GARAGE'S PROFILE

author=RukasuWYZ
@Marrend and @Garage
How do you share custom content? How do you get it all in the same file (Tachie, Story etc)

I always copy my stuff to a clean folder, recreating the structure like this:

Then you can select all those folders (Tachie, Story, Profiles) and right click > send to > compressed folder.

You'll get a ZIP file containing all your content which can be dumped right into the game directory, creating all the needed subdir's.

Edit: I mean: select all of them at once, then right click while they are still selected.

Since you asked, RukasuWYZ - this how I created each of my tachie sets:

First I made a fresh copy of the same tachie generator which has been used for the built-ins, too.

Then I opened it with The GIMP.

As described in Mr. HelpFile, the "generator" is a multilayer graphic file that contains layers - grouped (roughly) by bodyparts having multiple versions for each part.

You should take a few minutes to make yourself familiar with these layers, if you are not used to it.

The basic idea is, that ALL variations of ALL parts are there in one single file. You just have to enable those parts that should be shown, and disable those you don't want to be shown. Note that there not only a group for Arms and a group for Chests - but also a group combining the two in one set of layers. IN fact there is yet another group for bare arms ...

The next, important, step is to recolor at least the hair, and in the case of my sets the eyes. You should recolor each of the different layers of hair to with the same parameters so you get a consistent look (well: unless you want some advanced special effects, of course - like having a blue ponytail and red bangs ...) - I used the tool "colorize" (I hope that is the correct english name for it).

After this you can design the haircut by enabling and disabling the different layers until it looks like "your girl".

You should save this as "name.xcf". Then I created the "name-neutral.xcf" version by selecting layers for eyes, clothing, arms and anything ...

The other expressions are simple: take "name-neutral.xcf" and adjust at least the layers for mouth, eyes, blush and eyebrows. For me it was easiest to go from neutral -> unfriendly -> dislike and neutral -> friendly -> like -> love ->lovesick ...

If you like and need it you might add other expressions which you will then assign to OTHER1 et alt.

Once you have a complete set of .xcf files you export each of them to a .png file. You should then resize the .png to the target hight of your character.
(I first resized before exporting ... the result is less desirable in some cases because the masks of some layers get messed up.)
Normally you should resize all the files of one set to the same hight, of course ;)

Since I kept all the .xcf files for all expresions of my characters I am able to easily edit them (like for example moving part of the hair behind the clothing as suggested by Marrend).

Some basic information:

• as mentioned in Mr. HelpFile you should definetly turn off the background - or your tachie would appear on a black box.
  

• You can disable and enable whole layer groups with just one click.

• The layers have to seperate functions: they are organising the content of the file (into bodparts) and they define the order in which things are drawn above each other. The lowest layer (Background) is drawn first, the top layer (Hair/Glasses) is drawn last and thus over every other layer.

• You can't combine any version of hair with every version of arms+chest. Look at Back_Long_Tail_Braided and its variations.

Better?

Here is a first extremly early fragment of my new project.

Profiles are incomplete, the story has not really begun ... spelling errors are irrelevant right now ...

But.

I would really appreciate any feedback on TWO topics:

• What do you think of the tachies?

• The twins start a guess-the-twin game with player ... Is it to hard or is it to easy? Is it plain stupid?

This guessing game starts after just 2 or 3 introductory events. Everyone willing to play them for just a few minutes (clean mode ON!) is very much welcome. (Just don't expect anykind of storyline or completeness).

As a sidenote: file names should probably not contain anything fancy like "white spaces" I bet.

Since the space char is used to seperate stuff it is bound to break things.

Example: if you put your stuff in to a folder named "new characters" and name the profile "my profile.txt" then I am pretty sure that a story-file starting with

new characters/my profile.txt

Would be looking for three different Profile files. ("new" "characters/my" and "profile.txt")