Hey, there's still questions left to ask!

For example: Will CS be able to support 3D sound?

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(url="http://"http://www.avidgamers.com/phil")Philosophical Mouse(/url), two word that don't go together.
D**nit, these marshmellows are ADDICTIVE!!! I can't stop eating them, and the bag is enchanted to never be empty of them!
(/backspeak)(/mindless rant)

I'm still trying to figure out how our sprites should be rendered. Do I need a background that has a specific transparent color. Or do I need masks or something?
Someone out there PLEASE answer me.

And also STILL no one answered my question about how the graphics change thing would work when it was a small change like a weapon in hand. I got some suggestions, but one can't truly be sure if a MODERATOR or a BETA TESTER doesn't come to throw in a few cents. Maybe someone from PoG can tell me how they did the graphics changes. (I can't talk on that board since I'm not registered... why they wouldn't let me is completely beyond me) But if anyone knows the answer or has a REALLY GOOD IDEA, pleeeeeeeeeeeease help me. I want all of my graphics done by the time coldstone comes out. Honestly...

Quote

Originally posted by Kireck:
I'm still trying to figure out how our sprites should be rendered. Do I need a background that has a specific transparent color. Or do I need masks or something?
Someone out there PLEASE answer me.

I believe the engine can recognize white as transparency in picts, while in pngs you can use alpha channel and such.

Saphfire

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Thank you very much. But that's not the main question. Someone answer the OTHER one...please

Quote

Originally posted by Kireck:
Someone answer the OTHER one...please

The answers to your question that were given in the other topic are basically correct, so far as I know.

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Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. - Albert Einstein
The loss of enemies does not compensate for the loss of friends. - Abraham Lincoln
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. - Mark Twain

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!!?
crying
Wait a minute, so which one is correct? The one where I must render EVERY freakin' possible combination of weapons and outfits?! crosses fingers

Or the one where I have to render the part of the weapon that would be sticking out of my character's hand.(How exactly would that be done)

I hope it's the second one. It's the only thing that seems reasonable. I mean, EVERY single combination... cries harder

Please say that the second one is possible.
holds breath

still holding breath

turning blue

(throws Kireck out of the topic) Stop hijaaking my threads! 😉 :rolleyes:
Anyone going to answer my question?

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(url="http://"http://www.avidgamers.com/phil")Philosophical Mouse(/url), two word that don't go together.
D**nit, these marshmellows are ADDICTIVE!!! I can't stop eating them, and the bag is enchanted to never be empty of them!
(/backspeak)(/mindless rant)

Mouse, if it's not in the format supported by the engine, you can't use it. If it is, then I'm sure the engine will have support for it, if it even needs support. But it will have no strings to actually aid you in the process, plus, there's the string that the person playing your game has to support it. And go easy on Kireck, unregistered members can't post new topics, so he can steal it if he wants.

To Kireck, your best bet would be to render every combination, or just the major ones. You may be able to make character hotspots for weapons and stuff, but I doubt it if you want any amount of animation. This isn't a 3D engine. Of course, I haven't played PoG, but this has been true of Coldstone from the beginning, unless something has changed.

Saphfire

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Quote

Originally posted by saphfire:
**Mouse, if it's not in the format supported by the engine, you can't use it. If it is, then I'm sure the engine will have support for it, if it even needs support. But it will have no strings to actually aid you in the process, plus, there's the string that the person playing your game has to support it. And go easy on Kireck, unregistered members can't post new topics, so he can steal it if he wants.
Saphfire

**

I know he can't make his own topics (yet), but he already had a topic on his question going.

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(url="http://"http://www.avidgamers.com/phil")Philosophical Mouse(/url), two word that don't go together.
D**nit, these marshmellows are ADDICTIVE!!! I can't stop eating them, and the bag is enchanted to never be empty of them!
(/backspeak)(/mindless rant)

To mouse, I apologize. Seriously, I just realized that I didn't even give your question a chance. (no one said anything on the topic so I took over, sorry)

To Saphire, I thought you'd say that. I just find the thought to be scary to render every combination. I was just hoping there'd be a way to make it as if the graphic of the weapon could just follow my character's hand. Like every weapon has almost as much animation as the sprite. I was thinking like, you'd see the weapon as if the character was really holding it, where is hand would be, there is a gap, but it fits on the sprite, making it look like there's a weapon in the hand of him. (sorry for continuing to beat the stuffing out of this topic, it's a very touchy subject for me)

Quote

Originally posted by Kireck:
**To mouse, I apologize. Seriously, I just realized that I didn't even give your question a chance. (no one said anything on the topic so I took over, sorry)

To Saphire, I thought you'd say that. I just find the thought to be scary to render every combination. I was just hoping there'd be a way to make it as if the graphic of the weapon could just follow my character's hand. Like every weapon has almost as much animation as the sprite. I was thinking like, you'd see the weapon as if the character was really holding it, where is hand would be, there is a gap, but it fits on the sprite, making it look like there's a weapon in the hand of him. (sorry for continuing to beat the stuffing out of this topic, it's a very touchy subject for me)**

You MIGHT be able to do that, but it would really cause MUCH headache. Making the sword follow the character, and then move with it during animations is not only choppy, and insane on memory, but hard to script. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the engine won't support this without some tweaking on your part. I'm 100% certain it would be better to either just stick with a few basic combinations (i.e. just change weapons, not armor), leave the character graphic alone, or render every possible combination.

