Norn Holiday Santa Project Easter in Albia FAQ Tutorials

Body

How Body Data (.att) Files Work

Updated 5/17/98


Body Data files are essentially the attachment points for each body part. Think of those paper Halloween skeletons with the brass brads at each joint. The .att files point to the place where those holes are.

Each body part has its own .att file, just as it has its own sprite file. These .att files are text files and can be opened with any word processor. If you opened the .att file for the head of a norn, you would see four columns of ten numbers. The first two columns are the x and y coordinates showing where the head attaches to the body. The second pair are the x and y coordinates for the mouth. If you look in the pictures below, green dots point out where the attachment points are for the head. The ten rows stand for the first ten poses. Yes, there are more poses for the head sprite, but only the first ten count here. This means that the big smile, sad look and frown should match the regular smile (9th pose) exactly, and the eyes closed pictures should match their eyes open counterparts exactly.

Head .att points

By the way, (0,0) is at the upper left. A program such as Paint Shop Pro, which tells the (x,y) coordinates of the mouse pointer is extremely useful here.

The .att file for the body has twelve columns. The first pair is for the head, the second for the left leg, then the right leg, left arm, right arm and tail. Note that the tail is not defined in Creatures 1 (it will be a separate part in C2), so the last two columns are always 0,0. There are ten rows of numbers -- these correspond to the ten poses.

Body .att points

Like the head, the upper legs have just four sets of numbers. The first pair is the hip joint, and the second is the knee joint. Realize that from here on, everything is in pairs. C is for the left hip, while F is for the right. There will be a separate .att file for the opposite body parts -- they are simply mirror images.

upper leg .att points

Again, there are four columns for the lower legs. The attachment points here are the knee and the ankle.

lower leg .att points

There are two attachment points for the foot. These are the ankle and the ground (sole of the foot). I don't know why there should be a ground attachment, but there is.

foot .att points

The upper arm also has two attachment points. These are the shoulder and the elbow.

upper arm .att points

Like the food, the lower arm has two attachment points -- the elbow and the hand. I presume this serves as a pointer for telling the game where an object being held should attach to the hand.

lower arm .att points

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Norn Holiday Santa Project Easter in Albia FAQ Tutorials


Greg Poehlein
poehlein@sigecom.net