns is 0 (To reset things)
Turns is equal to Monster Number
Turn Wait On

And another thing to countdown turns before shutting off Turn Wait, using every possible character action in another Turn 1x even to basically say Turns -1 and shut off at 0.


The only other thing is putting all the monsters (I want) with Do Nothing for TurnWait ON. It's sort of a screwy mix of ATB and turn-based. Which is exactly what I wanted.

Edit: Sorry, that's wrong.

Turn-based code is...
Turn 1x
(Inside Common Event: Enemy Turn)
If Turn Wait OFF
If Turns is >= Monster Number
Turn Wait ON
Else
Turns +1
End Event Processing

Then you set to each party action under another Turn 1x (tedious...) such as
Hero1 uses Attack. You don't need fifty pages, just one page with a very long list.
(Inside Common Event: Your Turn)
If Turn Wait ON
If Turns is <= 0
Turn Wait ON
Else
Turns -1
End Event Processing

It's basically a seesaw effect of numbers. At the start of battle, you'll need to set it at one or the other end.

author=Cherry
That's why you have to save and load these settings like battle speed, battle layout or anything in DBSystem or DBActor manually (in onSaveGame/onLoadGame).

@Kazesui: In your code, I wouldn't use global_vol as absolute value, but as percentage. So you will multiply the volume by global_vol/100... This way people can still control a relative volume of sound effects...

Yeah, the onSaveGame/onLoadGame stuff makes more sense now. I've been reading more about C++ and the DynRPG SDK this week, so I'm definitely seeing more possibilities and workarounds.

With that, I'm making a really slick plugin right now that lets you save a range of variables to binary file after saving your game, starting at an identifier defined by var 3351 (via the CustomSaveLoad patch). The file acts as a "global" save file to store variable data from multiple save files.

By setting the variable to a particluar identifier again in your save/load menu (essentially querying the binary file), you can pull specific save game variables, querying information like other party member info, game locations, gold, treasure chests collected, or anything you could ever want/desire, and load them back into that range of variables. I've kept the actual range value low, since you shouldn't need more than 100 variables to query. With 99 potential saves, the binary file's size comes out to only about 50k.

The end result is that when you can press up and down in your menu to select save files, you can query for this information and show it on-screen. The CustomSaveLoad only supports the first party member's name, HP and level otherwise. You could make the YanFly save engine in 2k3 if you wanted to.

So far, the write portion of this plugin is coded and tested (works beautifully) and I have the read portion coded, but won't be able to test until later today. There's also a "check" to make sure the global save file is present upon startup, but there's a minor bug with that so far that I need to fix.

I'm gonna post the plugin/source probably over the weekend since I'd like to event my menu and make sure everything works first. Stay tuned!

Hello guys, i've spotted a bug recently on dynrpg and that's about character transparency , for instance events and my character cant be shown semi - transparent, obscure bottom half and Obscure bottom third. Also events can be shown transparent when they are placed below hero or above hero.Is there a way to fix this bug?

Are you also gonna work on the stuff that's "Not Implemented Yet" (ActorLearning, Chipset, MoveRouteItem, AuroraDrawMain)?

And maybe something to mess with wherever the menu items/skills/etc are stored. I tried to find someway of finding the spells used/possessed (something like if you use a certain skill, you can trigger something or turn on a switch or variable). And then I found that there didn't seem to be one. They just had battle menu item/skills.

MUAHAHAHAHA!

So my custom save/load menu has been evented. I finished the global save data plugin and a delete save plugin. I came across a weird issue over the weekend where the save data plugin caused a memory leak or something, and ended up filling up hard drive space on drive C (over the course of a day while I was testing things). Upon restarting, that space gets cleared up, but obviously it's a huge issue. I think I fixed it by adding a fstream "flush" command, but I'm still skeptical. I'm thinking it should be placed after the write command (within write_to_binary) but I need a second opinion. Would someone mind looking this over? I know it's not the most efficient in terms of variables declared etc, but from a functional standpoint, it works great in-game.



Would someone mind looking over this code

author=bulmabriefs144
What's Cerberus mean by national alphabet?

The cyrillic letters became too wide after applying the patch.
Before:

After:

It's almost impossible to read, as you can see. With another font in the project settings - the same issue. Font Changer haven't used yet, maybe it will help...

author=bulmabriefs144
I'd recommend the Lufia SDK. Among other stuff it has, it has FontChanger and a bunch of fonts as a bonus.

Pepsi could you make a demo (with variables defined by user)? I don't really know how to use it, so all I see is another storage thing with my old, not a new save system. The other thing is to restrict memory leaks, make an onExit code where you make sure everything is closed up good and tight. I didn't notice that last night, but I remembered alot of these image scripts had image destruction as a safeguard for creating runaway memory. File close/flush at the very end (again, my grasp on fstream beside the very basic is weak, so some of this you'll need to experiment yourself) will probably do the same.

