Free to Be Where I Be

I decided to add Himework's Free Formation to my main project.  Normally, a party only has order so a party of three would be 1-2-3.  Free Formation adds some "blank spots" so that I can arrange the party as 1-x-2-3.  In a normal RPG Maker project, this is purely aesthetic.  However, my main project does use "Line Attacks", or attacks that will strike a certain line (example: if an enemy only attacks the character in front of them), and it is surprisingly written for Free Formation's party placement.

That's not saying that the script was fully compatible with the game.  While the battle side had no surprises, I had three other snippets that also played with party placement:

-Party Formation in Battle - This snippet swaps around characters in battle.  I made a small edit to cap the swap to the current party.  May have to change this again to see how the formation affects outside of battle.  Also, should make a variable that functions like the battle switch but would limit the 4+ party swap outside of town.

-Party Formation in Menu - My current snippet would keep characters at their position, so swapping the leader would not place one person in the front.  So far, I managed to make this snippet work by inflating the clone array to be similar to the positioning array and compacting it after the swaps, yet swapping a character to the 4th empty position would set that character to the spawn point.  This may be because I've written non-existent characters to not really move, so I may have to update the movement system to move empty characters with the party.

-Party Rotation- Himework's script that rotates the current player of the party, aided with a snippet to keep characters at their position.  It works by copying the formation code, but I'll have to see how this is affected by a party bigger than 4.

Also, the current Line Attacks are written with the enemy's position in mind, but I will probably write a Random Line Attack in case I want random attacks to strike positions rather than the remaining actor.

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Edit:  Solved it mostly. When sorted or summoned, the relocated character should appear 1-2 spaces from the next person.  The bug was in multiple places, though I believe the main bug was because I have a return code in a method designed to return things, meaning it doesn't even return a proper nil.



Also of interest is how Free Formation will work with the Vore DBS.  It occurred to me that if a character is inside a stomach, I can technically blank out that character's information in the battle Party Formation and you'll swap around the characters outside.  However, the opposite is that the vored characters would be moved around, and maybe I would have some sort of formation tactic if the whole party is vored by one monster with crushing walls.  Simplest answer is that I go that route anyway but fade out their HUD.  Second answer is that I set up a second display window for the vored characters (though that would take up more room).

Another feature of Free Formation is the ability to lock characters in place or at least within the party.  If the character can be locked in place, it could lead to some interesting tactics (aka a character is forced to tank an attack at that position for the duration of the battle).  I did something similar before, but had the mindset that the battlefield was not limited to a narrow hall.