What is MACK and what is the Mack style

[Nuclear Mosquito]

Ok, so this is a fairly stupid question, but what is MACK? Firstly, hold your horses apple fans, this does not concern you...

I know MACK is a style of RPG Maker character that is two tiles high instead of one, but I've seen people use the term to describe art styles and a few other things that have nothing to do with characters. Could someone please just give me a clear description of what MACK is and what a MACK style is?

Thanks

 

[Kes]

Mack is the name of someone who produced a lot of tiles and sprites, all in a particular style.  The ones you see most commonly were made for VX originally.  I'll see if I've still got the links to his material - but it may have been caught up in the loss of the FSM web site.

EDIT

Yes, as I thought it's part of the lost world of FSM.  However, there is a thread where alternative locations of the materials is being gathered.  It's here: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/27123-first-seed-material-refmap-gone-resource-recovery-operation-go/   If you look through you'll find links to Mack's stuff.

 

[mlogan]

One of the most common ways you hear of "Mack Style" is in regards to his larger sprites.

Standard VX/Ace sprites are 32 x 32. "Mack sprites" are 48 x 32.

It can often get confusing because, if my understanding is correct, there is a generator, the "Looseleaf Generator" that creates sprites that are taller as well and is attributed to Mack. But they are very different in style from the "Mack" sprites offered with the FSM, different enough that the two styles cannot be combined.

It's taken me a while to get this down, and I may still have the technicalities of the different sprites wrong, but I think that's it.

 

[Nuclear Mosquito]

Standard VX/Ace sprites are 32 x 32. "Mack sprites" are 48 x 32.

Wait, then how do you create maps for them if they don't fit into the 32x32 grid?

 

[Andar]

Wait, then how do you create maps for them if they don't fit into the 32x32 grid?

Sprites do not need to fit into the grid - look in the shop for example maps from the High-Fantasy-Packs (or the Mythos Pack from the same series), those sprites are 64x32 for regular humans.
The only effect of using larger sprite is that the collision area of those sprites is still limited to the bottom 32x32 pixels, but as you can see in the HF-Examples that limit is no problem if the maps are made for this (HF-Packs can't use the tileset-counter-flag in the usual way, but that's also easy to work around)

 

[Nuclear Mosquito]

I have another question about mack sprites that I want to ask.

I have a chair that I've put above the player so that it looks like he is sitting:



But when you walk past the bottom of the chair your head extends past the tile your body is on and ends up underneath the chair. Like this:



Is there any way that I can keep the player's head above the chair when he is walking past, while he is still able to "sit" in the chair?

 

[Kes]

NeonBlack has done a fix.  You can find it here: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/22243-large-sprite-%E2%98%86-display-fix/