Is there a script for large followers/actors?

[Andar]

The current handling of the caterpillar for actors gives each actor a width of 32 pixels as a distance to previous and later party members.

This works with all actors sprites that have a width of 32 pixels (the height doesn't matter because is automatically by overlap).

If you try to use a larger sprite for an actor, the fact that sprites are displayed centered bottom results in an overlap of the actor sprites when walking in caterpillar on map - see example pictures from HF below.

Is there a script that places an empty distance between actors for those cases where the actor is declared to need more space for the sprite?

If not, would it be difficult to make such a script?

This will influence the race options I'll have for the actors in my planning - I could use races like centaur or naga only if that distance can be fixed somehow.

View attachment 8748

View attachment 8749

 

[Venima]

As far as I can see, this gets rather complex if you want it to still look right. But you can fix the second picture by adding extra space to the snake's graphic to the left of all its sprites. At least that way it's "head" will be where it should be, not at the front of the party.

Otherwise, you have two options:

1: Simple graphic offset. But if you just offset the other actors, the moment it comes to changing direction weird things will happen to the following actors because their offset will suddenly change.

2: Modify pathing. But if you modify their pathing, exactly what do they follow? The tail? And how do we know what tile the tail is on? What happens when the snake goes around corners? The actor behind might get stuck behind the wall (or go through it). If you turn often the actor behind will start lagging behind because the tail dramatically changes coordinates at each turn.

The question is, which way would you like this to be done?

Edit: A third way would be to add blank actors to the party, for the added size of the snake. They might then follow more naturally that way, might be more feasible than 2, and perhaps looks better than 1.

 

[Tsukihime]

Visual effects from #2 is important to consider.


If the tail realistically trails after the body then that might work, but I don't think you have that kind of thing set up.

 

[Andar]

Edit: A third way would be to add blank actors to the party, for the added size of the snake. They might then follow more naturally that way, might be more feasible than 2, and perhaps looks better than 1.

This is more or less what I have in mind, but it can't be real invisible actors because those would still count in Battle and in menues, it would need scripted in for the caterpillar only and nowhere else. And when going in a circle, it might be neccessary to detect diagonal distance to prevent overlapping.

Visual effects from #2 is important to consider.

If the tail realistically trails after the body then that might work, but I don't think you have that kind of thing set up.

If I go and make such an actor, the sprite would be commissioned and custom made. That naga sprite is only a placeholder to show the problem (it wouldn't work using that sprite anyway because the right-direction has a different offset grafically and the sprite jumps above the line when going right due to that problem.

But that's why I need to know is such a script exists or could possibly be done before commissioning a larger sprite, that would then be fitted to the script's limitations.

One possible such limitation might be that only the last actor in a caterpillar can be large - then I would make sure that the player can have only one large actor at any time (even if there are several in the game), and force that actor to the last position whenever he/she/it is used.

I would prefer to have a script that can do with large actors in middle positions, but as said that might be too difficult to handle.

 

[Venima]

One possible such limitation might be that only the last actor in a caterpillar can be large - then I would make sure that the player can have only one large actor at any time...

That could be a good motivation to initiate characteristic dialog between large actors. When you attempt to add a second large actor to the party, they dislike each other and bicker until you choose which to keep. Reminds me of Baldur's Gate and Mount and Blade.

But anyway, I don't know of any such script, but I actually think it would be easier on both sides to in fact add invisible actors to the party after adding large actors, and just for battles and menu's to skip them. The only question is to what extent your other scripts refer to the list of party members and how much of a problem they might be.