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Animation List Overhaul Announcement (GS2 patch incoming)

Started by Salanewt, 28, May, 2015, 11:57:42 PM

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Rolina

Wow.  Goodspeed with the project then.  I assume we can look forward to incremental updates as you get section by section done?

Salanewt

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.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Aile~♥

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.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

Salanewt

#23
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!
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Aile~♥

#24
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.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

Salanewt

#25
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.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Aile~♥

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.)
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

Salanewt

#27
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.

Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Aile~♥

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.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

Salanewt

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.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Aile~♥

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.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

Salanewt

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?
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Aile~♥

I think the freeze was most likely caused by Impact's animation trying to run over top of itself.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

Red Dingo

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?

Salanewt

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.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Red Dingo

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?

Salanewt

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.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Red Dingo

#37
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*.

Salanewt

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.
Oh yeah baby, £ me harder.

Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Adepts stronger.

Yoshi's Lighthouse is a hacking website in progress. Why not check it out if you like Yoshi or the Mario & Luigi games?

Red Dingo