Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: Streetwalrus on May 28, 2013, 03:47:53 am
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Hi guys !
I just started playing Illusiat 11, and I have to say it's pure awesomeness packed into one game. ;D (http://www.omnimaga.org/Themes/default/images/gpbp_arrow_up.gif)
My only concern with it is the speed : it's pretty annoying to wait while the screen redraws. Also the fact that it can't run from archive but that's something else. So here we are : I want to rewrite it in Axe for even more awesomeness ! :D
I already tried to write a map display routine and it is pretty much instant.
So here is what I wanna do :
-Completely rewrite the engine in Axe for speed and splitting all the data from it
-Nice looking GUIs
-New battle screen (maybe with graphics ?)
-The battle engine will have to be written in ASM in order to keep floating point math because I heard it relies on it
-Keep these awesome ASCII maps
-Map compression
-Scripting
-Cutscene scripting
-Music ! (probably gonna remix one or two of DJ's songs)
-Anything you guys could suggest
Of course I won't do it with DJ's permission because it's his game after all. ;)
So planning stage discussion, engage !
[offtopic]Also this doesn't mean my two other projects (HammerIDE and my unnamed storyless RPG) are dead. ;) [/offtopic]
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I know that Yeong was working on a Grammer port of this game, but he vanished off the face of the earth, so I guess you can go ahead. Just keep in mind that this is a massive project so if you never worked on an RPG before this will be very challenging.
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I think I have the tech knowledge to make it. :P
Anyway if you still have the documentation it would be very helpful (assuming you wrote one when you initially wrote THE GAME (:trollface:)).
Edit : Map display is fully working and crazy fast. :P It scrolls several screens/.1sec.
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Well, one thing is for sure, is that I will not help in any way with enemy balance and the rest of the game, for the following reasons:
1) If the project dies, I'll have once again wasted my time helping, like I already did with the other Illusiat 11 remake, along with ROL3 Grammer and Reuben Quest Axe/PC remakes last year. Of course it's good if the project succeed but I prefer to not take any chance anymore, especially now that I have even less free time and more projects of my own. Sorry.
2) The source code is already available, along with complete bestiaries at http://ourl.ca/17392. You can learn TI-BASIC at http://tibasicdev.wikidot.org and if you have troubles opening the game code on-calc you can use Token or SourceCoder.
3) It is possible that some help might already be available in the other Illusiat 11 thread, but it isn't as likely since the project was started after the Axe Remake of Reuben started showing signs of dying (it may still be alive right now, but one update every 6 month isn't very encouraging). The topic is available there anyway http://ourl.ca/18029
However, if somehow you want to get rid of the ELEVEN part in the title screen (I would prefer that the original Illusiat 2002 logo is kept, tho), here are the title screens of the last 4 games, which you can use as inspiration:
(http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=15432.0;attach=14450;image)
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Yeah I already know TI BASIC. It was my first ever programming language. :P I started with it on the TI-80 with trial/error until I've put my hands on the manual. I continued on the TI-84 until I learned Axe.
Back on topic, I know how to open the code on calc. Also thanks for the bestiary link, I guess it's the only info I'll get along with the original code, but that should be enough.
Well, one thing is for sure, is that I will not help in any way with enemy balance and the rest of the game
The battle engine will implement the BASIC floating point system through ASM, so I'm going to reimplement all your formulas which I can get from the code. ;) I want to stay as true as possible to the original.
The only help I'd need is some pixel artists because I'm not a good drawer. :/ But I'm not there yet. Same for music.
As for the tittle screen, I'll keep the original one. ;)
Edit : Map screenie. That was really easy. Note that the tiles will eventually be letters like in the original. ;) Aaaand diagonal movement is supported.
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Don't hate me DJ D:
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Don't hate me DJ D:
I don't ???
(http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16393.0;attach=15255;image)
Hmm why is the screenshot blue? O.O
Also you might want to make sure that diagonal movement doesn't cause problems with map design. In the original game, you can't move diagonally and the random battle encounter counter decreases by 1 every step. Maybe make it decrease by 1.5 when moving diagonally so people don't cheat their way out of random encounters by moving diagonally. Also make sure that by moving diagonally you can't reach places you couldn't reach in the 2002 game.
