Invisible units?

[Superfan959]

How do I make invisible units? In Nightmare, I see how to make units unselectable, and how to remove the standing map sprites, but the unit still appears when the cursor is placed on top of it (to do the "hovering" animation"). Is there somewhere else in Nightmare I can remove that animation too, or does something else need to be done?

I know it can be done, because I'm pretty sure it was in one of the Ragefest submissions.

Sorry if this is a stupid question and there's a simple solution, but I can't find it.

Edited July 11, 2015 by Ghatsu!

[Blue Druid]

Well, it was done in F.EXE which was on FEXP. My guess would be to make a new class number in Nightmare, but having its map sprites pointer point to free space. I've done this once with Moving sprites, though I'm not sure about Standing sprites.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it's a safer bet to insert a map sprite sheet with no sprites on it, just the transparent colour.

Edited July 7, 2015 by Blue Druid

[ghast]

you can insert an 'action' map sprite sheet as a blank sheet, so when the cursor goes up to it, it shows nothing because there are no physical mapsprites to display

Edited July 7, 2015 by Ghatsu!

[CT075]

Pointing to free space is more likely to display garbage than nothing

[Blue Druid]

Pointing to free space is more likely to display garbage than nothing

Yeah, I figured that later, that's why I added the edit.

[Superfan959]

Well, thanks for the tip everyone, but like everything else I'm having trouble with this. After re-setting the pointer in Nightmare, it crashes. I used the provided image.

Here's what it looks like before:

Here's what I did in GBAGE:

...and in Nightmare:

And I did it without changing "Another Pointer" earlier.

This question might warrant another topic but if you guys know what the issue is that'd be a huge help, thank you.

[Blue Druid]

You shouldn't have added 8DD0000 to the another pointer. Just copy and paste the another pointer from a similar class, and keep trying several pointers until you get what you want.

[Superfan959]

I only did that once to try it out, which happened to be the picture I took (I mentioned this in my previous post, but in a miss-able place).

I've been trying several different pointers to no avail. I even thought I'd found the problem when I realized I was importing the image as a PNG and not as a BMP, but that didn't help either.

This is rather frustrating. I find it hard to believe that I just haven't found a lucky pointer that works; I have to be doing something wrong.

[ghast]

Are you still having a problem with this?

it looks like you're pointing data to jumbled garbage which is probably cause the crash.

[Superfan959]

Sorry I haven't come back to this.

BlueDruid fixed my problem. Here's what he PM'ed me:

The problem might be in the insertion itself. Try re-inserting the map sprites (make sure to uncheck the Import palette option), but this timedon't go to the offset you're importing the map sprite to in the Image Control before you import it. It magically worked for me.

So yes, it was pointing to garbage, because the insertion itself wan't working. For whatever reason, inserting data into a part of the ROM while you're looking at that section messes up the insertion. What I did was browse to an empty area, remember the offset, then went pack to image 0 (where the program usually opens; Lyn's hut BG). This allowed the sheet to be properly inserted.

[CT075]

that's because if you try to insert into free space while looking at free space it won't automatically compress the data for you

sometimes this doesn't matter but map sprites are (i'm pretty sure) compressed so it does matter

[Blue Druid]

Ohh, so that's why it makes a difference.

[Superfan959]

Well that's good to know. I feel like that needs to be explained in more tutorials, because looking at the area where you want to insert stuff seems kind of natural. Maybe I just missed it.

[Blue Druid]

I know! As far as my knowledge goes, it wasn't explained in any tutorial.