Help! Chipset not big enough?, Huge tree does not fit!! Options

[Cyladis]

First off, I'd like to mention this is the first thread I've started on this site, and it's nice to meet you all.

I'm having a little bit of a problem. For my game, I wanted to use a certain Tales rip; no issue there, as I have all the in-game graphics set up on a nice sheet. The issue comes into play when I actually have to start arranging stuff around..

See, I'm trying to use Yggdrasil, from Tales of Phantasia (The tree looks exactly like what I visualized, so it fits.) The problem is, the tree is GIGANTIC. I can't fit it all in one chipset! I even tried using events to show the rest of the tree, but this did not go well. I even tried a panorama, but it wasn't working.

Any ideas on how I can show the upper half of the tree? I'm stuck with this, and it's exactly what I need.

[Kread-EX]

Can you show us the tree? It'll be simpler to determine the best way to display it if we know how big it is.

[Vanit]

If the player won't be walking behind it I'd definitely lean towards doing it panorama style. So you can either make the entire map for that area a panorama or do a combination where most of the map is tileset but you leave a transperant area where the tree is meant to be and fill it in with a panorama. For both cases to work you'll need the panorama to be the exact dimensions of the maps or you won't be able to position the tree within the map easily. So if your map is 40x30 tiles the panorama needs to be 40*16x30*16 pixels.

If you want the player to be able to walk behind the tree then you'll need to use events by chopping the tree into 16x16 pixel blocks and splitting it between however many charsets you need. This was the technique I ended up using for the train sprite in my sig (but it has 2 carriages).

[shinyjiggly]

You could make it a picture that stays in place and put invisible events around it to avoid players from walking though it.

[Cyladis]

The tree would be Yggdrasil. This is the disassembled picture.

[Show/Hide] Gah.

The only one I'm having trouble with is the green tree; the one with the huge leaves. The withered one would be far easier to do.

Since it's going to be positioned on the edge of a cliff, the character does not need to walk around it; so I tried out using a panorama. It didn't work out very well. All I could see was the very top, which is a problem as my chipset only goes up mid-trunk (And this tree is huge).

And then I tried a picture, but then I wasn't able to move anymore. I couldn't even see my character, the rest of the tree just took over. Is there a way to make it so I can continue to move after the picture appears, and where it will not flood my screen?

How would I be able to ensure a panorama would seamlessly connect to the tree? Would it just be a matter of constant readjustments?

I'm not a good scripter, and this is my first game..so I don't entirely know how to do more complex things. I might be over my head, but I *really* need it.

Also..um, sorry for one more question, but I feel very stupid. I'm trying to get a fog overlay in one of my forest levels, but the default weather fog is really dumb looking. So I made myself a semi-transparent fog overlay, but I can't seem to get it to work. I know I need to set it as a Picture, but I can't seem to configure it or find a tutorial on it.

Also sorry if this post makes no sense. I am just totally lost.

This post has been edited by Cyladis: May 20 2011, 01:22 AM