Characters

Français · Type: reference · Audience: author · Context: engine repository, created project · Status: ready · Applies from: 4.3.0

A character is declared once, in game.ts (characters, usually from cast.ts), and placed in a room as an actor. This page lists a character's fields, its poses and mouths, the variants its state selects, palette swaps, and characters that are seen but not acted on.

A character

characters: {
  grandma: {
    name: 'Grandma', color: '#f0c040', height: 124, kind: ['person'],
    portrait: 'grandma/r1c2',
    sprites: { idle: ['grandma/r3c3'], talk: ['grandma/r3c4', 'grandma/r3c3'], walk: ['grandma/r2c1', 'grandma/r2c2', …] },
    refuse: 'That is sweet, dear. But keep it, you will need it for your errand.',
    hug: 'Always. Even with a basket in my arms.',
  },
  talkie: { name: 'the walkie-talkie', color: '#ff6fb5', offscreen: true },   // speaks in a frame, no body
},

The hero is a character too (hero in game.ts); several playable characters and choosing the hero are on heroes. A character speaks in a room only through an actor, except in a phone call (commands).

Poses

By convention: idle, talk, walk (profile, facing right; the engine flips the image for left), walk_front, walk_back, point, use, plus any special pose you want (sleep, sit, celebrate…). A pose is a list of images played in a loop. A missing pose falls back to idle (validate warns about an actor whose pose is missing). The template's cast.ts has helpers for the standard sheets: human(id) and cat(id) map a 6 × 4 sheet to these poses (images). { pose: ['cat', 'sleep'] } sets a lasting pose; { anim: ['hero', 'use'], ms: 600 } plays one for a while (commands).

Speech: only the mouth moves

A character with a talking sheet declares their mouths per pose. During a line the body never changes: the open-mouth images cycle at random (160 to 220 ms), and a blink passes by now and then at rest. The "mouth closed" image replaces the pose's rest image, so rest and speech come from the same drawing.

import { human, mouths } from './cast';
grandpa: { …, mouths: mouths('talk_grandpa', { idle: 'profile', front: 'face', seated: 'seated' }) },

mouths(folder, { pose: row }) reads <folder>/<row>/t1…t6 (t1 closed, t2 to t4 open, t5 blink, t6 smile), the frames tools/talk-apply.py produces. With no mouths for a pose, the character keeps the same image and bounces a pixel while talking; a long line starts with a gesture (the talk pose) played once.

Variants depending on state

import { cat } from './cast';
hero: { …, sprites: cat('hero'), variants: [{ if: { has: 'bucket' }, sprites: cat('hero_bucket'), mouths: … }] },

The first variant whose condition is true replaces sprites, mouths and portrait, and name when it has one (4.3.0: the hero the player chose, a character renamed after a reveal; heroes). The change shows right away (e.g. as soon as the bucket is picked up).

Palette swap (palette, also on variants)

One sheet, several looks: palette maps source colours to target colours, both #rrggbb. The room view recolours every sprite and mouth frame of the character once, in an offscreen canvas (cached, alpha kept). A variant's palette replaces the character's while its condition holds (a variant without one keeps the character's).

biscuit: { …, sprites: cat('cat'),
  palette: { '#2c1818': '#7a3416', '#492a25': '#b0592a', '#543329': '#c4703a' }, paletteTolerance: 14,
  variants: [{ if: 'muddy', palette: { '#492a25': '#5a4a3a' } }] },

Matches are exact RGB by default: this suits the pixel art style, whose cutter gives every material one exact value. Painted (cel) sheets and lossy WebP have many neighbouring tones: paletteTolerance (an RGB distance; 10 to 16 is a good start, below the distance to the outline colour) recolours every pixel near a source colour, keeping its offset from it; the nearest source colour wins. Pick the source colours from the cut PNG (the most frequent opaque colours of a cell). The demo's Biscuit uses this to become a ginger tabby.

Limit · portraits-not-recoloured Portraits in menus and calls are not recoloured. npm run validate warns about a palette key or value that is not #rrggbb.

Things with multiple states

A seagull that watches or snaps, an old dog that sleeps, sulks or yawns, a cat's eye glowing on a screen: a hotspot has only a name and a zone, so for a drawn thing that changes, use a stateful prop:

props: { seagull: { name: 'seagull', states: { watch: 'obj_yard/r2c4', snap: 'obj_yard/r2c5' }, initial: 'watch' } }

with a position per state in the layout (props.seagull.states.snap); the clickable zone follows the image. Change the state with { prop: ['seagull', 'snap'] } and react to it with if: { prop: ['seagull', 'snap'] }. For a zone of the background that changes name or shape, use two hotspots with opposite visible conditions (visible: 'x' / visible: '!x'), each with its own zone; a rule can target both (a: ['h1', 'h2']).

Presence without interaction

actors: { ghost: { char: 'ghost', interactive: false, visible: 'ghost_seen' } }: visible, but neither clickable nor named. Combine with { show: 'ghost', fade: 1500 } / { hide: 'ghost', fade: 1500 } and glow on the character's sheet.

Related identifiers

• CharacterDef, ActorDef, MouthSet in src/engine/core/types/content.ts.
• Rooms: actors, dialogues, heroes, images, voices.

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