For Flare we use "campaign statuses" to tell where the player is in the story. During triggered map events or while talking to NPCs, scripts can set a status or check a status. So if you're on a certain quest an NPC might have unique dialog. Or an NPC will thank you if you have the status that proves you returned their lost item.
The statuses are unique strings, so the current campaign state is a set of these strings. Example campaign statuses are "found_silver_key" or "hunt_the_goblins" for tracking items and quests.
A common expansion on this system is to have a string and number combination for quest chains. The string is the tag of the overall quest chain and the number is your current progress through the quest. I think World of Warcraft does it this way. So you might have a hunt_the_goblins quest chain that starts off at 0 and ends at 100 when the quest is complete (basically allowing one quest to have 100 possible steps/branches, but you can combine multiple long quests easily). This is good if you have many long quest chains. E.g. every time you have a quest to find an item you have three states: accepted the quest, found the item, returned the item. If you're only using strings you need three unique identifiers e.g. silver_key_accepted, silver_key_found, silver_key_returned. If you combine with numbers it might be silver_key:0, silver_key:50, silver_key:100 instead.
Hope this helps! We use the simpler string-only version and it works well enough for us.
He says different things depending on whether a campaign status exists (request_status) or does not exist (requires_not) and also moves the story forward himself (set_status). Whenever it's time for this NPC to talk the game checks all the available dialog choices to find one that meets the current quest requirements.
How did you get the soft painterly look and still use the 32 color palette? Did you paint in full RBG and downsample to the palette version? Or is this really just careful pixel art?
It'll take an artist 15 mins to 1 hour per frame depending on how complex the character is and how skilled the artist is. You could pay more hourly and still pay less overall for a great artist!
Count up the number of unique frames you need, minus any mirrored ones. Maybe you'll need about 60 unique frames for just the 4 animations you listed. But you may remember more animations you need, so make sure you have everything thought out in the beginning.
Now figure out how much a pixel artist costs. Maybe you can get an amateur freelancer to do it for $15/hr., but professionals will cost $60/hr or more.
So let's make a VERY conservative estimate! 20 mins per frame, 60 total frames, $15/hr.
That's 1200 minutes, or 20 hours of work. At $15/hr that is $300.
Try this mod. (put it in your mods folder then enable it in the config screen). It makes the male's greatsword attach to the back instead of the hand during most animations.
You can see the illusion breaks for some directions (noticeable if you face northwest). That's because the draw order for holding a sword in the hand is different than having it on the back, so it doesn't draw in the correct order all the time.
The engine doesn't have a way to really solve this right now. Draw order is by slots, and that is sorted by the most common position of the slots (hand in this case, not back).
Can't give a specific item a unique draw order, because if several simultaneous items have unique draw orders then it's probably not possible to always solve the correct final order.
If all handheld items were usually sheathed there may be a new overall draw order that works better. E.g. if I make this mod so that all right-hand weapons are sheathed to the backpack, I think the mod could also specify a new engine draw order.
But it might be close enough that casual use is fine? Let me know what you think.
Oh this is fantastic! I didn't think there were enough pixels left to do lowercase well, and this looks superb.
For Flare we use "campaign statuses" to tell where the player is in the story. During triggered map events or while talking to NPCs, scripts can set a status or check a status. So if you're on a certain quest an NPC might have unique dialog. Or an NPC will thank you if you have the status that proves you returned their lost item.
The statuses are unique strings, so the current campaign state is a set of these strings. Example campaign statuses are "found_silver_key" or "hunt_the_goblins" for tracking items and quests.
A common expansion on this system is to have a string and number combination for quest chains. The string is the tag of the overall quest chain and the number is your current progress through the quest. I think World of Warcraft does it this way. So you might have a hunt_the_goblins quest chain that starts off at 0 and ends at 100 when the quest is complete (basically allowing one quest to have 100 possible steps/branches, but you can combine multiple long quests easily). This is good if you have many long quest chains. E.g. every time you have a quest to find an item you have three states: accepted the quest, found the item, returned the item. If you're only using strings you need three unique identifiers e.g. silver_key_accepted, silver_key_found, silver_key_returned. If you combine with numbers it might be silver_key:0, silver_key:50, silver_key:100 instead.
Hope this helps! We use the simpler string-only version and it works well enough for us.
Have a look at this example NPC file from Flare. https://github.com/clintbellanger/flare-game/blob/master/mods/alpha_demo/npcs/guill.txt
He says different things depending on whether a campaign status exists (request_status) or does not exist (requires_not) and also moves the story forward himself (set_status). Whenever it's time for this NPC to talk the game checks all the available dialog choices to find one that meets the current quest requirements.
How did you get the soft painterly look and still use the 32 color palette? Did you paint in full RBG and downsample to the palette version? Or is this really just careful pixel art?
genuine_zealout we'll check on the defaults for that config file. I think it's supposed to be Joystick Off by default.
These are well made. Are you the artist that created these for SGA? If so, kudos.
I like that this free sample contains many of the colors most used in games.
It'll take an artist 15 mins to 1 hour per frame depending on how complex the character is and how skilled the artist is. You could pay more hourly and still pay less overall for a great artist!
Count up the number of unique frames you need, minus any mirrored ones. Maybe you'll need about 60 unique frames for just the 4 animations you listed. But you may remember more animations you need, so make sure you have everything thought out in the beginning.
Now figure out how much a pixel artist costs. Maybe you can get an amateur freelancer to do it for $15/hr., but professionals will cost $60/hr or more.
So let's make a VERY conservative estimate! 20 mins per frame, 60 total frames, $15/hr.
That's 1200 minutes, or 20 hours of work. At $15/hr that is $300.
Hm, it appears in the hand when I swing. I'm using the latest engine build from the repo though, not the 0.18 release.
@hahaitwork sure, just put my name (Clint Bellanger) somewhere with the credits. Thanks!
http://clintbellanger.net/temp/backpack_weapons.zip
Try this mod. (put it in your mods folder then enable it in the config screen). It makes the male's greatsword attach to the back instead of the hand during most animations.
You can see the illusion breaks for some directions (noticeable if you face northwest). That's because the draw order for holding a sword in the hand is different than having it on the back, so it doesn't draw in the correct order all the time.
The engine doesn't have a way to really solve this right now. Draw order is by slots, and that is sorted by the most common position of the slots (hand in this case, not back).
Can't give a specific item a unique draw order, because if several simultaneous items have unique draw orders then it's probably not possible to always solve the correct final order.
If all handheld items were usually sheathed there may be a new overall draw order that works better. E.g. if I make this mod so that all right-hand weapons are sheathed to the backpack, I think the mod could also specify a new engine draw order.
But it might be close enough that casual use is fine? Let me know what you think.
I can create one of the files as a test. Let me try the greatsword.
Pages