Terastal: Animations
Section 7.F.3
The Deluxe Battle Kit incorporates various animation utilities which it uses to animate Mega Evolution and Primal Reversion. This plugin utilizes these same utilities to implement a new animation for Terastallization that is built in the same animation style.
There's a bit to explain about these animations and how they work, so I'll provide a break down of everything in this section.
Note: If you already have an existing Terastallization animation which is stored as a Common animation named "Terastallization", that animation will take priority over the animation added by this plugin. This means that there's no risk of your animation being overwritten or ignored, nor do you need to change anything to make this plugin compatible.
Trainer Terastallization
Terastallization typically requires a trainer with a Tera Orb and a Pokemon with a Tera Type to Terastallize into. If so, the option to Terastallize that Pokemon will appear in battle. When triggered, the Terastallization animation will play.
There will be slight differences in the animation based on which side of the field the Terastallized Pokemon is on. Pokemon on the player's side of the field will face right, and their trainer will slide in from off screen on the left. If the Pokemon is on the opponent's side of the field, they will face left and their trainer will slide in from off screen on the right. This helps distinguish if the Terastallized Pokemon is friend or foe during the animation.
Terastal Animations will always display the trainer's Tera Orb above the trainer during the animation. The trainer's item may not always be the same, however. The Tera Orb is the default item used, but it's possible to give trainers unique items that trigger Terastallization. If you create unique Tera items for a trainer to utilize along with the necessary sprites, then the sprite for that unique item will appear in this animation instead of the default Tera Orb.
Wild Terastallization
Typically, wild Pokemon are incapable of Terastallizing. This is because a trainer with a corresponding Tera Orb is required. However, this plugin includes a feature that allows wild Pokemon to Terastallize on their own without a trainer, by utilizing the "wildTerastallize" Battle Rule (more details on this can be found in the "Terastal: Battle Rules" subsection). This bypasses the Tera Orb requirement, allowing the wild Pokemon to Terastallize.
The animation for wild Terastallization is mostly the same. The only obvious difference is that no trainer slides on screen during the animation, since no trainer exists.
Animation Utilities
Skipping Animations
You may have noticed in the examples above that during the Terastal animation, a button prompt on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen appears. This "skip" button indicates that you can cut the animation short by pressing the ACTION key. Pressing it will immediately end the animation, allowing you to get right back to the battle if you grow tired of sitting through these animations.
Turning Off Animations
If you want to turn these animations off entirely, there are two ways to accomplish this. First, you may do so by turning off battle animations completely in the Options menu.
If so, this animation will also be turned off. Instead, it'll be replaced with a generic "quick-change" animation which happens instantaneously.
The second way to turn off the animation would be to open the settings file in this plugin. Here, you'll find the setting SHOW_TERA_ANIM. If you set this to false, the Terastal animation will be shut off permanently, and will be replaced with the quick-change animation above, even when battle animations are turned on.
Other Animations
There are some additional animations added by this plugin related to Terastallization.
Tera Break
This is the animation used when a Pokemon's Terastallization is forcefully ended. This may only happen if a Terastallized Pokemon is KO'd, or if a wild Tera Pokemon reaches a certain HP threshold where their Terastallization state is abruptly ended. If so, their crystallized form will "shatter" and break off of the Pokemon. It's a simple animation, but it helps to emphasize a more dramatic end to the Terastal state than simply fading away as it does in most other scenarios.
Tera Burst
This animation is used whenever a Pokemon in a Terastal state is about to execute a damage-dealing move that is receiving a power boost due to Terastallization. For example, if a Pokemon has Terastallized into a Fire-type, moves used by that Pokemon that deal Fire-type damage will display this animation before use. This is even true if the move isn't Fire-type naturally, but has been turned into a Fire-type move due to an effect, such as Tera Blast.
Note that if the user is Terastallized into the Stellar-type, this animation will play whenever their selected move is being boosted by the Stellar type. This can happen once per type in a single battle. The only exception to this is Terapagos, who's moves are boosted indefinitely while Terastallized into the Stellar type, so it will always play this animation.
Tera Visuals
Tera Type Icons
When a Pokemon Terastallizes, the Tera Type icon of their new type will be displayed next to their databoxes, similar to icons for other mechanics such as Mega Evolution and Primal Reversion. This will allow the player to see the current type of all Terastallized Pokemon at all times, since no Tera hats are displayed here, unlike in Scarlet & Violet.
Terastal Overlays
While in the Terastal state, a Pokemon's sprite will be overlayed with a crystallized pattern. This color of this pattern will reflect their current type while Terastallized. If you would rather turn this pattern off and display the Pokemon's sprites normally, you may do so by setting SHOW_TERA_OVERLAY to false in the plugin settings.
Each Tera type has its own colored overlay pattern. These can be found in Graphics/Plugins/Terastallization/Patterns, and are named tera_pattern_TYPE, where TYPE is the ID of the Tera type for that overlay. If you add a custom Tera type without an overlay pattern, then the default white overlay will be used instead, which is the same pattern used for Tera Normal.
Animating Terastal Overlays
The overlay displayed on Terastal sprites is a pattern than can actually move around in a loop, creating an animation of sorts. By default, this overlay will scroll to the right in an erratic fashion, creating a shimmery effect.
To edit how this pattern moves, you simply have to open the plugin Settings and find the setting TERASTAL_PATTERN_MOVEMENT. You will see that this is set to an array containing two symbols.
The first element in this array corresponds to how the overlay animates along the X-axis. The second element in this array corresponds to how the overlay animates along the Y-axis. By combining different settings for each axis, you can control how the pattern moves.
If you'd prefer that the pattern is a still image that doesn't animate, then you would just set this as [:none, :none] to prevent any movement on either axis.
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