Default character placeholder label doesn't seem to update correctly

[jdhthegr8]

Hello all,

I am just getting started with doing the first actual Ren'Py script out of my written story. At this point in time I have no graphics so I'm just letting the placeholder character do the job of showing poses and how it changes. I noticed that having another show statement with the same character does not seem to update correctly; it just blanks out the label on the placeholder rather than replacing it. At the line shown in the attached picture, "ang reading desk surprised" should be shown but it just cleared out "ang reading desk" instead.

This is not an issue if I add a hide statement before the next show statement but this is needlessly redundant and the documentation advises that this is unnecessary. Is this just a quirk specific to the placeholder character or am I missing something here? It'd be nice to be able to depict pose changes in the engine before I have to bother with any graphical assets

[mitoky]

You are one attribute short for "ang reading desk". Instead, make it "ang reading desk normal" and name the image accordingly.
Then it should work. (:

[jdhthegr8]

Huh, interesting. After going further also I noticed that it seemed to no longer be an issue when I defined a position for the character at center and so had done that for the time being.

[jdhthegr8]

Adding "normal" didn't fix that particular issue even though defining the position did, but I notice you mentioned to "name the image accordingly", and since I'm not working with any images right now I suppose that would explain why. I suppose to be more specific in my question, what does the "normal" tag do when it's applied to an image? Should it be applied only to the character's base sprite before small modifications, or would it need to be applied to others? Would it only need to be used for the first instance of a character sprite being loaded into a scene or at other times as well? DISREGARD THAT I GET IT NOW! So to be more clear, however many types of variations you could have from the base sprite need to always be defined when a show statement is used for the character. Like for example, if between all my combinations of poses for a sprite I have modifiers for arms, mouth, eyes, and emotion and there is at least one show command that uses any combination of all four then four attributes always need to be explicitly defined.

So if this is in fact the case, does it mean I need a different image for the whole sprite or could my current plan of layered sprite parts still be done with this?
Thanks for your assistance, by the way!

[mitoky]

Ahh sorry, i didnt get notified that you replied and didnt check the thread;;

I checked again, yeah, usually it should show the imge since its the first one too. Thats weird;;
The reason i said normal you probably already figured out but basically its more even and that way you canm easier swap images. Its not necsassary, since you can just remove an attribute too but instead of "surprised" you can just write "normal" and its shorter.

Also you dont need to name the whole image when you show it, only the first time when it appears on screen. Afterwards only image tag (aka first word in image name, here would be "ang") + changing attribute (aka what changes, like "surprised") is enough.

[jdhthegr8]

Interesting. For now while I have only placeholders, defining the location works but I'm going to have to suck it up and get some sort of art made so I can experiment more with this. Actually now that I think of it I'm sure there are plenty of free-to-use sprite placeholders on here with a few poses that I could use for experimentation with image modification... Thanks for the assistance! I think that's what I'll look into next because I do want to be learning how this script actually relates to image positioning and editing: I'm a bit familiar with Python but the unique things that Ren'Py does are new to me!