[CGMZ] Light Effects (Patreon)

This is a simple, lightweight light effect plugin meant as an alternative to more involved lighting plugins.

! SEE BOTTOM OF POST FOR UPDATES !

Hi all, introducing [CGMZ] Light Effects!

Today we have a plugin for simple light effects. Each light is basically just an image that you can customize with things such as flicker, scale, color tone, and more. They show up on top of events with the proper comment as an event command as described in instructions.

This is a port of my CSCA Light Effects as voted on in the Patreon Poll a while back, as this was most popular it was the first to be ported.

I have also attached a light graphic you can use to get started, but you can also make your own or even use different graphics for each light effect you create.

Let me know if there are any features you'd like to see added, but keep in mind this is meant to be a simple light effect alternative to the more involved lighting plugins already made.

Alpha Update: Fixed a bug that would cause this plugin to conflict with some other plugins placed above it.

Alpha Update: Light Effects should now work in saved games

Beta Update: Added ability to change the flicker speed of lights

Version Beta R2: Hi all, this plugin was updated today to add a few new features. The first one is that you can now have lights that follow the player around! These use the same id system as event lights, only you use a plugin command to attach them to the player. This can be useful if you have a dark area that the player can have a light for to see better. For example:

Of course, player lights can have flickers and other effects just the same as your event lights do. Speaking of effects, this update also adds a breathe effect so your light can get bigger and smaller with an ease in and out transition for the effect. It looks something like this:

Notice how the campfire light grows larger and then smaller. You can set the amount by which is will grow and shrink, as well as the duration for the effect. This should hopefully help provide more natural looking lights.

Finally, this update also modernized the JSON parsing to read plugin parameters and commands, so it will no longer crash when invalid JSON is detected and instead it will warn in the dev tools console. These warnings are still important to fix, as the plugin parameter or command will not function properly until fixed.

This update adds a z offset to lights, so you can now change their z values to get them to appear above or below other events, layers, or the player.

This update also fixes an oversight with the X and Y offsets, where they used to not allow for negative numbers. Now you can have negative x and y offsets too.

This update adds a blend mode property to the light effects. The possible options are Normal, Add, Multiply, and Screen. By default, lights had been using Normal blend mode, but now you can change it if needed. You will need to go in to each light parameter so it can load the default blend mode after updating.

This update also fixed a bug that could cause the player, followers, or events to appear above star passability tiles.

This update adds proximity based lights. This is an additional parameter on light effects that can cause the light to turn on or off automatically based on distance to the player. When the player gets within a certain distance of a proximity light, it will turn on. When the player leaves that distance, it will turn off. Here is a gif of how it can look:

Keep in mind that proximity based lights still need to pass the other checks for whether they are visible, such as if the global light is turned on and the light type is not disabled.

This version adds direction-based lights! Previously, you were limited to lights that did not change rotation with the sprite they were attached to. Now, you turn a light into a directional light with a simple boolean flag. See below gif for how it can look:

 Along with the direction based light setting, there is also a new offset setting with different x/y offsets for each direction. This can help correct how your light image looks while facing the various directions available.

This version adds rotating lights. You can now set up lights that rotate. You control the speed of the rotation. This also allows you to set up a preset rotation for any light that doesn't automatically rotate if the rotation speed is set to 0. See below gif of how rotating lights can look:

This also changes the global visibility setting for lights to be controlled by a game switch instead of internally via plugin command. This should make it easier to understand how to turn lights on and off at a global level. Individual lights are still controlled by plugin command.

This version adds more control over light visibility, with a focus on making it even easier to turn your lights ON or OFF. You can now set a switch to turn them ON/OFF, which will affect all lights of that type when it is toggled on or off. In addition, you can set a self switch for that light type which will only affect that event when that event's self switch is turned on/off.

This update also converted some deprecated [CGMZ] Core function calls, which will be required for next month's core update.

This version adds a cursor light. This is a light that will follow the cursor, making it so your player can shine light wherever they want by moving their cursor. You might use this as some kind of dungeon mechanic, or you could make a subtle effect to help the cursor stand out more in some scenes. See below gif for how it can look.

This update also added some better error handling in the case that you type your light id in wrong into the event comment. Previously, this used to cause a crash because the plugin would not be able to find your light. Now, it will log a warning in the dev tools console but otherwise allow the game to continue though the invalid light will not work.

This version adds the option to attach lights to followers. These lights work the same way as the player light does, although there are separate plugin commands for attaching or clearing lights from followers.See below gif for how it can look: