I've played a lot of RPGs, and especialy the ones like chronotrigger and earthbound---even Lunar TSSSC--- the characters did more than just stand at attention all the time. They were expresive and they moved. Arms out, kneeling, and other movements. I remember the it was this expressive quality that made me really connect with the characters I was playing and watching.

RPGM1 doesnt have this feature.


Untill now.

I've been toying with the idea of using the sprite editor to draw limbs (arms mostly), that are in different positions. Intead of redrawing the whole sprite, all you would need to do is use each of the sprites nine movement patterns, as "something else." Instead of having the character facing left, draw a picture of an arm pointing somewhere. In the box next to it, draw an arm with a drawn sword.

This can work to add other animations to your game sprites if you just plan a head a bit! If the animation is only going to point/ move in one direction, All you need to do is animate the indevidual "cells" of the animation and then when it comes time, simply super impose the sprite over the main character sprite/what-have-you and then run through the animation by rapidly switching the poses using the actual event, while said event is standing still. Your character will "perform" the desired action, and you game will look more polished!

Let me know what you think!

Sounds good but its tough to make sprites. I cant even make an arm sprite.

Superimpose, as in place over? That wouldn't work, because you'd see the character's real arm underneath his pointing arm. But there's nothing wrong with taking the character's sprite and editing it wholly to do the different animations, replacing the character's graphic with the action sprite altogether. Dunno if that's what I meant.

Kinda interesting how the idea isn't used that much. Even if you're not good at creating sprites from scratch, editing sprites isn't super-difficult if all you're doing is making them perform actions. I guess that the main problem is how many sprites you're limited to. Even if each character only had two or three poses, you'd only be able to have nine characters that have extra poses, less if you've got other sprites being used for something else. Not that it's a bad idea, though. I myself have two characters lying down unconcious, one knealing on the ground when hurt, and another floating in the water.

That sounds really cool, I never thought of doing that.

While I commend you for the concept, it's already been done...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLeJi9cgifM

And I can only guess how many blocks of data it would require for all the diffrent poses.

You may remeber that vid as one of TAKE's... he had other games (two to be exact) that had moving sprites as well.

I now feel...

What's the word for being insecure about ones shortcomings after one has reailzed ones inability to perform a certain act that requires skills that one has just found one is lacking despite having previously thoght they were infact pretty well skilled?

I think that would be DP's favorite word, "pwnt".

But sersiously. I'd still go for it... Me being most the way through the game have been using narration to document action for the most part. So starting to use extra sprites out of the blue would be out of pace for the game. And going back and splicing them in to previous scenes would basically be a hara-kiri.

Anyway, I didn't mean to discourage you... my appolgies.

Oh, no. That's fine. I woulden't recommend this for people who are already deep into an existing game. Also, I think that the short comming of this is that it would require that you sacifice one whole block for the sprite data. The trade off is questionable, especaily if you considder that this would be of most use in games that are already approching "epic" length. In other words, it would be taking away from your blocks, and those are in short supply.

Just in Anime Maker blocks, and there's no problem there if you aren't going to use all 9 sprites anyway. As far as memory card blocks overall, there's always using a third memory card. That's what most do anyway.

Need I remind you of the discussion about how they are not making new PSX memory cards anymore?

They can be found online for about a dollar each. they're plentiful. they only stopped manufacturing them at the end of 2005. that means there's a decade's worth of memory cards out there. the supply is going to be fine for a long time.

Beyond which, most of us who used RPGM in the past have two or three RPGM-dedicated cards already, and those who need an extra card can just back up their other-games memory card and use it for RPGM for a bit.