[Discussion] Headbutt Trees in Essentials

Headbutt Trees are one of the features of Pokemon Essentials, derived from the Gen 2 era games, brought back in the remakes. There's no need to explain what they do or how they work, so lets jump into the discussion segment.

At present Headbutt Trees are handled like events. Make a new event, make it a headbutt tree event, presto. It works, but is it efficient? Say for example you have a large sum of headbutt trees on a map, lets use about 30 as a low base number. Events on a map eat up processing power, and while 30 trees may not seem like a lot, if you combine it with NPCs/Trainers, Signs, warps, items, and whatever other events your map may have, that 30 slowly rises from a "manageable" number to a number which will cause games to lag on even strong machines.

I had an idea earlier which should, theoretically, cut that lag from the equation: if one was to make Headbutt Trees work like Surf does - a tile with a special terrain tag - and have that tile run the headbutt formula when interacted with, it wouldn't be calling up an event. But this is just a theory, and I've yet to actually apply it to practice. I'm curious to know what other people think about this before I go and work on something which has no feasibility in efficiency.

I think the exact same thing, headbutt trees should be a terrain tag.

Yeh I agree with you. Have been thinking about that already. In that way you won't need and extra tile for a tree so it could work like headbutt in HGSS. Without having to place 100 events on a map.

Essentials uses an Anti-lag script, that basically makes the engine only handle events that are in the screen (or near the screen) (that's why you can't use a set move route command for an event that is way too far from the screen). With that said there is no problem using events for headbutt trees, even more so since they aren't parallel process, which means they aren't really consuming proccessing power.

I always wanted for my project to have the headbutt trees, but I stopped using them when I figured out how they were lagging my game a lot because they were all events. So just like you, I wanted the trees to be tilesets with terrain tags like water and tall grass, but nobody cared about that.

Tbh, anti-lag system or not, I think the headbutt trees should be terrain tagged anyway, I think the petition would get a pass if we made one... Unless JV says no and others agree with him... But I don't think they would, anyone who has used those trees would know they lag despite the anti-lag system... It's easy enough to make, but there is no point unless Maruno is willing to add it to Essentials properly, because we'd have to keep re-adding it at every new upgrade, it's extra hassle when most of us have custom scripts already, I think this is Essential in the sense of -No More Lag Please- and then it's as easy as labeling our trees in the tilesets to 20 and for a message to say, "oh hey, that's a headbutt tree *DOOSH*... Wild Snorlax fell out of the tree!" if surfing water gets a terrain tag, why not headbutt trees?! At least then, we could possibly use this for larger trees and make a new script for handicap or swarm battles to make a bunch of Beedrill attack lol.

If this is a popular idea, I can put it into Essentials. I wasn't aware that it caused that much lag, since the events don't actually do anything by themselves.

Maruno said:

If this is a popular idea, I can put it into Essentials. I wasn't aware that it caused that much lag, since the events don't actually do anything by themselves.

Click to expand...

Exactly that was my point, I can't see how 8 to 10 (at most that are "checked" at a time) events on the current screen would lag more than the engine checking for each tile's terrain tag.

But again, I have nothing against the change, I just think that using events are more noob friendly and they also don't cause any problems if you decide to change/edit tiles on a tileset. I think it's fair enough to open a poll for that.

I added a poll up to the top of the thread, since that probably is a decent way to gather interest on whether or not it should be changed in the next build of Essentials (Not that it will be, but to see who thinks what).

That being said, I've seen the lag first hand with the headbutt trees, because my first iteration of Viridian Forest had several Headbutt trees in it, and whenever I would walk through that map my game would just hit a massive slowdown point. I know my friend has worked on a map for their game and people playing it have also experienced lag relating to maps with lots of headbutt trees. In the end, I support making it a terrain tag so that way the lag is cut down a great deal, and it allows you to have more comparability with making different kinds of Headbutt Trees (aesthetically) for something similar to HgSs.

...We can do both, by the way.

I think Maruno already said this... But, I don't think you need to remove how it is, just add the terrain tag way in to it as well, I'd prefer terrain tag, but some may not... Viridian Forest is the main culprate for lag... But if I were to use this as a couple trees on a route or 2, events aren't the problem.