What's up, RMers?

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

I ran into a bizarre bug when testing my game: if the player character gets killed in battle, you'll end up controlling an invisible square on the field. They will only appearing again after being revived.

[Taylor]

I've noticed when opening the skill or item menu, I get a bit of a pause while RMVXA has to draw or the items, I suppose. I know it's something to do with the item number, as 1/0 items creates no such jump.

A skill menu with 16 items creates a bit of a jump first open, then doesn't seem to afterwards. An item menu with 21 items has a larger jump/lag issue, and happens every time it's opened. So I wonder then if it's something in the engine, or in my scripting. In a side sandbox/project, there doesn't seem to be any such issue, despite sharing similar design/scripts. The question then is what that they don't share, that is causing the problem.

On lag notes, my battles seem to sway around 57-58fps. It shouldn't be an issue since I don't see slowdown like with those menus opening, but it just bothers me, since everything else seems to be perfectly okay at 60fps~. A quick commenting out leads me to believe it could be the animated battlers in some way, which sounds even more complicated to check for.

[MechanicalPen]

XP or VXACE? I remember XP has a bug that can cause battles to lag. Or maybe your animated battle script is redrawing everything more than it needs to. A shot in the dark, but it's probably redrawing once for every battler onscreen, instead of updating them all at once.

[Taylor]

I'm using VXAce. I looked around all over the script, notably in update areas.

I think it's just a part of Ace. I fiddled around, but I'd always end up having the 60fps bounce to 59/57 every 3/5 seconds. I then removed/placed-below-main the Anim Battler script, and set use_sprite? for Game_Actor to true (among some co-ordinates). Even though the sprites were not there, there was still a moment every 5 seconds of a few less frames.

So I should probably just shrug it off.

[Steel Beast 6Beets]

XP or VXACE? I remember XP has a bug that can cause battles to lag. Or maybe your animated battle script is redrawing everything more than it needs to. A shot in the dark, but it's probably redrawing once for every battler onscreen, instead of updating them all at once.

Interesting. I was suffering from some noticeable lag on battles when using single buffing/healing spells. Initially, I chalked it up to the large party script I'm using but upon closer experimentation, I realized it was the HP/SP bars script I had.

[DerVVulfman]

Recently, I've been using a sort of timer check in a number of things recently, so bars and stats only refresh after X number of frames. That way, you avoid lag. Helps out a lot.

[Taylor]

That seems excessive even then. You know that the stats will change after an attack/spell/item, so you should just have the refresh for that window there. Otherwise, it's just refreshing every few frames without a need to.

i still can't work out why my item window has a lag/jump when opening ;; ... It doesn't seem to even be any of the edits to it or Window_Selectable, I'm confused...

EDIT: It seems to be the items themselves. I don't know why, but the presence of a bunch of "loot" items, that aren't even included in-battle because they have a Never use condition, is what causes a heavier jump. x -x

EDIT: This is the sequence VXAce seems to go through to check if an item should be drawn in the BattleItem window. Here's each definition, and the definition/s referenced:

PHP Code:

# Window_BattleItem
 def include?(item)
    $game_party.usable?(item)
  end 


PHP Code:

# Game_Party
 def usable?(item)
    members.any? {|actor| actor.usable?(item) }
  end 


PHP Code:

# Game_BattlerBase
 def usable?(item)
    return skill_conditions_met?(item) if item.is_a?(RPG::Skill)
    return item_conditions_met?(item)  if item.is_a?(RPG::Item)
    return false
  end 


PHP Code:

def item_conditions_met?(item)
    usable_item_conditions_met?(item) && $game_party.has_item?(item)
  end 


PHP Code:

def usable_item_conditions_met?(item)
    movable? && occasion_ok?(item)
  end 


And finally the line that obviously matters:

PHP Code:

def occasion_ok?(item)
    $game_party.in_battle ? item.battle_ok? : item.menu_ok?
  end 


I replaced the initial include? with item.is_a?(RPG::Item) && item.battle_ok?. There's still a minor jump, but as expected there's zero of it if there's no battle-ready items. With the default line you just need a large number of items at all, even if zero are battle-ready, and there's a hiccup.

I don't know if there's a bug in the sequence, or it's just goddamn convoluted.

[BeJeremiah]

I dont have enough game to post it. but here's a picture to say im doing something.

Im tired of the boring old title screen. Here's my MMO mimic loader screen. something different.


and The CMS...working on it still...or trying to unbreak what worked and now doesn't then fix what never did. If that makes sense.

[thephantom]

I like it! Is this gonna be for the RMXP friends game where you all get lost in an online universe? Kind of like .Hack or something, where you are playing a simulated MMO like game?

[BeJeremiah]

Yep, something very similar to the later .hack themes. Story is a sore point since I have conflicting ideas trying not to completely copy the genre. There's a lot of them now. Sword Art Online, No Game No Life, Log Horizon. Lots of anime that could easily be made into a game. Don't want that competition if I translate it out of RMXP.

and thanks for the feedback :)