changing animations?

[mecurylighthouse]

so Ive been working with some abilities and i made a Plasma variation that (if i knew how to do this) would cast a normal plasma while attacking in other words a sort of combo attack like quick strike or anihalation but is there a way to edit animation arguements?

[Kioll]

The answer to that, my friend, is yes.  Animation arguments are in the little white box to the right of the animation number in question when you're in the abilities editor.  That said, you may find that changing the argument will have an unforeseen side effect.  Also, certain things are not available in the editor.  For instance, I believe if you want to make something into an EPA, you have to do it without the editor.  (I could be wrong on this, so don't quote me on it, but last I checked, that was the case.)  Secondly, the idea of having the Plasma animation while executing a physical attack is not related to animation arguments.  Honestly, I don't know if that's even possible, unless maybe somehow that's how it works with EPA's.  Doubtful, though.  My advice to you, start a little smaller.  Don't get me wrong, push yourself into learning new things.  But start with slightly less ambitious goals, work your way up to things like that.  Then again, no one listens to me anyways.

[Misery]

This can be done, and is actually very simple. Since you're probably not familiar with hex editing, the easiest way would be to change an unleash or other ability that already strikes the enemy instantly (like terra strike, mortal danger, frostbite, etc) and give it Plasma's animation index. I expect that would cause a character to attack while Plasma's animation plays. Animation arguments are primarily used for different animations in psynergy series, Plasma with an argument of 00 would use its normal animation, but 01 would use Shine Plasma and 02 would use Spark Plasma. Summons are generally a psynergy with a different argument. Also, some enemy attacks and unleashes need to have their argument set to 04 or the game will crash.

If you want to be able to use any ability index for it, you can check out this topic, although the address listed there is in the format of ROM bank + address, not the actual address you see in a hex editor.