Graphics question

@Nigec
Yes the most important thing about an adventure is the story.
To use lights and shodows and all that stuff is just to get a player involved into the story.
You could have the greates graphic, but if the story is boring nobody would like it.
Finding a mix out of this and telling a mabybe crazy, nice or serious story player can laugh, fear or feel with the charakters is the biggest part of this.

@AFRLme
Use more outfits is a nice idea. But like you said it would end up to big. You still have to look to the playability on normal computers. For a few scenes i guess it would work out. But the plan is to use lights in very many scenes in different ways. So if even if you will use only half of about 70 scenes the amout of outfits would be crazy.
There are also places like an casino with also slot machines, so there will be lots of lights. You would need maybe 10 different outfits with a minimum of 8 directions and 8 animation each ... 640 outfits for 1 scene and this only to walk trough it ,and to load and unload all this outfits would be insane.

But so far i can say it seems like it really works.
I like the light map, simple to use and looks at some points right now really good.
For example walking trough a shadow from a lamp. This isnt a great thing but this are this little things you can use to make the game look much better and more realistic.
So are the lights at the pictures, i figured out if you just make it in front of them a little darker the effect dosent looks to bad, but i am still testing

hmm does the lightmap affect the whole character or just the parts of the character which are underneath the lightmap?

I really should look into how it works so I can explain it clearly/properly on the new documentation wiki as I didn't find much information about it on the old 2d wiki - maybe I didn't look hard enough? I tried the search tool & all I got was the tiny section inside of the data structure 3.x page.

I only tried the lightmap now. But it looks like it allways affect the whole charakter.
Maybe i should try also the other way first.

Edit:
Just tried again, the best way to see it if you use the same screen as the background u use. The last point the charakter stands, the whole charakter gets colored like the point he stands.

ahh I thought maybe it would only affect the things it was overlaying - shame!

Yes would be much better if this works but i think it is to much work to write the code for this for something almost nobody want or need. I guess is not possible till this 2.5D is in Visionair and even then it depends at how this will be done.
Normaly you need 3 axis to put the lights proper into the scene. But the lightmap is only a flat map.
At least it is a engine for 2D Adventures and the whole team has done a great job with this.

I testet more and i upload the result to youtube:

http://youtu.be/QpJQkFPYjCQ

I isnt very aligned, and a little fast (the speed depends on the music at the end), but you can see what i want to do at least.
This is also kind of special scene while the lights and colors change often. Till now i cant find out how i can change the lightmap in runtime but i think this dont look to bad if i look at the model.

hmm there's an action part inside of "scene" for switching lightmaps if I remember correctly & simple idea would be to add the action part to each individual frame in which the light switches to another etc - means you wouldn't even need to use if else queries either (well for lightmap bit anyway)

Thank you so much this saves my day. i tried this an this one really works

I am almost happy with this ... but ... it seems like this lightmap changing takes to much ressources (if you do it often in a loop) so the model jumps like and rabbit (not rigged now so only stand) arround.if it walks.
I only use 2 pictures that change also 2 lightmaps.
And it cant be a problem of the ram i have in my workstation, it is more then i ever will need.
I think i should try also the way with a script, maybe this will use less ressources.

Again a video:
http://youtu.be/vCgTom-xBZQ

The good thing is it really works the easy way

ah yes the stuttering walk cycle...
quite a few people have this issue - myself included - in general when character is walking around.
there's also a slight hiccup with scaling too especially if you try to scale via x-axis.

hopefully the stuttering will be less likely to happen in next release of VS as it's getting an overhaul & is supposed to require much less cpu/ram/vram etc to run.

failing that I think there's plans to replace/update walk system at some point.

To bad this is a major problem. This would solve a lot of problems

Right now i test with action areas and this seems like to work (enter show- leave hide animation with the lightmap).
It still jumps in this area but there is no problem if you walk around outside this area.
Still need to test a while but i think if the action area isnt to big you would not even really notice this jumping.

If i unserstud right it will take a long time for a new version.
I try as long as i have to, till i have an answer to solve this problem

Edit:
I just noticed it also effect the cursor

After some more testing this jumping reminds me at a similar problem i hade almost 2 years ago.
I wrote a business program to write bills, reminder, backup and all this stuff. The program runs perfect exept one thing.
It acts also with jumping mouse arrows and get stuck if you run the backup out of it.
I simply forget to use a single thread for the backup so u could still use the rest of the program.

I dont know how the code is written but i think to use different threads maybe would solve this special problem.
I have no idea if they allready have a solution for the problem but maybe it helps to think about something like this (if not allready in use). Just a clue i have in mind that maybe could help.
And i dont know where to post this text so the developer would read this.

here is fine (david, alex & simon check most posts)