Making a crowd of cloned characters

[Samwise]

Hi all,

In my game I have two scenes with multiple and identical characters - one with about 10-15 soldiers, and one with about 20 activists.

I want them all to look the same, and to react the exact same way to the player's actions.

I know it's possible to create all these characters manually by using the same views and copying all the scripts, but for 30-35 characters that would be a real pain.

Does anyone have an idea how to solve this issue?

[Ashen]

You can more quickly assign the views with a couple of while loops in game_start:

Code: ags

int Temp = 1; // Or first 'activist' character
while (Temp < 21) { // first non-activist
  character[Temp].ChangeView(ACTIVISTVIEW);
  // Can also set Speech view, Name, etc if needed
  Temp++;
}
 // If 'soldiers' and 'activists' aren't consectutive characetrs, set Temp to first soldier
while (Temp < 36) { // first non-soldier
  character[Temp].ChangeView(SOLDIERVIEW);
  // Also set Speech view if needed
  Temp++;
}

I've done something similar in the past, and it works fine.

For the interactions, you could probably use unhandled_event - just check if the character is a soldier or activist, and run the appropriate interaction:

Code: ags

function unhandled_event(int what, int type) {
  if (what == 3) { // Character was clicked
    Character *theChar = Character.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y);
    int Temp = theChar.ID;
    if (Temp >= 1 && Temp < 21) { // character is an 'activist'
      // 'Activist' reactions here. Use 'theChar' to make sure the right character reacts, e.g.
      theChar.Say("Don't push me, fascist!");
    }
    else if (Temp >= 21 && Temp < 36) {
      // 'Soldier' reactions here. Use 'theChar' to make sure the right character reacts, e.g.
      theChar.Say("Clear off, hippy.");
    }
  }
}

Not fully tested, but SHOULD work (provided the values for Temp are right, and I didn't mess up the braces...).

[Samwise]

Thank you very much.

There isn't a conventional method or a specific module to clone characters, right?

[Ashen]

No, because there's really enough call for that in adventure games (which is obviously what AGS is mostly for), that it's worth including as standard. That said, some sort of copy-paste function for Characters, Inventory Items and GUIs might be a nice little timesaver.

You could probably module-ify this code whith a bit of work, if you were interested, but I'm not sure it'd be worth it.