Non-Player Creatures that use player avatar animation combinations (male/female armour + weapons)?

[WithinAmnesia]

Can the Flare Engine do what most large scale R.P.G.s do where they save work and add diversity of content by having N.P.C.s. (friendly / neutral / enemy) have the creative options to render their avatars / sprites such as the same appearance as the player's avatar / sprites in terms of possible armour / weapon male/female sprite ~'load out'?

Pre-baked creature animation assets are different from the system used for the player avatar animation combinations (male/female armour + weapons). These pre-baked creature animation assets are very limited in scope and offer much less creative power in terms of amount of creative work input verses game content output.

It with be incredibly creatively empowering if the Flare Engine has the possibility to support / have a ~'creative tool' / harness a feature to implement Non-Player Creatures that use player avatar animation combinations (male/female armour + weapons). For this could lead to hundreds of thousands of different possible N.P.C. appearance option combinations to drive large scale game content generation; while also using the same graphical sprites as what the player avatar has available to render / display with. In effect this is killing two birds with one stone in recycling graphical avatar animation resources and also adding tremendous content depth and developer creative power.

Examples of official release R.P.G.s with Non-Player Creatures that use player avatar animation combinations (male/female armour + weapons):

Baldur's Gate (1998)
Everquest (1999)
RuneScape (2001)
World of Warcraft (2004)
Dragon Age (2009)
Path of Exile (2013)

There are more examples but those are enough. This is a classic developer work saving, content generating feature that I hope the Flare Engine can pull off and support. What is one the line here is literally the difference of a small scale game and a massive scale game in terms of content generation possibility for the same amount of developer work.

[dorkster]

The way that player animation layers are handled is very closely tied to the inventory menu. So if we decide to implement this, one of two paths should be taken:

1. Decouple the inventory behavior from the menu and let every entity have an inventory.
2. Add a way to define additional animation layers to the non-player entity StatBlocks.

Number 1 is probably the "right" option, but I think I might favor number 2 due to simplicity.

[dorkster]

This would take a lot of work, and I don't see it as critical to the type of ARPG Flare is. As it is, no target version is currently planned.

However, option 1 would help tackle some other issues. For example, it would be nice if the Goblin Thief enemy had an inventory to store its stolen potions (and thus be able to drop them on death). So maybe some day. Just don't expect it any time soon.

[WithinAmnesia]

1.20?XD

[dorkster]

That'd be more realistic.

[WithinAmnesia]

@dorkster Wait how simple / complex / difficult to implement is Option 2? Can these solution options be broken into different parts for different patches? Possibly 1.14 for Option 2 and ~'1.XX' for Option 2? As in like adding Option 2 animation layers for humanoid non-player entity support first with a later possibility of adding Option 1 entities with inventories?

I am thinking of minimum viable solution with 'enemy looks like player and can be customized like a player' without going too potentially complex. Is this a case where player animation graphics / assets could be added as an option for non-player entities; and manually tweaked to say have a humanoid non-player entity look like a player and have armour and have visual weapon combinations as a player character? Yet behind the scenes these are manually tweaked visual details of a developer / advanced creature / entity sprite / graphics display? Thus if a developer wants to simulate displayed / worn items dropped on death from a non-player entity they could just add a set of 100% drop rate items; to kind of simulate a more advanced inventory system but use a simpler graphical solution of using player sprite armour and weapon layer combinations manually for each entity tweaked behind the scenes?

Can Option 2 be done much more easily than Option 1 and possibly can Option 1 be added later (if at all, if it turns out that Option 1 is just too complex)? Is this a case of where Option 1 is around ~8/10 difficult and Option 2 is ~3/10 difficult (or something like that)? I am not sure the severity of the difference of difficulty to implement Option 1 verses Option 2. Or if more pragmatically they could both be mutual options done / eventually implemented in sequence; as Option 2 possibly followed by Option 1? I am wondering if Option 2 could possibly be a reasonable way forward as a minimum viable solution for humanoid non-player entities that can use player avatar animation combinations (male/female armour + weapons)?

[dorkster]

Option 2 would probably be one step of implementing Option 1, so it would naturally be easier to implement just that step. In fact, I'll cautiously say it might be simple enough to squeeze in for 1.13. I've opened an issue for it here: flareteam/flare-engine#1802