Slowing Down $* Events

[Koi]

Hi again, I know I'm asking a lot of questions lately but I am going into uncharted territory in my game. I already did a Google search and couldn't really find anything.

Anyway, I have an event that has um... I dunno, auto movement? Using a file name with "$" in front of it. But, it moves really fast. Is there a way to slow it down?

 

[cabfe]

You have either the Speed options in the Event Window or the Change speed option inside a Move route command.

Speed 4 is considered "normal" speed for a walking controllable character.

 

[Andar]

For your info: the $ in the filename has absolutely nothing to do with the event or the speed of the event. The $ simply tells the engine that the spritesheet contains only one sprite as opposed to the regular spritesheets with 2x4 different sprites (check the actor spritesheets to see how that looks)

 

[Koi]

You have either the Speed options in the Event Window or the Change speed option inside a Move route command.

Speed 4 is considered "normal" speed for a walking controllable character.

EDIT:

Wait never mind I just duplicated the lilypad images to each of the, um... cells, I suppose you could say. Now it works fine.

Well, that works, but now I have another problem.

First of all, it works perfectly fine when the events (lilypads that slowly rotate back and forth) are stationary, if I have "Stepping Anim." turned on.

But these events are movable, and I want the animation of the lilypads to happen only when they move. So, I ticked on "Walking Anim." However, now the event just completely disappears. I mean maybe it's still there, but the graphic is gone. I'm not that familiar with using the $ files to make event animations so I'm doing something wrong.

This is what the $LilyPads file looks like by the way (of course without the outline on when it's put into the Resource Manager).

 

[bgillisp]

You have to fill the entire spritesheet. Right now the lilypad will only show when it is facing down, as you only filled the row for down. You need to fill the rows for left/right/and up as well, else it will not show when it is moving any direction but down (and if you tell it to face a direction besides down, it will not show at all).

All sprites need to be 3 x 4, otherwise it will not show for certain directions in the game.

 

[Koi]

You have to fill the entire spritesheet. Right now the lilypad will only show when it is facing down, as you only filled the row for down. You need to fill the rows for left/right/and up as well, else it will not show when it is moving any direction but down (and if you tell it to face a direction besides down, it will not show at all).

All sprites need to be 3 x 4, otherwise it will not show for certain directions in the game.

Heh, yeah I realized that and made the edit before I knew you replied...

Thank you very much, guys.

 

[cabfe]

This is a character sheet. While it can contain anything, its structure is always the same:

First row: going down

Second row: going left

Third row: goind right

Last row: going up.

You can fill your sheet with the same picture.

Each time this event moves, it will display the corresponding row animation.

 

[Matseb2611]

An easier option for the above is to simply switch 'Direction Fix' ON. That way you can have 4 different graphics on each row doing their own thing.

 

[Heretic86]

The reason it disappears is because the image only has a graphic when the Even faces "Down", but when it turns any other direction, like when it moves, it will disappear until it moves Down again.  The easy way to get this to work is to enable Direction Fix, but that is not quite the Correct way to do it.  Fill in the rest of the graphics there with rotated grapics.  Then you can use Direction also to provide 12 frames of animation (or 16 if you have $Filename.png) instead of just 3.  You will most likely need to use Direction Fix to prevent Turning While Moving, but that will both fix some stuff and cause issues elsewhere, namely, you wont be able to turn, but that is also easily overcome.

Even if Direction Fix is turned ON, you can still turn an Event by directly accessing the Property.  Instead of putting in an Event Command to Turn Left, use a Script instead: @direction = 4 which is what holds the direction, but doesnt check for for Direction Fix (a.k.a. Direction Lock).

There is another property called @pattern.  The @pattern controls which column will be displayed.  So @pattern = 0 will display the stuff in the left most column.  @pattern = 1 will display the graphic in the next column.  @pattern = 2 will display the right column, unless you use $filename.  @pattern = 3 will only work with $filename and then will display the right column for XP style sprites. 

There are two ways to do this: either "Change Graphic..." and select which frame of animation you want, or use @direction and @pattern. 

Example 1:

Change Graphic (Row and Column)

Wait 3 Frames

Change Graphic (Row and Column)

Wait 3 Frames

Example 2:

Script: @pattern = 0

Wait 3 Frames

Script: @pattern = 1

Wait 3 Frames

Script: @pattern = 2

Wait 3 Frames

Script: @direction = 4

Script: @pattern = 0

Wait 3 Frames

Script: @pattern = 1

Wait 3 Frames

Repeat until a full cycle is completed, but it gives an example of how to fully control your animations, even if Direction Fix is ON or Move Animation is OFF.

---

In regards to Move / Animation Speed, I wrote a script for XP that could probably also be done for VX Ace, which I cant do since I dont own VX Ace.  Basically, it allows you to seperate Move Speed from Animation Speed so you can have an NPC that steps very quickly even if their Move Speed is very low, or vice versa.  This is usually great for Children or small sprites as they would have to step more quickly than taller characters to move the same speed.

Heretic's Animation Speed [XP]
http://forum.chaos-project.com/index.php/topic,13777.0.html

Again, this probably wont help VX Ace users, but the concept is simple and can be easily ported over to VX Ace.  What you'd do is put a Comment in that says anime_speed=6 and that will override Move Speed for anything related to how quickly they appear to step.

 

[Shaz]

When events move, they will "turn" to face the direction they're moving in. This is why in a character sheet for a person, you have one row with sprites facing down, one with sprites facing up, one with them facing left, and one with them facing right. With your lilypad sprites, even though they're not "facing" certain directions, the frames are still going to change accordingly.


You COULD check the Direction Fix box, which will stop the sprite changing from one row to another. Or you could just copy the first row and paste it into the other three.


To animate when moving but not still, uncheck the Stepping Animation box and check the Walking Animation box. I believe this is the way they are selected by default when you create a new event.