[CGMZ] Animated Battle Backs (Patreon)

Add unlimited amounts of animations to your battle backgrounds. Specify the x/y coordinates and scale, delays, and more.

! SEE BOTTOM OF POST FOR UPDATES !

Hi all, this plugin adds animations to your battle backgrounds to help make them less static.

The plugin works by allowing you to create "animated battle background" properties in the plugin manager, and then in your maps you will change the battle background using plugin command to call that animated background via the id assigned to it. When you no longer want to use the animated background, you use the Clear Battle Back plugin command.

As for the actual animations, you can attach an unlimited amount of them to your animated battle background properties. Animations use a sprite-sheet based animation style, with as many frames as you want. You can have a starting or replay delay, specify the x/y coordinates of the animation, the x/y scale of the animation, and the delay between switching frames.

Have another feature you'd like to see added? Leave a comment below with your suggestion, or use the #suggestions channel in the Casper Gaming Discord.

Happy RPG Making!

This update makes it easier to control when the animations are shown in the battle background.

You can now have your animations start the battle hidden. There are also two new plugin commands: Show Animation and Hide Animation. These will allow you to show/hide an animation during the battle.

Animations now also have an opacity parameter, in case you want slightly transparent animations.

This update adds the option to set up a flicker for your animations, now your animations can flicker by changing opacity in the background. Hopefully this is useful for adding unique animations to your battle backs. You can also change the animation anchor. Typically anchors are the top-left corner of the animation, though to make things easier to center you may want to use a center anchor. Now the anchor is an option, either center or top-left.

This update also makes the plugin easier to use. You can now set up a note tag in your map properties to use an animated battleback on that map. Previously, you would need to use a plugin command to set the battle back which could be done via a parallel process event that erased itself. Hopefully this new map notetag method is easier to use and more intuitive. 

This version adds scrolling parallax battlebacks. Since the normal battle back is made up of two images, the way scrolling works is it will turn the first battleback image into the scrolling one. You can then either set an empty image for the second battleback image, or use it as an overlay (for example, if you want cliffs over a scrolling ocean background, etc). See below for a gif example:  

This version adds videos as a possible battleback. You can now set a video file to play in the battle background, which should loop as the plugin will repeat it automatically. This should really allow you to customize your battle backgrounds. See below gif for a preview of how it can look:

Along with this, an option was given to hide the battleback sprites. I was going to hide sprites automatically with a video, but thought some people might have use for a sprite in front of the video.

This update also simplifies the plugin commands the plugin comes with. Clear Battle Back has been removed, instead you can now call Set Battle Back with an empty id to clear the animated battle back. Show Animation and Hide Animation have been combined, with a new Show argument that determines if it will show or hide the animation.

This version is a quick compatibility update for other [CGMZ] plugins that have vehicle encounters, such as [CGMZ] Custom Vehicles. This plugin will no longer use the map animated battle back when the player is in a vehicle, as the battle back will be handled instead by other plugins. The option to add an animated battle back has been added to those other plugins. Previously, both plugins would fight for control over the battle back.