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Actually, I'd love to see tiles that aren't letters - It'd be a shame if developers used a full-color screen just for displaying monochrome ASCII characters :P
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Actually, I'd love to see tiles that aren't letters - It'd be a shame if developers used a full-color screen just for displaying monochrome ASCII characters :P
But... this is an Axe project, so I assume it is for the monochrome z80 calcs with Flash, not the 84+CSE. Hence why DJ_O (and I too) wondered why the screenshot was blue.
Or did I miss something and Axe is actually out on the CSE ? *.*
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I doubt it, unless Runer112 works on it already and decided to release a private beta (which could explain the blockiness since he planned to only support 160x120 resolution). But yeah maybe graphics would be nice since you can take advantage of Axe speed, plus Axe graphics are faster than ASCII due to how horrible TI's text routines are. You could maybe add two graphic modes, though, for those who want to use the original graphics.
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Lolnope I don't even have a CSE. :P The blue screenie is a TiLeM feature (also 288*192 is a multiple of 96*64).
Also DJ, to answer your question : there is no actual diagonal movement, but I allow to press more than one arrow at once. Hence there is absolutely no issue with this. You see diagonal movement because the screen is updated after movement is made. ;) I allowed this to make it easier to navigate on the map.
Also since I draw the map with sprites (MUCH faster than text), I could use any tiles I want, not necessarily text. But OFC it will be limited to ground and wall (walkable and solid) tiles.
BTW the map shown on the screenie is the Pic1 from the original. I didn't even need to convert anything, just copy it to the back buffer and read with pxl-test.
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Oh snap, I thought the screenshot was of a CSE. My bad, carry on! :P
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Ah I see about diagonal movement. I guess it's kinda like Metroid II: Evolution then. And Leafy it's not CSE, it's just a TilEm feature apparently (if it was CSE, there would be no motion blur anyway).
And yeah by using the original maps you could save a lot of memory, because such game with standard map data that takes 1 byte per square would take insane amounts of archive.
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Yeah I also plan to add map compression. :P
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If you can make a routine to read map data from the pic var, you basically only need around 4k for entire map data.
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I already do. ;)
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Actually one thing that made map data smaller is that 3 of the dungeons are actually identical and use the same map data. Only the sprites palette changed. :P
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Sorry for double post, but if you ever decide to allow switching between text and sprite graphics, will sprites use 6x8 size instead of 5x7? This would allow you to remove the gap between each sprite that text has.
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Yeah I could do that. :) I don't know how it will look if I use 6*8 sprites though because the tiles would be right next to each other.
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Actually one thing that made map data smaller is that 3 of the dungeons are actually identical and use the same map data. Only the sprites palette changed. :P
I thought it was 4? Or am I confusing with ROL3?
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Yeah I could do that. :) I don't know how it will look if I use 6*8 sprites though because the tiles would be right next to each other.
Or you can use 6x6 sprites too if you like square sprites better, and use the remaining pixels for a HUD or something.
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Yeah I could do that. :) I don't know how it will look if I use 6*8 sprites though because the tiles would be right next to each other.
It might actually depends of how the sprites are designed. It is possible to make them look good even if they're stuck with each others, if done properly, and you could still use the 5x7 text sprites for the text mode option, since all you have to do is leave row 8 and column 6 of pixels turned OFF.Actually one thing that made map data smaller is that 3 of the dungeons are actually identical and use the same map data. Only the sprites palette changed. :P
I thought it was 4? Or am I confusing with ROL3?
It was 3, since they were based on Fire, Ice and Bolt elements. ROL3 was Earth, Wind, Water and Fire. Illusiat 13 had 6 identical dungeons (Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Darkness and Light), but in its case the same data couldn't be used for them, due to a TI-OS glitch with heavy string concatenation making it impossible. Illusiat 10 also had the twin towers dungeon, where the magic tower was identical to the attack tower. Actually Illusiat 7, 8 and 9 also had elemental dungeons, but they all looked different.
