Far and near distance effect

[RyanBram]

Hi, everyone.


I am looking for a way to create point-and-click adventure game styla a'la Lucas Art.


In most of point-and-click adventure, the character sprite can move freely in 8 directional (in RPG Maker also possible using script). But the only thing that I cannot do with RPG Maker VX Ace is creating far or near effect for an object or character. In point-and-click adventure, a character will looked smaller if they move away from screen and will looked bigger if they move closer from screen.


Can I do this by using event or I need to use script for this?


Regards

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

You'd probably script it. We have been trying to do that actually for some time now, from my experience, there are some problems with this. It's easy to modify the sprite zooming dynamically based on position, modifying the terrain zooming is another thing, then you'd still also need to modify the collision size of objects depending on their zooming, and you'd also need to modify how many pixels the characters move depending on their zooming also... And so on...


This is because RM was built to make top-down games, in which case, the distance from the screen is almost always the same, so there is no near or far part.

 

[Tsukihime]

You'd probably script it. We have been trying to do that actually for some time now, from my experience, there are some problems with this. It's easy to modify the sprite zooming dynamically based on position, modifying the terrain zooming is another thing, then you'd still also need to modify the collision size of objects depending on their zooming, and you'd also need to modify how many pixels the characters move depending on their zooming also... And so on...

I like the approach used in Mode7


If we had more control over the viewport itself that might also be an option.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

It doesn't really seem to have visibly zoomed in/out though... At least not that much especially at lower angles, this gets easier if the zooming would be minimal as you could possibly go on without modifying movement and collision.

 

[RyanBram]

Hi, everyone.

Thanks for the response.

About Mode -7, I agree that it will give depth effect. But I think Mode-7 is more suitable if we want to create a World Map like Playstation era of Final Fantasy or Tales series. It takes too many effort if we want to create every map using it.

What I want to do is create a map (e.g. bedroom, store, street, etc) where the character not moving top and down, but near and far like Monkey Island series.

In the picture above, the map background is static. The map doesn't change its size. Only the character or event object who will looked smaller or bigger if they move away or closer from screen.

In RPG Maker, parallax may be used to put pre-made picture as background. But I miss a simple script that will modify the character or event object size based on their distance towards screen (and I don't know how to script it).

If somebody willing to help, it will be very nice.

Thanks.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

If you're not gonna use the mode 7, making a new script for that will be quite hard and it might also need some special things depending on what you actually need.

Anyway, if you could get a pixel movement script with custom collisions that allows dynamically modifying pixel movement size and the collision size (to be accurate during zoom in zoom out), adding the sprite zoom in and out is easy. As I remember when I did it, it was only a few lines of code. 

 

[RyanBram]

I am not really sure, but probably I don't need those feature.

Maybe the script that I need is the script that will zoom in or zoom out character based on tile regions. For example if I mark an area as region 5, the character will be gradually zoomed out until it reach 50% of its original size. If I mark an area as region 2, the character will be gradually zoomed out until it reach 20% of its original size. These region and zoom association should be configurable in script.

I hope this picture can give clear explanation about what I mean:

Thanks.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Well, basically once you zoomed out the sprite and it still walks on the 32x32 grid, it just looks weird...

 

[Tastica]

That would be a great script... I´m searching currently for something like this also.

This script would be great for parallax maps which have not the standard front-top view of the RPGMaker... I hope someone is interested to script something like that... And will share it with us...