Hand-drawn tileset limitations?

[-Silver-]

I've always been hooked on the idea of creating my own backdrops and locations for my game. After doing some digging around this forum and looking at similar topics, i'm thinking of hand-drawing all my areas, then breaking them up so they can be stacked into tilesets. That allows me to set passability easier, and use trees and rocks etc on separate layers so that the player can move behind them. But one thing has been bugging me: Water.

Is there any way to make streams, waterfalls, and the sea move? Autotiles wouldn't really work since they would look out of place with the rest of the art style, and they can't really be used for a natural looking effect in this situation. I can't really think of anything to solve this, but I'd love to have waves lapping against the shores, moving waterfalls, and flowing streams to really create that immersion factor. A stationary waterfall would just look ugly as hell!

If anyone has any solutions here, or just some ideas to throw at me for testing, i'd love to hear them. I'm not keen to let this idea die at all.

Thanks for reading,

-Silver-

 

[ImmuneEntity]

I think the best way you could really try to achieve this is to play around with "fogs", since they can be moved and you can set Sub and Add values, but I think it would be very difficult to achieve what you're trying to using fogs...I haven't really tried it.

Otherwise maybe you could somehow find a way to use pictures and move those around the screen and somehow make it fit with the actual map. But I think that would be very difficult too.

Other than that, autotiles are probably your only option. I personally don't think streams, waterfalls, etc. in RMXP look all that bad when they're autotiles, but they would indeed look better if they actually moved.

In general, I think this is quite difficult to achieve. Try some of those things above and see they get you anywhere.

 

[monkeydlu]

you can use a animated tileset script, basically makes the entire tileset into a autotile, in the sense that it's animated.

Behemoth made one.

http://www.phanxgames.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7525

 

[Muffins .org]

Why can't you create an auto tile?

 

[-Silver-]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll check out Behemoth's script, since that sounds like it could work perfectly. Thanks Monkey. As for why I can't use standard auto-tiles, they all seem kind of squared and unnatural, and while they fit perfectly into a world made from an rmxp tileset, that's because an rmxp tileset is squared too. I'm thinking of waterfalls on an epic proportion, branching when they hit massive rocks, and creating huge sprays at the base. Not a very rectangular, straightforward, rmxp autotile waterfall. =P Might be possible to create an autotile that serves that purpose, but i'm sure it would be incredibly difficult!

Immune: Fogs may well be able to help with the base of a waterfall, so long as I can find a way to keep them fixed to one specific area of a map. I'll have to look into that one. And the idea of using pictures has crossed my mind for foreground use. I'm picturing a view of a narrow side street in a big city, with both sides of the street encroached by tall leaning buildings, and the camera's viewpoint coming from a bird's eye view along the top floor of the buildings, looking down on the road below. The camera naturally pans up and down as the player runs in the relevant direction on the street. As the camera moves, new top floors become the foreground (being closest to the camera, although positioned on the extreme left and right of the scene to avoid obscuring too much view), and on one of the windowsills sits a cat, casually looking down on the cititzens milling about below, occasionally licking her paws or getting distracted by a bird flying in the sky above. The buildings would of course be a part of the 'tileset' that remain stationary. But I could create a series of pictures to animate the cat, which could be placed on top of the tileset, provided I can get it to remain on the same windowsill when the camera pans up or down, removing the cat from view. It's the small things that add to the immersion factor, but god damn are they tricky to work out!

-Silver-

 

[Myrmior]

Alternately you could do it using an event.

You need to create a charset of whatever size and put four frames of animation across the top.

Create an event at the base of your waterfall (for example), and choose the charset as the event graphic. Set the event to move in place (Sorry, dont have rmxp open right now, but its one of the radio buttons beneath the graphic. The one that makes charsets walk in place a-la dragon warrior). It may take a little tweaking to get the position of the charset right to meet your needs, but its only a matter of adding or subtracting a little blank space on either side side of each frame on your charset.

Ensure you have the event set as a parallel process.

If you require more than 4 frames of animation just create another charset with the additional 4 frames (or however many charsets you need to reach the desired effect), throw a "wait" for a number of frames that you will have to experiment to find, and set self switch A to on. Create a new page on the same event with "self switch A on" checked, choose your second charset with the same options as before, add another wait command for the same amount of time, and then switch self switch A off (or over to B if you are using even more charsets of animation).

This method will allow you to use alpha transparencies in your animations, so that your images will have dithered edges, or be semi-transparent. Your character will be able to walk behind mist, etc. The downside with this method (the entire hand-drawn game idea, for that matter) is that your file sizes will be extremely large (especially using alpha transparencies), and even though in this day and age many people have high speed internet and can download large files quickly, you will be met with at least 10 individuals who will cry about file size the instant you post your project to the board.

Good luck


EDIT: Oh, and now that I realized that Im an idiot, you could just put up to 16 frames of animation on a single charset and change the direction the event is facing after each wait. This would eliminate the event pages, as well as cut down on your number of files to deal with...

 

[Unka Josh]

Your event wouldn't necessarily need to make the event parallel process if it's only using four frames of animation-- just check "Stop Animation" and "Direction Fix," and you're golden.

 

[Myrmior]

Thanks Unka, didn't cross my mind.

If you are going to use more than four frames though, and have the event change directions, don't forget your parallel process.

 

[-Silver-]

Myrmior: Events would certainly work well for an animation at the base of a waterfall, or for a fountain in a town centre, but it would be a pain in the ass to create an entire river or stream out of events. So for flowing water i'll try working with Behemoth's script as Monkey suggested, but i'll definitely be using events for waterfall spray etc. Thanks for your reply =)

-Silver-

 

[Myrmior]

It may be a pain, but it would still only require one properly placed event

Either way, the hardest part (regardless of the implementation) will undoubtedly be the actual drawing of the frames.

As long as you aren't using an anti-lag script, though, one event should be enough to cover a river of any size, as the animation will still roll even while the actual event tile is off screen.

I can't wait to see what you come up with. I LOVE hand drawn games. I know how absolutely time consuming it can be, though, as I am under piles of work with my own. It may seem overwhelming at times, but each milestone you reach will renew your drive.

Keep us posted!