Indie Dev
Hello Guest!. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, sell your games, upload content, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
I don't think there's a simple yes/no answer to this. There's a reason why older RPGs had NPCs marching in place and that reason disappeared as hardware improved, but there is still a potential application.
With old, tile-based RPGs the hardware wasn't very good at animating high-detailed environments, it wasn't until the SNES where this became more feasible, so generally tile-based maps were very static. Not much movement happening.
By having the NPCs cycle their two-frame walk animation it gives a bit more life to the screen, it makes the NPCs pop out as interactive characters beside the background.
Final Fantasy V was when Square started to stop doing this. The NPCs march in-place only when the player has control of the movement, otherwise all the motion is acted out by the character expressions and animated tiles (the opening cut scene has animated shadows cast by the canopy of the forest).
Chrono Trigger and Sword of Mana had a lot of animated background sprites and lots of character movement and expression, granted by the size of the character sprites. Sword of Mana in particular had lots of animation for elements where it was rather strange like the shop keepers literally dancing in spot. This was all because constant motion and high detailed animation was more possible on the SNES hardware.
However, this means more graphical resources required. If you're doing a commercial game, then the extra effort is very much worth it - if you're not, then perhaps having the walking cycle loop is something you could try to add more motion to the screen.
Also keep in mind how RPG Maker itself behaves; you'll have to enable this walk-in-place for every NPC you create, that's a lot of work. Clearly, RPG Maker was not designed for this kind of animation. It's more work to enable this, and what if you change your mind in the future and design to disable it? You'll have to go through every NPC you've placed and modify it.
So my advice would be; don't do it. If you want more motion on the screen, then do it the hard way with custom graphics. If you are going to do it, do it for the right reasons (lack of motion on screen) and realise that it's a commitment you'll have to make for every NPC in your entire game.
With old, tile-based RPGs the hardware wasn't very good at animating high-detailed environments, it wasn't until the SNES where this became more feasible, so generally tile-based maps were very static. Not much movement happening.
By having the NPCs cycle their two-frame walk animation it gives a bit more life to the screen, it makes the NPCs pop out as interactive characters beside the background.
Final Fantasy V was when Square started to stop doing this. The NPCs march in-place only when the player has control of the movement, otherwise all the motion is acted out by the character expressions and animated tiles (the opening cut scene has animated shadows cast by the canopy of the forest).
Chrono Trigger and Sword of Mana had a lot of animated background sprites and lots of character movement and expression, granted by the size of the character sprites. Sword of Mana in particular had lots of animation for elements where it was rather strange like the shop keepers literally dancing in spot. This was all because constant motion and high detailed animation was more possible on the SNES hardware.
However, this means more graphical resources required. If you're doing a commercial game, then the extra effort is very much worth it - if you're not, then perhaps having the walking cycle loop is something you could try to add more motion to the screen.
Also keep in mind how RPG Maker itself behaves; you'll have to enable this walk-in-place for every NPC you create, that's a lot of work. Clearly, RPG Maker was not designed for this kind of animation. It's more work to enable this, and what if you change your mind in the future and design to disable it? You'll have to go through every NPC you've placed and modify it.
So my advice would be; don't do it. If you want more motion on the screen, then do it the hard way with custom graphics. If you are going to do it, do it for the right reasons (lack of motion on screen) and realise that it's a commitment you'll have to make for every NPC in your entire game.
