[Starlight] Glasya and Lynnoe tag into battle! + reinforcements, stream (Patreon)

But... this one is different!

Instead of Glasya OR Lynnoe, this one is Glasya AND Lynnoe, together as they have been intended to be from the start.

(cat overworld sprite is placeholder)

Since finishing the system base, my first goal in the [System Finishing] category of our roadmap has been to implement Glasya and Lynnoe's ability, Tooth and Buckle, which allows the two to work together as one unit, or separately as two weaker ones. 

I wouldn't be surprised if Tooth and Buckle ended up being one of the most complex abilities to implement in the overall game, so naturally I had to include it in the demo...... gg me... but it's for that reason that I want to get it out of the way ASAP. 

there are a handful of reasons that it's complex from a programming side, but it probably especially seems that way to me right now while the system is still pretty bare-bones. for one thing, i was really nervous about how either dragonbones (our animation program) or our code would handle needing to display two separate models as one units, but fortunately that ended up being super easy. you can see some of the animations here:

offensive idle:

(glasya previously didn't have an offensive pose since he can't attack without lynnoe). both of them are waiting for the right opportunity. the chop is in the gif, not the actual animation.

defensive idle:

lynnoe jumps behind glasya for defense; he has a shield and can take hits a lot better than she can. he motions for her to stay back a little while she hides under her tail. if she can't see you; you can't see her. that's definitely how she works. but she still peeks sometimes. 

a damaged animation:

only glasya takes the hit when they'e together. lynnoe peeks again cuz she's concerned, but they'll be ok. probably. 

finally, attack!

glasya's our first experimental case of actually updating the armature's graphics during the animation-- his hand changes from a neutral position to let him point and command the attack. this went pretty well, so we can probably do more things like that in the future as necessary. 

i was really lukewarm on glasya as a character (compared to others in starlight) for a long time during planning phases but the more i work on these two, the more i like them. i really hope everyone else will too once it's time to properly meet them. 

anyway, other reasons that Tooth and Buckle is a mess to implement: i need to be able to spawn a new unit into the map when they separate, regardless of what map they're on. that's not something that RPG Maker can normally do very well, but thanks to a certain plugin, i've now just implemented a reinforcement system for enemies, and i can use the same plugin to handle the separation. 

...i feel like mentioning it casually in this context doesn't do it justice. i didn't expect it to be as difficult as the previous system implementations i laid out before, and it wasn't, but that's still a pretty significant feature to have in now. 

there's one more significant feature i'll need to add for Tooth and Buckle-- and that is positional action commands. that probably sounds fancy, but i just mean, if the unit it standing next to something they can interact with, like, say, a friendly cat, then i need the UI to reflect and respond to that. so that'll be the next hurdle for this ability.

in the mean time, we will be having another stream this weekend! once more, Sunday at 3pm MST. i'm sure the timezone hyperlink won't work and if it will it's too late patreon has already beaten me in submission so here just. just click this or whatever
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Zaharald+Splittin%27&iso=20200426T15&p1=75 

i will be streaming as i work on taking commissioned art of a yet unannounced character, Zaharald, and split it up in preparation of someday becoming a combat model.
someday.
sunday
come day

ok. stay safe and stuff. no one's allowed to perish too hard or you're grounded. this matters because i have that authority. thank u.