Character Creation

[DerThad]

Hi @ all, I'm the new one here

I had developed already a little Pong NetworkGame, and various PHP & MySQL based games.

Now i want to create a littel rpg game

An already at the planning step i run into a (in my opinion) difficult question..

I want to provide a character creation menu where you can choose your type of hair and its color, also the skin color, type and color of eyes, .. etc.
My first idea was to create little sprites and put them over each other, but since i also want the game to be played in network I#m just curious on how to create each player character..

Is it a good idea to have all characters already created (which would be a lot of sprites..) or put every part of them together at runtime (and still only have parts as ready sprites) ?

further more i want to change color and form of clothes/items to the color/form of the item equipped.. should i use the same method? (and even for handy, equipped with hone handed weapon, two handed and unequipped)

hope someone could understand what mi intention/meaning is ^^°

[Varkas]

I see no immediate problem with a paperdoll approach for characters. I've used it with some success in the past. It's a bit tricky to make all the overlays fit together, though.

[Best Username Ever]

What do you imagine the problem is? In one technique, you create and store m*n images. In the other you create m+n.

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[Jimmt]

imo "little" and "rpg" are conflicting terms

[RobinB]

Just create an character when you need one (at runtime).
There is no need to pre render all possible combinations.

[zngga]

paper doll it, it should be fine.

...this is where Spine2D would be perfect...

[DerThad]

ok, thanks alot

[Oskuro]

The usual method is to build characters at runtime.

Fun example: In the old days of World of Warcraft, when the Auction Houses where hosted in a single city per faction, entering said city (Ironforge for Alliance) resulted in a mass of nude people running around while the game loaded the individual clothing (it lagged like hell).

Unless your users can create custom content, each client will have the data for all the pieces of the paperdoll, just read the character's info when loading it and fetch the required parts. Worst case scenario, characters will be "nude" for a few seconds.

[Best Username Ever]

Worst case scenario, characters will be "nude" for a few seconds.

Or invisible

[sproingie]

I can only recall seeing invisible avatars with just nameplates and a little spot shadow underneath, not nude ones.  Maybe they changed that.

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[Oskuro]

Yeah, technically the "nude" models need to load too. So the sequence is more like "nothing" -> "nude" -> "clothed", with the clothes sometime popping up one at a time.

It all depends on the granularity of the data (function of lag vs data size).

But nude characters are more fun to talk about.

[Best Username Ever]

Evidently the developers thought the same thing.

invisibe -> nude -> fully clothed