Positioning certain characters manually and others automatically.

[Benny Jackdaw]

Edit: On second thought, the "Eh? It's me again" business wore off after the second time.

In the RPG I'm making, there's a feature where, if you have certain items, your character can transform into a super powerful monster who fights alone (regardless of if you have others on your team) and to make it look somewhat convincing, the background changes to said monster, and the monsters heads are animated. To get this effect, I have to position monster head sprites manually. ...However, in order to do this, other characters must be placed manually as well, which gets kind of strange looking when the game gets so many characters. Is there a way to have main characters placed automatically while having monster heads placed manually where they belong on the larger sprite?

 

[CleanWater]

For the effect of the lone beast (it kinda remember me of Breath of Fire XD) you need to remove the characters from battle, then add them again after the transformation is off. But I can't think of any way to do it automatically, you will need to program it in every battle to achieve this.

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

It doesn't appear there's an option to switch between automatic placement and manual.

 

[CleanWater]

In the events of each battle, you can remove/add characters, but place them in a specific place is not possible. You can place them in the battle screen (database) though.

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

But if I select Manual, then I will have to place every single non-giant character in a different location, which will inevitably result in characters having to be placed very close to each other depending on how many characters I plan on having, which is a lot since I plan on allowing other people to sprite their own characters for the game. ...But if I select Automatic, then the giant character's heads will not be properly attached to their bodies.

 

[CleanWater]

Now you got me. I can't have any ideas right now...

Whenever I step in a dead end like this... I decide either to give up with it, or adapt the idea to something that can fit it.

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

I guess... just deal with having to place characters specifically? I don't know how much room I have to work with since some of the bosses are very big.

 

[CleanWater]

If you accept a suggestion...

I don't know if you played Breath of Fire, or Breath of Fire III, but there's a specific Ryu's dragon form that removes all party members from battle and replaces then with one lone giant dragon.


You can use the events do to the same. You can use specific battle backgrounds for the body if it's the case too.

 

[Benny Jackdaw]

If you accept a suggestion...

I don't know if you played Breath of Fire, or Breath of Fire III, but there's a specific Ryu's dragon form that removes all party members from battle and replaces then with one lone giant dragon.


You can use the events do to the same.
You can use specific battle backgrounds for the body if it's the case too.

Well, I know that. Actually I have played Breath of Fire 3 and I do remember the behemoth. He's awesome. ...My problem is there's no way to place the monster heads how I want to. The only thing I could possibly do is use smaller sprites in the backdrop, but while I still want the bosses to be bigger than the goodguy monsters, I still want the goodguy monster to be fairly big.

 

[CleanWater]

Well, you can use no sprites at all and only the backdrop monster. For the monster animations, you can use the battle animations (the ones like used for fire, thunder, etc).

 

[CleanWater]

Here is another screenshot to show better what I was trying to explain…

Instead of using the battle char animations, you shall use the battle animations (like the ones for magics, skills and spells) to replace the character. They are bigger, so they might work for what you are trying to do.