Sideview Battlers

[Xennial]

This game making gives me a headache, it seems to be one problem after another.

I have created an animated Dragon. I have given this Dragon the full 54 images required to have an animation for every battle stance (ie. dead, evade, thrust etc etc) the file is perfectly spaced and arranged and during battle my animation works perfectly fine.

The problem I have is, when I attack the enemy my skill animation (let's use the slash animation as an example) slashes way above the top of my enemy. The animation is set to attack the centre but doesn't do so. I then changed it so the animation instead attacks at the feet of the enemy and that works fine from what I can tell. If I have it to attack the head the animation is way off in outer space out of view.

Now that's not all, when I put tags into the skill so my actor approaches the enemy, the difference between front base, front, front center and front head are off the scale. Front base has him move to front base but if I try moving to front my actor is at the top of the enemy image, if I try for front center he's off into orbit and front head he's out of the solar system.

It's as though my enemy image has a top invisible half which is impossible because my sideview character sheet is perfectly proportioned and my animated images show up perfectly during battle.

Does anyone know what the problem is? all help is appreciated.

[JohnDoeNews]

Do you use any plugins for this animation?

One thing is important, if you battler is like 150% as tall as the default battlers, the grid should be 150% too. If your battler sheet is 200% taller, and your battler itself is only 150% taller, you indeed have an invisible spave above your battler.

[Xennial]

I just did a test, I created an animation and I placed a fireball image in each corner of the animation window and one in the very middle and set it to last 40 frames, when I attacked the dargon the animation window for some reason is offsetting upwards. Instead of the middle off the dragon being in the middle of the animation window the bottom of the animation window is acting at the middle point. I can't fathom why, my spritesheet does not leave any free space above or below the dragon, the edges of each dragon image is touching the tips of the Dragon. This problem doesn't appear to happen for the regular side view sprites, they're showing up in the middle of the animation window as they should.

[JohnDoeNews]

Oh I miss understood. I thought it was the battler you cutomized.

You might want to look into the Action Sequence Packs by Yanfly.
http://yanfly.moe/yep/ (scroll down to the battle core, you will need that one too, the packs are right under the battle core.)

Oh, if you're new to yanfly plugins, chech the video's posted with each plugin.

[Xennial]

Yes the battler is my customised Dragon, a compeltely fresh image not related to the games original dragon image. I also already have all the plugins.
I just realised I may need to alter the anchor point for this image but it doesn't let me do it. The note tags don't work, It only works when I change the figures on the plugin but that would affact every side view enemy which is no good.

[Xennial]

So I scaled my dragon down in increments to see what it looked like, it appears that as you scale up an image the animation box does not scale the same way, it does not scale in all directions, it basically expands bigger upwards and sideways but not downwards which is what causes the problem. This causes the image to go from the middle of the animation box to the bottom as the size increases and as my anchor points aren't working im pretty much screwed. All my enemies are going to have to be tiny.

[Caethyril]

Originally posted by SoulSpark:

So I scaled my dragon down in increments to see what it looked like, it appears that as you scale up an image the animation box does not scale the same way, it does not scale in all directions...

I think it works OK if you scale the battler image itself rather than using notetags? But make sure the final image has width and height a multiple of 9 x 6 (number of frames in each direction) so that the frames are all the same, whole-number size.

[Xennial]

I'm not scaling my battler with notetags, the battler is scaled on the sprite sheet itself. The larger the image on the sprite sheet the more off balance the animation window becomes. I can't scale the image with notetags because my battler animation is detailed and to scale it down on the sheet and then scale it with tags would make it look terrible. If I could anchor my individual battler in the notetags it would possibly get fixed but the notetags aren't doing anything and I don't know why because I've managed to do it previously.

[Xennial]

I guess I could scale my enemy down a little, expand the sheet a little so it creates more blank space underneath the enemy and it might level out enough to not be too bad.

[Caethyril]

Originally posted by SoulSpark:

I'm not scaling my battler with notetags, the battler is scaled on the sprite sheet itself. The larger the image on the sprite sheet the more off balance the animation window becomes.

Oh, I haven't encountered that issue before. Are you sure your plugins are up-to-date? Not sure what the cause might be...

Edit:

Originally posted by SoulSpark:

I guess I could scale my enemy down a little, expand the sheet a little so it creates more blank space underneath the enemy and it might level out enough to not be too bad.

Sounds like a good idea! =)

[JohnDoeNews]

You can try taking an excisting battler, scale the whole image, to fit the new battlers size. Now you have an example of how high/wide your character should be, so keep the annimation settings work right.

If this appears to be to small for your character, scale the example up some more. Is it too big, scale it a little down.

The thing is, you need to scale the empty space in the same rate you scale the battler, or else your face would be where the software things your chest is, or the other way around.

I work with battles twice as high (but not twice as wide) as the originals. I had to change the hight of weapons used once, but I didn't have any problems with the aimations.

The animation will not scale at all, automatically after you scale your battler.

[Xennial]

The height and width of my Dragon battler is equal. The problem is simply the animation window moves up as the image increase in size rather than expanding outwards in all directions, causing the centre point to rise to the top of the battler image.

[Xennial]

Cos the bottom of the animation window seems to always remain by the battlers feet I guess I'll just have to set every attack to attack the feet of the enemy and give them all small legs
lol.

[Marquise*]

Maybe not related to your problem althought someone warned me to be careful when I sprite those about his collision box script, but...

I'm pretty curious about your dragon. It is rare to see some in animated battlers or have peoples making them. :) Did you used Spriter for it?

[Xennial]

Nah mate, I just found a decent dragon image, free to use for my project and used getpaint.net to animate it in different ways, it's standard wait animation has it flapping it's wings and waving it's tail and there's smoke coming from it's nostrils lol. I did want it's wings to match it floating in the air but because of the problems i'm having I can't float it because if it's high up in float mode when attacked the animation goes off the screen. I have given it other special animations for when it's hit by different types of states and I've added an animation for when it's near death with wounds and the look of exhaustion. One of the attack moves I've given it is animated fire breathing.

[Marquise*]

You did that from a single image? Wow you got patience. :) Hope we all see your game once finished. (Off-course I will try to get a peek on that draconic presence. ;) )