Gaining Portraits / Sprites

Archive Harvest Moo
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1

Since a stated feature of this game is different body-types, I am curious to know how you plan on implementing this in an RPG Maker engine. I see a few potential options;

Manually (i.e. outside of the game engine) generate all possible permutations and select which variant to display via scripts and/or events

[ul][li]Pro: Easy![/li]
[li]Con: Tedious to draw. Tedious to use.[/li][/ul]

(Ab)use one of the many paper-doll scripts prewritten by the community

[ul][li]Pro: Less work.[/li]
[li]Con: Subservient to other people’s code.[/li][/ul]

Write some kind of custom script.

[ul][li]Pro: Does exactly what is needed.[/li]
[li]Con: Requires Ruby or JavaScript knowledge depending on your RPG Maker version.[/li][/ul]

I’m curious because I’ve thought of doing something similar but am unsure of the best way to handle changing characters in an RPG Maker game.

2

Basically, each time you examine a cow, the game checks the cow’s stats and renders 5 sprites stacked on top of each other: hips, belly, breasts, head and hair. According to the size of the different body parts, it chooses a different sprite that reflects a different size. Sadly this method excludes unique characteristics (for example moles, skin colour or inverted nipples) but it works just fine for what it needs to do.