Drakkonis

Drakkonis

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  • Drakkonis
    Oof, this "side project" of mine is starting to get as complex as a VS plugin, at least as far as plugin parameters are concerned. I think I now understand why a plugin like this doesn't already exist(that I know of). Learning a lot while trying to make it work though!
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    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    I'm not even sure what that is, I've never heard of it. I've only ever seen VS used to refer to VisuStella, since they're practically the MZ plugin standard. I take their dominance as both a challenge and an inspiring reference. :p
    estriole
    estriole
    to answer your confusion... prior MZ VisuStella still not exist... in MV we all know the plugin as Yanfly's back in the days :D... VisuStella name only show up when MZ released... so older Rpg Maker user might think VS = Victor Sant because his animated battle scripts (from ACE) and plugins (from MV) used by quite a lot of people... :D... hope this help clear the confusion :D.
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    Makes sense. I only started with MZ, my last RPG Maker before that was 2k3 back when it was still bootleg. Tried a demo of XP, didn't like it, only recently rediscovered the series.
    Drakkonis
    Writing custom JS extensions is actually kinda fun. Trying to figure out what kind of extension would be useful/desirable, on the other hand....
    Drakkonis
    Decided to take a small break from RETRO to work on other miscellaneous things I got ideas for... and I think I just started something with nearly as much complexity, even if nowhere near as important. I think I'm taking breaks wrong. lol
    Drakkonis
    If anyone were to look at certain pieces of my code they might assume I understand RegEx. I actually don't understand it in the slightest. I've tried to figure it out, it's all Greek to me. I'm just good at Googling and poking it until it works. lol
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    Shaz
    Shaz
    "I'm just good at Googling and poking it until it works."

    I would like to poke RegEx.
    With a sharp object.
    Repeatedly.
    Jragyn
    Jragyn
    @Drakkonis what language are ya proficient in? I come from the land of C# (but also know JS to some extent), and much of the codebase of RMMV/Z hurts my delicate feelings.

