Re: [Adonthell-devel] Character design

[Alexandre Courbot]

> All in all, characters are a quite complex topic, as there are so many
> things involved. I'll try to list all the different character related
> things and see if I can come up with something sensible.
> 
> Character parts:
> 
> * schedules
> * graphics
> * misc stuff
> * map-related stuff
> * basic attributes and properties

The way graphics would be handled by the engine is quite simple, I
think. The engine itself would not handle graphics as it does in 0.3,
but instead each character would have a string describing which graphic
model to use and maybe also some parameters for the instanciation of
this model (key color - which could be used for dialogs also, etc...).
It'd then be up to the client/renderer part to display them properly,
knowing that each model has a set of "states" which are set up by the
engine (would be "walking", "running", ... for characters. Good thing
about that is that some characters could have states others doesn't
have)

As for the rest of your mail:
As we decided, the C++ engine should handle non-game related stuff.
Therefore, things like map handling and an interface to control
characters have to belong to it. But I think that's all. All the rest
(characters attribute and so on) could be done in Python. Don't forget
that all the map stuff if only a small part of what a character is. A
map_character class would just be a placeable object which can nove and
gets controlled by a specific interface. The actual character class
would create such an object when needed. I think it's important to get
these two well separated, I mean no more inheritance or things like that
(references would be necessary though). That way, a character could
exist without necessarily having to be on a map. This could be useful.

Alex.
-- 
http://www.gnurou.org