[Ohrrpgce] [Bug 794] Layer-2 should have an equivalent command to "Suspend Overlay"

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http://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=794

--- Comment #9 from Bagne <Robin.Geodesic at gmail.com> 2009-12-05 12:37:22 PST ---
> Perhaps we're looking at this the wrong way. The best way to do this would be
> to move the heroes layer, right? Moving the actual layer around means that both
> NPCs AND heroes would be affected, which in your flying example would be
> undesirable.

Ah. Yes. That makes way more sense.  Maybe this feature request should be
renamed.

> Roughly 10000 years ago (or, late 2006), when I was discussing this plan with
> Inferior Minion in IRC, including backdrops was part of the plan. However, it
> never became practical until very recently.
> 
> I wanted to allow paralaxing (the background moving at a different speed than
> the foreground) as well. This should all be quite easy, these days.
There's also effects in some games where one or more layers gets warped or
transformed - I always thought that those were cool.
You could do things like heat waves, or dimensional warps or something -
anyways, it would give the game-maker some options other than "fade screen out"
or "show backdrop".



> The plan is that eventually they
> will (almost*) all be slices, and you will be able to rearrange their draw
> order.

Perfect.  That's exactly what's needed.

How are the NPCs going to be managed?
I could probably conjure up a rare occasion that someone may want to place some
NPCs in an upper layer, and others in a lower layer. Is it too complicated,
tracking a layer for each NPC?
I remember hearing someone's lament on the message board about keeping track of
layering among NPCs (if two are on the same tile, who goes on top?).
I'm thinking that there may be a need for a command to move an NPC from one
layer to another, and maybe another to move NPCs within the "NPC layer" (if
such a thing will be used)

Is there any thought on caterpillar walkabouts? A similar treatment may be
needed here.
As an aside, I always thought it looked a little silly when the rear-most hero
ends up on top after you use a door, or teleport.

Hm, while I'm on the subject of caterpillars, I want to test the waters:
I have on a growing number of occasions desired the ability to alter the
caterpillar "walkabout history".  I don't know how it's done exactly, but it
appears to me that a history of commands like "walk at speed S to coords X, Y"
and "teleport" are stored, and then executed down the line of the caterpillar
on each step.
What's in store for caterpillars? TMC mentioned that walkabouts were likely to
be left untouched unless an attempt was made at non-tile-based movement.

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