Elite Battle 2015: Gen 5 battle skin

[Luka S.J.]

Disclaimer

The following is a visual upgrade to the Pokémon Essentials starter kit. It was created to resemble the Gen 5 battle system in both the scene and behaviour.

All the scripts and graphics are 100% plug and play. This system does not support GIFs and is not styled or optimized to the likes of Gen 6 games, so the resources provided, and the positioning of the scene elements will not work ideally with new Gen 6 sprites/graphical resources.

Should you wish to make changes to the system, you may do so, but I will not provide you with any support or assistance. Tweak at your own risk! Everything you could possibly need is already included in the kit, and should some resources be missing, or should you wish to add more, you can do so manually.

Carefully read all the instructions .

Rules

• You may use this system for any and all personal (non-commercial) purposes.
• You may modify this system. Should you wish to do so, you take all responsibility for any outcomes the modifications may have done to your system. If you agree to this, you also agree to the right of Luka S.J. from withholding any assistance when it comes to issues that may have arisen due to the modifications of this system. Any persistent and repeated asking for help of modified instances of EBS will be treated as spam, and be promptly deleted.
• You may not use this system in any commercial projects.
• You may not use footage of this resource (unless you're showcasing modifications done to it) in order to promote your game
• You may not re-distribute this system
• You may not bundle this system with unauthorized packs
• You may not use this system in commercial projects
• You may not claim this system as your own. Whenever using or showcasing parts of this system, full credits must be given at all times.
• Read the FAQ before asking for help

When asking for help, or reporting any errors, make sure to paste the whole error in your bug report as well as mention which version of Essentials you are using (whether or not it is vanilla as well).

Credits

Please credit all the following people for their contributions, when using the Elite Battle System.

Sprites:

• GameFreak | Original sprites from B/W/2 games
• Pokecheck.org | Ripping the sprites from B2/W2 roms
• Luka S.J. | Indexing and formatting the sprites
• PinkCatDragon | GIF to PNG conversion
• Tebited15 | B/W styled trainer Red sprite
• Spriters-Resource (redblueyellow) | Gen 5 ball sprites

Battle Backgrounds:

• Eli | Ripping and compiling the backgrounds
• lilatraube | Some B2/W2 battle bases

Custom UI:

• Luka S.J. | Design, formatting and implementation

Scripts:

• Luka S.J. | Elite Battle System
• Maruno | General help and support
• PinkCatDragon | GIF to PNG converter
• Pokémon Essentials | Base system

Sound Effects:

• GameFreak | Original sound effects from B/W/2 games
• BadSamaritan | Ripping the sound effects

Watch the video preview!
A small video compilation showcasing the key features
​

Features​

New Features:

• Fully animated Pokémon sprites (spritesheet format)
• Fully animated Trainer sprites (spritesheet format)
• Dynamic battle scene motion
• Dynamic (and fully animated) in-battle weather
• Custom UI
• Support for in-battle Trainer dialogue
• Gen 5 styled ability messages
• New VS sequences and battle transitions
• New (custom coded) common animations
• New Evolution and Egg Hatching scenes (B/W styled)
• Insane new move animations!

Included Resources:

• All 649 B2/W2 Pokémon sprites [front,back,shiny,formes] fully formatted and indexed are provided
• Resource pack containing all the UI elements and animation files
• Several B2/W2 battle bases and backgrounds
• New metrics data for proper sprite positioning
• New Positioner.exe to easily reposition your sprites
• Audio files for several animations

All other Essentials related functonality (Mega Evolution, Safari Zone, double battles, support for static sprites, form specific sprites, etc.) has been retained.

Instructions​

Getting the new system to work has been made even easier! There is no need for you to worry and try to figure out how to install something, as everything will be done for you. Follow the instructions at this page to get the system running.

Refer to (broken link removed) to learn how to set up the new Sun/Moon styled trainer VS sequences.

Since the system allows for in-battle trainer dialogue and BGM changes; if you'd like to use this feature you would need to turn the endspeech of the Trainers into an array, where the first field will be the speech after losing, second the speech during battle, and third (optional) the BGM filename that will be played.
Here is an example of how to use it:

pbTrainerBattle(PBTrainers::RIVAL1,"Test",["Not too shabby","It's not over yet!","final_battle.ogg"],false)

Let's talk sprites!

