Hello! Just making this post as a more formal announcement for a patch I have been working on over the past little while. It does things. The changelog as of 12:00AM EDT, 30/5/15 is below. Please note the "to do" portion, as a few of these IDs will likely be tweaked or wiped out once I combine related animations and make them utilize argument numbers. Yes, even ones that I have already added to the animation list. I have also cleared out a number of duplicate or obsoleted IDs, which will be listed once the patch is actually available.
Quote
Changes:
24 - Split code, only has Healing x03 (now tiers like other healing)
25 - Uses argument; x00 - Venus Revive, x01 - Mercury, x02 - Mars
26 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Purple Dull (unused), x01 - Impair, x02 - Weaken, x03 - Dull
27 - Changed, Uses argument; x00 - Impact, x01 - Guard, x02 - Ward, x03 - Granite
28 - Uses argument; x00 - Zephyr, x01 - Flash, x02 - Iron, x03 - Steam (unused)
29 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Shade, x01 - Coal, x02 - Fog Imapct (unused), x03 - Steam
30 - Uses argument; x00 - Guard Aura
31 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Taint, x01 - Poison, x02 - Delude, x03 - Paralyze
32 - Tweaked to use code for argument; x00 - Charm, x01 - Mystic Flame, x02 - Drown, x03 - Demonfire
42 - Tweaked code so Drain x02 requires argument 2 (old arguments still in place)
44 - Changed to Healing x04, replaced duplicate (now tiers like other healing)
48 - Added Anime Attack, uses argument; x00 - Boost Hack, x01 - Twin Shear
50 - Uses argument; x00 - Demon Night, x01 - Rumble, x02 - Haunting, x03 - Thorny Grave
52 - Tweaked to use argument; x00 - Comet Slash (unused), x01 - Quick Strike, x02 - Vorpal Slash, x03 - Lunar Slash
57 - Changed base animation function so it can use arguments (now tiers like slash)
60 - Uses argument; x00 - Planet Diver, x01 - Planetary
61 - Uses argument; x00 - Titan Blade, x01 - Acheron's Grief, x02 - Unfinished Blade
64 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Whorl, x01 - Gale, x02 - Lethe Albion, x03 - Poison Flow
65 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Raging Flood, x01 - Unfinished Purple Current
70 - Changed to Purple Blast/Nova (repositioned Thrash explosion, original still works fine)
79 - Uses argument; x00 - Bramble Card, x01 - Frost Card, x02 - Flame Card, x03 - Thunder Card
86 - Uses argument; x00 - Thunder Mine, x01 - Earth Force, x02 - Plasma Globe (unused)
87 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Sleep Card, x01 - Baffle Card, x02 - Death Card, x03 - Sword Card
101 - Uses argument; x00 - Heavy Divide, x01 - Strong Hit
106 - Uses argument; x00 - Dreamtide, x01 - Watery Grave, x02 - Combined Wave
113 - Uses argument; x00 - Shred, x01 & x02 - Star Magician Attack & Critical, x03 - Mine Ball
114 - Uses argument; x00 - Purgatory, x01 - Djinn Storm, x02 - Djinn Blast, x03 - Unfinished Gold
180 - Added Skull Gas x05 (background distortion effect)
183 - Added Dagger Rain (unused animation)
186 - Added Slash x08 (unused unleash; same as unleash, but also tiers like standard Slash and new Cutting Edge)
225 - Changed to Healing x0E, replaced duplicate (tiers like other healing)
230 - Uses argument; x00 - Balm, x01 - Tinder, x02 - Regen Dance, x03 - Non-Djinni Feather
234 - Uses argument; x00 - Waft, x01 - Aroma, x02 - Bare Djinni (unused), x03 - Purple Aroma (unused)
236 - Uses argument; x00 - Core, x01 - Cannon, x02 - Mars Ground Pound
240 - Uses argument; x00 - Rime, x01 - Haze
242 - Changed to Geode
243 - Changed to Serac
246 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Gasp, x01 - Parch (unused), x02 - Reflux, x03 - Djinn Counter
247 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Mold, x01 - Shine, x02 - Lull, x03 - Counter-rush
248 - Uses argument; x00 - Demon Eye, x01 - Claw Slash, x02 - Formina Sage, x03 - Beat Dance
249 - Uses argument; x00 - Element Swap, x01 - Cage, x02 - Clarion Cry, x03 - Psy Boost
264 - Added Unfinished summon/unleash sequence (most likely)
265 - Added Doom Dragon Battle Entrance
266 - Added Doom Dragon Transformation (boom, head shot)
285 - Added Venus ePow boost
286 - Added Mercury ePow boost
287 - Added Mars ePow boost
288 - Added Jupiter ePow boost
290 - Added Venus Djinni Set
291 - Added Mercury Djinni Set
292 - Added Mars Djinni Set
293 - Added Jupiter Djinni Set
300 - Uses argument; x00 - Sonic Wave, x01 - Shriek, x02 - Banshee Howl, x03 - Wicked Howl
301 - Uses argument; x00 - War Cry
302 - Changed to Sound (base) - Smooth blue rings, resulting from no defined argument?
