Color variations?

[AllistairF]

Does MMF2D have a feature which would enable different colored variations of the same object without having to redraw the entire object and all its animations? Sometimes the color can be just for variety, sometimes to give the player personalized choices, or to indicate variants of the creature such as strength or weapon information. Can it be done in MMF2D without redrawing the object? And is it possible to do it without somebody's third-party extension?

[Bovril]

You can use the "animation->replace color" action of active objects to change one colour at a time. This should be ok for very few colours (an example was made in the old forums for changing gameboy style colours this way)
If you want a general tint / hue change, you may need to wait for the ink effects SDK to be released, then third-party developers :P will no doubt make hundreds of effects, one of which is bound to do what you want.

[LazyCoder]

For more shades of colors what you can do is you can have each 'object' really be made up of 2 objects, one that is just an overlay with all the shading and non changing colors (this one would need an alpha channel), then another which is just a solid color of whatever color you want it to be.
Each object would have an alterable value called 'ID' or something like that, something that can tie them both together. In addition to the 'ID' one, the solid color object would have one that stores the color in it, so you know what color to replace.

This could be used until the ink SDK comes out.

[AllistairF]

I think it would be easier just to redraw the whole thing.

[LazyCoder]

But then it is much more limiting... your choice though.