It is important to know that the Elite Battle System uses a different convention of formatting sprites as opposed to vanilla Essentials. First off; your sprites can either be set up in a sprite sheet and you can have them animated, or they can simply be single frame sprites to make them appear static on screen. On top of that, it is important to know that EBS handles all the scaling of the various sprites (both the baseline and then the zooms for the dynamic motion) automatically through the newly written BitmapWrapper. This means that you don't have zoom your sprites to the default upscaled 200% resolution that vanilla Essentials enforces. Another crucial part to keep in mind when making sprites is that the width and height of each individual frame of the sprite must be the same; in other words, each frame has to be a square. EBS has to somehow calculate the number of frames you have in your individual sprite sheets, and it does so by dividing the width of the entire sheet, by its height. Unfortunately, I have not yet graduated Hogwarts, so I'm no expert in wizardry to do it any other way. To further illustrate what I mean, see the graphic below:

Alternatively, if you want your sprites to be resized but don't want to have to go through each sprite manually, you can do so by adjusting the appropriate configuration constants from within Settings.

F.A.Q.​

Q: Help, the game is throwing out errors about missing Pokémon sprites!?
A: Run your game at least once in Debug mode to re-index the sprites.

Q: Help, I'm getting a 'NameError' 'uninitialized constant' error!?
A: This just means that you haven't compiled your game data yet. Please do so.

Q: Can I use GIFs with this system??
A: No. It's that simple

Q: Can I use static and/or default Essentials sprites in this?
A: As stated in the features list, yes. You can still use single frame, static sprites.

Q: How do I get this to work with a DS layout?
A: As of version 4.3.3, EBS no longer supports DS engines.

Q: HALP!!!! My sprites are huge/tiny?
A: If you're not using the resources provided, you'll have some issues at first. The system is not magic. However, you can use the Positioner.exe to position the sprites, and the scaling constants (in the SJPlugins_Settings script) to automatically scale your sprites.

Q: My Mega Pokémon are all over the place in this. What gives?
A: Unfortunately that is not an issue with EBS, but rather a limitation with Essentials, as it doesn't have a separate method to position mega Pokémon sprites.

Q: Can you make this compatible with online play?
A: No. That is none of my concern. Essentials has no PvP aspects to it, so neither will EBS.

Q: I'm getting 'Critical Error' messages!?!
A: That has nothing to do with EBS, and could occour from a multitude of reasons. A common one being that people tend to use pirated versions of RMXP. Another, is a mismatch of the version of RMXP that you are running and the RGSS10xE.dll Library in your project folder.

Q: Can you make this more like 6th generation?
A: No. I have no interest in that.

Q: How can we disable the zooming and scene motion?
A: The dynamic battle scene is the whole point of this system. By default, you can't. You'll have to go through and edit a lot of the scripts to achieve that.

Q: How do I use the new VS animations?
A: Read the top portion of the EliteBattle_EntryAnimations script.

Q: My game is telling me that I'm missing some Graphics resources??
A: Run your game at least once in Debug mode, and update your plugins when prompted.

Q: I'm getting a undefined method `isVersion17?` for NilClass error
A: Missing the mandatory Utilities Script (which has to be placed above EBS scripts)

Q: I'm getting a uninitialized constant PokeBattle_SceneConstants::XXX error
A: You're missing the mandatory Settings script (which has to be placed above EBS scripts and is included in the pack)

Q: I'm getting a Errno::ENOENT error (during sprite conversion)
A: Download the 4.4.11 patch

 

[Skystrike]

I've been waiting for the release of this and holy crap it's sexy. I'm not developing anything right now but I'm downloading this for future use.

Literally no reason to use this

Good job!

 

[Florio]

I'm so glad it's finally out... TESTING NOW!

 

[Luka S.J.]

Change the following four values in PokeBattle_SceneConstants, to

  MESSAGEBASECOLOR  = Color.new(255,255,255)
  MESSAGESHADOWCOLOR  = Color.new(32,32,32)
  HPGAUGESIZE  = 168
  EXPGAUGESIZE = 260

For those of you who missed if from the Edited post. I apologize for the inconvenience. It was an oversight on my part when I was writing the instructions.

[EDIT]
Oh and this sprite by tebited15 as an example of B/W formatted backsprites.

 

[miniking]

Lukas S.L. Have a error, when open the pokedex, all sprites no anime , only static the PngGif monster.

You can with help moruno, add new dynamic for battles .
Ex: Bolt Strike, when the zekrom fly to over enemy, can move the camera in cenary.And return to original position.
best use for Brave bird, Bonce/Fly and any attack need this feature :D

Thank you for the AWSOME add-on *-*


Sorry the bad inglish.

 

[Luka S.J.]

Lukas S.L. Have a error, when open the pokedex, all sprites no anime , only static the PngGif monster.

You can with help moruno, add new dynamic for battles .
Ex: Bolt Strike, when the zekrom fly to over enemy, can move the camera in cenary.And return to original position.
best use for Brave bird, Bonce/Fly and any attack need this feature :D

Thank you for the AWSOME add-on *-*


Sorry the bad inglish.

