Third-Party Scripting

We know that scripting wont take place in ZC anytime soon. Even so, I think we can all see how animated combos, which allow us variably timed animations, could be used to realize any sort of animation or event that a person might like. By making a few tiles of a character walking, for example, you could set up animated combos that show a little scene acting out between characters, ala FF4-6.

The problem, of coruse, is that doing this using the animated combo structure would be hediously complicated, and insanely time consuming- a hundredfold more than the more clunky screen animation method.

The solution? Well, since we have the MECHANICAL ability to make these events in the program, since there are well-defined rules to making events work, it seems that a third party program could be made to allow scripting. For example- the program could take link-style character scheets as sprites, and then allow the designer to set up strings and animation sequences. This would have to be on a per-screen basis, since managing the screens involved would be complicated. Even so, this would save time. This program could tell each character to switch to a different sprite, or move around, appear or dissapear, repeat movement, or whatever.

Once a screen is designed, the player could click "go", and the screen could be imported to a specificed map/screen location in a Zquest unencoded quest file. The tiles and combos necessary to create the animation could be systematically set up and designed.

This all seems totally possible- the only problem being the amount of tile and combo space this would consume. It could be absolutely horrible. The program would have to be smart enough to compress the tile and combos used to the smallest amount possible, and put them in the most intelligent location in the tilesheet. More combos/tiles might make this more reasonable, but the program size alone might start to make using a scripting engine like the unreasonable.

I know Fatcat has made 3rd party programs before... any thoughts on this one?

-C