May I maintain your plugin

[RyanBram]

Dear HashakGik,

My name is Ryan, and I'm in process of updating RPG Maker MV corescripts to PIXI v7.

I recently discovered your "BulletHell-RMMV" (top-down aircraft) plugin, and I just have to say—I am incredibly impressed. It is a very unique and creative plugin, and I love how it cleverly utilizes the RPG Maker MV engine's features in a new way.

I noticed that the GitHub repository hasn't seen updates in some time, and I was wondering about its current status. I am very interested in helping to maintain and update it, perhaps fixing any outstanding bugs or ensuring its compatibility with more recent versions of RPG Maker MV.

Before I began any work, I wanted to reach out to you directly to ask for permission. I noticed the repository doesn't have a specific LICENSE file, which makes it unclear how others in the community can contribute or build upon your work.

I am writing to ask two things:

1. Would you be open to me (and potentially others) taking on an active maintenance role for this plugin?
2. If so, would you be willing to officially add an open-source license to the project?

I would be happy to prepare a fork and manage pull requests under the MIT License, as it's very permissive and standard for the RMMV community. Of course, I would respect any other open-source license you might prefer.

Thank you so much for creating such a fantastic plugin. I believe that with a clear license, we can ensure the community continues to benefit from your amazing work for years to come.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
Ryan

[HashakGik]

Hi!
The repository has not seen any updates because life happened and I had to move on to other projects (I still have notes on features to implement and upgrade around, but I could not find the time to work on them in years, most notably spatial hashing is haunting me since the first commit, and porting to RMMZ is long overdue ^^').

I have not licensed the plugin in any way, because back then I believed even the Unlicense to be too restrictive. I think that, at this point, we can settle for a Beerware License (everything is free and released without any obligation for users or developers, but spontaneous gratitude for the developers effort is welcome).
As a consequence, you are free and welcome to fork and submit PRs. On my part, and just for safety reasons, I would like to check your progress for a few months before inviting you as a contributor to the original repository.

Best.

[RyanBram]

Hi HashakGik,

First of all, please accept my apologies for the delayed response. I wanted to make sure I had some substantial progress to show you before replying.

I have created a fork of your repository, which you can view here: https://github.com/RyanBram/Danmaku-MV-Ace

I have implemented several significant changes to modernize the plugin and make it more user-friendly:

• Key Item Integration: Aircraft availability is now determined by the possession of Key Items. This removes the need for plugin commands and allows players to purchase aircraft in the Scene_Shop just like regular items.
• Database-Driven Configuration: I moved the parameter setup away from the manual BulletHell.json editing and into Database Notetags. My goal is to leverage the RPG Maker editor as much as possible so non-programmers can use the plugin easily. Conceptually, Aircraft are now treated as Actors, while Emitters and Bombs are treated as Skills.
• Multi-Resolution Support: I updated Scene_BHell to adapt to any aspect ratio. This aligns with my broader goal of building an RPG Maker ecosystem that supports dynamic resolutions.
• Localization: I ensured compatibility with my rpg_locale system, meaning translations are now fully active within the Bullet Hell scenes.

Regarding the license: Per your request, I have added the Beerware License to the README.md and LICENSE file in the repository.

However, would you be willing to reconsider using the MIT License instead? While I appreciate the spirit of Beerware, the MIT License is the industry standard for the RMMV community. It offers the same permissiveness but provides a clearer legal framework for developers who wish to contribute or use the code in commercial projects without ambiguity.

I am incredibly excited to integrate your work into Project Ace (https://github.com/RyanBram/RPG-MV-Ace). I plan to use your plugin as a prime example of how RPG Maker can be expanded far beyond a simple RPG creation tool.

Thank you again for your time and for trusting me with your code. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Best regards,

Ryan

[HashakGik]

Hi,
I cannot check changes as the git diff shows changes in every line (are newlines normalized? Were they normalized in my code? I do not remember). It will take a lot of time to review, however I can already tell you that the Beerware License allows you to do as you please on your fork (I will NOT reconsider a license change) even though we may decide not to merge.
I can see you added about 700 slocs (even though it is currently impossible to check where), it is significant progress. Good job.

Some thoughts (before being able to actually check the code):

• You were supposed to work on the src/*.js files and then run make all. You lost the ability of maintaining code and documentation in a clean way, while also breaking the automatic update of the demo. I never added a CONTRIBUTING.md file, but I assumed makefiles to be an obvious hint. As the code is rather large, maintaining a monolithic 7k sloc file will cause you huge headaches in the future. (I am not a JS developer, but I am sure npm also has build automation, in case you want to switch to something more specific to JS)
• Moving away from plugin commands and json configuration is an interesting choice, but I wonder whether this can actually make it more difficult for users to use RMMV to make vanilla RPGs in some scenarios (e.g., when using scripts for % game completion calculations, etc.). I need to see the plugin in action and give it more thought.
• Regarding broader compatibility, does it still work as a standalone script or did you inject additional dependencies?

Do as you please on your fork, but addressing the first point above is necessary if your aim is to merge and maintain master. The other points are just considerations.

Best.

[HashakGik]

Here are my point-to-point comments:

• Why have you removed some boss features? I can understand removing the warning picture, because your i18n library does not support translating images (?), but the warning sound and the possibility of stopping the scrolling in place had no reason to be removed. Unless you discovered some bug? Note that the stage is not blocked only during messages, but also by generators configured to prevent you from moving on if you have not cleared the area yet, for example when we want an entrance to be blocked by guards, or a boss to prevent us from escaping an area (hence your hasPendingConsecutiveMessage flag is not enough to decide whether we want to scroll the map or not).
• The json files in the demo are not updated, can you include the new BulletHell.json, Emitters.json, etc.?
• Does replacing emitter ranks with database skill levels preserve the possibility of removing an old emitter on rank up?
• Some minor efficiency issues (e.g., when you gain a new item, you can avoid the for loop with an $O(1)$ reverse lookup, if you preload at the beginning a dictionary item_id $\mapsto$ actor_id)
• In line 4582, should if ($gameBHellResult) be negated (if (!$gameBHellResult))? Same for line 4601
• Why are bombs forced to use "IconSet"? I used that file in the demo because I did not want to create new images, but users should be free to load icons from any image.