Black-Wind said:
Ok, it seems like things at Serebii have started to cool down now that he is talking about it (approves of it but doesn't think it's true or at the very least thinks it should be explored in the 5th gen games) and people have been throwing down the "DPP takes up less than 50% of the DS card!" line.
Has it occurred to anyone that the different looks needn't actually be separate sprites? All they'd really need to do would be to have a base sprite, a set of quirks for each (say, a pattern of spots, tufts of hair, different eye shapes etc., all overlayed onto the base sprite) and then an algorithm based on IVs that determine:
- Whether or not the quirk is visible on the base sprite at all
- Positioning of the quirk with respect to the base sprite
- Size of the quirk
It'd basically be the same thing as they did with Spinda back in RSE. There aren't 65,000 different Spinda sprites on the RSE cartridges. Rather, there is a single Spinda sprite and each Spinda's pattern of spots is procedurally generated from its IVs (and possibly capture data) every single time that particular Spinda's sprite is displayed.
The beauty of it is that since the IV data remains constant for each monster, the individual look will always be the same, even if the monster was traded over from another game. An added bonus is that since IVs are partly inherited, certain quirks can be passed down the family line.