303 - Changed to Gust
304 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Bear Claw, x01 - Bacteria Rush, x02 - Freebite Rush, x03 - Gust (same as 303)
305 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Ur Flash, x01 - Crusher Grip, x02 - Vanish Claw, x03 - Claw Attack
307 - Changed to Crazy Voice from 303
308 - Changed to Wing Beat from 306
309 - Changed to Wing Flutter from 307
310 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Mars Charge (unused), x01 - Mercury Charge, x02 - Jupiter Charge, x03 - Venus Charge
311 - Uses argument; x00 - Bone Charge, x01 - Onslaught
313 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Bone Chiller, x01 - Sticky Goo, x02 - Sticky Poison, x03 - Rotten Blood
314 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Mad Spatter, x01 - Decompose, x02 - Poison Ink, x03 - Mud
315 - Uses argument; x00 - Rising Venom, x01 - Formic Acid
322 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Double Fang, x01 - Poisonous Bite, x02 - Acid Bite, x03 - Cannibal Fang
323 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Vampiric Fang, x01 - Electric Bite, x02 - Numbing Sting, x03 - Twin Beaks
324 - Uses argument; x00 - Mortal Blow, x01 - Poison Tail, x02 - Rabid Fang, x03 - Drain Fang
325 - Uses argument; x00 - Mad Zephyr(a), x01 - Mad Zephyr(b), x02 - Heat Stun, x03 - Maneater
326 - Changed, uses argument; x00 - Angle Spike, x01 - Firework Fang (unused), x02 - Burst Bite (unused), x03 - Kill Sting
327 - Uses argument; x00 - Frost Bite (unused)
344 - Uses argument; x00 - Soothing Star, x01 - Sleep Star, x02 - Slaver, x03 - Unused Particle Test
348 - Uses argument; x00 - Spasm, x01 - Berserk, x02 - Recovery, x03 - Sack
353 - Changed to Flame Cloak x04
382 - Uses argument; x00 - Poison Beat, x01 - Spinning Beat, x02 - Plain Purple Tentacle (unused)
388 - Uses argument; x00 - Large blast, x01 - Small blast, x02 - Moderate blast
389 - Changed to Mighty Press from 394, and uses argument; same as 388, but now the explosions are red
395 - Changed to Slash x0A (Ice Breath, was formerly 402)
400 - Uses argument; x00 - Fire, x01 - Blue Fire (unused), x02 - Water, x03 - Deadly Gas
401 - Uses argument; x00 - Acid, x01 - Storm, x02 - Dark, x03 - Evil
402 - Uses argument; x00 - Petra, x01 - Fugue, x02 - Aging Gas, x03 - Fire Dance (unleash)
403 - Uses argument; x00 - Toxic, x01 - Sand, x02 - Desert Gasp, x03 - Black Ice
404 - Uses argument; x00 - Typhoon Blow, x01 - Djinnfest, x02 - Heat Kiss, x03 - Fire Dance (enemy)
405 - Uses argument; x00 - Gravel Blow, x01 - Darksol Gasp, x02 - Fury, x03 - Storm
406 - Uses argument; x00 - Char, x01 - Light Fire (unused)
433 - Changed to Charge x0A
437 - Uses argument; x00 - Human Hunt, x01 - Echo Cut
451 - Changed to Drain x05, old drain now arg 2 of animation 42
465 - Uses argument; x00 - Djinn Stun, x01 - Mystic Call, x02 - Djinn Stun+ (more particles)
- Unset the Beam-family arguments, so each beam can use arguments 0-2.
- Animations 285-288 share the same code, but the new code uses subtraction to calculate the actual ID for the
ePow boost animation; they also all have tiers, like healing animations; also doesn't do much to target.
- Animations 290-293 work the same as 285-288, only with a different base animation; no tiers though.
- Also removed a bunch of duplicates, but I can't remember which IDs they were. Oh well, there's a list of
duplicates floating around somewhere anyway. You can also compare ROMs to figure that out yourself.
- Oh, and I even "combined" several animations to clear up some pointers in the list; many animations may no longer
have their own IDs, instead being decided by the argument (functioning exactly like the Drain spells).
- One exception to this is 113 - Shred, where the other animations still exist in the same format they did before;
this basically just adds alternate variations of those that use the casting animation.
Removed:
To do:
- Tweak 266 - Doom Dragon Transformation so it can also do two heads
- Make enemy attack animations more accessible
- Combine larger families into subgroups based on argument, like...
Consider:
- Rearranging pointers/IDs so they are better organized
- Add varieties of certain "poorly aligned" animations with fixed positioning
Now, the reason for this announcement being posted before the patch is even ready is because of something else I would like to announce. In the future, I will treat this patch as an "official update" of sorts for the base GS2 ROM.
I plan on basing any and all future battle animation patches on this one. This is because a number of IDs and a fair amount of space have been cleared up, meaning that future patches can utilize this free space and minimize the risk of them being incompatible with other patches.
As such, I also plan on removing the Jupiter healing particle patch; it is and will continue to be unnecessary.Feel free to ask any questions that you may have about this little overhaul. This may also be a good time to get me to double check IDs if you want to plan ahead or otherwise need to know about a particular ID for whatever reason, since I'm doing a lot with them right now.
