RPG System Iteration 8....Complete!

May 10th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)

....It's been a long time but the new iteration of the RPG System is done :). The main reason for this delay is that I've been busy with my thesis and my second game...anyway

Since I've never done something like a dialog system and I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. I had to research quite a bit about the "best" way to do a dialog system..I learned a lot from Zelda Ocarina of time and from The Elder Scrolls. But the main lesson from this iteration is that in a RPG, dialog systems are....very complex.  I think what I'll end making for this RPG System will be (maybe even less) about 30% of what a full RPG dialog system must have.

Ok enough talking, lets just make a feature list, the current dialog system has:

  1. The origiginal Pokemon fire red bitmat font
  2. Gradual message dispaly (also like pokemon)
  3. If you press the spacebar while a message is displaying the message will display faster
  4. After a message has displayed, the dialog system waits for user imput
  5. The dialog system can display more than one message in a row
and a list of things that I don't have:
  1. Questions
  2. Branching dialog
  3. Scripting support (everything is hard coded right now)
  4. Upper case letters, or symbols (like (),:)
  5. Numbers
  6. Text formatting
  7. etc...

Of the latter list...I'll only add scripting support...all the other things will be left out...after all this is just a prototype...but don't worry I have big projects on hold that depend of the RPG System :)

Here is the usual video. Right now the system just displays a simple message whenever I press F2.

RPG System Iteration 7 Complete

March 8th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)

After launching Save a Mole I finally have some time to work on the old (but loved) RPG system :) In this iteration I added several things

  1. The classic "dancing"  flowers.
  2. Static NPCs 
    Right now they just stand still ^-^U
  3. Basic portal detection (with houses)
    By this I mean that I can detect when the player enters a door. In later iterations I'll be doing something when that happens.
  4.  Floor Items ( the classic pokeball)
:) Now my little system actually resembles a game right?. In the next iteration I'll handle basic dialog.

By the way :S I was supposed to have this iteration ready by yesterday...but I miscalculated how to add the static NPCs (the policeman an the old man) and It took me another day to finish this...anyway...here is the video:

RPG System Iteration 6 Complete

February 12th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)


Ok. the sixth iteration is over. In this one I added some "solid" objects to the map and manage the collisions between the player and the map. Since the collisions are tile based this iteration ended way easier than I initially thought. Here is a small description of what I did:

In my last post I mentioned that most of the logic of the Pokemon maps is tile based instead of continuum. This is exactly why is so easy to use "look ahead points" to manage the collisions instead of going for a "pixel perfect" approach. I basically started doing this:

Instead of checking the whole avatar to see if it's colliding with some "solid tile" I just check the pink points n_n. Also I don't always check the four points. I just check the ones that are relevant to the direction of the player.

Later I noticed that having only one point per direction could lead to some wacky collisions don't being recognized...>_<. So I added two more relevant points.

And It was perfect ^_^...there is still room for improvement though. Here is a short list of things that COULD be done, but I wont now. (I'll probably do them in my first "complete" RPG)

  • I think that the middle collision point isn't THAT useful now that I have 3 per side. It could be removed. But It must be tested
  • Also, I noticed some bumps with the camera system when the player is colliding with a solid tile. Right now the camera want to ALWAYS have the avatar sprite at it's center.
    I could try to add a "smooth" value. So that the camera only moves when the player is actually moving.

That's all for now...the next iteration will focus on animated tiles. I don't really know how many iterations will take to finish the system...BUT there are only have 7 main features left :D so it MAY be 7-10 iterations :)

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RPG System Iteration 5 Complete

January 27th, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)

Ok. The fifth iteration is complete and after writing this post I'll start to work in the next one (which by the way will feature "obstacles" and collision detection in the map :)). As I said before...this iteration only deals with the animation of the player's avatar.

I'll just post the video...then I'll talk about something "interesting" that I noticed while programming.

So, logically I'm using Pokemon Fire Red as a "model" of the map system. Usually when I'm programming/designing something I play Pokemon and try to "reverse-engineer" the logic of the game and use that as a base for my own system.

After I finished the movement of the avatar I noticed that I couldn't exactly reproduce the "Pokemon movement". I basically walked over pallet town for about 15 minutes just trying to figure why. Want to know why? after the break n_O.

(more...)

Iteration 4 Complete

January 1st, 2012 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (1 Comments)

Ok, so we all know that this itaration should be renamed to iteration 1 again...but I'm going to keep the old numeration :). 

