Chapter 58: Custom Battle Animations – Scripts

Oh my. In the previous chapter, you made your animation frames. Now, we have to code them. That little template script I gave you will be the basis for that, but your REAL animation script won’t be that simple.

First, you need to go to FEditor Adv’s doc and find the very important list of 0x85 commands to use. I could explain the significance of the name, but it won’t help you with your hacking. In case you can’t find it on your own, it’s in the “Battle Animations” folder, which is in the “doc” folder, which is in the main folder of FEditor Adv. It’s called “0x85 Command Usage”.

Now go, read it. Yes. Read the ****ing doc.

I just pulled a Xeld. Had to do that at least once in this tutorial.

Okay, I will now go ahead and explain the template animation script I gave you, since you read the doc and you have some background on a few things, maybe.

First, there are 12 animation modes. Each mode needs its own codes and has its own significance, except for modes 2 and 4. I’ll explain each in order, so I’ll get to modes 2 and 4 very shortly.

Mode 1 is the attack mode. It’s the main attack that hits and does damage. But it’s not a critical, and it’s only used in melee (close-up) fights.

Mode 2 is the above, but its sprites are layered BEHIND the enemy. This is how piercing is done: in the piercing example in the previous chapter, the piercing sprites are put behind the enemy, if need be. It’s automatically coded for you based off of the frames and mode 1, so no worries.

Mode 3 is the critical attack. It works the same as mode 1, but activates with a critical.

Mode 4 works the same as mode 2, but applies to mode 3. Consider it the piercing mode for critical.

Mode 5 is for ranged attacks. This means attacks that load spell animations, but don’t actually hit themselves.

Mode 6 is the above, but for critical ranged animations.

Mode 7 is the melee dodge. Close-range dodge. Enough said.

Mode 8 is the ranged dodge, for ranged attacks. Kay?

Mode 9 is the standing animation. It’s just for standing. Yes, you can have an animation for standing guys, but good luck getting it to work right.

Mode 10 is another standing animation. Or so the doc says. If I knew what the difference between mode 9 and mode 10 was, I forgot, or else I’d tell you.

Mode 11 is the last standing animation, for ranged attacks. If by some chance your character stands differently when he’s farther away from an enemy, then by all means use this mode to make your character stand differently.

Mode 12 is the missed-attack animation. It’s what happens when an attack misses. It’s usually very similar to the normal attack animation.

Okay, now that we know that, I’ll cover how to actually code each mode. To be honest, once I teach you the first mode, the attack mode, the rest will be a piece of cake, because the key to doing each mode is using 0x85 commands to spice up your animation.

0x85 commands can add sounds, special effects, and other stuff. But mainly sounds and special effects.

In mode 1 for the template, we have:

/// - Mode 1

C03 -

C07 -

3 p- standing.png

/// denotes a comment. So “- Mode 1” is ignored

C03 and C07 are important codes. Just keep them. (NOOO!!! DELETION!!! EVARRRRR!!!!!!)

3 p- standing.png is important. It’s the graphic-loading code. So it’s very important.

“3” is the time for the frame to be shown. “3” isn’t very long. When you test your animation, you’ll see for yourself. It’s hard to tell you how long “3” is, so you’ll just have to play around and test different values and find out what looks good. Just know that the time must be a positive integer greater than 1 (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… etc… why am I counting?).

“p” is just part of the code.

“standing.png” is the name of the frame to use. Make sure the frame is in the same directory/folder as the script, or else you’ll have problems.

Now, onto explaining the rest of the script:

-------------------------

/// - Attack Frames

C04

C1A

C1F

/// - Frames after hitting but before stopping to wait for HP depletion

C01

/// - RETURN TO BASE

3 p- standing.png

C06

C0D

---------------

C04 is just what the doc says. It starts HP depletion. Keep it always when there is a hit.

C1A is the normal hit code. Just keep it next to C04, please. Oh, and you can only have one of these.

C1F is the hit sound. It actually changes depending on whether the attack is a critical or not and stuff.

C01 is the code that says “wait for HP to deplete completely before continuing the animation”. Whatever frame is right before that is the frame that will show until the HP is done depleting.

C06 says “start enemies animation sequence”. And C0D ends the animation. So logically, you will most likely just want them next to each other.

That’s the basis to the attack animation. It’s quite simple, no? You can add lots of frames (although if you have too many frames in an animation, the game won’t be able to take it, and problems that I cannot help you with will ensue), and you can also use other codes listed in the doc (0x85 command usage text file).

For example, the doc says “0x1B Play quick "heavy step" SFE”. How do you use that? Simply put a “C” in front of the hex and give it its own line. Like so:

C1B

That’s it. Then it will play that sound (which happens to be a stepping sound, which you will probably use in animations that move).