Overview of what you need to make an agent
Describes the three different types of file you need to make a new
agent - images, sounds and scripts.
There are really only 3
types of file you need to make an agent; an image, a sound and a script.
Images
The image files have the
file extension .s16 or .c16 - .c16's are just compressed
forms of a .s16 file (and so take up less disk space - highly recommended!).
You can view these sprite
files using the CyberLife Sprite Builder, which is available free of charge
from this site.
The Sprite Builder does
not come with any image editing tools, but you can use cut and paste to create
a sprite file from *any* image you may have ... whether it is something you've
created yourself or have scanned in. Simply open your images in your favourite
paint package and copy them across to the Sprite Builder.
The Sprite Builder comes
with some more advanced tools that allow you to cut out individual image frames
from a master image that has all the frames on it - refer to the Sprite Builder
documentation for use on this feature.
Sounds
The Creatures 3 engine uses
ordinary WAV files to produce the sound effects in the game - this means you
can use many freeware or shareware tools to create samples.
The quality of the sample
will affect how many sounds can be played at any one time. Because the game
uses a buffer of a fixed size to store all samples that need to be played, if
you produce a sample that is very high quality you may find that it doesn't
play when there are a lot of other sounds playing at the same time. Finding
the compromise between quality and size can be daunting but nearly all of the
samples in Creatures 3 are recorded at 32,075Hz, 16bit Mono - with no noticeable
degradation on the samples.
Scripts
Scripts are the life blood
of all agents - you need scripts to create and destroy agents as well as making
them do something while they are in-game! The format of these scripts is a COS
file ... which is merely a plain text document with the text in a particular
format. CyberLife have created a CAOS tool that is fully aware of the syntax
of COS files and will allow you to create and save your own script files. The
CAOS tool also allows you to inject these scripts into the game while it is
running.
If you do not have the CAOS
tool there is another way in which you can inject your own scripts into the
game and that is by placing your completed COS file in the Bootstrap/world folder
of your game. Next time you start a new world your script will be run. This
has a few disadvantages over using a tool such as the CAOS Tool ... not least
of which is that the CAOS Tool will not inject scripts that have syntax errors
- the bootstrap method will inject any rubbish you give it! Another advantage
is that if you create a lot of objects it can be time consuming to have to quit
the game and start a new everytime you want to create a new object.
Topic Keywords: agent creatures3 dockingstation system tutorials