[spoiler=Irrelevant to topic]Wow. There are three separate "divebomb into purple explosion" animations that are each used and all very similar; the only differences are in blast tiers and jump height.[/spoiler]
This pleases me. Carry on.
Sweet, it's nice knowing that this won't be a total waste of time!
Also, yeah. I think I have gone through most of the animation families and combined them when possible. Many of them use arguments now; the only downside to this is it looks like the "may multiply damage by #" ability effects just simply overwrite the argument with a different value and proceed from there, so the animations that do this may not look so great with those effects. Silver lining is that it's a pretty easy fix, one which anyone can do by creating a separate pointer and manually assigning an animation/child argument with some extremely basic assembly (which more or less looks like "start -> value -> branch -> end").
Although those effects would probably be used a minority of the time by most people anyway, especially when there are so many other animations available. Shouldn't be a huge issue.
We really need more stuff like this - anything to make the process of using the editor easier is a great boon. This should help quite a lot when trying to make or edit spells.
Definitely agree with you there. That's the main reason I am thinking of reorganizing the animation list a little differently as well, but that could be a lot of work to worry about until near the very end.
Also, I'm currently looking to see if I can tweak the Blast (Nova) animation code and/or list ID animations (jumping ones like Thrash, of which there are three similar purple ones and no red ones) so we can have a little more variety with them. Almost like the Cutting Edge change. After this, I mostly just want to take a quick look into enemy attack animations and expand the Doom Dragon transformation thing for a little more variety. May or may not be approaching the final stretches for this patch.
Edit: Okay, so I think I figured out why two blast/nova variants are locked to the casting sprite's position. They aren't assigned coordinates, so they default to 0,0. Looks like there should be an easy workaround though; I'll see about adding a standard purple blast/nova in the list somewhere.
Edit 2: Just tweaked the base function slightly. Purple blast/nova should be in with no problem at all. I'll just see if I can update one of the Thrash variants with a red explosion and maybe call it a day.
I wish animations were a multi-layered thing. Imagine if we could mix and match animations for the ability, pallet, pose, and if there's a djinn popping up...
The hilarious thing is that some animations are just shy of being exactly that. Healing particles are a good example, and Cure is excellent; many (if not all) of the healing particle animations will double up as djinn and apply the graphic if the ability is set as a djinni one. A lot of these also have set palettes (which are either linked to the graphic or assigned afterward) that are pretty easy to change as well. Like, Cure's animation is literally Flower the djinni. As for pose, there are other animations that practically set that up before linking to the actual animation. You can also get jumping, sliding, etc. in before and/or after an individual animation plays if you know how to do it.
But yeah, it would be great if more were like this. Oh well!
Yeah, there's several animations that I'd love to use, but they're tied to specific caster animations. If only we could pick and choose whether they're casting, attacking, casting then attacking, jumping at some point, etc. That would open up so many possibilities...
Oh, you mean the tri-bubble and stuff? I use a version of the editor that lets me change certain things like that, so I guess I kind of take this animation stuff for granted in a way.
Also decided to search for more unused animations, and I found about three more (four if I count what is either a second copy or a second part to the fireball battlefield thing). Also found about 1-2 functions that looked a lot like animations, but they refused to play. I guess I'll find out in the future.
Newly discovered animations, with some names and basic descriptions to hopefully give people an idea of what they look like:
184 - Added Brine (unused Mercury djinni unleash)
- Reminds me of Salt, only it's pure blue. The djinni goes directly above the target before pouring healing particles on them, which go downward in a sort of V shape; not quite
like Wish, but this djinni is practically a combination of the two
- Particles also have a set destination; may be set just a little too high (just above Jenna's head when she uses it, really high above a Vermin)
- Multi-target works well, as the djinni will just go to the middle of the target range
185 - Added Elemental Harvest (unused animation)
- Basically, a bunch of djinn/element-coloured particles are drawn toward a central point in the middle of the battlefield before coalescing into a small particle before vanishing;
they do not actually target anyone in particular; there are four colours
- Alternate name: Djinn Companions Union (DCU) Local 8
187 - Added Grim Omen (unused animation)
- It's almost like Gasp, but with a single graphic that is layered over the target in a similar manner to the candle in Curse (no sound)
Unfortunately, I can't really confirm if there are any more. Went through the huge block of code where all of the animations are stored, and these were some of the only new ones that I could find.
Yeah, I tried to make a spell out of the Mad Zephyr animation a while back... kinda awkward when your character always swings their weapon to do it. The annoying thing is that I know how you've actually figured out what determines that, it's just that it's likely stupidly difficult to code for the editor.
Oh man, yeah. It's the same thing with Star Magician's attack and related variants, though at least this overhaul adds versions of those that use the standard casting animation as well. Come to think of it actually, I think I inadvertently did the same thing with Mad Zephyr back when I grouped all of the child animations up using argument IDs... might be worth a test when this patch is done.
