Cross-posted from Omnimaga:
As some of you might have noticed, I've been busy posting in the Game mock-ups (http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=244.105) thread. I've decided to turn these mockups into something more and actually make them into a fully fledged game! In case you haven't seen, here are the mockups and test tiles so far:
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/H4-7adhMh8NXUXBQ-4xCxYD0McjYnePqjwe5fhxSoQ=w280-h288-no)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/O0w2SIiOxbf1zYEfgQPKNPXcfZW7AJuw8sSW2HnbWA=w192-h128-no)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4W8aQzNKOuMDWzFJaDdKAKJr5ckH_mHpVozz_SWaxw=w192-h128-no)
The game is currently planned to be done in pure BASIC, but I may end up resorting to some ASM/ASM libs to read from archive if things get to big. Stay tuned for more!
Wait, how do you get the sprites working in basic? Text sprites? Anyways, sounds good!
Yep, I'm using text sprites.
Wow I am curious about how text sprites will turn out for such complex game. Will you use large fonts or small ones? Hopefully you can get a decent speed. Good luck and nice to see you're still into calcs :)
I'm using small fonts. I'm thinking speed will be ok, but it depends on how complex the tile mapper ends up being. I want to have foreground an background tiles. I have rough ideas for how to do it, but I'm unsure how it will turn out speed wise once I actually write the code.
If you do end up using asm for something I'd definitely say that its worth it to do the drawing rather than the other stuff as that tends to make what would be a great game only an OK game.
There aren't nearly enough pure BASIC games recently, and that's one of the reasons I want to do this in BASIC. I want to show of that BASIC can still do really cool (and pretty games). However; this is subject to change, and I may end up going a different direction if I feel it's needed.
I have one that used dual-layer ASCII but it hasn't been worked on in a long while. My goal with it was to have a small RPG that is still somewhat long to beat, but I was mostly into color models lately.
Also I think Art's goal is to make the game in pure basic to show what the language is capable of in terms of graphics. While I tend to prefer dual-layer ASCII due to its much faster speed, text sprites offers more possibilities. If speed is a concern, you could store the displayed map into a picture so that when you enter the menu then exit, the screen is redrawn instantly.
Yea, this aims to be on the smallish side, and not super huge. Also, Pics will definitely be used for quick recall as you say. I'm still amazed that Joltima manage to fit in RAM. I know it's an ASM rpg, but it's still an impressive feat.
Oh yeah I completely get the trying to see more ti basic games.
Also
@DJ Omnimaga was the karma change an accident?
Yeah, especially considering it was made 17 years ago with minimal documentation. ASM code sometimes ends up getting larger or as large as BASIC because it's compiled instead of interpreted. With BASIC all you need to clear the screen is 1 byte of RAM (ClrHome). It's data that becomes horribly large in BASIC.
@CKH4 it was due to the fact it is frowned upon over here to tell a project author to switch to a different language when the author states that he intends to use a specific one for this project. We also tend to discourage singling out people's work solely based on used language/platform/OS/etc. In summary, BASIC vs ASM discussion should stay in different topics.
Ah, I did not mean it like that.
Art it wasnt meant as a you should change but if you do decide to move something to asm like you mentioned in the original post I was suggesting the display routines. I went back and read it and I didn't realize that you had said archive related stuff. Sorry.
Actually, now that you mention archive, I missed the part of his post about how he might need archiving libs. I guess that would be fine considering the limited calc RAM. Illusiat 13 is entirely pure BASIC except the archiving/unarchiving part of the game.
@CKH4: It's fine, I didn't take it that way. As I said, this project may change direction anyway depending on the needs of the program. Using ASM to do the graphics could be a possibility at some point, but the initial direction is more or less pure BASIC.
@DJ Omnimaga : I agree, trying to keep the data small is what will prove challenging. It's going to be an interesting experience to say the least. The amount of space text alone will take is a scary prospect. x.x
so if need be, you will switch to some lib like xlib?
For text you have no choice but to go full file size or strip off parts of the story. My early RPGs suffered from lack of storyline because of that.The only way to do it in pure basic is to keep multiple strings of text archived, but then you use all string vars. But then you get around the lack of archiving programs inside programs issue that plagues pure BASIC.
You may end up having an app var for the storyline things. O.O
Appvar usage is impossible in pure BASIC.
Well, yeah, I should've added a appears using Celtic or some other lib.
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on August 02, 2015, 02:23:01 PM
I like it Art. Is the text at the bottom always displaying or does it only appear once entering a new area or when stopping moving? Also I see you went with the Nemesiat/Illusiat 6/7 style HUD :P (although with more text)
This was posted in the mockup thread and I missed it. The question is in regards to this mockup:
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/4W8aQzNKOuMDWzFJaDdKAKJr5ckH_mHpVozz_SWaxw=w192-h128-no)
The text box at the bottom will always remain there. I'm considering using ti to display town names when you enter. It'll also display other info. For example; If you open a chest it'll say "Player found x gold!" or things like that. If the chest is empty It could say "This chest is empty". It can also displaying other messages when you interact with objects. That's the idea anyways.
*Edit* I may actually extend the bottom box to the full length of the screen and shrink the side HUD slightly.
*Edit2*: Can someone move the post to here: https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=640.msg19956;topicseen#new
I accidentally posted in the wrong thread.
