New guy with a few issues with custom char

[RedRock911]

I had a couple of problems with my new charecter I was making. I'm hoping some people might be able to help

 

1. Scaling issue: he is incredibly small! Although all the dimensions are correct from the extended character template, he's coming out about the size of a carrot! I have no idea what I did to make him so small, but he is.

 

2. Not really intended to be a playable character: I made him with the intention of making him a container follower, much like chester, but specifically for another character I created. Are there any tutorials on how to make a container, and a creature follower? Or is that wishful thinking and i'm going to have to figure it out myself?

 

3. Neck and torso issue (more of an artistic undersite really) So my charecters body and head need to match up. SO is it better to increase the body size and tweek the head, or do I need to decrease the head and keep the body size? This is a more of a artists question. maybe someone has ran across this and figured this one out through the wonderful process of trial and error. 

 

and finally

 

4. If I make a custom hat? and am I supposed to make a masked layer somewhere? 

 

 

I am almost positive i'll have more questions, I'll try and keep them all in this post if possible.

 

[Blueberrys]

2. See the container component ("..\scripts\components\container") and follower component ("..\scripts\components\follower").

I haven't seen any tutorials specific for that, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Why not just copy Chester's code and change the texture?

 

Can't really help with the rest, sorry.

[RedRock911]

2. See the container component ("..\scripts\components\container") and follower component ("..\scripts\components\follower").

I haven't seen any tutorials specific for that, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Why not just copy Chester's code and change the texture?

 

Can't really help with the rest, sorry.

 

that's what I plan on doing, but before I did, I wanted to ask. Just in case someone had done it before, and knew another way to do something like that. speaking of doing things other ways, are there any resources on how to look at .bin files? I wanted to check out how the pigs where put together animation wise. 

[Blueberrys]

@RedRock911 I haven't done much with bin files, so I can't help with that, sorry. But I think I did see a thread talking about it a few days ago. Search for "bin" or ".bin", you might find something useful.

[Corrosive]

@RedRock911,

 

1. Does your character make use of pre-existing animations(such as player_basic.zip)?  If so, you need to scale your actual bitmaps to be the necessary size.  Scaling data data is located inside the animations, and if you're just swapping bitmaps, that's your only option.  Since you probably don't need a ton of animations for a non-playable character, you may, however, be able to use ktools' krane to pull partially-usable animations out of the animation .zips.  In a folder, place your character's build.bin and texture files along with the anim.bin from the animation set you want to extract.  Run krane on that folder.  You should receive a partially functioning .scml containing your character with the appropriate animations.  Some sprites will be incorrectly animated, since Spriter doesn't support the 2d-matrix transforms that Klei's animations use.  The legs, for example, on the running animations will be all wonkily animated.  Nothing that's not rectifiable though.

 

2. 100% what Blueberrys said.  Additionally, I'd take a look into SGchester.lua

 

3. Whatever works.  You'll want to use the method that loses the least amount of data when scaling your sprites to full size.  Ideally you'd increase the body size in actual pixel dimensions to match the head, otherwise it'll be blurrier than the head when scaling it up.  Once you've rendered them to bitmaps, it doesn't matter quite as much how you decide to scale them.

 

4. I'm not 100% sure on what you're asking here. A custom equippable hat or something different, like a hat that's baked into your character's animations?

[Corrosive]

@RedRock911,

 

Bah! I took too long to respond there <.<

 

The best tool for figuring out .bin files is BinaryConverter, which you can find in the downloads section.  Make sure to run input-precise.bat to see how the animations are actually handled in the .bin files.  Using the regular input.bat converts the 2d transform matrices into scale and rotate values which are easy to edit by hand, but aren't able convey things like skew, so the intermediate text files may not be faithful to the source.

[RedRock911]

@RedRock911,

 

1. Does your character make use of pre-existing animations(such as player_basic.zip)?  If so, you need to scale your actual bitmaps to be the necessary size.  Scaling data data is located inside the animations, and if you're just swapping bitmaps, that's your only option.  Since you probably don't need a ton of animations for a non-playable character, you may, however, be able to use ktools' krane to pull partially-usable animations out of the animation .zips.  In a folder, place your character's build.bin and texture files along with the anim.bin from the animation set you want to extract.  Run krane on that folder.  You should receive a partially functioning .scml containing your character with the appropriate animations.  Some sprites will be incorrectly animated, since Spriter doesn't support the 2d-matrix transforms that Klei's animations use.  The legs, for example, on the running animations will be all wonkily animated.  Nothing that's not rectifiable though.

 

2. 100% what Blueberrys said.  Additionally, I'd take a look into SGchester.lua

 

3. Whatever works.  You'll want to use the method that loses the least amount of data when scaling your sprites to full size.  Ideally you'd increase the body size in actual pixel dimensions to match the head, otherwise it'll be blurrier than the head when scaling it up.  Once you've rendered them to bitmaps, it doesn't matter quite as much how you decide to scale them.

 

4. I'm not 100% sure on what you're asking here. A custom equippable hat or something different, like a hat that's baked into your character's animations?

 

 

@RedRock911 I haven't done much with bin files, so I can't help with that, sorry. But I think I did see a thread talking about it a few days ago. Search for "bin" or ".bin", you might find something useful.

 

Thanks guys, working on it now! 

@blueberry I made a hat for the game, and it looks as if it's "hiding" behind everyones hair. The Hat is there, you can see it in the inventory, and it equips. So I am wondering what I need to do to see it on the head.  Since i am pretty new to modding, I'm positive it has something to do with a step that I don't know about yet when creating a user generated item. 

Edited February 15, 2015 by RedRock911

[RedRock911]

O.K. fixed the issues!. took all my torso artwork and transferred it to the head. then made an extra torso bottom, which was easy. (its K'nuckles from misadventures of flapjack. So i essentially gave him his wooden bottom) the rest is just polish (my hand claws are slightly misaligned, and some of the art doesn't match in the hands due to experiance of perspective,) 

 

So, off to learn how to LUA, then some polish, by next week or so, my first publish! WOO HOO!