NetGore

Paperdolling is a feature that NetGore has, but isn't fully completed by default.

I finished this feature off (with help from Spodi) and created a wiki page for users to follow so that they could have the completed paperdoll effect in their own game. There was also a forum thread on my progression.

However, I have been absent for about a year due to personal commitments and have just noticed a lot of the wiki pages have been lost. I believe I kept a local copy of the tutorial on my PC. So if you or other users so wish then I would be more than welcome to try and re-create this tutorial.

After all, I did work hard on it and feel like it is a core feature to the types of games we are developing in NetGore.

Oh and if I have confused you, paperdolling is the effect where when equipping items, it will show on the characters body, etc.

Hope this is helpful in some way .

I wouldn't mind reading it. I'm starting from almost no knowledge of Netgore, except what little has been put back into the Wiki.

So far I havent been able to get anything to successfully build and run except the demogame.client, which needs the server to go much passed the initial screen, so there is a lot I haven't been able to check out, like that fancy NetGore Database Editor I see up there or even DBClassCreator. I'm working up a list of errors to submit for it.

Anyway, I'm also looking for the 'proper' way to add items, NPCs and the like. I've found the entries in the database for defining stats and whatnot, but I get the feeling that these are placeholders for the running game, and something else, like the Editor (that I got to run twice and never again) seeds with the proper info.

There's probably and editor for adding them in the netgore editor program, in the dbeditor part, but personally, I just add stuff into the database myself

Yeah, It would be cool if you could make a tutorial again .

Yo dude, I helped out a bit with the wiki page aswell . Good to hear form you again by the way. . It would be nice to have it back on the site again. Allthough I do remember that others had problems with implementing it and getting it to work (allthough it is still working very nicely for me in my game).

If you need any help with the wiki page , let me know.

Greeetz

If you notice any wiki pages missing, let me know asap (preferably with the name of the page) so I can try and dig it up.

There seem to be a lot of "empty" pages and references to pages that don't exist. I'll start making note of which ones I come across from now on.

I did double check all the pages in the backup provided. They are there.
A list of missing ones would help alot.

http://www.netgore.com/wiki/Automatic_GrhData_updater

Page is there but it's not listed under anything. To access the page you need to go on "Adding Graphics" then you need to click on "Automatic GrhData Updater".

So it would be fun if you could list it, probably under graphics.

AliceD wrote:

Yo dude, I helped out a bit with the wiki page aswell .

I know you helped with the paperdoll feature AliceD, didn't mean to offend you or any one, I just forgot names, etc..It's been a while .

I appreciate the help you and any other NetGore user provides, thanks .

Thanks dude, it's good to be back.

To give you a bit of schedule of my upcoming work:

1. Over the next 2/3 weeks I'm going to be merging the latest commits of NetGore into my project.
2. Once everything is up-to-date - I'm going to re-familiarise myself with both NetGore & my added code.
3. Try to finish the artwork as I only had a third of it finished. This will involve a new and dedicated artist.
4. Then code code code .

[//EndOfTopicHijack]

Cool ok. I'll try and get on that then and re-add it to the wiki page (unless Spodi can find it if we provide him with the wiki page name - I'm guessing "Paperdoll"?). Well I'm glad it is working for you and it was working for me (except for a few upgrades I wanted to add, etc) but I can understand why people had problems with it. It's because even though it was nicely laid out and structured, if people don't understand the code then they will never really get it to work .

Thanks Alice, I'll be sure to let you know if I need any help. Cheers for the support.

Revising what I earlier posted, paperdolling will be highly implemented in my game. Knowing the community that will be playing the game, they will want to almost exclusively want to customize thier characters, and it sounds like this is the way to go (instead of trying to build some sort of drawing program into the game, then have it distribute new graphics to everyone every time someone changes their character).

What is missing from the paperdoll implementation? Any luck finding the tutorial wiki?

I haven't had a problem paperdolling my sprites so far, but I might not be aware of what constitutes "full" implementation. I'm assuming by paperdolling we mean the addition of equipped accessories to the character spriteset (such as the Crystal Helmet and the Crystal Armor, which are implemented by default in the Demo Game). It looks to me as though this works in the current release. Although the Db Editor is a little buggy, much of it can be done there and in the Skeleton Editor, according to my experience with it. To add additional paperdolling to my custom character, I took the following steps:

• Copied the character's body file and renamed it (in my case "clothing1.SKELB")
• Opened the file in the Skeleton Editor>Body, attached the new clothing PNGs I made to the appropriate bones, and deleted the body parts I didn't want to change (in this case, I didn't have to change the head or the arms, so I left them out of the doll form). Saved changes.
• Opened Db Editor>Item Templates. Created a New Item (which I named "Female Outfit 1" just to be descriptive) and clicked "EquippedBod" (2nd listed field) to call up selectable file list. This list is basically the contents of the DevContent\Skeleton folder, filtered to list only SKELB files. I selected the "clothing1.SKELB" file I just edited in the Skeleton Editor.
• Clicked on "Graphic" and assigned it a 22x22 graphic I made that will represent the unclaimed item in the game world as well as in the inventory window. Saved the item.

So basically, now I have a new paperdoll with a dropped/inventory state (the 22x22 icon) and a worn state (the headless, armless paper doll I made). The final step is equipping characters with it and having slain characters drop it, which is a whole other story. Basically I've found it's best to do much of that stuff by modifying the values in the database directly, since the Db Editor yields unpredictable results in its current state.

Anyway, here's my results so far:

Nothing Equipped:

"Female Outfit 1" Equipped:

"Crystal Armor" Equipped (obviously too small for my character model):

What I'm trying to wrap my head around now is how to modify the source to implement a "Body Selection" routine for character creation, so that new players can choose from various SKELB files to customize the look of their avatars.

That looks like it will work, though Im lookong at doing top down as a primary view. I might experiment with modifying the sidescroller skeleton into an isometric view, but I dont know if the engine will switch between skeletons for up and down as well as sideways. It would require it to toggle between three skeletons in this case, one for side to side as normal for sidescroller, one for up, and one for down, as well as body images to match (then, more on topic, clothes and items to match). On top of that, I plan to have male and female characters, with at least two or three unique NPCs and at least two different body types for male and female for users initially... Then after beta, add at least three more races with the same criteria...

Im just weighing out if I should go with sprites or mess with skeletons, as with the sprites I might have help, but skeletons Id have to do all myself.

I wonder if the paperdolling is complete for sprites?

Sorry for the delayed reply TrollHammer, forgot about this topic.

Ok, so just to clear one thing up - Paperdolling is complete by default for side-scrolling (skeleton sprites, etc) but IS NOT 100% complete for top-down sprites. This is why Owlbear has managed to use paperdolling without problems in his/her side-scrolling project.

I (with the help of others) produced a top-down paperdolling system into NetGore which works great as a base implementation for this type of feature.

For you and the rest of the NetGore community, I'll re-type the guide but will probably rely on someone else to put it on the wiki (I can't be bothered to do that all again right now ). So expect a new post later on tonight when I have time to find the relevant work.

[Edit]
Hmm, I can't find the offline document I had of the paperdoll wiki entry. I could go through my code and re-write it but I won't be doing that any time soon (mainly due to having altered quite a lot of my code). Sorry .

Maybe AliceD can help.