I'll make a demo at some point when I'm confident with everything. Between that plugin and the event code, it's a huge working mess right now, haha. The menu still needs some optimizations, mainly with how it cycles through files. I plan on testing it on my netbook and figuring out what's laggy, and going from there.

As a preface, I haven't added configuration stuff in the plugin yet, so the code I posted actually only supports 100 variables at a time. The "400" value you see in the SaveSlotOffset ((saveSlotID-1)*400) is basically the number of variables in your range times 4. So if you want a range of say 1000 variables (not sure why you would need this many) you would start by changing that number to 4000.

As for how it works: get aquainted with the BetterAEP patch and the CustomSaveLoadPatch here first as it follows one of the conventions used: http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/9751/

So the big drawback to this patch out of the box is that it can only query the first hero's level, HP, and name. Considering the default save/load menu does more than that, there's room for improvement. Hence the reason for my plugin.

Explaining this whole thing is gonna make me puke, but here goes:

My plugin basically ignores the query conventions of the CustomSaveLoadPatch and checks variable 3351 for the save state ID, and pulls the values from the variable range (4101-4199) that are stored in globalVariables.dyn and stores them into 4101-4199 in-game. With that in mind, they need to exist in globalVariables.dyn first, so there has to be some kind of trigger in RPG maker to store them there. That's where variable 3346 comes in (very last section of code). If 3346 has been set to a value (the save state's value, above 0). It takes what is stored in variables 4101-4199, and places them in the database, using the save state's ID as a starting point, so no data is ever overwritten or corrupted.

When you do this:

A) SAVING THE GAME

1) Write the number of the save slot you want to use into variable 3351 (not limited to 1-15! Can also be zero or a number greater than 15.)
2) Open the save menu

EXAMPLE:
<> Change Variable {3351:SaveID} = 20
<> Call Save Menu
This will save the game into slot 20.

The plugin adds an extra step that requires this:

EXAMPLE:
<> Change Variable {3346:SaveExport} = 20
-- Saves variables 4101-4199 to globalVariables.dyn
<> Change Variable {3351:SaveID} = 20
<> Call Save Menu
This will save the game into slot 20.

Save 20 is calculated with ((saveSlotID-1)*400) so if you open globalVariables.dyn and jump to decimal position 7600, you'll see your variables placed there in sequential order. The binary file starts at position 0, so that formula has to have "-1" in case you are saving to slot 1 (which will equate to 0).

The for loops are used to go through each variable, and assign them a spot in the array "varArray" using i. The (saveSlotOffset+(4*i)) calculates the actual decimal position in the binary file each variable will be stored in. It has to be a multiple of 4, since it takes 4 bytes to store 1 variable. Every 4 hex values will contain a new one. Reading is coded the same way, but in reverse.

As an aside, the "onStartup" function checks if the file "globalVariables.dyn" exists, and if it does not, creates one and writes "0" (blankData) to position 40000 (since this position is greater than (99-1)*400. 40000 is another value you would need to change if you wanted to support more than 100 variables. This is necessary, because if the file doesn't exist, then the fstream read/write functions won't do anything, and if a user decided to delete globalVariables.dyn, then they'd break the save/load menu. This function prevents a situation like that.

The eventing process kind of goes in this order:
1) Create some variables in the range of 4101-4199, and make a common event that saves hero stats, game stats or anything you want to query in your save menu.
2) Create some kind of way to set the save slot ID to variable 3346. For test purposes, you can use the Input Number command w var 3346.
3. Use <> Change Variable {3351:SaveID} = 20 & <> Call Save Menu to actually save your game as you would normally using the CustomSaveLoadPatch.

At this point, you should have your .lsd game save, along with data in the globalVariables.dyn database, so you can query for them.

1) Start by setting variables 4101-4199 to 0 so that you know the values you get are being pulled from globalVariables.dyn. Use a "Wait until key pressed" event and hit F9 ingame to verify this.
2) Use "<> Change Variable {3351:SaveID} = 20" or "Input Number" command w var 3351 to query for various saves (20 is used in this example). At this point, the variables will be automatically pulled into rpg maker. If your .lsd file exists, variable 3352 will return "1", otherwise it will return "0" (per the CustomSaveLoadPatch notes) So you could then write a conditional that says "if var 3352 is 1, show me the data on the screen." You could do this a number of ways but the easiest thing to do for testing purposes is a "Wait until key pressed" event, hit F9 ingame and find your variables. They should have the values contained in your database. Do this with multiple save files and you should be able to query information from any save file, into any of them.

To actually load a game, you can just do this (per the SaveLoadPatch):

<> Change Variable {3351:SaveID} = 20
<> Change Variable {3350:BetterAEP} = 1
<> End Event Processing

It only gets more complicated from there when you have to event your menu, but you basically want to query for information every time you select a new save file, so that you can load those variables, and then use something like the DynText plugin to show it onscreen, and you only want to save to the database upon actually saving your game.

TL;DR: RPG Maker 2003 is my bitch.

I posted some info about how the actual menu works here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/20/images/34230/