Fastest way to replace character graphics in a game?

[Astronio]

Hi everyone,

say that you have a game which consists of 20+ frames and you wish to replace the main character's graphics and animations in all frames. What is the quickest way to accomplish this?

[foyzul2002]

I'm guessing that just changing one character's animations is enough, then it would be a case of importing that sprite when inside a particular frame?

[Aasland]

Hi,

You could make the character global.
(It's under object preferences I think)

[Astronio]

Thanks, I will try that

[Del_Duio]

I've done it with with the main hero of Hasslevania over 200 frames by changing his active to global and it works however there's a couple things you should know that I found out about the hard way:

#1) Sometimes changing an animation on one frame does NOT carry over to all the others and in fact only some of them will be changed. The way I went around this weird bug was to copy the animation I wanted and paste it into several of that active object's frames and it worked. Ex. Paste into the hero's active on frame 10, 50, 80, and 130 or something. Weirdly enough, this worked.

#2) If you're going to do this but you don't want to have your character a global object in the end make sure to change him back to non-global (untick the box). Reason being I've accidentally changed my global hero's active in one frame trying to do something and in doing so CHANGED THEM ALL because I forgot to change him back to non-global first. Oh, that was terrible haha.

[happygreenfrog]

Maybe you're just facing the Feng Shui issue associated with how a deeper purpose frowns on you copycatting things. Come on: Hasslevania? That seems like a shameless ripoff that I am surprised Konami hasn't cautioned Clickteam for allowing open plagiarism to be discussed. One of these days, somebody's going to end up answering some really tough questions about the ramifications of copyright infringement....

I think that it was supposed to be a parody, or a painfully hard Castlevania-like game. He's talked about it on here before. And, despite what you might think, parodies are allowed. Also, the person who made this thread isn't the one who made that game, and your post is off-topic. I really don't have much experience with completely overhauling/replacing graphics, though, so I can't really help.

[Del_Duio]

Maybe you're just facing the Feng Shui issue associated with how a deeper purpose frowns on you copycatting things. Come on: Hasslevania? That seems like a shameless ripoff that I am surprised Konami hasn't cautioned Clickteam for allowing open plagiarism to be discussed. One of these days, somebody's going to end up answering some really tough questions about the ramifications of copyright infringement....

Hmmm.. Well, I released it in 2007 and so far nobody's jailed me yet. It's an original game with homages, yes, but no more illegal than peeing in the shower. It was built from the ground-up and didn't use any existing engine, graphics, or music which is why it was okay.

Anyhow I was trying to show the OP that you can make animation changes to multiple copies of an active object over a bunch of frames and that was my best example to use to try and help him.

[Nifflas]

When I went to GamesCom in Berlin, Mari0 by Stab Yourself was on display, and the extremely popular Super Mario Crossover is soon reaching version 3.0. Okay, granted, sometimes it can happen that a company sends a "cease and desist" letter to take down a fan game (I've never once heard about anyone going directly for a lawsuit), but this is very rare for free games because it's a waste of time and resources that only upsets people and doesn't help themselves in any way. Free fan games are very common on the internet and they are rarely taken down! If everybody strictly followed every copyright law, amazing things like this wouldn't exist. On top of that, I highly doubt that "Hasslevania" infringes the "Castlevania" trademark anyway, as swapping letters is a common way to do satire without using the trademarks directly. I spotted a synthesizer called Morg in Simpsons, and there's a hamburger resturant in Dr. McNinja called McBonald's. Those are way less distinct than this particular case. So relax.

Besides, you can always become the victim of patent and trademark trolls. Look at Tim Langdell's attack on everything that used the word "Edge" or Lodsys' attempt to sue both large and small developers over an in-app purchase patent. If you want to protect yourself against everything that can possibly go wrong, stop making software.

Parodies are allowed? By whose standards?

Fair use.

[Jacob]

99% of fangames are not covered under fair use, but you're never going to run into legal issues if you aren't selling because as Nifflas stated, it's simply not worth it for the parent company. I always recommend people work on original games because it's much more worth it to create your own project rather than another fangame, but nobody actually cares and nobody has the right to tell them they can't.

[Nifflas]

Those fangames aren't covered by fair use because they are named after existing trademarks and uses assets from other games. Yet, the Castlevania fan games that does all this aren't taken down. In this case, we're talking a game that doesn't use Castlevania assets or infringe on its trademarks. And if somehow "Hasslevania" gets into trouble for having a name similar to "Castlevania" (which will never happen), I'm sure fair use would cover that.

And on topic, check out the Mumble Indie Bungle which is lovely.