Ellye's ATB (also includes CTB option)

Hey Mellye, first off great plugin, and second I was wondering if you're taking any requests on feature additions?

I am, feel free to ask.

At this point quite a lot of this plugin was done due to requests, and I intend on keep following this route. :)

Ok Awesome, so I don't know if you've ever played final fantasy x, but there is a window that shows the current battle order (like who is going to get a turn next, and so forth). You think you might add something like that?

Oh and side question, where did you learn how to write plugins? Like is there any good resources out yet? So far, I've just been digging into the Help Doc, and Built-in code, but it's very inelegantly written (as in the code for the entire base engine is combined into 5 files lol).

it's in the plugin. They are named and you can put a portrait picture along with the actor & monster

Oh, the FFX style of battle is often called "CTB" (Conditional Turn-Based Battle). My plugin does already include it (though it's not 100% done yet, the base functionality is there already). It's off by default, but you can turn it on in the plugin parameters (look for the Turn Order Prediction parameters).

Yeah, it's a bit of pain, but unfortunately reading the files is indeed the way to go for now, as far as I'm aware. The only thing that allowed me to pick it up relatively quickly was the fact that the overall structure is still similar to the way it was on VX Ace, and I've made a few scripts for that one previously.

Oh ok, I didn't know it was a different battle system lol, what is the difference between the 2 they play pretty similar?

And ya the structure is mostly the same as it was in xp as well which is where I started a long time ago, but it had a good resource base setup already when i started lol. I'm trying to learn by recreating one of my old scripts from forever ago.

... Just looked at it in game, totally awesome, I tried all day at work to figure out how to go about making a battle order window, and you've already done it. Now I can learn from your code. You're Awesome!

Since you're accepting requests, would it be possible to change the turn timing to be based on seconds? I could make DoT effects like poison or burn to deal damage per second, while being completely independent of the ATB bar and turn order. Right now 1 turn seems to (almost) be a full atb gauge. I tried fiddling around with the average turn timer but I don't know how it works ^^ and setting it to a decimal seems to break it.

Another small update:

* 2015-11-07-0222: Added parameters for position actor name and icons.

PS: If you want to take the states icons to the left, you probably want to reduce "Actor Name Width" instead of using the offsets.

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Behind the curtains it's actually basically the same, indeed. This is an example of how a different presentation can make it feel different for the player.

For a FFX style game, you would turn on the "Turn Prediction Interface", turn off the ATB gauges, and turn on the Instant ATB option (reducing the full atb parameter also helps when you turn on instant atb, for better performance).

My code is... messy, to be honest. It's weird because I usually tend to be a bit perfectionist on stuff that I code for my job and such, but here I sorta decided that I would treat my code as simply a means to an end. Still, I hope it can prove insightful!

Oh, the "Average Turn Timer" is indeed just a ON or OFF switch.

If you turn it off (zero), you can use the "Turn Timer" parameter to set a constant speed for the turn (that follow the general atb formula, the value you insert there is basically the turns Agility).

For a turn timer based on seconds, I'll wait to do it after I've made an Full Active mode (i.e: the combat doesn't pause for input), as it would make more sense that way.

Ya once, I looked deeper i found those options, I love the CTB, style of presentation, and your plugin nails it spot on. 

And as far as messy goes, I can read messy, it's editing messy that drives me crazy. Thankfully I dont think I'll ever need to edit the system you got it perfect for my tastes. :)

(and I know how you feel about being a perfectionist for coding, i wrote a pretty big addon for wow while i was still playing it, and from the beginning of 1 expaction to another I rewrote it 3 times lol.)

Oh, OK, thanks!

Will the full active include not waiting for animations to finish?

You mean, if the gauge will keep going while animations are being fired and such? Yes, that's part of what full active would encompass.

Or do you mean instantly jumping from one turn to the other, without having to wait for the gauge? If so, that option is already available even now ("Instant ATB"), and would also work with Active mode (gauges fill normally if the player is in input, otherwise it goes instantly for the next action).

So... I'm trying to get this straight here, Yanfly has an ATB-like thing, but he doesn't have a bar for it? But this does? But this isn't compatible with Yanfly's stuff?

:dizzy:

This is compatible with yanfly's battle core, I don't know about any of his other plugins, but i'm using yanfly's battle plugin with this.

I think I've made a mistake then, or missed a step. I'm not going to say "Hey, something's wrong and you need to fix it." Rather, I'm going to say "I screwed something up, but don't worry about helping me, I'm positive this is a PEBCAK."

EDIT: Within literally one minute I fixed the stupid problem. I feel like Gollum banging his head on a rock saying "STUPID, STUPID!!!"

Remember kids, always save after you install a plugin.

Looks beautiful, going to install a bar editing plugin to make things look pretty. My project is either going to be immensely amazing because of these plugins from you wonderful coders, or it's going to be a sack of crap because I didn't utilize these AWESOME F$#$%^& PLUGINS to their fullest extent. Can't thank you people enough.

lol, I've done that quite a bit actually, and forgetting to add it to the plugin list is one of my biggest problems lol.

You were right the first time.

Again, thanks

Another update for the evening (well, morning already):

 * 2015-11-07-0519: Added ATB gauges and Cast gauges for enemies, and parameters to configure it. PENDING: Offset per enemy (via [Note]), configurable gauge back color, and a few other optional stuff.

For now, the parameters for enemy ATB bars allow you to show or hide the ATB bar (it's hidden by default, at least for now), show or hide the Cast Bar (it's shown by default), allows you to chose whether you want them below or above the enemy, the colors, and whether they should have no text, fixed texts ("AT", "Cast", etc) or if they should show the enemy name and the name of the skill it's casting.


I didn't got a chance to test it a lot, but it seems to be working fine, and seems to be compatible with Yanfly's Battle Engine (at first I imagined that they wouldn't be). Do report anything that seems wrong, please! I'll be back later.

Hello Mellye, I was wondering if there was any way to tune the turn system to behave like the system here I am requesting here: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/48658-yami-tbb-like-battle-system-turn-based-with-instant-actions/

I got pretty close by turning instant atb on and hiding the bars, however I don't know how to tune the turn parameters so that a turn passes when all movable battlers have acted and only then. Actors should only be able to act once per turn. If it's possible, could you help me out? Thanks!

i have to say after trying both yanflys ATB and elley's, i personally prefer elley's more. I'm just hoping future plugins from others will always be compatible for elley's atb as well :D

One thing I really liked about yanfly's design on his atb was his cast bar overlapped the atb's previous color, which looks amazing with the "pretty guages" plugin by rocketmancer. Anyway to incorporate a similar effect for your plugin elley?