I think you should make the HUD a bit smaller. If your game has good balance, you shouldn't be able to have 99999 health :P Although, idk, perhaps due to you using basic a bigger game screen might couse to much lag *shrugs shoulders*
That may be more to limit money but if so the display makes no sense. Especially since basic handles variables so easily.
The HUD size could potentially shrink. Those numbers were just place holders. I'm not sure how large HP/ other stats will be as of yet.
I think the side menu looks pretty sweet. But yeah as i said somewhere earlier, maybe you can make it be hidden, but if you take damage or pick up some money or any other thing that affects one of these stats, make it pop up.
The problem with pure BASIC is that you can't use the rightmost column in the graph screen. The tiles are 8x8, so I'm unable to use the rightmost column for tiles. I figured a HUD would be a decent solution to put there.
Good call. Its looking pretty nice anyways!
Quote from: c4ooo on August 13, 2015, 08:01:47 PM
I think you should make the HUD a bit smaller. If your game has good balance, you shouldn't be able to have 99999 health :P Although, idk, perhaps due to you using basic a bigger game screen might couse to much lag *shrugs shoulders*
It depends. Some games are extremely long and have 255 levels instead of 99, so people might not be willing to wait 30 battles to level up. With 255 levels you can triple leveling up speed. Also some games will usually end at LV 99 but then have side quests that requires close to 255. And I guess some games try to go in the 5 HP digits to impress. :P
That said, a larger HUD limits the amount of tiles that you need to display to fill the rest of the screen. While this might seem like a bad thing, since he wants to stick to pure BASIC, this might actually reduce map loading time considerably.
Cross-posted from Omnimaga:
Here's a quick mockup of what the battle screen might look like. Please note that the sprites are only place holders and will not be used in the game.
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/14RXuXgd4qmZ4_kM8HnSwBwBa3_dF8uMUQUaxJXzOg=w192-h128-no)
Quote from: Art_of_camelot on August 19, 2015, 12:23:54 AM
Cross-posted from Omnimaga:
Here's a quick mockup of what the battle screen might look like. Please note that the sprites are only place holders and will not be used in the game.
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/5Pu6A7vI0WFf5EfKOOFPrPpFLQaLHWHa0rd3lJ5wQ2ElL_t0XvDa1KAv1M9204yK7lh_RG1RjfMK4a8=w1886-h827)
Image does not work. Says it's forbidden. Just upload it to imgur or something.
Yeah I have the same issue
@Art_of_camelot . 403 forbidden so I can't see the image.
Re-uploaded it. It should be visible now.:D
Wow, at first I thought it was more a select screen but then I realized there were really 4 enemies per battle. They seem to take a lot of space in the screen but given that it's a monochrome calculator, I guess that can do the job fine. Also those sprites look cool :)
Those enemies are pretty large. I wanted give as much space as I could for enemies so I could fit a few large ones or several smaller ones. The side effect is that the players have a minimalistic area to use. I tried to make the interface for the players as simplistic as I could while still being functional. That was the goal here. If there's anything that seems cramped or out of place feel free to comment so maybe I can try to arrange it some more. It's early concept work, so it will likely be refined as things develop. The player sprites are from Final Fantasy 4 quickly converted to monochrome. The enemies are from Final Fantasy Legend 3, also quickly converted to monochrome. I figured they'd be good to toss in real quick just to see how things looked.
Oh nice to see you will also allow larger enemies to fill more slots. You could have ones that are vertical (eg godnesses/angels) or horizontal (eg tanks). And I see about FF. Most Reuben monsters were from FF1 and 3 IIRC.
Another quick and dirty one since I can't sleep...Possible shop interface:
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/9-rD2afz5GI1AlHUNDgR2g-L8FWVl7ZlFZKww2bmMw=w192-h128-no)
I like that screen. Will NPC convos look similar without the menu?
I don't think I'll do that for all conversations. Maybe just shops. Otherwise it would slow down gameplay too much I think. Also, the portrait size is pretty huge there. May go smaller if I actually do something like this.
Ah ok. How will convos look like? As for portraits I like them, but I agree that they might be quite large. Usually, RPGs have them showing up inside text boxes.
Normal conversations will be pretty standard. It'll be a basic text box that appears on the screen and has the typewriter effect. I may use custom fonts, but I haven't decided yet. It might be more trouble that it's worth and add more to the size. XD
TI fonts would be fine I think. Custom ones are better but sometimes they are not worth the trouble, especially if you go for small fonts that are still 5 pixels in height.
I like but it, but you should remove the background of the character, because it makes the character itself really hard to see.
Alright, I wondered about that. Thanks for the input.
Cross-posted from Omnimaga:
Updated shop mockup. Also finished a new font shown off here:
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/eLXSnTEvd5lpJawER47pbpNDM81re68eXQNoD0lHSQ=w192-h128-no)
I like it. I kinda agree with Cumred, though, about the character background. Maybe it should be white? Those fonts look really nice by the way :)
Yea, I'm going to change it at some point, and thanks. :D
So are you using asm with those custom fonts or not ??? If not then that would be awesome ;)
Nope, no ASM.
Do you use text sprites (with large fonts) for them? Because that might be kinda slow during very long NPC convos or when acquiring very common items x.x
Yeah, I'd go for speed, when displaying text. ;)
I haven't checked speed yet, but I think it should be fine. It will be large fonts (if I end up using them).
Ah ok. I can't wait to see an animated screenshot showing what you got in action. :)