characters

[game master]

I'm having trouble making new characters for my game? I looked in the manual but it doesn't help me. any suggestions would be helpful.

[monkey0506]

What exactly is the problem?  Are you having problems importing characters, or creating new ones?

Creating a new character
1.  Open up AGS.
2.  In the left pane click on the "Characters" tab.
3.  In the Main pain, beneath the list of characters (a long white box), click the "New character..." button.
4.  In the box that pops up, type the new characters name.
5.  Import the sprites into the sprite manager (right-click and choose Import new sprite...) [Sprite Manager tab in left pane]
6.  Set the sprites into their appropriate views (in a new view, click "New frame", then double-click on the purple box, then choose the sprite for that frame.  then, place the rest of that sprite section (i.e. the walking down section) into that "loop".  to create a new loop (i.e. walking left), click "New loop"). [Views tab in left pane]
7.  Customize the rest of the character's settings in the Characters tab.

Importing characters
1.  Open AGS.
2.  Click on the Characters tab in the left pane.
3.  Near the bottom of the screen, click the "Import character..." button, then choose the "*.cha" file you want to import.
4.  Customize the rest of the character's settings.

I hope this helps.  You should really read the manual, the tutorial, and the BFAQ before posting BTW.

Edit:  I see you say that you looked in the manual, however if you type in "Characters" in the Index, it will display the following:

Characters
Adventure Game Studio makes it easy to add your own non-player characters into the game. A character is similar to an object, except that it can change rooms, maintain its own inventory, and take part in conversations (more on these later). It can also have its own custom animation speed and movement speed.
Go to the "Characters" pane. You will see on the left of the screen a list of all the characters in the game. To create a new character, click the "New character" button.

You will see that there are a lot of options which you can set for each character. First of all, the "This is the player character" check-box allows you to change which character the player will control at the start of the game. When the game starts, the first room loaded will be this character's starting room. By checking this box for one character, it will be de-selected for any other character which was previously set.

Secondly, the "Ignore room area scaling" check-box allows you to specify that this character will not be stretched or shrunk in scaling areas of the screen. This could be useful if you have a character who always stands still in the same place, and you want the graphics on-screen to be the same size as you drew them, even though he is standing on a scaled area.

The "Clickable" check-box tells AGS whether you want the player to be able to click on the character. If Clickable is checked, then the character will be interactable, like the way things worked in Sierra games. If it is not checked then the character works like the main character did in Lucasarts games - if you move the cursor over him or click to look, speak, etc, then the game will ignore the character and respond to whatever is behind him.

To set which room this character starts in, change the number in the "Start in room" box. You can set the character's location within this room by using the "At X:" and "Y:" textboxes, typing in the X,Y co-ordinates you want him to start at. These co-ordinates should be the middle of his feet.

The "Normal view" is where you set what the character looks like. You must create a view in the View Editor, and this view must have either 4 or 8 loops. If you use 4 loops, then when walking diagonally the closest straight direction is used for the graphics. Each loop is used for the character walking in one direction, as follows:

Loop 0 - walking down (towards screen)
Loop 1 - walking left
Loop 2 - walking right
Loop 3 - walking up (away from screen)
Loop 4 - walking diagonally down-right
Loop 5 - walking diagonally up-right
Loop 6 - walking diagonally down-left
Loop 7 - walking diagonally up-left

To change the rate at which the character animates, change the Animation Speed box. Here, a smaller number means faster animation. Note that this does NOT effect the speed at which the character actually moves when walking.
NOTE: The first frame in each loop is the standing still frame. When walking, the game will cycle through the rest of the frames in the loop.

The "Movement speed" option allows you to control how fast the character moves when walking. Here, a larger number means he walks faster.

The "Talking colour" option specifies which colour is used for the text when this character is talking. It effects both messages displayed with "Display message" commands which are set to that character, and also conversations. You can find out the colour for each number by going to the "Palette" pane.

The "Idle view" button allows you to set an idle animation for the character. To do this, create a new view, with one or more loops of the character idle (eg. smoking, reading a book, etc). Then, click "Idle view" and type in the view number. If the player stands still for 20 seconds (you can change the timeout with the Character.SetIdleView script function), then the current loop from the view will be played.

On the right of the screen is a button called "Script Name". This sets the name by which the character will be referred to in scripts and in conversation scripting. The difference from the main Name of the character is that the script name may only contain letters A-Z and numbers 0-9 (the first character must be a letter, however).

To set what happens when the player interacts with the character, click the "Interaction" button. You will be presented with the (by now familiar) interaction window. Note that, as with Inventory interactions, you may NOT display a local message or use Object commands. Basically, you need to display global messages or use scripts to handle character interactions.

You can also set a talking view for the character. To set one, click the "Talking view" button. If you set a talking view, then that view will be used to animate the character while they are speaking. You should generally have about 2-3 frames in each loop (the loops are used for the same directions as in the main view).

There is also an available "Blinking view". This is used to play intermittent extra animations while the character is talking. You may want to use this for effects such as blinking (hence the name). If you set a view here, it will play intermittently while the character talks (it is drawn on top of the normal talking view). The default time between playing is 3-4 seconds, but you can change this with the Character.BlinkInterval script property.
NOTE: the blinking view is currently only supported with sierra-style speech.

"Ignore room area lighting" tells AGS that this character will not be affected by light and tint levels set on room regions.

"Do not turn before walking" overrides the General Setting for turning, and tells AGS not to turn this particular character around on the spot before they move.

"Diagonal loops" specifies that loops 4-8 of the character's view will be used for the four diagonal directions. If this option is not checked, the character will only face 4 ways, and you can use loops 4-8 for other purposes.

"Adjust speed with scaling" modifies the character's walking speed in line with their zoom level, as set on the walkable areas.

"Solid" specifies that this character is solid and will block other characters from walking through it. Note that both characters must be solid in order for them to block one another.

AGS allows you to export your characters to a file, and then import the file into a different game - so you can share the same main character between games, or create one for distribution on the internet. When you click the "Export char" button, you will be asked what you want to call the file, so type a short name and press ok. The entire character setup, and graphics, will be exported to the file. This includes the character's walking and talking graphics. Then, in the editor later (with any game loaded), click the "Import character" button. The file selector appears, where you should find the CHA file which you exported earlier. A new character slot will be created and all the settings imported.

NOTE: Because importing always creates a new slot, you cannot use it to overwrite an existing character.

[TerranRich]

The manual explains it quite well. And, FOLLOW ALL TUTORIALS! This way you'll be well-trained in all things AGS. Character creation is one of the most basic skills required to do anything in AGS.