Requesting help with animated cut-ins.

[NiaKurukan]

I've been trying to make it so when certain actions are performed in combat, a cut-in effect plays in the form of a battle animation. I've looked elsewhere for such an effect, but have only found one that uses an image from the "show picture" command, and only for skills.
The effect I'm going for is one for using normal attacks, one for using melee skills, one for using spells, and one for ultimate attacks. While the skills/spells/ultimate attack are all relatively possible (albeit it a way that I don't want to do it), I can't get it to work with normal attacks.

For the sake of explanation, I want it to be like the cut-ins from the Persona series, in a manner of speaking, but I want the character that appears to be animated, and I figure using a battle animation would work for this better than trying to use multiple pictures, and to be able to use it to give normal attacks for the main characters a bit more style.
Also, I don't want it to change the attack itself (the normal punches/slashes/etc.). Basically, I want it to play a cut-in of the attacking party member, followed by the actual hit animation.

Also, I'm not sure I can use the method of changing the attack command into a skill, as the way I have the game set up, you equip skills you've learned before using them in battle, and I'm not sure that change would work (although, I haven't tried it, and frankly, I'd prefer to do things differently if at all possible).
I'm also using YanFly's Ace Engine, if that's any help.

To basically sum up, is there a way to set a conditional branch or something that essentially says "Character A uses attack, so Animation A is used to represent" then the normal attack animation follows? And for different techniques "Character A uses magic/skill/whatever, so Animation B/C/D plays", followed by the spell/skill animation?
Even if I have to add it to each battle individually, that'd be fine. I know RPG Maker 2003 could do this, but they've changed it so much in VX Ace.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I wanted to be clear in what I'm after. If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it.

[Kio Kurashi]

Something like what happens with limit breaks in FF7, but not in the 3d scope perhaps? Or are you reffering to the trigger pull animation done by the characters behind the cut-in eyes pic in persona(since you said that series)?

I'm not sure just how well an amiation like that could be done. Perhaps if you had a animation file that left no room for the battle to seep through you could cast it as an area animation (as opposed to single target) however this comes with the drawback that you are restricted to a 192x192 image cell(5 cells per row. up to 20 rows).

For how to tell who has attacked or cast a spell you could add this into the begining of your damage formula.

v[X] = a.id;

X represents a number that you choose of a game variable that will store the information for use in a conditional branch. All that you'd need to do with that is have conditional braches in a common event check for the ID of the actor (the variable) and then play the animation you want accordingly. Basicly "if X equals 1 show EricAttackAnimation." This common event would be called by the skill that you want the animation for. If multipule skills/attacks use the same animation then have them call the same event.

That method is untested however so I'm not sure exactly when the Common Event will be called. It may be that it is called after the attack animation and if your going with something like Persona that would obviously not work.

Cheers to getting what you want handled! I'm sure that there are ways to improve what I have said here with scripts, but I'm going to leave that to you to decide if you want to pursue that route.

[NiaKurukan]

In the manner of how I want it displayed... it'd be sorta like the cut-in with the eyes, but it would serve the purpose of the Persona summoning (in essence). It'd show the character doing their action, then the normal attack/skill/spell would play afterwards, as opposed to it being part of the actual attack animation.
Basically, it would be character action appears on screen cut-in > actual attack animation plays, instead of character action appears on screen as the attack.
I think it can probably be done with techniques pretty easily, but for the normal attack, I have no idea how to trigger it.

The size of the image wouldn't be too much trouble, since I have no problem with using multiple cells for one image (and in theory, I could use more than one animation and just have one play after another seemlessly).

Like I said before, I knew how to do this in RM2K3, as there, you could set it in a battle event that read basically like "If "actor" uses Attack command, play "animation," but there's no default setting like that in VX Ace, sadly. I'm sure there's some kind of script that can do that, but I don't know what it is.

I do appreciate the info on how to add the character ID though, as I didn't quite know the method of doing that. Still learning a lot of this stuff.
Thanks for the help.

[Kio Kurashi]

The normal attack is the first skill so it should work just like any other tech.

[NiaKurukan]

I actually tried that, but it only changed things for the enemies.
But maybe I can rig it or something? I'll have to look into it.

Let's hope I can figure something out.
At least the worst case scenario just results in it not being as flashy as it is in my head (which it probably won't be, but that's beside the point).