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Somehow i didn't see this yet.....good luck with it! :D
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By the way, will the engine be easy to modify for use with different games? If so, then maybe someone could eventually re-use it for an Illusiat 9 remake.
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Yeah I planned to have an engine that's as modular as possible and to separate everything I can from it (that's why I wanna make a scripting system). :)
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That's cool to hear. :D
Also another question: Is your remake based on Kin Master Quest or the original? Kin Master Quest was the same game, but with harder non-boss enemies and some monsters even gave fewer experience/gold (although some actually gave more). Also you got special battle skills much later (for example, coin toss required LV 70 instead of 35).
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Hmmm, I'm gonna make the normal version first, but the Kin Master Quest edition wouldn't be hard (same engine, only some data to change). So I'd say both (maybe). :D
Edit : I managed to compress Pic1 from 768 bytes to 1195. :P Could someone point me to some bitmap compression algorithm ?
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Maybe a difficulty mode setting at game start? :P Actually, from what I remember, in Kin Master Quest, what happens is that before the battle starts, the enemy LV is doubled, although the SCAN battle command will display LV 99 if the enemy LV is above 99. Experience and gold gained are affected by the change, but in this version there is an experience/gold cap for enemies so they can't give more than a certain amount per level, which is why sometimes they will give more than in the original games, but other times fewer. Once the battle ends, the enemy level is reverted back to its original one. As for learning battle commands I guess their level can simply be changed via If conditions depending of the chosen difficulty mode.
For bitmap compression you would need to ask in the axe subforum.
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Oh that's nice then.
For compression I actually figured out why it didn't work and now it compresses to ~560 bytes. :D I'll ask if there are more efficient algorithms though.
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Make sure you put the damage cap :trollface:
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Now that you mention it, good luck with damage caps Streetwalker. I heard it was kinda hard in Axe, because of the whole 65536 limit, and this game often goes far above that during damage calculations >.<.
That's unless Axe supports floating points, though, which could be used, since not much speed is needed during battles.
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I plan to code battle math in assembly in order to use the tios floating point engine, so that's not an issue at all. :D
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That's a pretty nice idea, but wouldn't it take then ages to calculate or tons of ram?
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Nope. It'd be the same as BASIC, just that I can use it directly from Axe. => http://tutorials.eeems.ca/ASMin28Days/lesson/day18.html
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I see then, hopefully that helps development. One boss in particular has insanely low resistance against magic spells so without a 9999 damage cap he would take 9E99 damage or so.
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You might want to be careful using that though since it destroys the values of all registers when doing floating point calculations.
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Could this cause compatibility issues with Axe?
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I don't think so.
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Bump.
Just dropping in to say this isn't dead. ;)
I completely rewrote the tilemapper and it is now so fast that I can add a music engine. :D I'm too lazy to upload anything right now but you'll get a demo realease of the mapper by tomorrow. Also using graphical tiles turned out pretty well. :D It supports a wall and ground tile, and a four way masked character sprite (all that is 8*6 and no scrolling whatsoever).
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Sound nice. Looking forward to screenies. :)
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yay, I want screenies too! And a music engine would be kinda useless but 20% cooler >.>
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And a music engine would be kinda useless but 20% cooler >.>
That's the two reasons why I wanna code one. :P
I'll try to negociate for my keyboard so that I can upload screenies. I have a working game menu to show you too. :D
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Good to see this progress. :)
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Too lazy to make a screenie but here's the current progress. :D The fade animations are experimental and subject to removal. Also note that the menu is mostly a mockup for now.
Controls :
-Arrows : move around, select an option
-MODE : bring up the menu
-CLEAR : exit the menu
-2ND : validate choice
A.8xp is the executable, Pic1 is the map and the rest is the source. There might be silly mistakes or noob optimizations I missed in there but I hope not. :)
Hope you guys like it and feel free to throw at me any improvement in the code, suggestions an criticism. :P
Edit : I decided to move my *ss a bit and post a screenie. :P Enjoy !
