Constant background animations?

[FamousAdventurer77]

Since I don't learn well from books and I don't know of any interactive tutorials and/or someone who is willing to tutor me in scripting, I promised myself I'd kinda save scripting as the last thing to be taken care of (that I'd get all art/sprites, cutscenes, music, and dialog finished before conquering the worst part).

But I just want to know this: What scripting needs to be incorporated for constant background animations?

Note: This is in 320x200 resolution and needs to be viewed at 200% in any picture viewing program for proper viewing.

I just want to get in simple background animation, nothing too complex-- like the people sipping their drinks, talking to each other, that one couple making out, etc. What kind of script would you have to incorporate for it?

[TheJBurger]

The characters can be either "characters" (meaning independent of the background) or you could just draw them directly onto the background, and import that into the editor (which it seems you've done).
If you want them to be individual characters (This would be appropriate if you wanted to talk to the characters in the game), you would get rid of all the characters on the background, and import their sprites individually to create their characters. Then you would set them up in the room, and you could constantly animate them using the command:

Code: ags

character[name].Animate(code goes here);

That's method # 1.

Method # 2
If your characters are directly part of the background, you could edit them all each time, save the individual background frames as seperate files, and then animate the background using the "Animate Background" feature in each room. This allows you to have 5 background frames that will cycle in animation during the game.

Method # 1 is probably better, but you could probably get by with method # 2.

On second thought, you should probably use Method 1 as characters have their own walk behind areas which would update for animations. Background frames would be less effective here.

[FamousAdventurer77]

Thanks for the tip, I'll keep it mind when (and if I'm finally ever ready) to script: The couples dining by the window won't have any interactivity, until after a certain point in the game when the ones on the far right are finally gone.

The only people I want to have interactivity with are the two standing alone on the left side of the screen with (the blond man and woman.). The rest-- just like I said, are just there for decoration, like there'll be a description if you look at them but get a different message if tried talking to them.

How would that go about?

[R4L]

What I would do is make two characters together in paint or something and animate them talking back and forth, then import the frames into a view and set it as a character idle view and place them in your background. That way, you could have two characters in one, and have that realistic conversation. Note that this is only for background characters though. (Ones that have no interaction  )

[Khris]

I'd recommend to start learning the scripting language.
There are multiple possible solutions for your problem, and it's way better to know how these things are done before creating all the backgrounds and sprites.

[NiksterG]

I agree with Khris. When I started AGS, I stayed as far away from the scripting language as possible. However, I realized that a lot of the things I wanted to do in my game couldn't be done just in the interaction editor. I followed the tutorial in the AGS manual and now, though I'm by far no expert, I at least know what people are talking about in these forums .

So, I'd bigtime recommend taking the time to go through the scripting tutorials in the manual. After all, if you do get stuck, the great AGS community is here to help.