Saphfire

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A memory loss?! Awww geeze. You're serious aren't you? You're SURE it would take a lot of memory to do that? I just saw it as a simple extra sprite that happened to be stuck to your character that's only about 20x80 pixels and about 40 something colors, but I guess I'll just have to try to find out instead of asking until I get the answer I want to hear. Saphire, you've used the engine right? Could you, um, look into it? (You REALLY don't have too because I know you don't want to)
Infact, I guess I could wait for the engine to come out and THEN decide what to do about it.

Quote

Originally posted by Kireck:
I guess I could wait for the engine to come out and THEN decide what to do about it.

(andrew breathes a sigh of releif...)

PoG only has a few weapon/armor combinations. it's would be very, very, VERY ugly if you tried to use "hotspots" for weapons. the logisitcs are mind boggling unless you're using DragonWarrior style 8-bit sprites. even then... I doubt that kind of thing is supported anyway.

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Do not follow me for I may not lead. Do not lead for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either. Just leave me the hell alone.
-Jedi

If you're going to have a bunch of different weapons/armors to combine, why not make one or two different pictures for each category of item(like a brown and a grey staff for the stalves) and only use a total of maybe four armor pictures and render them all on the character. Even so, it would take a whol lot of picture images.
Me personally, I would make the player able to only use one type of weapon(a wand/staff) and choose between different ones and upgrades for them. My game's fighting would be based on magic casting with very little hand-to-hand combat. A player useing only hand-to-hand combat would need 4-5 levels of combat skill to be able to fight as well as 1 level of spells.

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(url="http://"http://www.avidgamers.com/phil")Philosophical Mouse(/url), two word that don't go together.
D**nit, these marshmellows are ADDICTIVE!!! I can't stop eating them, and the bag is enchanted to never be empty of them!
(/backspeak)(/mindless rant)

Not necessarily, I saw it done somewhere, I just don't remember where. The weapon was rendered with the character holding it, but the character holding the weapon was the same color as the background, so you could see the weapon, but not the person. It worked, but I'm just wondering if I could use that method. I know it doesn't seem to make sense, but I'm gonna try it, and I'll drop that question for good now.
applause

Quote

Originally posted by Kireck:
I'm gonna try it, and I'll drop that question for good now.
applause

okay then. but I should warn you -- unless you saw that in a CS beta shot, I wouldn't count on the engine allowing for it. some engines are designed to accomodate the sort of green-screening that you're talking about, but not all...

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Do not follow me for I may not lead. Do not lead for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me, either. Just leave me the hell alone.
-Jedi

I'm not counting on it, I'm hoping for a way to do it.

ANYWAY, I was wondering. I know this a very WEIRD and out of place question, but for your sprites, will there be a color change feature. Something like a lightness/darkness or hue and saturation changer that you can use on NPCs or your own character or ANYTHING. I'm asking this because I wanted to know if there was an easy way to make a town full of people with different hair and different clothing colors. That SURE WOULD make life SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier. Instead of rendering 12 different peasants, how about one peasant with twelve different colors. The same with monsters, you might want a dark blue-green hydra, and you might also want a grey hydra, would we have to use two sets of sprites? Because that would consume a lot of disk space. Or maybe a color change feature would just save a lot of disk space, just a thought.

Quote

Originally posted by Kireck:
**I'm not counting on it, I'm hoping for a way to do it.

ANYWAY, I was wondering. I know this a very WEIRD and out of place question, but for your sprites, will there be a color change feature. Something like a lightness/darkness or hue and saturation changer that you can use on NPCs or your own character or ANYTHING. I'm asking this because I wanted to know if there was an easy way to make a town full of people with different hair and different clothing colors. That SURE WOULD make life SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier. Instead of rendering 12 different peasants, how about one peasant with twelve different colors. The same with monsters, you might want a dark blue-green hydra, and you might also want a grey hydra, would we have to use two sets of sprites? Because that would consume a lot of disk space. Or maybe a color change feature would just save a lot of disk space, just a thought.**

I'm thinking...no. Cheer up, just edit the sprite in photoshop and add the color layer. Plus, Coldstone will come with media that you can use for villagers and such.

Saphfire

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So does that mean that you're thinking no? Or was that "I'm thinking" supposed to get my hopes up? Oh, well nevermind. There's no point beating the hell out of the question until I hear what I want. Isn't that really easy to program though?
wham
smack

Nevermind, I'll leave it alone.