Can you stand the standing?

[thelegendaryX]

You know, that constant posture every character seems stuck with: standing straight up, never kneeling or crouching, much less sitting or laying down!

How can I be expected to make a good story when none of them will be kneeling after a battle or laying on the ground after a devastating attack??

Any ideas, my good people?

[Wavelength]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

There are ways to "bury" a character in terrain on a field map (see the Tips and Tricks thread, I think), and if you get creative with object placement, you might be able to get a slightly different effect than straight standing.

Having said that, your best bet is probably to just use the Storyteller if possible, and getting more creative there.

RM2 has more positions/movements for characters, and RM1 and RMXP let you edit custom sprites, going around this problem entirely.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

Yeah, I decided to use storytellers more often just recently. I wanted to make a game without them (excluding the Prologue and Game Over) but it's ok.

What about this:

I want to make an enemy(character) crouch down immediately after I defeat them, but not before obviously. I think it'll be more believable that they disappear (that is, "die") when they're crouching rather than standing up. What would you do?

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

I would do one of the following:

1) Get RM2.

2) Use a Storyteller to simulate the fact that the enemy was mauled beyond recognition, unable to stand, gurgled something about revenge and then fell over dead.

Depending on how you use the storryteller you could go for the "3rd person narrator" and use it to fill in the important details like how many birds are flying by the window and whatnot.

The other thing is that if you set your game up "right" people will understand what's going on. We all know there'd no blood or sleeping/dead characters in the hardware so we roll with the fact that any games created will not have these things in it. Get creative with what you're planning and make something that no one else has ever though of or done before, or just take it in a totally different direction.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

Hmm.. Well I thought of changing the character's mode to one where he is crouching but I don't know if that would load immediately after battle or whatnot.

[MagusMartovich]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

I'm not 100% on this, but I'm reasonably sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong when I say that I seem to remember those modes as making the character bow their head, or some other useless "not just standing there" kind of animation.

ALSO, you could change the character's mode, but you'd have to either refresh the character or something after the battle is over. Someone else WILL have to step in on this one... I usually just opted for the "See a guy, kill him and he's gone" method after finding out about the lack of diversity for posing.

...that, and using the Storytellers and not playing with RM3...

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

No, I haven't found any codes that make even NPCs do anything but rotate (poorly). It'd be nice! Because I also wanted to have actual scenes where they'd walk/run up to one another, but now I'm dreaming, hehe..

The best I've come up with is an idea I used for a boss character who stands just inside a dungeon. You know, where he's surrounded by that heavenly light? After he's defeated he rotates 180 and disappears with a sound effect making it seem like he's just darting off, lol. Other than the flashing screen (for your more magical enemies), that's all I know of.

[Lausen]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

Yeah they’re animations to make people move. Such as, squat, get angry, be happy, etc. In the character menu when you pike either night or day modes you can change their action. Also if you talk to them you can use coding to change it.

I had some real trouble doing it through events other then the character themselves. I know making them crouch then disappear is doable cuz I did it in Evil Fantasy. You just have to play around with the different animations to find the one you like the best.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Can you stand the standing?

Yes, that's the challenge I'm referring to: making them crouch immediately after battle without having to talk to them. But I'll experiment and see what I can do..