The Mana World Forums

I personal want to use the sprite layering for all NPCs

I don't want to use sprite layering for NPCs because this discourages us from creating NPCs with different poses, body shapes or animations.

Crush wrote:I don't want to use sprite layering for NPCs because this discourages us from creating NPCs with different poses, body shapes or animations.

We can do layering with both animations, custom poses, and body shapes. I said layering, doesn't mean based on the player sprite set.

Layering the basic player sprite and all of the monster sprites would also potentially reduce pixel artist workload and ease development.

We can already layer NPC and monster sprites.

Ah this is where that thread went, Crush forked it on me

IMHO, keep on creating separate animated NPCs, but encourage the development of the frames to be done "unclothed" (but with the undies in tact of course) whenever possible so choice movements can be leached for the development of other NPCS or hopefully for the use in the extended playerset. The clothing and other layers for the frames would still of course be needed for the NPCs, but I'm suggesting work on these as separate layers of course.

Obviously not all of the NPC's need to be as lively as the others, but a good mix is preferable... that's why I've been working on an animated eyeball sheet layer for the player sprites (blinking, wandering stare, etc.) [which thank you Modanung for keeping the eyes basically the same frame to frame! It's just the offsets for reusing my frames that are the annoying part to configure.] Skin scars, facial tattoos and other facial masking sheets would be nice as well to help liven up the friendly NPCs and mobs that use the player sprites (thieves, bandit, etc.).

It'd almost be better to split up the player sprites into head, torso, arms, and legs as Jax has suggested several times.

Also that split might finally give us a usable playerset so we could get going with animating equipment etc.