CROSS ENGINE: Combining Chrono Engine with Altimit Movement

Restart · 2020-06-09T14:38:33+0900

Latest Version: Cross Engine Alpha 0.20.06.26 Demo Project What is Cross Engine? Over the course of the last few months I've been working on my game, and I decided I wanted to combine Altimit Movement and Mog's Chrono Engine. Cross Engine is what I call the big pile of functions that makes both of them work together, giving both pixel movement and ABS mode. It also includes bugfixes, and QoL features that came up when I was doing things (most of my notes to self thread is included). Basically, this is all stuff I found useful, and hope that other people will find useful as well. Why's it called Cross Engine? Partially because it's a Cross-Compatible Engine for making games, but mostly because it's a followup to a beloved classic which killed off Chrono. Compatibility Patches Cross Engine now works with yanfly's itemcore, altimit movement, yanfly's item spawner, yanfly's doodads, and galv's camera plugin (the last of which is actually essential to avoiding event/doodad jitter). Also, Ultra Mode 7. Spoiler: Other New Features: 8-directional, 2 directional, and 1-directional Spritesheets: Sure, a lot of people have 8-directional spritesheets (and I support all the major formats), but how many people have ONE-directional spritesheets? With Cross Engine, you can take any old image, give it a filename, and put it in. Save it as $Angel(f1)(d1).png, and BAM, it's usable as an event. No mucking around in photoshop making a spritesheet with four versions of the same sprite. But that's not all! I also added intelligent sprite flipping, as well. If you named that angel $Angel(f1)(d-1).png instead, it will flip to face left if it moves left, and flip to face right if it moves right. Split poses and actions One of the things really dragging down the pace of a chrono engine game is that characters were locked in place while they animated. I have changed the engine so now you have a separate 'pose duration' and 'act duration'. Pose duration means your character is playing an animation, act duration means they can't move or cast anything. I've also added a 'cooldown duration', which lets you move, but doesn't let you cast any abilities. Intelligent Tag Parsing 1) Tags parse from right-to-left, instead of left-to-right. This seems super minor, but it means that if your base character sprite is $Harold(f4)(d8), and he has a casting pose "_casting(f8)(d1)", then the new spritesheet sizes will take precedence! 2) Filename Completion: Let's say your idle sprite for harold is "$Harold(f4)(d8)_idle(f1)(d1)". In base Chrono engine this would cause rpgmaker to screech to a halt, because it can't find "$Harold(f4)(d8)_idle". However, upon starting up the game, Cross Engine makes a list of every file in your characters folder. When it checks for poses, it will first check for an exact match. If it doesn't get it, it will check to see if there's any longer versions of that filename. If it checks for "$Harold(f4)(d8)_idle", and can't find it, it will return "$Harold(f4)(d8)_idle(f1)(d1)". What if there's no match at all? The event keeps its base sprite. In playtesting, it will whine about it in the console. No crashing. 3) Negative values are now allowed for x and y offsets. Walking actions You know how in megaman you can shoot your little gun and megaman keeps on walking? Using the tag (walking) will keep your character in the same part of the animation cycle when transitioning into the new pose. Practically speaking, that means you can do the megaman things. If the character isn't moving, it will fall back onto a _static pose, so you don't run in place whenever you shoot. Standing Pose One of the big constraints on having fluid animation in rmmv is that your walking frames have to include a static pose used for standing. If you define a 'standing' pose, your character will use that instead when they aren't moving. While you can technically do this with an idle pose, I wanted to have both in my project. Faint Poses Mog was going to implement faint/death poses distinct from damage poses, but didn't end up finishing it. I have an implementation of this, so you can have a robot get banged up a bit when it gets hit, then violently explode into a miserable pile of circuits when it dies. Basic Preloader Function One thing you'll notice using chrono engine is that whenever creatures change poses for the first time, you'll sometimes see a flicker as the file loads. I have added a function which preloads all poses for a creature. If you enter ImageManager.preloadPoses('Ralph'), it will find 'Ralph_attack', 'Ralph_defense', 'Ralph_is_unstoppable(F4)(d8)(s2)(x4)', et cetera, and preload them. This doesn't happen automatically - you have to invoke it each time you're worried about preloading. New plugin command: disable_idleposes Turns off idle poses. Good for cutscenes where characters mugging at the camera is unwanted. Turn them back on with enable_idleposes Intelligent Rotations Do you want a magic circle of spinning runes? I've got you covered…

