Working with party-based graphics

This tutorial goes over how you might develop projects where the player is allowed to choose different leaders or party members and you would like to reflect the player's choice in your cut-scenes and dialog. Naturally, if the player can choose whichever actor she wants to control, you can't hardcode faces and character graphics.


Required


Party-based Graphics


Tutorial


We start with the idea of "placeholder images": these are just images whose purpose is to be replaced by the appropriate image to display when the game is running.


The contents of the place holder image itself is not important: you simply need a valid image with a proper filename.


Each image represents a specific position in the party, starting from position 1, which is the leader of the party. A possible placeholder might look like this to remind you that it is for the first position in the party.





The name of the images are simply


party1


party2


party3


And so on, depending on which party positions you want to use. Party1 for the first position, party2 for the second position, etc.


Once you have created some placeholder images, place them in the appropriate Graphics folders. The following sections describe how to set up your party-based graphics.


1. Party-based Dialog


You can set up dialog to show faces depending on the positions of each member in your party.


Begin by taking one of those placeholder images and placing it in the Faces folder in your Graphics folder. You should be able to select it in your Show Text editor:





That is all you need to do. Since you've selected "party1", that means the image will be replaced with the face of the actor in the first position in your party.


If successful, when you talk to an NPC, the face graphic used will depend on your party formation.





After changing formation and talking to the NPC again:





It wouldn't matter how many actors you have in your game; you would only have to create the event once and then let the engine handle the image replacement for you.


2. Party-based Events


The setup is basically the same as before, except instead of placing our placeholder pictures in the Faces folder, we place them in the Characters folder. You might want to create 4x3 placeholder images with filenames like


$party1


$party2


So that it is easier to select when setting up your event.