Help Animating Scene

[SilverSpook]

Hi all,

I'm weighing the best method of implementing a scene with many characters and was wondering what the veterans would recommend in order to minimize pain and performance degradation.



Many of the characters pictured in this particular scene will not be interactable initially, so I think it's ok to have a lot of them not be AGS character entities.  I would however like them to have some basic animation such as fidgeting, blinking, tapping a foot, just showing that they are indeed alive (relatively speaking) and not completely static in the background.

I'm thinking:

1.) Have an animated background loop?  One issue I guess is the resolution of the game is 1366x768 so this could bloat the install file.

2.) Have them as objects playing an animation loop?

3.) Make each one a character playing an animation loop?

4.) ?

If anyone has a suggestion how this might be handled best, let me know.  I've never done anything on AGS that pushes the limits of the engine so might be good to know where things might start overheating before I break it.

Thanks

[Mandle]

I would avoid the 5 frame background loop as this will seem repetitive and fake when used for people fidgeting. This loop is better for things like waves on a beach, wind blowing in trees etc. Stuff that is fairly repetitive by its nature.

I'm not sure if there is much difference between using characters or objects. I would probably personally use characters. Remember also that there is a limit of 30 objects per room (I believe it is 30 anyway).

[MyEakinBack]

Wow, that is an awesome scene.

I'm not that experienced, but I personally would recommend using objects with fairly short animation scenes. I would single out small areas where you could create an object and provide a short animation view. You could then use random numbers to set the times when an animation appears (eNoBlock). This way, the characters would look independent of each other. I have a feeling that at the detail you want, you will kill the CPU in no time.