Suggestion: Only change speech head in talking view?

[wackojacko]

Hey, I was wondering if this is a good suggestion for AGS. I believe this was also used in the Monkey Island series.
Here's my suggestion:
Now, if you want to create a talking view,you have to redraw the hole character, and only change the head and/or hands for talking. It's not possible to walk and talk at the same time, cause then you have to redraw the whole walking animation and change the head for talking etc.
What if you only have to draw the head for the characters speechview?
So that the game automatically puts the speech head on the characterbody, so not the whole sprite has to change. Then you won't have to redraw the whole body again, and it saves some room. And now you can create a walking and talking character, just by 'sticking' the talking head on the character when he's walking. This 'speech head sticking' is used in an other game creation program too (I forgot the name) and seems to be very usefull. I don't know if this is possible to do, but it's just a suggestions, though it comes in very handy.
Just wondering if this could be possible

[Khris]

True, this would be very useful.

GRAC and GRAC 2 (GRaphical Adventure Creator) for the AMIGA used this method.

[Janik]

It's not much more difficult, if you use layers, to make several full images for talking frames. Basically you can have one (or more) body layers, and have 4 or so head layers with different mouth shapes.

I would think there would be trouble in aligning the overlay head and the standing frame. Plus, you couldn't have the head move (like bob up and down) as that would end up showing the stationnary head behind it.

I could see this being very nice if the character changes clothes, though.

[wackojacko]

Well, if the whole character body is in layers, like arms, head, body and legs, you just let the normal head sprite disappear and show the speech head, so the speechhead won't overlay the normal head. In this way you can also change arm animations while walking, etc.

[Bernie]

In AGS, this could be done by using two characters. Make one with body only, the other one with the head. Set the head characters' x and y pos (or FollowCharacterEx with FOLLOW_EXACTLY) to the body one. Note that both head and body character need to have the same frame size or the scaling will look bad. I've done something like that before, works just fine. :3

[Pumaman]

This is a possibility, but I'm unsure of the advantages -- especially considering the 'head bobbing' issue. You'd really have to make sure all sprites of the talking and walking and standing animations were aligned perfectly to pull it off.

[SSH]

Maybe if one of the game statistics that could be displayed in the editor was the average compression ratio achieved, using AGS's internal compression, on all sprites in a game people would stop worrying so much about thing like this. ANd after all, you can probably save a lot more memory by doing your game in 320x200 8-bit than by this method.

[Janik]

True. Even a short MP3 music file will take up as much space as, probably, 2000 sprites or so. Probably more.

[YOke]

I don't get it... If you are going to use the same body for all speaking frames you would have a lot less work with just pasting the heads onto the body in paint and using a full sprite than to align the head? IMO the only advantage the "separate head" technique offers is reduced game size. Not much of that either. As you said LucasArts used that technique in their games, and when you distribute your game on 1,44 Mb disks you have to cut all the corners you can with regards to size. Theese days it's not all that important.

[wackojacko]

I still say it's easier because you don't have to create new talking views for when the ego has to raise a hand while talking or has to walk while talking. If you want to now how it works you can look at this engine, where this feature is used in: Twigz Engine

here's the link:
http://www.shatteredrealmproductions.com/Twigz%20Engine/Twigz%20Costume%20File%20Format.htm

Check the text from somewhere in the middle of the page, it's about the custumes and how they work in the game

I think it is very usefull

[SSH]

But its no problem doing the raised hand thing if yoiu use a decent layered gfx program, like PSP, PS or GIMP.

[YOke]

I still say it's easier because you don't have to create new talking views for when the ego has to raise a hand while talking or has to walk while talking. If you want to now how it works you can look at this engine, where this feature is used in: Twigz Engine

I have taken a look at the sprites in the old LucasArts games and done a bit of sprite-related programming myself, so I know what the deal is. I just don't think there's anything to gain by doing it that way.

But its no problem doing the raised hand thing if yoiu use a decent layered gfx program, like PSP, PS or GIMP.

Exactly. It's quick and easy and only has to be done once. And it's one less thing that can f*** up.