This project hasn’t even reached infancy yet (someone please inform if this section is meant for finished content and I’ll move this), but I’ve started to output content so I’ve moved my project here from “The Toolbox” section. I am working on a collection of overlays that will display what the character is wielding, wearing, and maybe even doing. I also plan to add a customizable appearance overlay system to change your character sprite’s starting appearance. The current plan is to splice these overlays into an existing tileset (with the owner’s permission hopefully). I’m starting with 32x32 overlays but I might try to do different sizes later (like a long time later though… I’m talking years). I have not invested any work into the coding side of things so, if you are able and willing, let me know how any of these ideas might work out when attempting to implement them into the game.
Features List(Will be updated as progress is made):
Finished:
(Absolutely nothing. Don’t judge me… I’m just a little slow.)
Unfinished:
A base player sprite, male and female. - Pretty self-explanatory.
Planned:
-Overlays of weapon and equipment. - Overlay of whatever the player is wearing and wielding, in accordance to how their equipment is layered.
-Overlays that change the player’s appearance - Change hair, ethnicity, and possibly face/eyes. Planned to be implemented through traits. For example, a “black hair” trait that causes the player to have a overlay of black hair, which is tied to that trait and cannot be removed unless the trait is removed/replaced.
-Direction the player sprite faces, and their stance, depends on movement - Moving causes the player sprite to flip horizontally to face whichever direction the movement was in. Pausing causes the player to assume a neutral stance. Therefore there would be separate overlays for the “movement legs” and the “pausing legs” that attach to the base player sprite which would then just be a torso.
-Neutral position differs according to martial arts* - If the player has an unarmed style selected, they are in a combat ready stance, if not, they are in a neutral stance. Would include different overlays for arms and legs.
-Stance changes when entering combat* - When the player moves into an enemy to initiate melee combat, they assume a combat ready stance. Combines with movement overlays to perhaps give the impression of charging into battle.
- The final project may end up with all of these features, only a few, or only one, due to possible conflicts in overlays, ideas, or implementation of the involved concepts.
Possible (low priority):
-A different art style for player sprites - A style for the base player sprite, and any associated overlays, that has a more “cartoonish” influence, which allows for a larger head and greater face detail.
Undeveloped Idea (lowest priority):
-Traits that change appearance and impact gameplay - This would involve editing existing traits, such as tough, to make the character appear more muscled and, well… tough. New traits would be added such as “large”, which would give bonuses to certain strength related activities, or “tall” which is similar but maybe increase potential speed on foot. And so on, with appropriate affects from other traits such as “short” or “small”. Would potentially involve very large amounts of work creating new overlays for the appearance changes from these traits.
-Add a MOLLE vest to the game. - I am not an expert on military equipment, but the current vests confuse me as they offer protection but little to no storage. I’m also unsure if the MOLLE vest is supposed to be included as a part of the existing “MOLLE pack” item but I am lead to believe that the MOLLE pack is a backpack. If the MBR vest is supposed to be the MOLLE vest with a different name, then my proposed changes would affect the MBR vest instead. The MOLLE vest would be similar to an MBR vest in that in its standard form it comes empty, and can be combined with certain armor components to form a more protective version. It would also have more storage capacity. A planned feature would be the ability to store ammo in a way similar to how player are able to sheath weapons. This would free up storage space in the player inventory, ammo would be drawn from storage in the MOLLE vest by default, and would give a small bonus to reload time when drawing ammo from the vest. Similar items such as bandoliers could be added as well.
