Make the leader invisible using slices

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Bird
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Make the leader invisible using slices

Post by Bird »

So what I try to do is make the leading hero invisible on the map. There is no caterpillar party enabled. Changing the walkabout graphic with "set hero picture" to something empty makes the hero invisible indeed, but also makes the character's icon invisible in the menus (screenshot example). That's not very beautiful.

Can I refer to the walkabout sprite as a slice maybe? How would I declare that?
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TMC
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Post by TMC »

Using slice commands you could make the walkabout sprite invisible. The effect will be identical to making it invisible using "set hero picture".

Why do you want an invisible hero which doesn't appear in the hero menus? Isn't the same thing as a hero that's swapped out of the party?
Maybe you should simply swap the hero out of the party before opening the menu.
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Bird
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Post by Bird »

Well, things are very complicated. In this part of the game, the whole party is constantly reordered, because there are three teams out of four characters, which are represented by three NPCs (showing each team leader) on the map. The NPCs are controlled, not the walkabout for the main hero.

So it's not about making one specific hero invisible. It's about having no actual hero at all on the map (there are NPCs for the gameplay).

I might have found a solution there: When having a look at the slice tree, making hero_layer invisible results in no hero being drawn, but they still have their original graphics in the menus. Perfect. Now is it possible to do this with a plotscript without having to define the slices first? Just take, what's there?

However, on some maps, there is no hero_layer to hide. It's really map dependant. Why? Maybe it's to consider, that I'm on the old Beezlebufo version.
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Bob the Hamster
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

There is a much easier way!

Don't worry about slices at all

Pick an inaccessible place on the map (I usually use the top left corner, 0,0 for this) and make sure it is hidden by an upper map layer or an overhead tile.

Then just put the hero there, and focus the camera on the NPCs
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Bird
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Post by Bird »

True! That would work in general.
But: The hero is in my case actually needed to touch some other NPCs (represented by arrows or crosses for example), that trigger some scripts. That's not the professional programmers way to do turn-based chess board action, but I think it saves me quite some code for the character movement, because directions of the own hero can be translated directly to what should be happening on the board.
I think if someone could explain the hero_layer thing to me...
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