    @Shaz googling and poking it until it works is basically what my company pays me to do- and there is nothing wrong with that! Do stab regex an extra time for me, though.
    • Haha
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    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    @Jragyn I wouldn't say I'm PROFICIENT... I've been out of that particular game for too long, but I first learned Visual Basic with VB6. Got my hands on VB.net 2003 and learned quite a bit of that. Tried to keep up with later versions as I felt compelled to code something, but never seriously.
    • Wow
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    Drakkonis
    The next RETRO update is gonna be a beefy one. Hoping to have it out in a week or two. Massive overhaul to the way plugin commands are handled, including shortcuts for those that have complicated argument requirements. There are numerous other things too, but that's the biggest single part, and has been consuming the most time.
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    Restart
    Restart
    Great! Glad you're making progress!
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    lol, despite the total silence on RETRO, I've been decently hard at work on it. (Time permitting. Full time job, daughter's first birthday party coming up, plus all the parenthood challenges that come with that age, that sort of thing. If I'm lucky I get about an hour a day to work on this.)
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    Drakkonis
    MV's plugin command setup is the current bane of RETRO's existence. To a degree, so is MZ's. Especially when trying to make MV's plugin command interface play nice with MZ plugin commands with complex arguments.
    Drakkonis
    Another new RETRO milestone! 3 actually. It's reached 500 lines of code (includes whitespace and comments, so technically the actual code is still less than that), it's reached version 0.05, and there are now over 10 plugins on its known compatibility list!
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    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    I had the idea once of adding to MV all the features that MZ added, to get the best of both worlds, but that would either make RETRO obsolete, or potentially break MV plugins on MV(which would be HILARIOUS), or potentially get me in trouble with Degica, depending on how they respond to THAT.
    Restart
    Restart
    Well, I was just thinking that since there's a stock method in MZ to play MV animations, you might be interested in trying to do the reverse
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    RETRO's only scope is to allow MV to use MZ plugins. If for some reason an MZ plugin requires Effekseer capability, it MIGHT be added in, unless it's only a single plugin or something like that. I don't imagine it would come up at all, since plugins dealing with animations tend to use whatever the engine uses.
    Drakkonis
    Apparently I'm back in the boat of something behaving weirdly and I can't for the life of me figure it out, and I suspect it's something that javascript users are supposed to "KNOW", and I... don't.
    Drakkonis
    New RETRO milestone. First function addition that exists SOLELY for compatibility with a single plugin. First, but I KNOW it won't be the last. lol
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    Shaz
    Shaz
    What was the plugin?
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    CGMZ_InfiniteColors. It allows a ColorManager call with a color index higher than 31... but MV doesn't have ColorManager and RETRO doesn't use it unless a plugin tells it to, so I had to make the default system route through ColorManager if needed.
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    I'm basically running through all of Casper's plugins (that aren't alpha/beta) since he's got a site that has them all in one place. That's just the first one I ran into that didn't crash but didn't work out of the box either. lol
    Drakkonis
    I think RETRO's hit its first real brick wall. Not insurmountable, the problem is my lack of understanding the graphical systems. But with no errors, it's extremely difficult to track down the problem. Oh well, plenty of other plugins to try to work with! I'll just have to stick this one on the back burner.
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    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    It's CGMZ_ToastManager for the curious. Everything is set up... and no crashes... but the toast never appears. I'm chalking it up to MV and MZ differences that I can't quite track down. I suspect it's being drawn... UNDER everything else. Or just invisible for some reason.
    Restart
    Restart
    Working with FOSSIL that usually means that it's getting drawn with a width of 0
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    The proper width is being passed just fine, as far as I can tell. I had some issues with it being passed as NaN early on, prompting the first and third plugin command functionality rewrites lol
    Drakkonis
    It all comes down to the pesky MZ plugin commands... the more I try to make the implementation user-friendly, the more complicated this thing becomes. Rewriting the parser for it... AGAIN. Only now I have to be able to detect and deal with structures. Cue banging my head into a wall.... o_O
    Drakkonis
    Gotta love having to put a simple function branch somewhere OTHER than where it logically should be simply because someone's core plugin wants to put stuff in weird, seemingly arbitrary locations.... and as far as I can tell, does stuff it doesn't need to do. It all looks stupidly inefficient/unnecessary and it bugs me. And makes RETRO's job just that much harder in order to make it functional.
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    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    Well, the whole POINT of RETRO is to make as many MZ plugins compatible with MV as possible. Supported plugins shouldn't be based on whether or not I like their code, just whether or not I can make their code work with MV.
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    And since it's someone's core plugin, if I ignore it, that means all their other plugins that depend on that core will likely be incompatible by default. It's doable... but annoying. I just have to hunt down a different spot to stick my intercept.
    Shaz
    Shaz
    ah, I didn't realise what RETRO was. Makes sense.
    Drakkonis
    Mwahahahaha! I've discovered how to figure out which plugin, if any, is calling a function! This will make RETRO's work SO MUCH EASIER when dealing with functions with identical names but different functions/executions! Honestly that's been the biggest headache in this project, trying to figure out if a function is being called by an MZ plugin, MV plugin, or MV itself. Looking at you, help window. >.>
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    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    If MZ, the help window is made with a rect, in MV, it's made with an optional parameter for the number of lines it will have, determining its size.
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    But since the createHelpWindow function is never passed a parameter, I had no way of determining if it was an MV scene or an MZ scene. Current RETRO has to rearrange custom MZ scenes, which causes a few issues here and there. Next version doesn't have that issue!
    Restart
    Restart
    Looking forward to see your progress!
    Drakkonis
    I have discovered that the plugin manager throws a low-key fit if your plugin contains "/*:" and/or "*/" in the code. I kinda get why... but that means the way it reads its stuff is... simplistic and without any additional checking. And it fails to load any of the actual working comment block information as a result, so it's all or nothing. o_O
    Drakkonis
    I just saw one of SigmaSuccor's RPG Maker news videos, it mentioned one of my plugins. Now I kind of wish I'd made a demo project for it, having nothing in that segment but a scroll down the code feels a little underwhelming given what the plugin COULD do. Except I suck at making demo stuff, and my testing project isn't fit for that. :(
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    Finnuval
    Finnuval
    Bland still beats non-existant tho :p
    SigmaSuccour
    SigmaSuccour
    @Drakkonis Just an image or two (or a gif) showing the plugin in action, can do a lot.
    Like what Nolonar does here:
    Visuals help a lot!
    I've been doing this news for around 4.5 months. It's only recently getting attention because... I'm visualizing it, in video. :biggrin: (Before, it was only text.)
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    I've been keeping up with the reddit posts you make on the topic since I discovered them shortly after getting MZ a few months ago, I found a couple of plugins there that I'm actually either using or referencing myself. Was super stoked when I saw my very first plugin in a news post. I'll try to accommodate in the future.
    Drakkonis
    Definitely glad I haven't released a few of my plugins that are technically done. As I learn more, I find ways to make my code more efficient, and in one case so far, discovered an existing function that did EXACTLY what I created my own function to do.
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    Pearl484
    Pearl484
    Oh, that is always a pain. I hate it when you spend so much time o a code, and then find a one line command that will do everything you just wrote. Still it's so fun to learn. Good luck.
    Drakkonis
    Drakkonis
    Well, the best thing about that kind of situation is that the time isn't wasted. I still figured out how to get it working myself, and learned a bit more about MZ's object structuring. I was a LITTLE annoyed when I discovered the function that did what I had just wrote... but I was amused to find I could chop about 30 lines of code off the plugin.
    Drakkonis
    Mad props to Yanfly and the VS team. Making a plugin that does a focused fraction of what one of their core scripts can do is extremely slow, exhausting, and occasionally frustrating. Granted, I'm learning JS as I go instead of from the ground up beforehand, but so many elements of this script are requiring either DEEP experience, or LOTS of trial and error to figure out.
    Wavelength
    Wavelength
    It's particularly difficult in RPG Maker because you are working with a very large collection of tightly-wound, and pretty much undocumented, code. I'm sure Yanfly and the VS team faced that similar grind, and some of those same frustrations that you do. And yeah, props to them for sticking to it and pumping out useful plugins at a dizzying pace in spite of those obstacles. Goes to show it's very doable.
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