Post by tiopalada in Tiny RPG - Hero Printer comments

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Oh yeah, the skins, you also brought to my mind that I completely forgot how to write proper instructions for those. And you are right, every skin requires a whole new copy of the file structure. I really need a more lean approach to that or things will grow exponentially - which will, in turn, use a lot of RAM to load all the files at once. The main issue is how I am building the paths so I can keep everything working in a similar way for all options. Your suggestion would work but, at the same time, it will limit the variety one can add to the tool since it becomes “hardcoded” in a way. I will tinker a bit with it and see how I can clean it up. Maybe an auxiliary text file giving instructions to what matches whit what - directory wise.

ANd keep at it, mate! I am really happy how much you are enjoying this tool and your feedback, I can see there is a lot of room for improvement. Thank you so much!

Bunni8977 days ago(+2)

It's understandable! I thought that my suggestion probably would be short-sighted, as I don't know much about programming. I'll just tone down the scope for my snake tail set for now, and I can always add extra colours in future if things change. Currently got 4 of them and I hope I can finish it this week! I wanna modify the Bottoms into things a snake can wear instead of just telling people "don't use that option" haha. And gonna swap the cat and dog tails for different pattern snake tails cos they don't overlay right. But it's a little time consuming. Also including some faces and mouths as a bonus~!

Bunni8977 days ago(+1)

Oh a quick extra question! Do the parts all have to keep the same naming scheme as the default ones? For example would my snake Skins have to be Skin07 etc, and eyes be Eyes19 etc? Or could I name them SkinSnake00 or something? Was just thinking cos naturally I'm naming them the number after what's there in the base pack, but if someone else made their same assets they'd probably also call it that, and it'd require a bunch of renaming to use both.

tiopalada77 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

Ah, tell me about it, adding new clothes for multiple shapes can be a bit….nightmarish. You have no idea how long it took me to adapt everything on the facesets for every different shape/skin. But I believe it was worthwhile!

For patterns the only thing that is strict about naming are the skins - I noticed that I completely forgot to add that on the documentation, thanks again for the headsup - so they should follow the naming convention:

shape##_skin##.png (charsets directory)

skin##.png (facesets directory)

This way the engine knows what shape refers to what skin and how to build the proper path for the facesets. Since we are dealing with just 2 shapes for now, you will have both shape00_skin07.png as well as shape01_skin07.png. Then your facesets directory will have under both shape00 and shape01 a folder named skin07 with skin07.png inside of it following all the clothes that match this combination of shape and skin.

Asides from that all that is required is that the files - let’s say, breastplate.png - should have the same name across all folders, so the tool know what .png to point at.

EDIT: Oh yeah, if anything goes wrong, the tiny terminal/console on the tool will tell you which file is missing.

Bunni8977 days ago (1 edit)

Thank you so much, this should help a lot! So just to confirm, the Skins have to still be Skin and nothing but a number afterwards? I couldn't hypothetically have Skin19S or something? But I could put Snake on the pngs of other parts to make it clearer they're part of this set?
I'm also having a little bit of difficulty doing the extra frames for the 6 frame version. Is there a particular rule you had when deciding what parts to get wider, to do that bouncy effect? Was just wondering cos the head seems to get bigger but the arms stay the same, so idk if i should have a wider tail or keep it the same, if contrast with the head is what was intended. It's a very unique vibe and I wouldn't want my sprites to look out of place with the style.
Edit: oh and do we need to have the same amount of pngs for each skin? Cos I noticed the catfolk have 16 eyes and humans have 18. But every other category is always the same size.

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