[Brainstorming] Pallete Changing.

[MechanicalPen]

I've been entertaining the idea of having differently colored battlers off of the same sprite. Normally one would use the Hue Slider for this, but most of my enemies are humanoids and hue shifting skin tones just looks ridiculous.

Anyone have any insights into doing such a thing? One solution I thought of is to have multiple layers of bitmaps to represent the sprite, one layer with constant colors and one layer to apply the hue shift to.

(And before you suggest "just do it in Paint", I'm hoping to find a run-time solution so I can color enemies based on its rarity without having 10 different PNGs per battler.)

[DerVVulfman]

Are these playable characters where you can take advantage of a paperdoll system (or two)? Paperdoll systems such as Me™'s Visual Equipment allows you to apply shirts or gear based on the filename.... but you can also set a hue factor to those shirts and the like too. Thus, one bitmap image of a red toga could be turned into many. Insofar as battlers, my Visual Battlers (based off of Me™'s Visual Equipment) allows you to adjust hues in the same way. It saved me a lotta headache in my current game with literally hundreds of hair combinations with my character generator system, I can tell you.

[MechanicalPen]

That is an ...interesting way to do a paperdoll system. I would have directly edited the bitmap in memory with blt instead of drawing a bunch of sprites. Whatever works, I suppose.

None of my battlers have equipment, so this solution doesn't work for my needs. Maybe if I hardcode everyone to have a visual only equipment slot, but I bet that'd break my fancy battler sprite animation system.

Maybe there is a DLL built for this somewhere...

[DerVVulfman]

*Shrugs* Dunno.

But, I don't see much harm in duplicating the following into Game_Enemy or into Game_Battler (if in Battler... Game Actor overwrites anyhoo):

Code:

attr_reader   :weapon_id                # weapon ID
  attr_reader   :armor1_id                # shield ID
  attr_reader   :armor2_id                # helmet ID
  attr_reader   :armor3_id                # body armor ID
  attr_reader   :armor4_id                # accessory ID

and in the initialzie method, either this (easiest)

Code:

@weapon_id = 0
    @armor1_id = 0
    @armor2_id = 0
    @armor3_id = 0
    @armor4_id = 0

or

Code:

@weapon_id = 0
    @armor1_id = 0
    @armor2_id = 0
    @armor3_id = 0
    @armor4_id = 0

That is if you want enemies to have equipment, if not to merely add the visuals. ^_^ Then you can make a routine configures individual enemies and their gear. THEN, duplicate the Game_Actor data in the visuals script, for the Game_Enemy class. That might work.

If it's only a matter of a suit of armor, you'd only need to change 1 armor slot. (#3). I believe that it only slows down when the battlers are first drawn or refreshes. If it is a single sheet sprite system like a Minkoff system... no worries. But not a ccoa spritestrip system.

Heheh... having equipment slots is an idea that we're thinking of for ReGaL, but for use with a paperdoll system wasn't on our mind.

[MechanicalPen]

That certainly could work. I could even split the paperdolling to use different variables that aren't related to armor at all.

[tnsi]

Have you considered having your battlers set up as two images? One will be the base image, of which you change the hue on, and the second will be layered on-top, with the portions that you wish untinted to be a normal, while the parts to be tinted would be partially transparent?

[DerVVulfman]

That is the actual definition of a paperdoll system, having an initial object (say a cutout of a guy named Akashot), and have a cutout of a new baseball cap which is pasted or layered over the cutout. But using a system, he could change the look by assigning equipment (or some remote variable) to an individual enemy to choose the cutout... in essense it would be your second layer.

:TONGUE: The plus would be if he has a couple of battlers that the second layer would work. AND... a paperdoll system usually allows for hue adjustment.