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Ui, that's looking cool! I just htink that you'll have to edit the character sprite a bit :)
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Looks good so far. :)
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Looks interesting so far, although I would replace the checkerboard by sand or something so it hurts my eyes less x.x.
Also try to not make the menu look way too much like MirageOS or TI-OS menus. What would be nice actually is if the main section had the same layout as Illusiat 11, 12, 13 and 2004, with the options at the top and the HP/MP/etc at the bottom, but with Final Fantasy like borders (kinda like Reuben Quest, The Verdante Forest and Final Fantasy v1.198).
By the way, will it be possible to see your MP when selecting magic spells or the individual items count when selecting items in battles? The first version lacked this IIRC and it was particularly annoying vs long boss fights. >.< (I think this was due to how the engine was done)
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All the graphics in there are temporary placeholders. :P I really suck at pixel art. BTW this is the castle you begin in. ;)
For the menu it doesn't look too much like TI OS but I'll try to make it different. I just wanted it to be fancier than the original. If you could post a mockup of what you'd like it would be nice. :)
As for the MP and item count in battles, yes it's planned. I just didn't work on anything battle related yet, but the battle screen will probably look way fancier. :P
Here's the current roadmap :
-Proper map handling (implement hub menus or even add some maps for that, the latter needs teleportation implemented) rather than crude loading as I did until now for testing.
-Objects on the ground and related events.
-A scripting engine for cutscenes (not sure about that, I might hardcode these like you did if I'm lazy :P).
-Battle engine. This will probably the most complex part of this project as I never made one. :/ I guess I'll have to look at the original source a lot, especially for balance.
-Probably some other things I forgot.
-The music engine will come last if and only if it is possible to make it run smoothly.
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Well it doesn't look like TI-OS at the moment but it looks a bit like ASM shells such as MirageOS and other file browsers I've seen before for calcs. I would also have the HP bar horizontal like in most RPGs unless you ditch it, since otherwise I first confused it as a scroll bar. :P I might try to do a mockup if I get more free time later. However, you can see examples of the menu borders here:
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/234/23497.html
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/453/45378.html (although they're grayscale)
Or you could do like TVF where we can still see the walking screen while in the main menu http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/11/115/115387.html , but instead of just the small menu at the top, add an extra box at the bottom for HP/MP/LV/location/etc
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I made a menu like that at first but since I wanted to add all kinds of info to it I made it fullscreen. I'll try to keep it that way but make changes like you said. Thanks for the feedback. :D
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Small update here ! :)
-New menu (I also made french strings for it), As you can see I went with Reuben style
-Small internal changes to make map loading easy
A.8xp is the executable, ILLUMAP.8xv is the map data (needed by the executable), the rest is the source.
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I like the menu! Nice job!
I should continue with reuben....
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Ooh I like it even better now :D, nice job. Also the energy bar fits well :)
I lost, though <_<
On a side note, this game was translated somewhere in Early 2005, so the English translation is pretty bad. I doubt I will re-translate it anytime soon, but it might be a good idea to make the game engine so that it's very easy to replace the text and that it isn't dependent on text lenght too much, in case at one point it would be re-translated.
Also, in RPGs, Skills is used more often than Moves. Back then, I think I used Abilities, though, so maybe it should be changed to Skills? Also do you plan to make it possible to use Cure magic outside battles?
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Thanks !
Actually I agree with you on Skills, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that. :P Fixed. For the french menu text I've put "Inventaire", "Techniques" (maybe "Capacités" is better), "Statistiques" and "Sauvegarder".
I think it'd be a good idea to have Cure magic outside battles, so yes.
I'm trying to make an engine as modular as possible and that relies on 100% external data. That will make it a lot easier afterwards, for translating and reusing it in other games. ;)
I've decidedto take a little break from gaming and work on this today so hopefully you'll see some progress. :D
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Capacitées might be better or Habilitées (sp?) since there is already a skills called Technique. Of course you could always change that skill to Special, though. Also maybe Statut instead of Statistiques since in English we use Status instead of Statistics?