But the weirdest (or second weirdest when you consider all the duplicates in the list) thing about some of these animations by default is that they have rather unnecessary restrictions placed on them. Cutting Edge is a perfect example; the function it shares with Slash and the like is set up so Cutting Edge can't tier like Slash can. I think it even manually sets it to tier 2 so it always uses the largest graphic? Can't remember, but the point is that it would have even made the code a tiny bit shorter if it just didn't do that to begin with.
So if we were to dig a bit deeper, and made a more versatile version of the editor, we might be able to manipulate it so you could customize animations to a degree? A brown version of Mine Ball sent from a Venus Caster, for example...
It's all assembly, so it would still be fairly difficult. Especially because not all animations have segments to reassign palette (i.e. Volcano does, Growth doesn't), and the ones that do may not necessarily have them line up with the start of the function the same way.There is one notable exception though, aside from changing graphic flags to use element-specific palettes rather than graphic-defined ones.
The 101 Unleashes. All of the animations that use argument 4 and have base IDs from 100-200 are part of the same massive function, and each one more or less has three palette segments. The first one has five options (gold/blue/red/purple, and an odd yellow that is the same colour as the standard tri-bubble Venus casting animation and is the default for when no specific palette is assigned) and is applied right before/as the animation plays (think attack swiping portion). The second I believe is graphic-specific (and is prominent if neither the first or third blend settings are used for it). The third is a blend to a specific finishing palette, and there are a number of options available. The first and third blends are done through pointer lists, which are probably the easiest thing one can change aside from single bytes.
- With three normally unused exceptions, which are the two Slash variants and a Gas variant; they have their own base functions and can't have this blending applied to
them.
- There also seems to be a number of them that are largely unfinished, and so they will just be odd yellow attacks by default. That topic that Sajin made years back should
say which IDs are the unfinished ones, even if it doesn't call them unfinished.
Quote from: 101 Blend #3#08160508; gray? [261]
#08160510; red (moderate yellow) [297]
#08160518; blue gray (light/white blue) [185]
#08160520; yellow/gold (no shine) [277]
#08160528; blue/cyan [304]
#08160530; purple [314]
#08160538; brown/cream (really light yellow) [391]
#08160540; red (white shine) [336]
#08160548; purple/pink [383]
#08160550; blue/cyan [381]
#08160558; yellow (white shine) [388]
#08160560; white (pure white) [359]
#08160568; turquoise [358]
#08160570; orange [376]
#08160578; lime [355]
#08160580; red pixel (not uniform blend) [318]
#08160588; red (high yellow) [328]
#08160590; red (low yellow) [327]
#08160598; violet [361]
#0816059E; [no blend]
So for example, you could make Aqua Sock turn brown part-way through. Garet's plunger lets out a howl! Toilet Flush!
I kid, of course.But, this overhaul won't do a whole lot with these. I might consider changing the two pointer lists for the 101 group into bytes instead and add a more options for variety, but then there's still the issue of deciding which palette options to add.
For the actual editor question, I could theoretically see an addition that adds template assembly options for things like pre-animation jump height and the like. Still seems like more work than it's worth though.
This... makes me even more excited for this patch of yours, simply because of what it lays the groundwork to do. Mad props, squirt. Mad props.
In the assembly, is it in regular locations? Could, for instance, options be added to the editor so that it just plugs in what it'd need in assembly for what you want it to do?
Thanks!
As for that second one, it would be ludicrously difficult to do that because then the base code would have to be rearranged for most animations. Recalculating addresses, pointers, branches, etc. would take far more effort than it's worth. Gets even worse if one wants to do both GS games, since the animation functions differ considerably between the two from the looks of things... which reminds me, I might check out GS1 later to see if I can find any GS1-exclusive animations in the code.
Or did you mean for the 101? Because a lot of those are in fixed locations, so that would be considerably more feasible than for almost anything else.
Otherwise, template stuff would basically involve adding a pointer to the list, and some basic value+branching stuff; still pretty fast and easy to do it manually though. Might make a tiny assembly guide for it when the patch is done.
Edit: Oops, looks like the first 101 blending thing has another palette that I overlooked because it's only used by a handful of them. Turns out one of these unleashes can start out grey as well.
Well, if the data has a specific location it needs to be in for each animation, and each component of the animations has a specific batch of code, then we'd have to have an animation editor tab. You'd have to pick each animation slot, state which character action type, which animation style, which palette (if valid), and a toggle for if a djinn pops up.
Sure, you could do this manually, but... the point of the editor was to provide some easy to use tools to work with. I mean, you could technically do assembly for the whole freaking game if you wanted, after all. The fact that it's not there yet is what drove most people away from the project.
I suppose so, although the only thing that would be 100% consistent are animation slots/IDs. Mind clarifying what you mean by both "action type" and "animation style" though? As for the djinni toggle, that's already a thing if you use Teawater/Fox' alpha map editor version. It still won't come up unless the animation is compatible with it in the first place, but it's there.
Makes enough sense. I don't really have the knowledge to pull it off though...
Oh, and I have slightly restructured the 101's first palette blend code so it works really similarly to the Simple Success Rates patch. Frees up some room for more palette swaps; have a dedicated pointer list with enough space for about 18 more swaps (24 total, but I might make it 30 or so), and the empty area that comes after the new byte table should be enough room to implement them all. I figure I can toy around with it a bit and then pick about 6-8 new ones to be included with this patch, which would leave some room for people to add their own if they wish. I'm thinking one or two greens, pink, orange... some of the same options that I posted before with one or two new ones.
