Characters + objects

[Scuzling]

hi, i am currently making a rpg / adventure type game where the characters hunt monsters & get expierence points, advance levels & such. Since i want the characters to be able to take off armour / clothing & put on better armour that a monster that they just killed may have dropped. this may be a new helmet, plate armour , greaves, boots , bracers. Does this mean thousands of drawings spent on each character to make the new item visable or an item removed or is there some sort of program where i can draw the base of a character (man in jocks) & then when they get a item the program automatically adds it to the char view? or takes it off when the player wishes to take it off?

[Squinky]

I don't think so, man. Your gonna have to re-draw them all and then script in the changes where appropriate...

[MrBombastik]

I'm guessing that you could make one sprite for each item, with all the same positions as the base character (probably a naked guy in undies) and somehow have AGS overlay them as needed. Not sure if that would work though, and you still have to animate each object independently, but at least you'd get rid of the permutations.

Not to mention wasting like 4 or 5 sprites just for the main character.

[SSH]

If you just mean that you're looking for a drawing package that will let you draw the sprites easier, using layers in the normal programs like paintshop pro, gimp, photoshop will do the trick: you just make each item in its own layer and turn on/off the visibility.

[Scuzling]

i was talking more along the lines about what MrBombastik said if i can make the sprites for the items seperate & have AGS somehow add them / remove them as i take an item off or put one on

[MrColossal]

well...

i've done a bit of fiddling before and AGS can do what MrBombastik says only i'd use characters instead of objects

i'd suggest writting your own functions which wouldn't be that hard at all, to get the characters all ontop of each other and animating with the proper loop, they'd all just be dependent on the base character and his view and loop.

problems i can see with this, when linking an object to another i sometimes see that the child object is a little bit lagged behind the parent sometimes and this will look really awkward when in came, the clothes or helmet will drag behind the players

another problem would be baselines, depending on the number of things the player can put on, baselines could be a problem for walkbehinds and walkable areas.

also, let me suggest doing the game in 256 colours and working with a strict palette [or i guess the tint function may work also] cause then you could have a WIDE variety of clothes that varies with the colour and not the form. Silver bronze gold flame water etc armor would all be the same shape only the colours would be different

eric

[Scuzling]

so where would i start & how would i go about this? , i am not too familiar with the AGS programming language.... yet

[Scummbuddy]

trust me, you would be better off just making different character views with each object.  well, thats my opinion, but I would think it would be easier overall and smoother.

[MrColossal]

i figured since you were making an RPG you would have been better at scripting, i'm not going to script this all out so i'd suggest either getting to know the ags scripting language or finding another way to do this

either with scummbuddy's suggestion or just making a different game