Baked in Weapons

I am going to be building all of my own assets from scratch.

One thing I am considering, even though it's MV, is drawing the weapons directly onto the sprite.

Reasoning is twofold...

• For the most part, weapon switching wouldn't be an integral component of my initial game concept.

• I'd like the character to be doing a lot more with their weapon in battle and would rather replace current animations that encompass different weapons with more of the signature weapon. Say a gun, beyond just pulling it out for the attack. Twirling during idle, an aim shot vs from the hip, a reload animation, dual wielding in a different pose (guns on their side), etc.

Is this a valid approach for what I'm going for, or is it still better to leave weapons off, animate the battler sprite separately (still hijacking most of the animations meant for swords/magic for gun-fu) and then simultaneously animate a pure gun weapon sheet to match up with all of the sprite animations.

The gun was just an example.

Thoughts?

At that point, you are better off just including the weapon as part of the actor's sprite sheet and having default side view weapons set as invisible.

Exact insight i was hoping for thanks.
Easy to achieve in editor?

@Guanto Vibrato's SV battlers are a good example of what I mean by "including the weapon as part of the sprite sheet".

As for setting SV weapons as invisible, go to "System" from the Database menu and set "Image" to "None" like so:


As for using more than MV's default 3 frames an action in battle, you'll need this plugin

Great info.

OK plugin aside for a second, if you were using the stock three frames and stock sheets - you would first set image to none in system and then put your Vibrato (just for example, and if it were 3 frames) over any of the stock 3 frame animations and call them per attack/skill at your discretion. Is that the general idea anyway?

@Guanto Vibrato does include default 3-frame versions of these so you can look at them to see how they work. You can find Vibrato's stuff here (you may need Google Translate): http://p3x774.web.fc2.com/.

OK yeah this is great.

I didn't see any 3 frame stuff, but site is tough to navigate even with translate.

However, what i did find is even though he is baking in weapons he still kept them as separate layers that he can adjust (a diff colored hat, a slightly diff gun, etc) in his editable source file - which is the exact approach I was planning on.

Worse case if I did want a character to unlock a new weapon or something I can just have a second sprite sheet with the baked in "new" weapon.

And again this will be a limited component for what i am going for, the customization/flexibility is more in the characters traits than equipment. Was also thinking I could deal with weapon upgrades more like a blacksmith thing, as in, your same weapon you always carry and do cool animations with has been tweaked a bit under its hood. Blade sharpened, trigger pull adjusted, arrow dipped in poison... that sorta thing.

Thanks man.

This has become a "How do I...?" (implementation) thread, rather than a discussion about the pros and cons of including weapons.
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