[CGMZ] Battle Swaps (Patreon)

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Hi all, introducing [CGMZ] Battle Swaps!

This plugin allows you to swap actors in and out of battle during battle. You could use this to add an extra element of strategy to your battles, as you could have one actor cast some weakening spell on an enemy and then swap to another actor to use a powerful attack on the weakened enemy. Of course, this is just one example and I am sure you will find many other ways to add this to your battle strategy.

Swapping

Use up an actor's turn to swap battle members during battle. First, select the Swap battle command during the actor's turn and then select the actor you want to swap with in the window that opens up. Only alive actors that are not already queued up to swap will be available to swap. Then, when it is the actor's turn to move, they will swap with the selected actor provided they can still move (not dead, not stunned, etc). See below gif for how it can look:

Mechanics

Swapping in battle does change the party order around. You can optionally have this changed party order persist outside of battle, or set it up to automatically reset to the same order as the party was in when the battle began.

If you do not want an actor to be able to be swapped, such as your party leader who must always stay the party leader, do not teach them the swap ability.

Battle Command

This plugin does not automatically add the battle command to swap actors, as this is better suited for a plugin that can add custom commands. If you would like to use [CGMZ] for this, you can use [CGMZ] Battle Command Window. This plugin is bundled with [CGMZ] Battle Swaps for this purpose.

Set up your battle swap command with parameters as desired (name, icon, background, etc) and then make sure the symbol is "cgmz_battleswap" and the battle swap plugin will handle the actual mechanics of how it works. You can still set up JS show/enable conditions.

Note: You should not need to use [CGMZ] Battle Command Window to add the command. The [CGMZ] engine is designed to be modular and highly compatible with other plugin authors. If you have another plugin that can add custom battle commands and you prefer to use it, [CGMZ] Battle Swaps should also work with that as long as it has a symbol parameter where you can type the above battle swap mechanic symbol in.

Roadmap

As with all of my plugins, this plugin will receive lots of support. There are already some planned features to be added in future updates. These include:

Swap without using up actor's turn

More control and effects for the swap animation

Additional control and options over which party members are eligible to swap

Do you have any ideas you'd like to see added to the plugin not already listed above? Let me know in the comments or in my Discord's #suggestion channel! I appreciate all suggestions I get and add them all to my to-do list.

Happy RPG Making!

This version is mostly a bug fix update for TPB battle systems. It fixes an issue with TPB battle system not being able to find the speed value to use for the battle swap action, which would lead to a crash previously. Part of this fix was adding a customizable TPB Delay parameter so you can now add a delay to swapping after the action is chosen if you do not want it to be instant. Before, the action would occur instantly with no option to change this.

This update also fixes pending swaps clearing too fast in some uncommon cases while using a TPB battle system.

This version adds some more customization options. You can now hide the battle swap window frame, which is how the default actor window displays. You can also have a [CGMZ] Window Backgrounds preset as a window background image.

This version fixes a crash that could occur if the battle swap window was accessed while there were no possible actors to swap with, and the player tried to select a blank entry. Along with this fix, I updated the UI to no longer show the selection rectangle and added a text parameter so you can let the player know why there is no actor to swap with.