Let's see, I'll make this brief, cuz I'm on a verge binge tonight and am pretty ready to get back to it. ;p Let's see, first on the list, since I'm working on the Trebezia battle animations now, is, does one of the highcolor versions of Verge allow you to have sprites be animated in battle without being moved? That is to say, can characters "walk in place" so to speak. This is also an important question that comes into place much later on in the game with a dragon pup, and obviously the fairy foke, who would make no sense sitting still during a meeting while not floating, but rather frozen in midair. Anyone who can answer this has my utmost appreciation, I have done a few of their animations, and a lot of character design (approximately I'm up to 123 characters done now), but needed to get this question out of the way before working on animations. Thanks a bunch ahead of time.

~ Blade Dragon

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There are supposed to be idle frame animations for v2 chrs, but I'm not sure if those work or not. I never used those myself.

What you can do is have the entity follow a movement script, where the script is a bunch of frame commands. Even v1 could do that (like my bluebird in Emil in Diver Down - he pecks at the floor and turns around but stands on the same tile).

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If I were to design the method that you're talking, I can see where the problem would lie, and that is the fact that my idle frames are most necessary in the Battle sequence, to give that crisp feel of no one being able to sit still amid a fight. Also, my method for attacks of the monsters is going to use the brilliant idea that Lunar had, which is that there's a different stance/appearance/look/mood to the monster when he/she/it is about to perform a different style of attack. This being the case, it'd look a little horrible to have the monster sit stationary as in FF3, then walk, attack, and stop to stationary again, then have its eyes glow, then move again when his turn comes up. As for the script idea, if I were to script a movement script for the character, I would have to reset the animation script after every round of combat, and once in the middle of combat (after he moves, so that he wouldn't freeze after attacking and become stationary again in his new position). If you think that's possible, I guess, then I think that may be the easiest method of working with my "idle" animations inside of a battle.

Just to give you some specs, so that you don't foresee any problems taking place... My characters (main, playable, nonplayable as well) are all designed in 40X40 cells, as opposed to the 16X32 of V1. This being the case, I'd have to use V2 or later in order to work (which I'm also debating to use a highcolor of Verge, not because I'm gifted with highcolor graphics, but because I am such a lousy tile artist, many of my tiles will be adapted from SNES games, and altered to fit my game). So if you know of any problems with a high color Verge, and/or V2 characters interfering with the movement script idea, let me know. Otherwise I'll take your idea as golden, and go ahead with designing the "walk in place", shift, fidgit with sword, or whatever animations for when they're stationary.

Thanks tremendously for your input, I didn't mean to question your advice, just wanted to make certain I didn't go to work on stationaries and then find out that they weren't useable yet.

~Blade Dragon

The Realm of Trebezia quote of the Day -- "How many Elven Princesses does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 1! She holds up the bulb, and the world revolves around her. Tee hee!!!"

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