RMMZ Top down orthographic sprite that turns to destination! Possible?

[mardin]

I looked in my asset library today and found a pack with spaceships. I will post a picture here so that you know what I am talking about:

In most other engines, something like a space shooter is the first thing that you learn, so assets like this are popular and there are a lot of good quality items out there. But of course they are not really usable for basic RPG Maker. Because you cannot let the sprite turn to destination.

The closest you can get is getting an 8 directional mod and pose the space ship 8 times. At least that is what I believe?

Is there a mod that lets you use just one sprite that turns towards destination? Or is there even a method to achieve this without a plugin?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Andar]

you need to specify what you mean by "turns toward destination", because as far as I understand that is the default behaviour of all sprites - you go into one direction and the sprite changes to use the row of animation that displays going in that direction (Up-right-down-left)

 

[Shaz]

If you are asking if there's a way to rotate an event to make it appear like it's turning, instead of following the standard character sprite layout of one direction per row, then probably you could with a plugin. I'm not aware of one existing, so you would have to provide more detail if you want one written.

Is this for the player sprite, or for an event? Are you having battles and how should the sprite behave then?

 

[mardin]

I understand. Sorry, my english skills are limited.

Instead of having a standard rpg maker sprite with 4 lines: down-left-right-up I just want to use 1 single orthographic sprite. Like you see in the picture above.

You can do that in RPG Maker. But when you do that, the sprite does not rotate towards the desired destination. So when you click to the desired travel point on the map with your mouse, the cockpit always faces upwards, no matter if you go left, right down or up.

What I want is for the sprite to rotate with the front (the cockpit) to turn towards the desired travel point while the character (the ship in my example) is moving to that point.


In a perfect scenario, I want that movement for events as well and I want it usable for an ABS (like Alpha ABS) so that I can make a space shooter...but I think that this is too much.

So right now I would be fine with just the player movement rotation so that I can make something like a space travelling map.

 

[Andar]

for that, you'll need to replace the entire sprite method (or introduce a second sprite handling if you want to keep both options available).

doable, but needs a lot of work for a plugin to replace that. And as far as I know no one has tried writing such a plugin before.

 

[mardin]

Thank you. I see. Shame.

I thought that this was easier to achieve because it is so easy to do in other 2d game engines.

 

[JDevain]

I don't know if this will help you, since I'm not 100% clear on what you're trying to achieve, but it might be worth pointing out that you can rotate pictures under the Move Picture command. So if it's just a visual effect you are going for, you could have a picture to show the spacecraft, and an invisible event to run your processes.

Also, there is a Yanfly plugin called Picture Common Events that let's you click a picture to run a common event (in this case your spacecraft), so that might be useful.

EDIT: Just realized that that is a paid plugin ($10 USD for bundle), so be aware of that.