Adding characters

[Leoni]

Hi all.

I'm still starting to edit this game. My intention is to add some characters to a custom battle that I've created, but most of the characters simply do not appear inside the game.
I've heard that there is a limit to sprites and characters. Can anybody explain me more about it?

I attached screenshots of what I want to create. By the way, I would like to know if I can make them all undead, just like the undead knights in the battle against Zalera. After all, Wiegraf should be dead. Is it possible?

Is it possible to make him turn into velius again, after defeated?

Thanks a lot!

[Xifanie]

Any battle can only have up to 16 units, it can be 11 monks + 5 of the player's units (this is an actual random battle in vanilla).
Any battle can only have up to 9 sprites loaded at any given time. It's just not possible to alter this for random battles. For story battles, vanilla pulls out a trick a few times, like at Orbonne (first battle) where it unloads the sprites of your opponents in order to load in Delita, Ovelia and the Chocobo.

In random battles, as soon as the ENTD has 4 sprites loaded (5 are reserved for the player; 9 total), it will completely ignore units that does not match one of those 4 sprites, and not even try to generate them. In story battle, you'll just have a nice graphical glitch; the sprite won't be loaded, but the unit will exist and will be functional.

AFAIK, "Always Present" means the unit will always be created if the game can afford to load a new sprite, or if it is already loaded. "Randomly Present" has ~50% chance of creating the unit or not. If it fails to, it gives a chance for the next unit at the same location to draw.

Sprites are different looking unit graphics. Male and Female Priests look different, they use different sprites. Chocobo, Black Chocobo, Red Chocobo do not look different, they're just different colours (i.e. a different palette). They still share the same sprite.

For example, let's take this ENTD (let's just assume they all have different X/Y coordinates):
[indent=2]

Goblin	Random
Chocobo	Always
Squidlarkin	Random
Red Panther	Always
Blue Dragon	Random
Bomb	Random
Black Chocobo	Random
Red Chocobo	Random
Female Priest	Always

[/indent]

Legend:
[indent=2]
Failed to randomly create
Successfully created
Unable to create because 4 sprites were already loaded
[/indent]


It could generate:
[indent=2]

Goblin	Random	1st sprite
Chocobo	Always	2nd sprite
Squidlarkin	Random
Red Panther	Always	3rd sprite
Blue Dragon	Random
Bomb	Random
Black Chocobo	Random	2nd sprite
Red Chocobo	Random	2nd sprite
Female Priest	Always	4th sprite

[/indent]

Or even:
[indent=2]

Goblin	Random
Chocobo	Always	1st sprite
Squidlarkin	Random	2nd sprite
Red Panther	Always	3rd sprite
Blue Dragon	Random	4th sprite
Bomb	Random
Black Chocobo	Random	1st sprite
Red Chocobo	Random
Female Priest	Always

[/indent]

Or still:
[indent=2]

Goblin	Random
Chocobo	Always
Squidlarkin	Random
Red Panther	Always
Blue Dragon	Random
Bomb	Random
Black Chocobo	Random
Red Chocobo	Random
Female Priest	Always

[/indent]


As for the whole undead thing... you can't really make them undead. It's possible, but it's extremely complicated. What you can do though, is either creating a custom job with the permanent undead status (that's what vanilla did), or equip a Cursed Ring and give that unit Maintenance.

If you really want all those units available at the same time, you could only use 4 "Sprite Sets" total, and they would all need to be special character sprites, since you can't select generic male/female/monster sprites under the Sprite Set dropdown.

[savantopus]

Thank you xif. Cleared some things up for me