Going to do the same with the other portion of palette blending in a bit, although likely with fewer empty pointers.
Action type:
Character casting animation
Character attacking animation
Character jumps and attacks
Character starts casting animation, shifts to attack animation
etc
Animation style:
Quake
Growth
Fire
Volcano
etc
Basically, Action Type is what the character's animation is. Animation style is what the spell's animation is.
Ah, I see. What you define as action type varies a fair bit though; the character casting animation is basically what Fox and I call ability type (includes standard attack, tri-bubble, Gaia party fade, Mold/Meld, etc.) and can already be done with the alpha map editor release, but that other stuff seems sensible enough. Still a little tricky, but nowhere near as much as making a full assembly editor would be. Don't have the knowledge/skill in other programming languages to attempt that myself though.
Well anyway, tiny update. Decided to go ahead and edit the palette blend code for the 101 Unleashes. There are 24 total for the first part and I have filled every entry, which took forever because it seems like the majority of the palettes are either the same as other ones or kind of ugly when used this way (and I swear that about 80% of the decent ones are very minor deviations from the standard yellow/blue/red/purple set, which explains why there are so many animations that just use these palettes).
- 00-05 = buff yellow/gold/blue/red/purple/grey (original set).
- 06-0F = turquoise/pink/lime/ash/orange/fire/aquamarine/violet/sand/indigo
- 10-17 = navy/camo/hot pink/silver/lava/green/white/azure
Haven't gotten to the other portion yet, but that will come in time.
Edit: About time I show an example image. This is Echo, with the lime palette applied to it instead of the standard gold/Venus palette.
(http://i.imgur.com/Le4tVSb.png)
I bet something like this could look pretty cool for Sap...
Edit: Uploaded! Everything anyone needs to know is included in the download post, but I'll be up front about the one downside; it will likely take a fair amount of time to reassign animations to the majority of the game's abilities, since every animation past animation 283 has been moved to an earlier point in the list and many earlier ones have either been relocated or outright removed (there were so many duplicates, wow). Enjoy.
Wow. Goodspeed with the project then. I assume we can look forward to incremental updates as you get section by section done?
Hard to say. I don't know if I want to do this for a while, but I like the idea of restructuring certain animations in a similar way to how I handled the 101 Unleashes change. For example, changing the base healing function so you can assign particle graphic and palette to each individual animation and maybe even add more variants. I would probably consider this for the base healing, revive, buff, and debuff animations. Not sure yet, I need to take a little break from animation stuff for a bit before I make up my mind.
I'm not planning to reassign animations to abilities at all though, and I have a couple reasons for that:
1) Such a change would largely benefit unmodified ROMs and screw with edited abilities in modified ones. Users of hacked ROMs would likely still have to go through it and make their own changes again; especially if they want to use any of the new unused/fixed animations that have been added (i.e. Purple Blast/Nova).
2) Pain in the butt. I've been doing this for Disco Sun and it took me a few hours to even reach the 2/3 mark. The positive side is I only have to do a mass edit like this once, which is likely true for other people as well.
Also, for those who missed the chatbox announcement, I released a slight bug fix for some of the slash variants and corrected the changelog. I recommend reinstalling it if you have not already done so.
Having a baseline patch supplemental to the Animation List Overhaul patch would be useful though. If you've already modified things then obviously you're going to have to do it manually, but it would still be useful for people starting a new hack to have the ability to fix the base game abilities via a secondary patch. Especially since your notes in the OP don't list all of the exact abilities that each animation goes with.
That's certainly true, but at the same time it's a lot of work for me to do when I could be working on other patches. Like this one tiny patch that changes how a few ability effects work. I haven't ruled it out entirely though, it's just not on my list of priorities right now.
Also, a little oversight; I didn't realize that Claw Slash (I think was the name) tiers, so I accidentally cut out a couple options; i.e. Vital Moon. Also, things like Double Fang and the like aren't fully compatible with multiplying ability effects. I'll work on an update that remedies these issues over the weekend, but I'm not going to add a lot of "multiplier compatible" animations unless they were used in that manner in an unmodified game.
Edit: Okay, updated to add an animation or two. The original Double Fang and Twin Beaks variants aren't affected by the multiplier in the original, but there are pretty close alternatives in the last unused bite and Mad Zephyr; decided to not add copies back in just for those two. What I did add are the following:
38 - Jupiter Revive (uses argument 3, and I think it may even be compatible with djinni effects)
218 - Claw Slash (tiers)
I recommend that whoever has installed this do so again. Sorry for the inconvenience!
So, how do you actually get at the original 101 unleashes? What animation IDs are they all set to, if any? I ask because I kinda still want to get at them without having to do too much assembly.
Edit: Actually, are they still in the same places they were, as animation whatever.4? Yes.
Edit 2: Is reversed camera still 128+normal argument? Yes.
