Pictures BELOW sprite yet ABOVE tileset?

[Scribblette]

This post wasn't intended to sound arrogant or the like - I was simply trying to be simple in how I asked, help recreate the image I had in my head. That and I'd been struggling for a while, so what brain I had had turned to mush.

I'm looking to create a scene where the picture is below the sprite, yet above the tileset. Is this possible, and how so?

Any help is of course appreciated, as any help always is.

Spoiler

Eagle's eye view - top down. Picture. Zoomed far away. Tiny. Ground.

Whoosh.

Ground is bigger. Sprite is getting closer and closer to picture.

Picture is getting bigger. Zooming in. More.

More.

SPLAT!

Or no splat.

But how? Sprite is always UNDER picture.

Sprite must be above - higher priority, higher z coordinate, whatever - picture.

Must have normal command power over pictures - move, rotate, opacity, etc - yet have picture showing 'above' tileset & panoramal, while 'below' character sprite.

Tried sprite move route 'always on top' command, did not work.

Scripting necessary? Event options unknown? How to put zoomable picture above panorama / tileset, yet below character sprite?

Mysteries of universe boggle brain.

I go ow.

 

[Luminier]

What? Are you asking how to a picture appear below a sprite? If so, then I think you should mess around with that post of yours. That's really not the proper way to ask for things. :\

 

[Scribblette]

I thought the basic premise was clear from the title of the post, and from one of the last lines in the post. The rest of it, although it may have seemed crude, was intended to be a simple expression of the sequence of images that would go through one's mind to explain what I was trying to achieve.

It was not intended as rude (and certainly not arrogant), but I've thrown in an edit to make that clear.

 

[Luminier]

It wasn't really arrogant, or rude, it was just... improper. Details always help, and it goes a long way towards getting your question(s) answered.

I'm not exactly sure how you would go about that... Have you tried setting the picture as a panorama instead? Or would that screw with your set up?

 

[coyotecraft]

I think i understand what you are asking. Could you substitute the sprite with a picture of the sprite? That way it would just look like the picture is under the sprite.

 

[Scribblette]

It'd screw with my set up, mostly - I think? I'm not sure.

Think of a top-down view, looking down from an airplane over a canyon with very high walls. The ground is oh so far away. Jump out of the airplane and start falling. The ground rushes up - the ground rushes up, faster than the canyon walls.

The canyon walls would be the panorama. Every now and then I could replace the panorama to indicate that part of the wall has been passed.

The falling you would be the sprite.

The ground that rushes up to obscure more and more of the panorama (the only thing that really needs the 'zoom' function) is the picture.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to make a picture show up under a character.

It'd be possible to have the picture zoomed to various sizes in another program, saved at those sizes, and imported as many panoramas... and then to have the panoramas swapped so the picture 'jerked' into a larger, more zoomed in version... but that'd be messy and bump up the game size a bundle. And I'd still want to be able to put pictures on top of that, below the sprite, to show approaching obstacles, etc... for any decent layering effect that remains zoomable, I need pictures, or multiple panoramas on top of each other (and I think the latter is laggier, if I recall that ever being done before?)

Thinking about that bit confuddles my brain, but using replaceable panoramas is probably the only option otherwise. Shame panoramas don't have built in zoom options... but it seems more probable there'd be a script for zoomable panoramas than there would be one to insert something between sprite and tileset. Chances are the sprite layer's z-coordinate is fixed.

So thanks for the panorama suggestion. Didn't properly evaluate that.

Coyote - if I understand you correctly (replace sprite of player graphic with sprite of player graphic above picture?) for an extended piece of gameplay, that'd require too many frames for that animation (and much eventing if any movement options available!) for it to be feasible. Changing player graphic would lend itself better to a shorter cut-scene just fine, though.


The other way to approach this sort of gameplay scene is to do a side-view instead, but then one can't drift across the divide to things on the other side as well, and worst of all it requires many more frames of animation to be drawn for the falling sprite (and trying to do the sprite side-view sky diving has been a nightmare, lol).

 

[Brewmeister]

Scribblette, do you want the player to be movable (with arrow keys), and animated?

What Coyote suggested was to create a single image of the character, and display it using the "Show Picture" command after your canyon floor, so it's on top.
I think it's BRILLIANT! (... I was thinking the same.) :scruff:

You could still make it move, with a parallel event & move picture command to make it follow the actual player that is below the picture.

I'll also see if I can get a picture to display on a z-plane below the character...

Be Well

 

[Scribblette]

Oh, silly me. I didn't even think of that. That's a fine idea! And of course I can rotate that player sprite then just fine then - even better, since the picture rotation makes it far smoother than redrawing the sprite from a few different poses. I was hoping to be able to actually animate the sprite as well - but I suppose keys that change the picture graphic could suffice, and it'd be the most feasible solution if it's not possible to get a picture on a z-plane below the character.

Thanks Coyote & Brew. I knew there'd be a way to get the effect I wanted.

 

[Scribblette]

No luck squeezing pictures in under the character set, then? Pictures on pictures it is?