Castle Paradox

[Fenrir-Lunaris]

A fellow OHR user recently posed the question of how I go about making walkabouts and Hero sprites, which in some games number in the hundreds. His own project of course requires a large number as well, a daunting task for anyone who's wanted to create their own game.

MY answer of course is to do them in groups - the heroes and any significant NPCs that'll show up in the game first (the boss, king, important ally, etc) then work your way down to generic townspeople. For each new area, have 3 or 4 *new* npc sprites that haven't been seen before, and so on. This lets the creator concentrate on each area individually instead of getting ahead of themself and making a lot of graphics too soon and not testing out their game.

This is all well and all, but clearly this isn't the ONLY way to mass-produce NPCs. Suppose you needed about 200 NPCs. What I'd like to hear/read are people's other methods of going about this. Would you do them all at once, or in blocks, or by importance? Perhaps there's a more efficient method of going about this? Share your ideas here.

[Rimudora]

I do about the same thing, but in addition...:

Normally, I make the very first walkabout set blank, for all the "invisible" npcs that I might need throughout the game. The second walkabout set consists of little text boxes with exclamation marks or "..."s that appear over the heroes' head. Afterwards, I do the hero walkabouts, leaving 3 empty sets between each in case I want to do custom expressions for my characters. I also leave 3 empty sets for other major characters and 1 empty set for every minor character.

I've found that leaving empty sets between each walkabout set really helps with keeping things organized.

[Fernurion]

I found leaving the firt slot blank works well, as it saves time when placing invisible NPCs. The second row contains 'blank' sprites. These sprites have no detail to them, and are used to keep animation consistant. These sprites are copied and then changed to create unique NPCs. Next comes the main hero(s), with 3 or 4 generic npcs. After that, npcs are grouped by area, leaving a blank in between each group. Additional heros are grouped where the player initially encounters them.

Thats my method anyway.

[Phil Arts]

Rimudora wrote:

[Gizmog1]

I usually start by taking the walkabout of the hero from my last game, and stripping it down of everything that made it unique. And then I go about fiddling with the costume, and the hair, and everything else until I get something that looks like I want it to. Then I go about modifying all of the frames of it to reflect this new hero. Then I Copy the sprite, strip it down, and save the stripped down version, and use that as the basis for each new sprite. I don't usually group them any special way, but I always make all of my graphics first, before I actually make the map. I do them in the order they'll appear in in the game, although the villain and heroes who're the most interesting and most fun to do, I'll do first.

[Mr B]

Having the blank set of sprites up top is a really good idea. I wish that I'd heard it before I began this project.

I also leave the first sprite set blank, as (rather painful) experience has taught.

Leaving a number of blank sets for each hero makes a lot of sense. One of the problems I have with game making is that I don't script the whole thing out before making it, so I never know how many expressions I should use. Leaving a number of blank sets is a good idea, 'cause then you can use a simple mathematical offset to determine what expressions characters should be using. I'll have to do that.

My main problem with my current project is that I simply have a slew (slough?) of sprites to make. I guess my best course of action is to get a stable number of sprites and then make everything testable. That should provide a sense of progress.

Thanks for the information. Good stuff.

[Komera]

mine is the laziest of all approaches, partially resulting from the version of the ohr at the time (w:p1 was actually started BEFORE plotscripting), but mostly resulting from my lack of organization. i drew (and still do) sprites only when i needed them, and it actually took me a while to realize that i should probably leave one of the sets empty (which is why my blank set is number thirteen) my method is to take one of the existing sprites and draw over the hair and clothing, so that proportions and shading remain intact. for this reason, all the humanoid sprites (one way or another) are clones of winger.

for those who have actually gotten a look inside the w:p1 file, they may eventually realize that there are more sprites than nessessary. the lack of organization can be blamed on my lack of any kind of graphic documentation (i.e. something listing every character i am going to need), but the excess number can be blamed on sprites being drawn before certain updates. all of the early 'hero emotion' sprites were done after hero and npc movement became available (read: THE first release of plotscripting), but before hero and npc sprite switching became available (which is why most of the early plotscripts i did panned the camera away from the heros before starting the scene... i was hiding the fact that i was turning on and off extra npcs. it's also why winger's flying plotscript used to bring up a backdrop, i was hiding the fact i was switching around heros). i haven't bothered to go back and organize the sprites, or get rid of the duplicates because it would screw up the earlier plotscripts.
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LJ.Art

SD - Ten creatures remaining.