Edit 3: To avoid the problem with Double Fang using Poisonous Bite's animation when it does double damage, you could duplicate it as argument 1 of animation 145, which is that unused Frost Bite thingy. As for Twin Beaks, if the multiplier thingy works the way I think it does, there won't be a problem as long as there's nothing on 141.4.
Edit 4: Tier 3 Blast Breath is so completely unnecessary holy arceus hahaha.
Yeah, I think Twin Beaks is fine but not Double Fang. The Frost Bite thing is actually Double Fang too I think. (Nope). I may make a standalone patch for it later, but I'd rather wait to see if there are any others like that I missed... or if you/anyone else can suggest other minor additions as well. Changing casting/attack animations (not ability type), jump heights, and even chaining animations should be possible. As Jamie said, Frost Bite is pretty similar to Double Fang and can double for it if necessary.
As for the crossed out stuff, that's exactly it.
Also not 100% sure because I think it was already positioned weird before the patch, but I may have screwed up Blast/Nova's positioning. I can make a fix later if I did.
Re: Edit 4: Lol, yup! I mostly just included it for fun. There may be a couple others like that if I recall correctly.
For Severe Blow (according to the post on the download page), it's also possible I could have messed up its pointer or something. Should be a super easy fix if that happens to be the case.
Edit: Um, there may be something on 141.4. Been almost a month since I checked though.
Chaining animations could be a thing? That opens up so many possibilities!
Mighty Press followed by Fume seems like it would have potential; user leaps at the foe and blows them up, then releases a Fume to intercept them mid-fall.
Another fun idea would be Serpent Fume immediately followed by Agatio's Rising Dragon.
Another one that might look neat would be something like Mighty Press or Death Plunge, immediately followed by tier 1 Blast Breath; user launches foe into the air, then lasers them on the way down. Death Plunge might even make the laser appear to start from the right location if it starts just as the user bounces away after Death Plunge.
Also, 57.1 followed by 57.3. Launch the foe into the air with a diagonal upward strike, then leap after them for a follow-up slash.
Oh, by the way: Both variants of animation 152 (152.0 — Char and 152.1 — Light Fire) soft-lock the game when targeting multiple foes, specifically after the first foe takes damage when you try to scroll the text to the amount of damage the second foe took. I don't remember if animation 146.1 — Blue Fire also has the same issue, but it might. Is there a workable fix for this?
Ice Breath, Chill Breath, Raging Flood, and Djinn Storm animations don't behave properly when targeting multiple foes. The left-most target flinches and shows damage effects/knockback as they should, but the other targets don't flinch until the text comes up indicating the amount of damage they took, and they don't show knockback or other damage effects (such as temporary palette changes caused by some fire or ice moves). This was an issue even in the base game, and it looks really clunky.
Also, how do you get Meld to work properly? Was its animation a direct duplicate of Mold's animation in the base game, so you just use 215.0?
Speaking of Meld, is there any way to make other abilities behave similarly, perhaps using animations other than a standard attack? (For example, making two characters both Fume a target simultaneously, or both leap on a target with an epic explosion using animation 165.4.)
Are there other animations like that Tiamat variant you named "Vietnam" (animation 174)? That is, summon animations that have most/all of the GFX but completely lack the actual summon sprite? If there's one like that for Nereid, that would be really cool.
Is there a way to make animations that are normally designed to hit only one target (such as Vorpal Slash) appear to strike the central target rather than the left-most target? It wouldn't be a perfect fix, but it would make using those animations for multi-target moves look a little less clunky.
If chaining animations is a thing, any way to remove the debuff GFX from animations like Lunar Slash, Meltdown, Shred, Hurricane (unleash), etc.? Or possibly even automate the debuff GFX on those animations to automatically match any debuff the ability applies? (Shattering purple shield for Resistance debuffs, shattering red shield for Defence debuffs, shattering red sword for Attack debuffs, or nothing at all if the move doesn't have a debuff secondary effect.)
Chaining animations: I think so. I don't know how that would look with flinching/damage animations, but I imagine it would be pretty easy to do because some animations (like Severe Blow or the vanilla Cutting Edge) use a little code to change certain other things before playing the actual animation. I imagine one could do something similar and just add a delay between the two animations.
Serpent -> Rising Dragon: Woah, good idea! I'll see if I can test that combination later, I bet that would look really cool. Have to help my grandmother with a couple things first though.
Soft-lock: Damn, lol. I have no idea why that would happen for those two specifically. I can try testing it later, as I don't recall noticing anything like that happening but also can't recall actually testing for multiple targets. I thought I tested the blue fire one and found it to work properly, but I forget for sure.
Odd targeting: Yeah, some animations work differently in that regard than others. The Slash animations are an example where the animation is repeated for every target (pretty sure Ice Breath and Chill Breath are both related to Slash, but not all sibling animations will work the same way), but then you have other animations that either hit every target at the same time and others that only affect a single target visually. Not necessarily sure what it would take to change that for some of them. Raging Flood works the same way as Poison Flow, which I think is a single-target family for the most part, and Djinn Storm may also be the same.
Meld: It was literally the same pointer, yeah. How it normally works is there is a special ability type/effect that lets Meld or Mold do it's thing (it's a part of the same table that makes the screen go dark when you use Gaia, among other things). I can't remember 100% how they are differentiated from one another after that, but it may be ability ID number.
