i don’t like enemies only having like 2 animations and i’d love to get them back to using all the normal animations. is there a way to do this? thanks in advance!
What do you mean by animations here, the enemy sprites moving around (stepping in, flinching, swinging) or the battle animations that play on screen when an enemy uses a skill? And are you set to frontview or sideview?
If it’s the sprites, YEP_X_AnimatedSVEnemies is the extension that lets enemies use sideview battler sheets and all the motions that come with them. It needs to sit under YEP_BattleEngineCore in the plugin list.
i mean enemy battle animations and i’m set to frontview. sorry for not clarifying haha
In frontview the animation you see is whatever each skill has in its Animation field in the database. If those are set to Normal Attack, every enemy skill falls back to the same default, which could be why it feels like they only have a couple. Battle Engine Core adds a notetag for the enemy if you want to change that fallback:
<Attack Animation: x>
The other spot I’d look at is the cast animation settings in the Battle Engine Core parameters. Those apply a cast animation across the board by hit type, so if your enemy skills are set to None or Normal Attack, those defaults might be most of what’s showing. You can zero them out in the parameters, or per skill with <Cast Animation: 0>.
Does it go back to normal if you turn Battle Engine Core off for a test battle? That would tell us whether it’s the plugin or just the database side.
I tried your advice and it is actually a database thing. If that’s the case, I don’t know how to enable enemy attack animations without going into SV battle (which is a whole other can of worms)
That lines up with how MV handles it. In frontview, a skill whose Animation is set to Normal Attack plays nothing at all when an enemy uses it, just the enemy attack sound and the white flash on the sprite. Actors pull their weapon’s animation in that case, enemies have nothing to pull from, so for them that field effectively means no animation. The default Attack skill in the database is set to Normal Attack and most enemy action patterns use it, which is why it looks like they only have the flash and the collapse.
Two ways to give them a real one, and neither needs sideview.
The database only route is to give the skill an actual animation. Since you probably don’t want to change what Attack looks like for actors, duplicate skill 1, set the copy’s Animation to whatever you want enemies to use, and put that copy in the enemies’ Action Patterns instead of the original.
The Battle Engine Core route is the notetag from earlier. With the plugin on, <Attack Animation: 4> in an enemy’s note box makes Normal Attack resolve to animation 4 for that enemy, so you keep the shared Attack skill and give each enemy its own animation without touching the Skills tab.
Any other enemy skills that come up blank are the same thing, check their Animation field in the Skills tab and set it to something other than Normal Attack.
yeah that’d work but here’s the thing… i don’t want just enemy regular attack animations, i want it for enemy skills, magic, etc. as well. any way to do that?
Skills and magic already work that way, there’s no enemy side switch for it. The Animation field on a skill plays for whoever uses the skill, actor or enemy, so if an enemy’s Fire plays nothing, open Fire in the Skills tab and that field is set to None or Normal Attack. Set it to an actual animation and the enemy will show it.
The only thing Normal Attack is special about is that enemies have no weapon to borrow from, which is what the notetag or the duplicated Attack skill covers. Everything else is just the skill’s own field.
If some enemy skills already have an animation set and still show nothing in battle, post a screenshot of that enemy’s Action Patterns and of one of those skills in the database, since that would be something other than the field.