Your Pokedex not animating sprites in it, is not an error that has anything to do with my system. In fact it has everything to do with the Pokedex, and it's structure which is obviously lacking sprite updates. In any case, that is none of my concern.

As for the animations. I'm not interested in coding manual per-animation movement. Those extra details are up to you to figure out and do, should you so desire.

 

[miniking]

Your Pokedex not animating sprites in it, is not an error that has anything to do with my system. In fact it has everything to do with the Pokedex, and it's structure that is obviously missing sprite updates. In any case, that is none of my concern.

As for the animations. I'm not interested in coding manual per-animation movement. Those extra details are up to you to figure out and do, should you so desire.

Who I modify the pokedex to anime the new Png files?

thank you for help

 

[Zeak6464]

Pokedex Error :

 

[Radical Raptr]

Pokedex Error :

Spoiler:

Did you check this post?

I'm about to test it out

 

[Luka S.J.]

Read this post to change up your Pokedex

Guys, the instructions are all there, including the one that asks to post any potential bugs/errors within

Spoiler:

tags. I want to keep the thread tidy, so that it's easier for me to keep track of things.

 

[Luka S.J.]

BitmapWrapper section has been updated to fix issues concerning Spinda, and other potential Pokemon that would utilize the "alterBitmap" function from MultipleForms.

Spot drawing has been removed from animated Spinda sprites. This has been done due to the issue of the spot drawing not accounting for sprite movement. The compatibility is still there, and you can manually remove the check from the scripts (everything is annotated in the script itself) to enable drawing spots on animated sprites. Static Spinda sprites will still have their spots drawn on them though.

+ Optimized UI performance for large screen option

 

[Pumone]

Wow, this is a huge work you've made for us!! Thank you so much for sharing with us this beauty!! 10/10!!

 

[iZackefx]

I have a question. How come when I attack a Pokemon, the opponent doesn't attack unless I switch out? I had a Pikachu use quick attack on a Rattata and the rattata did not attack.

 

[Luka S.J.]

I have a question. How come when I attack a Pokemon, the opponent doesn't attack unless I switch out? I had a Pikachu use quick attack on a Rattata and the rattata did not attack.

There are AI issues pertaining to wild Pokemon in v15 of Essentials. These issues have been fixed in the 15.1 release. Download that. My system makes no change to the core functions and AI of the battle system. It's a purely cosmetic overhaul.

 

[Pumone]

I'm not sure if it's just me, but when I send a pokemon to battle, its cry sound does not start, please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[ROCK7JD]

a little doubt ... that the essentials version is compatible , is exclusively for V.15 ?

 

[Luka S.J.]

a little doubt ... that the essentials version is compatible , is exclusively for V.15 ?

I've coded it with v15 and 15.1 in mind. And tested it on those versions too. I'm not sure about older versions, but unless something drastic changed in the ActualScene of the PokeBattle scripts I think it could work. One way to find out though: test it out.

I'm not sure if it's just me, but when I send a pokemon to battle, its cry sound does not start, please correct me if I'm wrong.

It's not just you. It seems I have forgotten to add cries for player and enemy trainer Pokemon in their sendout animation. Unfortunately, I don't have a machine to work on this atm, so I'll have to get back to fixing it a bit later.

[S-HIGHLIGHT][EDIT]
I added the cries of Pokemon when they are sent out into battle by either player or opposing trainer. The updated script section is DynamicScene.[/S-HIGHLIGHT]

 

[carmaniac]

I'll be one of the few to says this but thanks for making the effort for everyone out there at making this, I must admit this is in a handful of generous things to do. Not encountered any bugs yet other than ones caused by myself, the movement and UI is fluid while looking at the coding probably one of the most efficiently coded public scripts out there. Good job Luka.

 

[xTHx]

Hey Luka! Nice script ^^
I have a question: The same pokeDex bug occours with the Trainer Card, when put the converted trainer images. Has some way to fix it?

 

[Luka S.J.]

Hey Luka! Nice script ^^
I have a question: The same pokeDex bug occours with the Trainer Card, when put the converted trainer images. Has some way to fix it?

You can replace the default bitmap call in PScreen_TrainerCard

@sprites["trainer"].setBitmap(pbPlayerSpriteFile($Trainer.trainertype))

with my new wrappers

@sprites["trainer"].bitmap=AnimatedBitmapWrapper.new(pbPlayerSpriteFile($Trainer.trainertype)).bitmap

But I honestly never considered anything like that, since you don't really see animated sprites for trainers on the trainer card and so I didn't think you'd have an animation sheet for your trainer. Setting up a normal static sprite is pretty much your instant fix.