Tiamat: Not that I can remember. I only really recall that and Meteor having other "relatives" in the code, and Meteor's sibling was just a purple palette swap used by Fusion Dragon.
Central targeting: I have no idea, but I imagine for some of them it would be a matter of changing how the targeting/coordinates work. It would be kind of like how Blast or Volcano work I think. I haven't really looked into targeting stuff yet though.
Debuff GFX: I'm sure it would be relatively simply to remove them from some animations (some easier than others), and chaining them should also be pretty simple of my tests later prove that to be the case, but automatically having certain animations selected/added could be a tad trickier and/or longer (as in taking up more code) than just manually adding each individual one or changing them when the need arises.
Oddly enough, Poison Flow actually appears to work just fine when targeting multiple foes, even though Raging Flood is, from what I recall, uncooperative. (Interestingly, that unused "combination wave" that looks like a merge of Dreamtide and Watery Grave works just fine targeting multiple foes.) Or at least, the unused Smog Flow looks fine when targeting multiple foes. All the enemies struck are launched into the air as the gust reaches them.
Just removing debuff GFX from things like Lunar Slash, Meltdown, Shred, and maybe even Heat Kiss would already be quite helpful if animation chaining is going to be a thing. The GFX look, to be blunt, tacky.
Huh. Well, there could be exceptions in place that change how their targeting works. Blaze Rush is a different example of an animation that, while related to it, doesn't target each/any enemy like Slash does.
As for the GFX, I wholly agree that they look tacky. I think I'll consider doing it as a separate patch though; this one is more or less supposed to add animations that already exist without modifying them extensively, with a couple exceptions.
On that note though, I just thought of a way for the buff animations to be applied directly after the normal animation, rather than by chaining them. It would be easier to just create new ability types based on Megaera and Iris and tweak how the targeting works. Basically, those two summons have their standard abilities and then activate a second one (Impact in Megaera's case and Aurora Field for Iris) with both animation and effect. I imagine it would be pretty easy to create some extra types that cast debuff abilities on the selected targets, so that the debuff animations and effects play right after the normal effect. May be able to take it a step further and create extra versions with "success rates" coded into them. The only downside to this is the lack of editor support for additional types, but it would be super easy to set it through hex editing.
Just have to make sure it doesn't result in a game freeze. Attempting to use Megaera's summon slot for a double Impact to the whole party seems to like freezing the game.
Been busy, so I'll test some of this stuff the next time I'm free.
Ouch, that sucks. Is it only Impact that it freezes for, or is it any ability that targets allies?
I think the freeze was most likely caused by Impact's animation trying to run over top of itself.
Couple things. I went over a patched ROM with the editor. There are several animations missing from your list so...I was wondering about that. Also wouldn't the Jupiter healing animation still be useful for people who didn't want to overhaul their whole animation list?
Missing animations: There honestly shouldn't be unless I overlooked a couple arguments (I think I mentioned one example earlier in this topic), but would you mind telling me what you think is missing just in case? Keep in mind that I also removed over a dozen duplicates from the list and combined several others so they use arguments; for example, Lucid Prophecy was an exact duplicate of Curse, Flower a copy of Cure, Revive, Dew, and Spark are all in one entry now, etc. I don't actually name any of the duplicates in the overhaul list, since the plan was to make a separate list of duplicates that I never got around to making.
Jupiter: Not at all, lol. I made that when I was first getting into assembly, and later realized that it was an exact duplicate of an animation that can already be selected in the editor (I want to say it was Ether). So... one can just use that instead.
It's probably just that I don't know which unleashes and use duplicate animations so I can't reassign them using just the change log. Thus far, I cannot find Sargasso, Sarcophagus, and Cyclone Slash. Actually, I think I might just be misunderstanding the change log. The Raiden's Wrath animation is 86 argument 8 right?
Aaah, yeah. Argument 4 animations, which also include the 101 unleashes; none of those have actually been changed (Raiden's Wrath is 186:4, as it was before). I just made it easier to customize some of the palette options/transitions that these unleashes, including Flint, Echo, Aqua Sock, and others use. It does require some very basic knowledge with hex editing, but all one has to do now is change a few bytes per unleash if they want to take advantage of the option. Pretty simple stuff if you know how to use a hex editor.
As for not knowing which animations are duplicates... Um, I had a partial changelog somewhere I think. May be around here, or it may be on my laptop. I can investigate the changes I made to Disco Sun following the overhaul patch, but if it helps the likelihood of an animation actually being missing is pretty low due to the way I organized the pointers before putting everything together. The main issue is simply finding out which IDs were obsoleted, or at least which alternate names were simply excluded from the list.
Are there any in particular that you are having difficulty with? If you can name an animation you don't know the new ID for, I can probably help fix it.
No it seems I just misunderstood what you changed. If the regular djinn/weapon unleash/summon animations can be left where they are, than I just need to rearrange the monster abilities/psynergy and create placeholder abilities for the additions.
Actually, do I need to change the Summon animations and djinn unleashes? Or are they fine as is. It's little confusing when several default animations are now listed as *Crashes game*.