And good idea, it could make it possible for example to port Illusiat 7, 9 and 10 to this engine. :P
An idea I had, btw, would be the ability to go back in previous chapters whenever that's possible. Of course once you go down the river in chapter 1 you can't go back, but there were examples where going back would have been possible if I decided to allow it, such as the end of chapter 3 and perhaps 2. It could make the game feel less linear and perhaps it could allow you to add extra side quests such as an extra set of weapons/armors to make it a bit easier to beat the secret boss or something making the final boss much harder, requiring that extra set of weapon/armor. :P
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/me takes note of these good ideas
I really should make a to-do list somewhere. :P
Capacitées might be better or Habilitées (sp?) since there is already a skills called Technique. Of course you could always change that skill to Special, though. Also maybe Statut instead of Statistiques since in English we use Status instead of Statistics?
Mmmh... The thing is that screen does not only show the player's status but also his battle stats, so it feels a bit awkward to me. :/
Also a question for the title screen : would you guys prefer the Illusiat logo mono-spaced or variable width ? I prefer the second option because then you don't have huge gaps between I's and the following letters. :P
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I guess you could keep it monospaced if you want to keep it as true to the original as possible, else to make it look better I guess you better use the 2nd one.
The reason why it was monospaced in the first place is because of how it was generated IIRC.
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Yeah I know, I took a look at the code. :P
Also I put up a poll.
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To be honest, it was almost a mistake because a pic of the logo and text would have been much smaller and faster, but of course on a CSE it would be the opposite due to one pic taking 21956 bytes instead of 767 (although they use no RAM).
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OK so I decided to go with the non monospaced one. Here's a quick mockup I threw together in GIMP :
(http://img.ourl.ca//Title.png)
BTW I want to delete that poll but I can't. :/ If someone with the power to do it removed it it would be nice. ;)
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Done. :) I think the non-monospaced (though I thought it was mono-spaced ???) looks better as well. Good job with it. :thumbsup: Not going to use XI for eleven though?
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Done. :)
Thank you.
I think the non-monospaced (though I thought it was mono-spaced ???) looks better as well. Good job with it. ;D(http://www.omnimaga.org/Themes/default/images/gpbp_arrow_up.gif) Not going to use XI for eleven though?
Yeah I didn't think about XI. Gonna look into it. ;) Also thanks for the compliment, all I did was shift letters around in GIMP. :P
Edit : Here goes :
(http://img.ourl.ca//Title_v2.png)
That looks a lot cleaner IMHO.
Also this one :
(http://img.ourl.ca//Title_v3.png)
I think this is actually the best of the three.
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Looks good, though I think I like the first one better as far as the XI is concerned.
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Thanks though I think there should be more spacing between Illusiat and XI then.
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My attempt at a title mockup. Do with it as you like. :)
*Edit* Inspiration!
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I like the second one more, but both look good :D
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Wow AOC these look awesome ! I love the second one, I think that's the one I'll use. :D You'll get credits for it of course. ;)
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(http://img.ourl.ca//Title_v3.png)
(http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=16393.0;attach=15732;image)
Those are my favorite two. The first because it remains very true to Illusiat 12 and 13 fonts for the XII and XIII parts and the 2nd because of the horizontal bars and the design in overall, which looks cool IMHO. However, in the 2nd screenshot, Illusiat isn't centered.
I'm unsure why I spelled eleven in the original game, but I think I might just have wanted to make it look a bit more original. However XI is fine as well and looks better. :P
You should maybe include some copyright somewhere, though, such as before the title screen, like I did in Metroid II: Evolution. If the game is based on the original, say (c)2002 Omnimaga. Remake (c)2013 by Streetwalker and if it's based on Kin Master Quest, (c)2002-2006 Omnimaga. Remake (c)2013 by Streetwalker. You could just do like some old games where the copyrights were listed on a screen before the title screen appears:
www.<omnimaga logo>.org
Original version
(c)2002 DJ Omnimaga
Axe remake
(c)2013 Streetwalker
Of course you got the credits option, though, so that can work as well, but many games typically showed credits right before the title.
