Embellishing Front View Battle

[Cymaiden]

So after a few months with MV, I find myself unable to stand the total lack of consistency in proportion in the Final Fantasy inspired side view mode. While I can just about bear the jankiness of it when playing a game made by someone else, it embarrasses me to think of putting out a game that looks like that.

Therefore, I'm experimenting with front view battle and trying to figure out ways to get it to look as engaging as a well designed side view interface. I've already found plugins to allow face icons or bust art to be displayed on the combat screen, though my attempt to find serviceable voice samples to key to character attacks has so far turned up nothing.

I'm open to suggestions on what more I can do in this area to work with the front view model.

 

[lianderson]

Power to the frontview!

My main complaint to a lot of the side view rm games is that their heroes are too small in relation to the enemies that they are facing. Many games need either larger actor sprites, or smaller monster sprites with the camera moved in.

 

[Cymaiden]

Power to the frontview!

My main complaint to a lot of the side view rm games is that their heroes are too small in relation to the enemies that they are facing. Many games need either larger actor sprites, or smaller monster sprites with the camera moved in.

I did find these two DLC packs with larger side view actors more proportionate to enemy sprites, but they're generic by design (so as to be as universally applicable as possible) and I don't have the money to commission enough custom sprites in this style to fill an entire cast.

 

[TheAM-Dol]

My main complaint to a lot of the side view rm games is that their heroes are too small in relation to the enemies that they are facing. Many games need either larger actor sprites, or smaller monster sprites with the camera moved in.

I didn't know you knew how to speak like a normal human.

That's all I really wanted to say, but I guess I should contribute something to this thread:

Aries has a plugin to add some sparkle and pizzaz to combat, it's definitely good for side-view, but I think it's "view" agnostic - meaning, doesn't matter front view or side view. I have a tough time recommend Aries plugins, simply because one of their paid for plugins had a typo that rendered a large portion of the plugin unusable...which, for a paid for plugin, it's just remarkably amateurish to not QA all parts of your plugins and still expect people to pay for it.
I also believe there are some voice packs available from the degica shop as official DLC, if you are looking to add voices. One thing worth considering, if you don't mind shelling out a little bit extra, Fiverr VA's usually charge by the number of words...so...if you are only needing like...5 ad-lib "Ha!" "Haaaa!" "Ya!" attack lines, I'm sure it wouldn't cost much more than the DLC to have someone record those for you.

 

[SGHarlekin]

You can try replica I suppose. It's AI generated voice acting and it's actually pretty good.

Signup

replicastudios.com

You get like 30 minutes of voice lines free (60 with the referral I think) They got a whole bunch of ai actors and most of them do a pretty good job. I used them in my trailers too.

 

[Animebryan]

One problem I found with front view battle is that they don't show the animations of enemies' skills by default. I desperately needed this for my Dragon Quest MV remake but never could find a solution. One of Yanfly's MV plugins tries to fix that, but doesn't handle setting up character battle HUDs properly when there's only 1 character, especially for the original DQ.

 

[MarxMayhem]

I do not foresee myself having the problem you have with side-view, as I'll be making my own assets, so making proportionate battlers is something on the list.

However for front-view: One of the things I like that newer DQ games did is that, when an important action is performed, you can see the actor step forward and do that action. In RPG Maker, this can be recreated by having the animation also include the actor sprite.

A drawback to this that I can see, is that skills would have a version that is actor- and enemy-specific because of animation. The enemy version would be the same animation throughout all enemies, and the number of actor versions will equal each playable unit who can use that skill. This can be alleviated by clever use of YEP's Action Sequence though. The more playable characters there are, the more work is there to do, but I think this works for games with fewer members, and would certainly be worth the effort for those with more.

 

[Cymaiden]

However for front-view: One of the things I like that newer DQ games did is that, when an important action is performed, you can see the actor step forward and do that action. In RPG Maker, this can be recreated by having the animation also include the actor sprite.

The problem here is that the actor sprite would still be way smaller than the enemy sprites, so I'd be right back at the issue that makes me consider front view battle in the first place.

 

[MarxMayhem]

The problem here is that the actor sprite would still be way smaller than the enemy sprites, so I'd be right back at the issue that makes me consider front view battle in the first place.

I suppose I forgot to mention that, since this is gonna be first-person, you are free to draw the actors in the animation to whatever you feel like. That be my mistake, and I did explain my thought process, so I thought people would get it by those alone.

 

[dogmari]

I have no idea how they did it - nor do I think this is necessarily your solution but- the first Hylics has some really cool first person animations including the character's hands for FVB's that personally really inspire me but that is a taste thing. I know Mason Lindroth used VX Ace for Hylics as well, so I have no idea if you can even recreate these effects in MV, might be worth exploring though.