Good morning RPG Maker Forums! Let's start the day with a quick jolt.
=== GIF Showcase ===
Thunder
====================
Using this is a bit tricky, as it is my first attempt to make a 2-piece animation in an effort to circumvent the size issue.
Please thoroughly read the instructions before asking questions on how to use this:
=== Instructions ===
1.Below you'll find two animation sheets,
XThunder1 and
XThunder2.
XThunder1 contains the thunderbolt effect that comes down from the sky,
XThunder2 contains the explosion + dust that occurs after the bolt hits (can also be used as just a standalone explosion).
2. Of the two,
XThunder2 is very straight forward, you can just tween the cells continuously to get the effect.
3. However, the "length" of the bolt in
XThunder1 is spliced into 3 pieces. The top pieces are from
cells 1 ~ 15, the middle pieces are from
cells 16 ~ 30, and the bottom pieces are from
cells 31 ~ 45. Due to the way that the bolt is "slowly" reaching downward, there are a lot of empty cells for the middle and bottom sections. This is not a mistake, they are intentionally left blank because I figured it would be easier to match the cells up. (There are also some blank cells at the start and end to take into account the timing; if you are experienced and know how to time things yourself, feel free to adjust as you see fit)
4. In the animation window, take the first frame and put the first cell of each piece (1, 16, 31) and stack them like so:
5. For the next frame, you would keep the positions of the 3 cells the same, but replace them with the next cell in their respective set (2, 17, 31).
6. Repeat until you've placed all the cells for the first 13 frames. Now you should have the completed bolt effect.
7. Now you need to decide where you want to put the explosion. After deciding the location, take Cell 112 ~ 175 into frames 12 ~ 75 (customize-able if you don't like the default timing) onto that same location, and you should have the explosion ready to go.
NOTE: As a special bonus for this first-time experiment, the animation sheets for XThunder1 and XThunder2 are both in 60 FPS! If you are not running RMMV with customized battle animation speeds at 60 FPS, however,
the animation might be too long, so you'll need to decide whether or not to prune it down manually. For example, if you are okay with the speed of the bolt, but find the explosions too slow, you would keep frames 1 ~ 12 the same, but use only odd-numbered cells (113, 115, 117, etc.) for the explosions from frames 12 ~ 45. LIkewise, if you want to shorten the length of the bolt, you would do something similar for the first 12~13 frames, just remember to match the three parts.
=== PNG Download ===
Thunder - Component 1 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/6s50dn90n53yqyy/XThunder1.png?dl=0
Thunder - Component 2 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/68u61poiwmbcgi1/XThunder2.png?dl=0
====================
If you are experiencing some slowdowns during the first cast of the spell, I would recommend pre-loading the animation images with a plugin to make it run smoother. There should be no problems after the first use either way.