06-20-2023, 12:30 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2023, 03:11 AM by DerVVulfman.)
Okay, so... the sprite is ... now Flag Striped?
Well... yes. Or at least you can see that the body bitmap in the window has been separated into three sections, a top, a middle and a bottom. And I had chosen to set different colors to each third using the color panel shown here.
The left portion of the color panel is set to an RGB (or Red/Green/Blue) setting of 255,0,0. And as it controls the top portion of the bitmap, the stop portion is vibrantly red.
The middle portion of the color panel has some red but more green set to it. This generates a more yellowish green hue which affected the middle portion of the bitmap.
And the right portion of the color panel increases the red, touches upon the green, and adds a good amount of blue. This color set affects the bottom portion of the bitmap giving off a nice purple look.
Now, it is NOT that the left panel affects the top of every bitmap, or that the right panel affects the bottom. It is actually that the rendered body shown in the window is composed of ... three different layers. Sort of like what I am presenting below:
Here, I am sort-of presenting a frame from THREE different sprite-sheets. When combined, the three spritesheets would appear as a single body. However, the color and hue of each component can be altered. And for those that remember using CharGenEx, indeed, I am setting up the possibility for multi-layered graphics for any resource.
Now what does that mean?
Imagine that you have a 'shirt' resource with a nice collar. The shirt itself may be red. But the collar portion of the shirt may be yellow. And the buttons blue. If the shirt is a multi-layered resource, the shirt, the collar and the buttons would be individual sheets and each could have their colour and hue altered to suit your tastes. And the same for any armor, weapon or accessory.
This too could be applied to the actual character body. For normal human types, you would tend to just have a single layer. But for those with animal appearances, a secondary layer may depict fur covering the bulk of the body, and even a lighter fur underbelly. And to not offend, this can be attributed to those of the amphibian or lizard varieties as well.
Understandably, there is much work to perform to have this completely functional. After having added the secondary and tertiary layer system, it has issues loading single-layer resources. But that is a minor technicality. I have not tested the save/load feature so one can have a more detailed WIP, nor the final Create Image system that finally produces a .png file. Those too should be elementary issues to tackle.
The issues I will need to deal with are those related to image selections, window locking and other content so the settings a user applies stays applied. Meanwhile, I am considering the use of the RGB Color balance system for all resources, not just any with RGB in the title. Likewise, this would mean that hue and color balance could be applied in tandem. Tricky, but possible.
... I just wish there was a faster means to adjust the color as the current process involves a script that cycles through every individual pixel in a bitmap. Decently fast if the resources are small, but may be quite slow for large scale resource files.
EDIT: Okay, I just ensured that the [Load File], [Save File] and [Create Image] features work. I had to do a little 'extra' work on the load system if all the bitmaps are altering their color balance en-masse. I found I needed to put in a slight delay mechanism into my color balance script so it would execute "Graphics.update" every so often, lest RPGMaker believes the script is hanging. Nothing big... it runs Graphics Update after every 100,000 pixels changed. Yeeeeeeaah, that's a lot of pixels. If it was an existing feature, I would not have had this problem.
And I gotta remember to put a Zoom button in the Color Balance window.
Well... yes. Or at least you can see that the body bitmap in the window has been separated into three sections, a top, a middle and a bottom. And I had chosen to set different colors to each third using the color panel shown here.
The left portion of the color panel is set to an RGB (or Red/Green/Blue) setting of 255,0,0. And as it controls the top portion of the bitmap, the stop portion is vibrantly red.
The middle portion of the color panel has some red but more green set to it. This generates a more yellowish green hue which affected the middle portion of the bitmap.
And the right portion of the color panel increases the red, touches upon the green, and adds a good amount of blue. This color set affects the bottom portion of the bitmap giving off a nice purple look.
Now, it is NOT that the left panel affects the top of every bitmap, or that the right panel affects the bottom. It is actually that the rendered body shown in the window is composed of ... three different layers. Sort of like what I am presenting below:
Here, I am sort-of presenting a frame from THREE different sprite-sheets. When combined, the three spritesheets would appear as a single body. However, the color and hue of each component can be altered. And for those that remember using CharGenEx, indeed, I am setting up the possibility for multi-layered graphics for any resource.
Now what does that mean?
Imagine that you have a 'shirt' resource with a nice collar. The shirt itself may be red. But the collar portion of the shirt may be yellow. And the buttons blue. If the shirt is a multi-layered resource, the shirt, the collar and the buttons would be individual sheets and each could have their colour and hue altered to suit your tastes. And the same for any armor, weapon or accessory.
This too could be applied to the actual character body. For normal human types, you would tend to just have a single layer. But for those with animal appearances, a secondary layer may depict fur covering the bulk of the body, and even a lighter fur underbelly. And to not offend, this can be attributed to those of the amphibian or lizard varieties as well.
Understandably, there is much work to perform to have this completely functional. After having added the secondary and tertiary layer system, it has issues loading single-layer resources. But that is a minor technicality. I have not tested the save/load feature so one can have a more detailed WIP, nor the final Create Image system that finally produces a .png file. Those too should be elementary issues to tackle.
The issues I will need to deal with are those related to image selections, window locking and other content so the settings a user applies stays applied. Meanwhile, I am considering the use of the RGB Color balance system for all resources, not just any with RGB in the title. Likewise, this would mean that hue and color balance could be applied in tandem. Tricky, but possible.
... I just wish there was a faster means to adjust the color as the current process involves a script that cycles through every individual pixel in a bitmap. Decently fast if the resources are small, but may be quite slow for large scale resource files.
EDIT: Okay, I just ensured that the [Load File], [Save File] and [Create Image] features work. I had to do a little 'extra' work on the load system if all the bitmaps are altering their color balance en-masse. I found I needed to put in a slight delay mechanism into my color balance script so it would execute "Graphics.update" every so often, lest RPGMaker believes the script is hanging. Nothing big... it runs Graphics Update after every 100,000 pixels changed. Yeeeeeeaah, that's a lot of pixels. If it was an existing feature, I would not have had this problem.
And I gotta remember to put a Zoom button in the Color Balance window.