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I was a sleepy when I was working on it, so if it isn't centered that's why I goofed. I thought I did center it, but I must have forgotten to check it before I posted it. Not feeling too well at the moment either :/. Gonna try to take a nap. I can fix it later, or someone else can if they get to it before I do. Glad you guys like it though. :) *Edit* Also, I think copyright stuff would go in credits. The title screen is a bit cramped unfortunately.
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Yeah true. That reminds me, will battle menus look similar to the in-game menu?
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Is there room for perhaps a graphical background at all?
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What do you mean Tr1p ? ???
Edit : AoC's mockup all fixed up :D :
(http://img.ourl.ca//Title_v4.png)
Now I'll convert it and try it on calc. :D
Edit 2 : Oh yeah it looks terrific on my 84+. :D This title screen is now in the resource build system.
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yay!
Also, be sure that you'll also make a english version :P
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Of course a translation is planned. ;)
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yay.
What would be kinda epic is if it was the same app and you had like an option for language in-game :)
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Yeah that's possible and depends on my laziness. Same goes for switchable graphics/ASCII stuff. :P
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Or you can also do like Pokemon Topaze and put all the text in appvar. Then to change the language, you only have to change the appvar. This allows people to add their own language even if you don't speak that language (or if you no longer update your game).
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Yeah I'm already splitting any data from the executable. ;) The appvar is generated with SPASM so it's really easy to change any resource in it, including translating, porting other Illusiat games or making a whole new game out of it. :D
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or making a whole new game out of it. :D
/me suspects a RPG-engine in the works
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Well, this is an RPG engine actually, but I'm designing it specifically for Illusiat. ;)
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Will this support Illusiat 12-like graphics? (where walls are more 3D-esque than flat)
Also for the text engine, does it split text by line automatically if a word is too long or not? If that's the case, this might make translation easier, since you wouldn't need to manually align each line of text with the screen width.
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Will this support Illusiat 12-like graphics? (where walls are more 3D-esque than flat)
I don't really get what you mean. :/
Also for the text engine, does it split text by line automatically if a word is too long or not? If that's the case, this might make translation easier, since you wouldn't need to manually align each line of text with the screen width.
Yeah I'll try do do auto word wrapping but I think that a line break control character would be easier to code. :P
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In Illusiat 12, a dungeon room looks like this:
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFLLLLLLLLLLLLFF
FF FF
FF L L FF
FF FF
FF L L FF
FF FF
FFFFFFF FFFFFFF
In Illusiat 9, 10 and 11 it would look like this:
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FF FF
FF F F FF
FF FF
FF F F FF
FF FF
FFFFFFF FFFFFFF
That's what I mean by 3D-esque vs flat. In Illusiat 12, maps are still 1 bit tilemapping (meaning one room only takes 16 bytes of RAM) despite using 3 tiles instead of 2, but when drawing maps, the tile that is right below the one that is about to be drawn is taken in account to determine if it's a wall or the ceiling that will be drawn.
Also for the text engine, does it split text by line automatically if a word is too long or not? If that's the case, this might make translation easier, since you wouldn't need to manually align each line of text with the screen width.
Yeah I'll try do do auto word wrapping but I think that a line break control character would be easier to code. :P
That could work as well, if it's kept simple. One issue, though, is that some people use Token or SourceCoder to edit their games, so it's very hard to tell if each line of text will fit in the screen and requires a lot of trial and error. This is why I suggested to Merthsoft that he adds guides to TokenIDE.
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For word wrapping, I did that in a useless project I made and never released (it's a port of the Pipotron to calculators), using a very stupid method:
-copy your string somewhere
-go through the whole string to replace all spaces with zeros, and while you're at it, count the number of spaces (which gives the number of words)
-set pencol and penrow where you want to write to, and set n to 0
-time for the loop
- save the screen buffer
- display the nth word (at pencol,penrow)
- if pencol is too high (read offscreen)
- recall the screen
- set pencol and penrow to a new line
- else
- n++ obviously
- end
-end the loop if you've displayed all the words (hence why you counted them beforehand)
(I am too lazy to check if the algorithm is in the right order, but it should look like that and if something is missing, I'm sure you'll know how to fix it).
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Did that work with small fonts too?
