Good Examples of Sprites Talking to Each Other?

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rook17
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Good Examples of Sprites Talking to Each Other?

#1 Post by rook17 »

Can anyone think of VNs (or scenes within VNs) that do a good job of depicting scenes in which every character seems to be visible (i.e. it's not first person from the perspective of the protagonist, or the protagonist is watching a conversation that they're not a part of?). I'd like to go back and do some visual study of the techniques they used. For example, I just noticed within Chaos;Child that there are "detective" interludes without the MC, and they use a mix of normal sprites with "facing-away" and "side-angle" sprites to create depth and conversational space; the eye is still drawn to whatever sprite(s) are in the normal position, but the characters do appear to be looking at and talking to each other.

Any other examples or techniques people can think of?

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Re: Good Examples of Sprites Talking to Each Other?

#2 Post by Mutive »

I personally liked how Doki Doki Literature Club moved the character who was talking slightly forward. It's *really* easy to do in Ren'Py (I can provide a code snippet if you're curious as to how - I'm sure mine is different from DDLC as I wrote it myself, but will totally cop to stealing the idea) and it makes it obvious that this is the character who is doing something.

I also like having the other characters react while the main character is talking via expressions, new poses, etc. It keeps them interesting and involved even if they don't have dialogue. (I'll let the main character react, too.)

And, of course, it's really easy to have the sprites face each other by flipping the image so that they're facing towards each other, away from each other, etc.
Enjoy Eidolon, my free to play game at: https://mutive.itch.io/eidolon, Minion! at: https://mutive.itch.io/minion or Epilogue at: https://mutive.itch.io/epilogue

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Re: Good Examples of Sprites Talking to Each Other?

#3 Post by timepatches »

Mutive wrote: Tue Jul 21, 2020 3:15 pm I personally liked how Doki Doki Literature Club moved the character who was talking slightly forward. It's *really* easy to do in Ren'Py (I can provide a code snippet if you're curious as to how - I'm sure mine is different from DDLC as I wrote it myself, but will totally cop to stealing the idea) and it makes it obvious that this is the character who is doing something.
I'd definitely be curious to see your code on this one!
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Re: Good Examples of Sprites Talking to Each Other?

#4 Post by Mutive »

Your wish is my command!

When I only had two or three sprites on screen at a time, I used this:

Code: Select all


                    show cl at left behind vi
                    show vi at center:
                        ease .5 zoom 1.05

# Using the "ease + zoom" command means that the character goes from her earlier default position at a size to 5% larger than before over .5 seconds, making it look like she's stepping forward

                    v "I will take note of that."
                    hide vi

# Hiding her makes her vanish

                    hide re

# The character then has to be returned to her spot at her normal size. I deliberately didn't ease this so it's fairly unobtrusive. As this happens before there's more dialogue, it's all instantaneous (e.g. she instantly returns to  her normal spot)

                    show vi at center behind re

# Then rinse and repeat for the next character to make her "step" to the front. Note that you have to keep track of which character is standing to the left, right, center, etc.

                    show re at right:
                        ease .5 zoom 1.05
                    r "As will I!"
                    hide re
                    hide cl
                    show re at right behind cl
                    show cl at left:
                        ease .5 zoom 1.05
                    c "Me too!"

Then when I had more than three, I used this (so they'd all be in their correct places):

Code: Select all


# Now each character has a specific "spot" that they stand in. In the case of Reia (aka re and r), it's xalign 1.1, yalign .99 (this brings her almost to the bottom of the screen)

# To get all the characters to fit, I had their "full size" be at 0.75, but then made them bigger at 0.85 when they were talking

                     show re:
                            xalign 1.1 yalign 0.99
                            zoom .85
                        r "Does that sound reasonable to all of you?"
                        hide re
                        hide csad

# You only need to hide/make them reappear when they either change size (e.g. are talking) or change expression (sometimes I'd have one react to something another one was saying and transition from happy to sad or whatever, in which case they had to be vanished then reappeared)

# Also, note that ease doesn't seem to work very well here as they fly in from weird angles. I'm sure it's solvable, but I didn't care enough to mess with the code further

                        show re:
                            xalign 1.1 yalign 0.99
                            zoom .75
                        show cangry:
                            xalign -.2 yalign .99
                            zoom .75
                            xalign -.2 yalign .99
                            ease .5 zoom .85
                        c "No we all know that [povname] likes to make things up."

Hopefully this helps! Let me know if you have any questions!
Enjoy Eidolon, my free to play game at: https://mutive.itch.io/eidolon, Minion! at: https://mutive.itch.io/minion or Epilogue at: https://mutive.itch.io/epilogue

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