You may need to change anything that didn't use argument 4 before applying the patch. Any ability with an animation that did use argument 4 should be fine.
The *crashes game* thing only means that there is no pointer for the entry in the main animation table; it doesn't account for argument-based exceptions.
Why is Mine Ball listed in two places?
Can't remember. Huh. I'm pretty sure 171 is the true Mine Ball, while the other is probably a similar animation; I don't think it is Angry Mine though, since the common trait between Start Magician's attack (where the first Mine Ball is) and Shred is the fact that they both use an orb while Angry Mine is just an explosion. Have you tested them?
Wasn't one of them Mine Ball and the other a Star Magician critical? I could be wrong though.
/late
I think it must be something like that. Not sure, may test it later to confirm.
Okay, so here's a quick update to talk about the tagging system I plan to use for all additional animation patches. I'd love it if everyone who makes animation patches also use these tags (should others start doing animation stuff), but I'm probably not your parent so whatever.
[OR] - Overhaul Required/Recommended: Using the overhaul is either required to use of the patch or is recommended to make use of all of the changes.
[OO] - Overhaul Optional: Makes no difference whether you use or not (but I still recommend it anyway, the overhaul is awesome).
[OI] - Overhaul Incompatible: Using this with the overhaul will either break something in either patch or just not work. I don't plan to make use of this tag for anything.
Because there isn't yet an overhaul patch for GS1 or GS3, all tags are for GS2 games only. Not sure if this will change in the future: I already know how I will revise the tagging system in the event an overhaul patch is made for either of the other two games.
Edit: Also, I fixed a couple very minor things in the overhaul patch: I recommend that anyone who is using it reinstall the patch. A supplement patch is also coming in the near-ish future to change the added debuff GFX thing (so animations don't add it) as well as another to add more multiplier-compatible animation variants, mainly because they may not be issues for everyone.
Hey everyone! Just letting you know that I've been ironing out some minor bugs I overlooked when I originally made the overhaul, with the most recent ones being that Megaera and Iris would crash the game when starting their secondary effects. I overlooked the fact that the code for these effects not only sets a base ability to use (High Impact for Megaera and Aurora Field for Iris) but also an animation, and the animations they were calling were moved.
As far as I know, the only other thing I need to do is double check and maybe fix some of the animations that use debuff effects as part of the animation itself. However, I don't know what all of these are; would someone be willing to compile a list for me? Oh, and for every animation that uses the "may double" or "may triple" effects! I would be very appreciative. :)
Thanks to everyone who is using this hack for their patience!
Edit: Thanks in part to this topic (http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=286.0), here's a complete list of the 101 animations; blank entries are as of yet unknown or unidentified, and I'm not sure if video exists for any of those unused djinni animations or not.
Quote100 - Bane
101 - Smog
102 - Mist
103 - Fever
104 - Flint
105 - Scorch
106 - Squall
107 - Sap
108 - Echo
109 - Sour
110 - Chill
111 - Gel
112 - Steel
113 - Fog
114 - Unused Djinni
115 - Unused Djinni (completed)
116 - Wheeze
117 - Blitz
118 - Unused Djinni
119 - Unused Djinni
120 - Unused Djinni
121 - Unused Djinni
122 - Unused Djinni
123 - Unused Djinni
124 - Unused Djinni
125 - Unused Djinni
126 - Unused Djinni
127 -
128 -
129 -
130 -
131 -
132 -
133 -
134 -
135 -
136 -
137 -
138 - Terra Strike
139 - Poison Cloud
140 - Poison Death
141 - Mortal Danger, Death Scythe
142 - Bad Omen
143 - Life Nourish
144 - Aqua Sock
145 - [Manually set Blizzard/Ice Breath?]
146 - Frost Bite
147 -
148 - Life Leech
149 - Psy Leech
150 - Broil
151 - Meltdown
152 - Heat Mirage, Heat Flash
153 - Barrage
154 - [Manually set Demon Fire?]
155 - Acid Bath
156 - [Manually set Slash relative?]
157 - Stun Voltage
158 - Blinding Smog
159 - Murk
160 - Cyclone Slash
161 - Psyphon Seal
162 - Asura
163 - Forcible Arm, Grand Golem
164 - Truncheon Fist
165 - [Manually set Blast relative?]
166 - Power Drive
167 - Heat Smash
168 - Stun Cloud
169 - Searing Fog
170 - Ice Crush
171 - Sargasso
172 - Evil Eye
173 - Vein Tap
174 - Scorpionfish
175 - Moon Air
176 - Flash Edge
177 - High Vitals
178 - Flare Burst
179 - Hammersphere
180 - Flash Force
181 - Crucible Fire
182 - Reverse Star
183 - Supernova
184 - Stun Bolt
185 - Sarcophagus
186 - Raiden's Wrath
187 -
188 - Apocalypse
189 - Flash Punch
190 - Armor Crush
191 - Stun Jip
192 - Quick Slash
193 - Bosca Hit
194 - Mother Earth
195 - Roc, Orc
196 - Wild Wolf, Fatal Fang
197 - Dinox, Power Bite
198 - Terrible Bite
199 - Call Zombie
200 -