Non-JRPG Style - max width/height of characters

[jet_black 0]

Hey guys,

 

At the moment, I am planning my RM-Game and I decided to not have the standard RTP- and JRPG-look.

I want characters that are higher and not as wide as the standard chars. I really want to show the difference between

muscular and huge guys (barbarians), "normal"/average guys, men/women, children, old guys, etc.

Personally I think that you can´t do that very well with the RPG Maker and I want to have completely custom graphics.

 

That means: Drawing own non-rtp-style characters, create parallax maps in Photoshop, create own Icons and more.

 

Now my question: How high and wide can I make the characters, so they will work well with things like-door events, Side- or Upfront- Battle Systems, Animations and such. 

 

It would be so awesome if you could provide a charset template of what is possible in terms of more height and less width (so it looks more human). Or if you can´t or don´t want to do this, could you at least please give me some information of whats possible or have some screenshots of taller, non-JRPG-style characters that someone already created?

 

A big thank you in advance

 

Greetings,

jet_black

 

 

PS: I am just learning custom spriting, so I had set the goal how I want my sprites to look like and the template would show me whats possible, so I can learn very ressource-effective.

[+ Sughayyer 163]

It's good to deviate from the original style, but it's important to learn the engine basics to make it work well. In recent days I have seen lots of people wanting to break rules they don't know yet.

 

That said, the engine will look for characters that are 4-directional, 3-framed sheets with four columns and two rows of sprites. So spritesheet size is not an issue: if your sprite is 32x64, for example, make a spritesheet that's 384x512.

 

Of course, you can make spritesheets with a single character (in the 32x64 example, it would be 128x192 large). Just add the $ symbol before the filename.

 

About the proportions, well that's entirely up to you. Use good sense: a door should be tall enough for a person to pass, walls must be tall enough to actually cover people (unless you want them to duck under the ceiling!).

[dipping dots 68]

As long as the character is a third the width and a fourth the height of the spritesheet, it can be any size. Just put a $ in the filename like $Karen.png

[jet_black 0]

I used RPG Maker 2003 and XP very obsessively some years ago. I am just geting back into it again, I only have to explore where every button is again. But I still know how everything works, how you even, what switches are for, how the database works, stuff like that. I even know how to implement scripts and how to do little customizations.

 

I just used the standard character sizes all the time, so I was never familiar with other sizes that may be supported.

The program I use for spriting is GameCharacter Hub, so I can easily set up the height and width I need. So you say it´s not problem, until I make sure that everything else will fit too, like height of buildings, doors, stuff like that?

 

So the spritesheet could theoretically every size, as long as I keep 1/3 width and 1/4 height, right? Of course with the $-sign.

[+ Chaosian 617]

Snip

Good advice, though I will offer some correction - and that's that a single character sheet is 3 columns (of different frames of an animation), and 4 rows (of differing rotations / animation sets).

 

 

So the spritesheet could theoretically every size, as long as I keep 1/3 width and 1/4 height, right? Of course with the $-sign.

So this is correct.

[+ Sughayyer 163]

When I said the number of rows/cols, I referred to full spritesheets - 4x2, each character with 12 frames (3x4).

But that's it, everyone's right on that one.