Happy 86th update!
A couple of bugfixex are made to Enhanced TP. The Item Core now has a new plugin parameter and that’s to allow you to enable ‘Midgame Note Parsing’ for independent items. This is because it came to my attention that other plugin makers out there may parse their notetags midgame as opposed to the beginning of the game and getting everything ready at once.
While this normally isn’t a problem in most cases, it is a case for Independent Items. Why’s this? Well, let’s explain how the standard database items work first. Within the YEP Library, the plugins there will parse all the notetags at the beginning of the game and convert all the note data into usable data immediately so that the game will not have to experience laggy delays midgame (especially with big notetags in large quantities), which can happen with midgame note parsing. Good games can be made into an irritating experience with midgame loading (for example, Ar Tonelico II), which is why I opted to convert all my note data at the start of the game.
When Independent Items are created, they are made off a replica of the base item with all of the data of the base item with the exception of the note data. The reasoning behind this is because unlike standard items, Independent Items must be saved within the save file. Standard items are always uniform, and therefore, can be loaded from a single database file. However, Independent Items have their own independent properties as they can be modified and vary from each saved game. The note data, for this reason, is dropped and cleared out as to not add excess bulk within the save files of player’s games. While a single item’s note data may not count for a lot, having several hundreds to maybe even thousands of Independent Items in game can increase the bulk of the game’s save file size by quite a bit. On mobile devices with limited memory, this can become a problem. And reading notetags midway through a battle system can cause potential lag especially if done en masse.
So, with that said, enabling the ‘Midgame Note Parsing’ will cause the note data to not be cleared out upon the creation of the Independent Item. This will let plugins that parse note data midgame work assuming it is the note data of an Independent Item that they need to extract data from. However, be aware of enabling this parameter may cause your game to encounter those problems I’ve listed earlier. This is not to say “Don’t use plugins that parse notetags midgame” but rather, this message is to let you know that if you’re to enable this, you ought to adjust your game’s Independent Items more carefully.
Plugin Updates as of Launch Date to 2016.01.16~
To download all available plugins, click here.
- Item Core v1.18
- Enhanced TP v1.01