Since I had to start again from scratch... and  also since I wasn't feeling comfortable using Mappy to make the tilemaps. I decided to make a new map using Tiled and some Pokemon FireRed tilesets. I made the whole map in about an hour (counting the time taken to find/download the tiles and install tiled).The map is  really simple right now, but I'll be adding more details as I continue to work on the system. Here you have:

Then I wrote a simple C++/SFML program to explore this iteration requeriment : "Player can move in the map". To load my map I used a loader made by Quinns. I highly recommend the loader, it really is very easy to use and to extend :). I even made a few changes of my own.

The actual code isn't really that complex, it just deals with the scrolling of the map, and the player movement.Even though I can't say that the credit is 100% mine,some of the ideas an the "theory" of my code are from 8bitRocket's book.

Unfortunately since I'm doing the new system with C++ I can't just "embed" it. I'll leave a short video instead :).

(Sorry for the video quality...or should I say lack of video quality...it is my first screen recording...I'll try to improve that in the next video.)For the long awaited iteration 5 I'm going to animate the player's avatar, stay tuned :).

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What the hell happened with the RPG System

December 25th, 2011 | Posted by vladimirsan in RPG System - (0 Comments)

First of all I just want to make sure that there is no doubt about the status of the system, the development of the system continues is just the approach of the development that is changing.

Ok it's time to write about what happened with the development the RPG System...I think that this will be a long (really long) post. Let's by reviewing the objectives of the system:

  • Gain experience with Role Playing Games design and implementation
  • Make the engine good enough to be used as the foundation of "complete" games

By the Fourth iteration I really started to notice some things:

  1. I was doing a lot of work that really wasn't helping to achieve my goals. I spent maybe a week worth of work just making the overworld map. I learned nothing by doing that...just spent time in something that I'll never use again.
  2. A lot of work on the RPG System isn't really "RPG related", menus and transitions really are "generic" and could be used in ANY game.
  3. A lot of the things in the RPG System aren't really "game programming related", the "core" of the system is actually an information system...and information systems is what I have been studying for a long time...so I really wasn't having problems thinking about how to make the "core" of the system.
  4. I realized that I was actually doing my LAST semester in the university....the moment of truth is really close. And by moment of truth I mean the moment where I will start trying to make a living out of videogame development...that is actually a scary moment :S and a scary thought.
  5. I was actually coding BY HAND lots (really lots) of things that I could easily let libraries handle.
  6. By doing a lot of "busywork" on the system I was actually delaying the true making of my first RPG.

Mainly because of point number 3 I decided to start testing the waters by doing some small flash games. Not too long after that I noticed that I was really learning a lot more by developing the small flash game that by working on the system.

It is clear that the RPG system wasn't helping me to achieve my goals...so...what will I do to fix that?

(more...)

Still Working

October 3rd, 2011 | Posted by vladimirsan in Flash Games | Projects | RPG System - (0 Comments)

It's a shame that I can't share many of the things that I'm doing right now :p but please trust me when I tell you that I'm working a lot :) even if I don't post a lot. So...what did I do this last...month?

    • First of all...university is taking way more time of my life than I initially expected...that is mostly because I'm working part time as an "assistant teacher" (I may be using a non-related name...but I really don't know the proper one...maybe instructor X_X). Some days I don't have time to work on anything interesting (;)).It really is a shame that I can't work on my projects as much as I would like but right now I'm satisfied with my work. Now considering the last point please read the next ones:
    • The core gameplay of the flash game is ready :). If we think that a game is like...a hamburger you could say that I have the meat ready :). Now I just need to do...everything else -_-.  In order to test and debug the game I've started to ask friends to play the game and to give me "honest" opinions. If you are a friend of mine you can expect to see the game soon.

      I just have the meat O_O

      I'm planning to complete the game by December, but I really don't know  when I'll be "launching" the game. That depends on the progress of a third project that I started yesterday. I don't want to have false hopes about all this but I think that saying that "the (game + secret project 2) combo will be ready by the end of this year" is fine.

    • About the RPG system...the fourth iteration is really complex (at least comparing it to the previous ones). I managed to complete a small spike of the iteration. Right Now I can display a fraction of the map onscreen. I'm working on being able to move through the map. I'll post a quick screenshot of the spike but don't get over-exited, right now It looks...boring. I really need more time :(.

So...that's all I'll come soon with more updates :)