First Fantasy II, a graphical TI-84+CE RPG using CE Textlib hax

[Dudeman313]

Thanks Cumred. The only drawback is that it flickers, but it's not that bad and I guess it's acceptable with Atari-like graphics anyway.

Looks very nice. Maybe I should get a CE sometime.

The game might be somewhat playable on the CSE, but with heavy glitching (especially with the new character sprite). But yeah the CE has a lot of potential so I recommend it.

By the way, I'M doing some more planning right now and I made a rough schematic of where each dungeon are located and the links between them.

I somehow just realized this was there.
Will you make a map that shows transitions like @123outerme 's pure basic RPG that I can't remember the name of?

[123outerme]

Thanks Cumred. The only drawback is that it flickers, but it's not that bad and I guess it's acceptable with Atari-like graphics anyway.

Looks very nice. Maybe I should get a CE sometime.

The game might be somewhat playable on the CSE, but with heavy glitching (especially with the new character sprite). But yeah the CE has a lot of potential so I recommend it.

By the way, I'M doing some more planning right now and I made a rough schematic of where each dungeon are located and the links between them.

I somehow just realized this was there.
Will you make a map that shows transitions like @123outerme 's pure basic RPG that I can't remember the name of?

You mean Dragonsglid? And are you talking about the map that showed up after you defeated an area?

[Dudeman313]

Yup! I played that on my CE when I had it.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

What do you mean by transitions? Also I might do a full map at some point that shows all areas side by side, but of course it would depend if there's any overlap.

Also I tried making the character so that his arms are shorter, but it looks a bit weird because it made the character look like he's wearing an insanely oversized and long t-shirt or something.


Also I will try to implement multiple ways to show event sprites inside a map. For example, If the map area is equal to E, it will show the event in the middle, but if it's equal to D, then it will block the upper exit with two sprites. That will be very useful for locked doors and unreachable paths. But progress is a bit slower since I went back on another CE textlib project right now (which is almost ready to showcase)

[Dream of Omnimaga]

So I was kinda lazy and I decided to make a batch file that opens most files and softwares I need during FFII development. It was annoying when I rebooted or decided to do something else to have to open everything one by one. Anyway, there was no progress due to the Wolfeinstein thing, but  I am currently planning the game according to both if a day/night cycle gets implemented and if it doesn't get implemented at all. If the latter case remains, then the second forest will just be darker. Day/night cycle is not necessary, but it would spice the game up, since I could have some quests being only available during daytime and vice-versa, and implementing such feature would be possible, due to using color palettes for pretty much everything. Time would only flow when performing actions or exiting a room and the Dawn>Day>Dusk>Night switch would be instant (just like in Simon's Quest). Don't get your hopes up, though, as this could still be some work to implement.

I also drew more sprite mockups, especially enemies:



THey are not stretched up, though. They will be 3 times as wide in the game. Enemy sprites, along with certain wall tiles, are designed in a way that allows me to store 2 sprites into one, to save space and make coding easier. The grayscale sprites at the bottom shows how sprite data looks like in graphical form.

[Dudeman313]

Cool!
By transitions, I meant like showing the character move from one area to the next. Sort of like showing the cities and there connecting paths, and showing the character walking from one city to the next.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

I don't think so, but you definitively see the area name when the map loads and who knows? Maybe there will be some NPC convos or stuff sometimes. I don't think that will be the case due to speed reasons, though.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

How does this new character sprite look like, by the way? I made the arms shorter:



The NPC still uses the old sprite because it's part of the sprite data, unlike the main character which is hard-coded, so it's 3x9 pixels.

And I am working on the village, which is called Tau Village (thanks @JWinslow23 for the unintentional idea ). I am still debating between keeping every NPC outdoors or not. The only solution to have them inside houses without redrawing the entire map and replacing the sprite cache on every entrance/exit would be to make house entrances as special events room (two event tiles blocking the top exit in the screen) that when triggered, they change the floor color. But then I would need to add a 3rd set of events for exiting houses to reset the floor color, which would make it impossible to have NPCs indoors. I'll see what I can do, but keeping them outdoors and having doors as decorations would make more sense IMHO, especially considering at night they are replaced with ghosts, and that you wouldn't be able to get inside houses at night anyway.

I also added an error message at the start of the program if you don't have CE Textlib installed. If you get an ERROR:UNDEFINED on game launch, then after choosing 1:Quit there will be a message saying that CE Textlib 1.1 or higher is required to play the game.

[p4nix]

I pretty much like the character. Reminds me a little bit of Lego (TM)(C)(R).
Good luck on your Tau Village, I hope it doesn't become too much nerdy

Also, I think that having NPC also indoors would be cool - but if it doesn't fit into your concept, then it's okay
to have them outside only.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Yeah lol, the Tau village name idea was after JWinslow23 started talking (again) about Tau on IRC, while I was posting FFII progress. There isn't much special about Tau in this village really, other than the Evil Dust Barrier surrounding it being circular, but I thought the name was cool anyway.

As for NPCs I'll see. Having them indoors would require every house to be two rooms in height (I want to keep the game so that it has 1 event per room maximum, and doors to exit houses would count as special events). And lol yeah the character look reminds me of LEGO as well. Thanks for the comment p4nix

[Dudeman313]

I like the character sprite better now.
Will there be a neighboring Piville?
And how to houses look when the character is outside? Many RPGs tend to have some sort of Quantum Physics in them that somehow allows the inside of the house to be much larger than the outside.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Actually, Piville would be a nice addition . I don't know yet, though, since the current game layout is centered around having the village in the middle. I could maybe add an extra village to the west, though (which would lead to the fire area).

Also, Tau Village now has indoors areas, thanks to the addition of two extra event types:



The event types I now have are the following:

Northern door (NEW): Acts like a regular northern map link, but can trigger an event (such as a "Door is locked" message or a boss fight). This event is two tiles large.
Southern door (NEW): Same as above, but at the bottom of the map.
Regular event: Usually for NPCs and treasure chests. 1 tile large. When walking on this event, you move back from it once the event is over.
Exit: Exits the dungeon, leading to the dungeon switching routine. This might eventually be merged with the new door events, as invisible doors.

In the village's case, the Northern door event changes the floor color to gray and each green pixel of the NPC sprites are updated to gray (this is why there is a small delay when entering doors). The Southern doors reverts the floor and the gray pixels of the NPC sprite to green.


I also added a new sprite type: treasure chests

[Dudeman313]

Nice chest!
The screenie and feature list is cool, but when the character(who for now on, I'll call Guy) walks up to the NPC, he looks like he's just jumped the guy. Should it really look like Guy is pinning everyone he sees?

[JWinslow23]

Oh, I had no idea you were serious about the name Tau Village. And sorry for still talking about it, but I AM trying to peddle it around my school. So far, I've actually sat down and pitched it to the principal, and it seemed like he agreed with what I had to say. We'll see how this goes.

And yeah, the new character sprite looks much better.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Regarding the Tau discussion and the Youtube link spam on WalrusIRC, I actually suggested moving it to the forums in a Tau topic and the Youtube video sharing topic twice before (to avoid cluttering the IRC chat during more relevant discussions), since they would be better for such long discussion.

Also thanks

Nice chest!
The screenie and feature list is cool, but when the character(who for now on, I'll call Guy) walks up to the NPC, he looks like he's just jumped the guy. Should it really look like Guy is pinning everyone he sees?

ROFL I didn't notice that actually. I doubt it's much of an issue, though. The alternate solution would be to make the main character move back before the NPC convo ensues, but that would be hard to implement due to how the engine works.