Hello!
I'm going to be here to answer some specific questions. I apologize if I cannot answer all of them, but I'll do my best to address the topics that raise the most concern.
Regarding: Victory Aftermath
There's a few things:
Victory Aftermath is a luxury plugin. It's not a core plugin. It's does not add in new mechanics. It is not a requirement for RPG's. Plus, we have decided to leave this outside of the Battle Core because we know that other plugin developers are most likely going to create their own Victory Aftermaths (just as they do for for main menu layouts for example).
The other thing is, I've opted to not port my version of
Victory Aftermath to RPG Maker MZ. Why? Because it's incredibly clunky. Like clunkier than the 20 year old truck your neighbor keeps around and spends more money maintaining than buying a new car type of clunky. So clunky that the robots in Steampunk games make less noise. That kind of clunky. It's embarrassing I even released something like that, to be honest.
For that reason, I've enlisted Olivia to port over her
Victory Sequence UI as a stand in for Victory Aftermath. But as my budget is limited, I cannot fully buy the rights off her to keep it free. We've all decided at this point, it would be better to keep it as a commercial plugin in RMMZ, just like it was in RMMV. The purchases here will go towards her and her continuation of creating plugins for the future VisuStella MZ library. This will help lighten the budget as she is a core member of the plugin development team.
Regarding: Obfuscation
I know this matter is more or less settled, but I feel it won't hurt to reiterate.
The reason why these plugins are obfuscated is because they contain code borrowed from my teammates in their public, commercial, and some private works. The obfuscation is there to protect their code. I have no plans on jeopardizing their livelihoods as that would be betraying their trust, and I, as their team member, have no intentions of violating this trust.
We know that it's much harder to edit obfuscated code, so we have made sure to include plenty of customization options available. These come in the form of highly customizable plugin parameters, some of which you can insert and modify JavaScript code in, along with plenty of JavaScript notetags. It's not a perfect solution, I know that. There won't be as perfect a solution as being able to edit the code directly. But we are always looking for ways to let you do the most with the plugins as we can allow.
As far as paying more for the non-obfuscated code, I will discuss with my teammates on the matter. However, keep in mind that this is neither a promise nor is it guaranteed. This is because some of my teammates are victims of theft in the past, and I do not feel like I would make a good team leader if I can allow such a thing to happen to them again in the future.
If there's any anger towards the obfuscation of code in the VisuStella MZ plugins, direct it at me. Do not direct it at my teammates.
Regarding: Future Plugins Plans and What Will Be Ported
Oh boy...
Where do I even begin with this one...
There's... a lot, planned in the pipeline. Practically every other major contributing plugin from the Yanfly Engine Plugins library is being ported over. I've given priority to those who have higher ranked positions based on downloads under the analytics since I'd like to give attention towards the unheard voices, too.
I cannot give an exact time table, because we've only really had the chance to catch our breath (kinda) during the past few days, but I can say this.
Near Future:
- Victory Aftermath (Olivia port)
- Button Common Events
- Picture Common Events
- TileD
- Quest Journal System
- Party Changing System
- Doodads
After that, there will be a focus on porting over the remainder of the Yanfly Engine Plugins libraries (minus the ones that got very little use, gotta budget after all).
Olivia will also be porting over her OctoPack Battle plugins from RPG Maker MV to RPG Maker MZ. She has been temporarily assigned off of the YEP porting duty to focus on the OctoPack plugins and bring them to MZ earlier. She will resume giving us a hand after their ports are done. These will be made compatible with the VisuStella MZ library.
Irina's visual novel systems will also be ported over from RPG Maker MV to MZ soon after and made compatible with the rest of the VisuStella MZ library. However, Irina is placed on duty to focus primarily on ports from the YEP library currently.
Alice's horror game private plugin collection is also in the works of being ported over to MZ and will be sold publicly for the first time. Like Irina, she is also placed on duty to focus primarily on ports from the YEP library currently.
Just remember, the YEP library is huge. It will take some time to get everything ported over. We are working as fast as we can. We cannot give a direct time frame on when it'll be complete, but at the same time, I don't want to overwork my teammates more than I already have.
I hope this answers a lot of your questions.
Thank you!