[PLUG-IN] [RM2K3] ANIMATED MONSTERS PLUGIN

Posts

author=Sam
Loving the plug-in! Here's hoping the alterations are made to get Cherry's seal of approval man! Definitely going to have to put this to good use! If this is ever joined by a large charasets plug-in for 2k3 I'll be a very happy man.


I'm not entirely sure, but there may already be a patch for that. Check Cherry's website.
No, that's for 2k...
Nightowl
Remember when I actually used to make games? Me neither.
1577
author=Killer Wolf
Nightowl- There are already ways to "fake" animated enemy skills and attacks, it just takes work.

Short version: Use battle events for targeting, set the enemy sprite to a transparent/blank one, run the desired animation through a battle event, restore the enemy sprite when you're done.

An example:


If you combined those tricks with the plugin's ability to display idle and injured frames, things would start looking downright good in a hurry.
I dunno, I'd still rather see a version which has frames for attacking or using skills because I think I could do something that I don't know how to explain because I'm an imbecile.

Having frames for those would be easier if the game has a lot monsters.
This is really cool! Would love to see this further developed to include attacking/using skills!.
Hey! Great work with your animated monsters plugin! I hope you still work on it! (like what cherry mentioned) :)
Wonder if you're having trouble to animate monster attacks, because if you have, I have a way to do so in a simple way without DynRPG....
Maybe this way might be easily accomplished in DynRPG with your skills! (I have no idea oO;)
author=MarcL
Hey! Great work with your animated monsters plugin! I hope you still work on it! (like what cherry mentioned) :)
Wonder if you're having trouble to animate monster attacks, because if you have, I have a way to do so in a simple way without DynRPG....
Maybe this way might be easily accomplished in DynRPG with your skills! (I have no idea oO;)


I'm really interested on how.. care to explain ? I've been trying to think o f a way for it + this animated monster plugin.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
Alex Unleashed has great animations before an enemy attacks (among other things). The downside is battle events get really messy really fast. DynRPG makes it possible to implement a global solution without copy/pasting battle events, which makes it less tedious (and less error-prone) to make adjustments to your battles.

I have not made any changes to this yet. I'm working on some other plugins.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
Bump because I fixed the issue cherry brought up. (Memory leak.)

As a bonus the code also looks much nicer.

Links are auto-updated with the latest code. Feel free to re-download.
author=dragonheartman
Bump because I fixed the issue cherry brought up. (Memory leak.)

As a bonus the code also looks much nicer.

Links are auto-updated with the latest code. Feel free to re-download.


Nicer code ouo?
Will be sure to give this q download when I get home!

Thanks again dragon.
author=dragonheartman
Bump because I fixed the issue cherry brought up. (Memory leak.)
As a bonus the code also looks much nicer.
Links are auto-updated with the latest code. Feel free to re-download.


I have another suggestion for this great plugin of yours...don't know if it is possible...
that is, if you have a monster without poses and you don't want this plugin to be used with it, you could check if the folder for the monster exists and if so make that is doesn't try to use the pictures which they don't exist...
--> in short I suggest to allow using enemies in the common way of the rpg maker
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
Sure I can do that!

That's a good idea. Right now it does a hard crash if the images don't exist, but I can have it completely ignore the plugin if the image can't be found.
author=dragonheartman
Sure I can do that!

Thanks ^^ I would really appreciate that!

Also I hope you don't mind if I have another suggestion... (probably the last one after testing your plugin for some time now)
If you have enough time... it might even come in handy for you too... though it is for very specific cases (not critizing here at all, just want to make your wonderful plugin even better!... and I could need it for myself of course ¬.¬;)

Well if you think it isn't that important or not easy to change just forget about this request ^^

The suggestion is that in your plugin you take the animation pictures from the folder with the name the monster owns in the monster database. However if you want to have boss monsters which have different forms but should have the same name their forms will automatically have the same graphics (unless you change it to "bossmonstername - form1" or so)

Also if you have monsters with unknown name like "???" you cannot do this, because you cannot create a folder called ???

If there is a way I would suggest the plugin to take the filename of the sprite of the monster in the database and open the folder with it :) (you could also make two different versions of the plugin...if that would mean that you need to change names of files in your project)

Again it's very specific so if it is a problem just forget about it ^^ The plugin is great as it is!
With this plug-in, you still have to use battle animations to show the monster attack right? Or say, not just attack on hero sprite like FF6 or something, but to get the monsters to move towards the hero and then attack, or if a monster has a gun, and there's a shooting anim.
Nightowl
Remember when I actually used to make games? Me neither.
1577
Until dragonheartman implements animation for attacking and skills, yyyyup.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=MarcL
Also I hope you don't mind if I have another suggestion... (probably the last one after testing your plugin for some time now)

Transforming monsters still isn't implemented, but I really need to do that. Some monsters in my own project have that dynamic so it'll be implemented one way or another.

With this plug-in, you still have to use battle animations to show the monster attack right? Or say, not just attack on hero sprite like FF6 or something, but to get the monsters to move towards the hero and then attack, or if a monster has a gun, and there's a shooting anim.

Correct, there is no attacking pose... yet.
Just checked it out, its a good start.

One strange thing: Idle and dead frames are shown, but the "hurt" frames do not show up, the images are there - the project does not crash either.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
"Hurt" is triggered when a monsters HP is reduced. If you are dealing some damage it should trigger. It only displays for a half-second or so while it's flashing, so it may be tough to see.

If you'd like to send a copy of your project I can try to debug it further. Or maybe if you have fraps you could snag a video of what you're seeing? Thanks for checking this out.
@dragonheartman

thanks, but its not so super-important to my project right now. i will try to excactly locate the error and report here again. only thing i can say is: im using the same graphics for both hurt frames to make it display a bit longer, but instead its not displayed at all. have to check resistances/armor, maybe the enemy couldn't be hurt at all in my test.

one more thing: sadly the enemies are removed when they die, it would be much cooler if their corpses (dead frame) would be left on the ground. but i think this is too specific to be doable.
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=Spellbinder
one more thing: sadly the enemies are removed when they die, it would be much cooler if their corpses (dead frame) would be left on the ground. but i think this is too specific to be doable.

I think it's totally possible to do something like this. You would just have to manage a separate array of monster images in dynRPG and display them when the corresponding monster dies. Right now, all it does is manipulate some pointers to images.

Next up I will be adding support for an arbitrary number of animations per-monster.