● ARCHIVED · READ-ONLY

Started by Restart Jun 9, 2020, 05:38 AM 206 posts Page 11 of 11 View original ↗

AquaEcho

#201 Jul 10, 2025, 06:11 PM Source

No problem. Those tool pages were posted somewhere earlier thread, I didn't come up with them. The issue is that Altimit makes events move 1 pixel forward at a time instead of 1 tile so you need to adjust the tool settings to account for that.
RapunzelMaker

#202 Aug 25, 2025, 09:43 PM Source

Hey everyone. I recently downloaded Mog Hunter’s Cross Engine plugin, but it’s not working. Every time I start the game I get this error message, and my character’s sprite just stands still like there’s no animation. Does anyone know how I can fix this and add sword and breathing animations, please??
AquaEcho

#203 Aug 26, 2025, 05:45 PM Source

RapunzelMaker said:
Hey everyone. I recently downloaded Mog Hunter’s Cross Engine plugin, but it’s not working. Every time I start the game I get this error message, and my character’s sprite just stands still like there’s no animation. Does anyone know how I can fix this and add sword and breathing animations, please??
View attachment 348308 View attachment 348309
That isn't a fresh project. You either changed the tool event comment, the main character's image, or the image file names.

It looks like the second one so go to the actor database and change the image back.
Gabiszon

#204 Nov 5, 2025, 09:02 PM Source

hiiiiiiii everyone i got MZ so I experimented with moving Cross demo to it (with FOSSIL ofc) (and to be clear i'm not so sure if cross engine is supposed to be compatible with fossil in the first place even tho restart made both of them? I know chrono engine is supposed to work so idk) anyway

Its “mostly working” and working suprisingly well but i got a few bugs trying so and i dont feel its fully functional (shield equip, these events with chickens clinging to the table, minotaur rush)

so my point would be is it even worth to try using cross engine in mz over mv?? anyone using chrono in mz??
AquaEcho

#205 Nov 5, 2025, 09:53 PM Source

Last I tested Cross Engine worked fine in MZ with FOSSIL but my MZ trial ran out so I can't doublecheck. MOG Damage Popups will throw an error this._digitWidth which is why I made a MZ port of it. You also have to add a ? to one line of code to stop the "cannot find property length" error after an attack animation

I noted the errors and fixes for MZ at the bottom of the first post in my Chrono Engine thread
MV - MV + MZ : Make an Action Game! Chrono Engine Beginner Guide - On Map Tools and Battles!
I would also double check that your plugins are in the same order Restart has them in the opening post of this thread. The plugin order matters because some code has to load first before other code can work.
Gabiszon

#206 Nov 6, 2025, 09:08 PM Source

AquaEcho said:
Last I tested Cross Engine worked fine in MZ with FOSSIL but my MZ trial ran out so I can't doublecheck. MOG Damage Popups will throw an error this._digitWidth which is why I made a MZ port of it. You also have to add a ? to one line of code to stop the "cannot find property length" error after an attack animation

I noted the errors and fixes for MZ at the bottom of the first post in my Chrono Engine thread
MV - MV + MZ : Make an Action Game! Chrono Engine Beginner Guide - On Map Tools and Battles!
I would also double check that your plugins are in the same order Restart has them in the opening post of this thread. The plugin order matters because some code has to load first before other code can work.
Oh hi!! And yay thank you so much, turns out shield didnt work properly because i didnt copy all files from 'data' folder from MV to MZ like a dumbass + adding ? to chrono, thanks for making these fixes!!
all the new code tips and plugins you made seem very useful i gotta check them out when i have time'