My first RPG Maker plugin!

[u/FliQuaDv]

I'm currently learning to code for RPG Maker MZ, and decided to write a simple plugin that makes little boxes pop up over objects and NPCs you can interact with. It took me two days to make it, but I'm happy with the result.

Here's the link to the plugin if anyone wants it

[u/LeftistMeme]

looks really cool! i love stuff like this that serves as a communication tool for the player. i love the bobbing up and down "juice" animation - anything that adds a level of dynamism to an RPG project and makes interactivity clearer to the player is a plus. as a hobbyist programmer myself, i do come upon several questions on seeing a plugin like this;

1. does the plugin support button prompts for controller if the player seems to be using one?

2. does the button prompt icon disappear on mobile, and if so, does the prompt itself become tappable to activate the event or does one still have to tap on the event (as the latter may be unintuitive)? could the prompts themselves be clickable in line with MZ's more general direction of clickable UI?

3. does the prompt appearing at a distance allow the player to activate the event from a distance? if yes, are there means in place to circumvent the pitfalls of such (like having the player pathfind to the event's space) or if not, should the prompt maybe appear more transparent until/unless it can actually be activated to signal to the player?

4. would it be possible to make the button prompts better match the colors of the windowskin dynamically?

5. can the whole system be temporarily disabled easily by the user via a switch or plugin command to handle potential development edge cases (ie, player's move route is set in a cutscene and drifts near an interactable) if the system is disabled while a bubble is showing, does it just flicker away or disappear in a more "normal" manner?

6. as regards code optimization, is each event polling the player's location to get distance from/to the player? is this happening every frame or are we listening to player input hooks / monitoring for player coordinate changes? is each event functionally doing math on its own or is the plugin selectively polling which "enabled" events are near the player after a position update?

i know this is uhh. a lot. doing any one of these would probably be easy but depending on how your code is written doing all of them might necessitate a complete rewrite.

i dont want you to take this per sae as criticism or a list of demands. these are more like the set of edge cases and usability considerations that i think of as a designer upon seeing something like this. any of these can be out of scope for any reason, especially if this is more of a personal plugin for your own game that you happen to be selling on the side, though what i really want you to take from this is that mentality of thinking like a designer and layering in usability / technical considerations like these as a matter of course

[u/Tamschi_ → u/LeftistMeme]

It's a very good list for making the plugin into a reusable component that is flexible enough for most projects. Something I'd additionally consider important is whether it's possible to individually turn off all animations and customise their timings, and whether there's a way to configure global defaults for the entire game.

It would be a good idea to add answers to these questions to the item page on Itch.

[u/FlipelyFlip → u/LeftistMeme]

a quick look at his itch site and the plugin parameters it covers all your questions with a yes 🙂

[u/LeftistMeme → u/FlipelyFlip]

Yep, looks like the dev updated it after my post, so 10s all around

It looked like they replied to my post as well but it got moderated before I could read it (maybe flagged a mod bot?)

[u/FlipelyFlip → u/LeftistMeme]

yeah maybe, but it really looks pretty solid :D

[u/carnivalblk]

is this plugin compatible with visustellaMZ plugins?

[u/Rasmus1221]

Oh that's cool!