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Yes, I made that useless program with the small font because the sentences don't fit on the screen with the big font.
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Oh that looks nice :D. The only thing I hate about small fonts is that they're not monospaced, so I tend to prefer to display text char by char. I wonder how hard it would be to modify the routine so that lines are cut off based on the lenght of each char (for example, if the sentence has more i's it would take more chars before it starts a new line)?
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Well that already works. Basically, the routine tries to display word by word, and if the word finishes offscreen, it erases it and re-writes it to a new line, then continues writing. The only "problem" is that I may have calibrated the "offscreen detection" a bit low, so there is always quite a few empty pixels on the right.
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oh ok, I wasn't sure since in your screenshot there was one particularly short line. ??? I guess I just didn't look well enough. How do you do the offscreen detection btw? Do you just count the total amount of pixels each char in the word takes or is that what pencol do? I was sure that pencol and such stuff was only for the homescreen...
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oh ok, I wasn't sure since in your screenshot there was one particularly short line.
That must be because the next word is a long one.
How do you do the offscreen detection btw? Do you just count the total amount of pixels each char in the word takes or is that what pencol do?
That is what pencol does. Basically, pencol is the x position of your pen. When you have written a word, your pen is at the end of the word. And if your pen is no longer on the screen (if pencol>width_of_screen) it means that your word was too long to fit on the screen.
I was sure that pencol and such stuff was only for the homescreen...
For the homescreen, its curcol (and currow), not pencol (and penrow).
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Thank you for the tip Hayleia ! Also I think I'll use a custom font for in-game text so I'll have a custom text routine that will do this for me. ;)
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oh ok, I wasn't sure since in your screenshot there was one particularly short line.
That must be because the next word is a long one.
How do you do the offscreen detection btw? Do you just count the total amount of pixels each char in the word takes or is that what pencol do?
That is what pencol does. Basically, pencol is the x position of your pen. When you have written a word, your pen is at the end of the word. And if your pen is no longer on the screen (if pencol>width_of_screen) it means that your word was too long to fit on the screen.
I was sure that pencol and such stuff was only for the homescreen...
For the homescreen, its curcol (and currow), not pencol (and penrow).
ah I see now, thanks for the explanation :)
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Soooo... Holy necro comeback Batman time ! :D
I've been working on this during the past few days. Mostly code refactoring (huge cleanup, general structure reorganized, everything documented). The mapping engine is now almost done and ready to expand with more awesome stuff. It's also almost ready to integrate into a whole project.
Also I have a pretty neat idea of how to implement stuff that can't be generic/standardized data : since Axe can call routines by address, map events, battle engine attacks and animations, animated cutscenes, etc. will be actual executable code and that will provide much flexibility for impressive results.
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Nice to hear :D but I hope you can use Fullrene because you'll hit the 8K limit very fast O.O (even an App page might not be enough)
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The mapping engine executable alone is currently <1.4K. I'll try to see how much I can cram in but the idea was to have all the data external in a massive appvar in archive.
Oh by the way I added dynamic mapping support to it. So on the bottom border of walls there is a different tile.
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Yeah my concern was mainly the cutscenes requiring a lot of memory. Good luck anyway :). As for dynamic mapping, just keep in mind that the game maps were designed without dynamic mapping in mind, so some maps might look weird. One thing you could do, though, is for the maps that were not mountains (ie: flat land ones or single story dungeons), is using a different wall tile if that wall is only 1 tile large vertically, such as rocks blocking your path. For forests, you could use bushes or trees that were cut and for maps like mountains where using a different tile would be impossible, just use the same as regular walls I guess.
In ROL2 and 3, it was possible to invert dynamic mapping for certain dungeons so that instead of changing the bottom of walls it changed the top to create the impression that you are on a platform suspended in the sky or something. Also, in Illusiat 12 it could also invert collision detection in the way that you could wall on top of walls but not the bottom of walls nor the floor. You just had to stand at the bottom of a stair, which triggered a cutscene where you climbed it, then it swapped collision.
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Glad to hear that progress on this is resumed :D
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Says the guy who's not working on Reuben.
/me runs
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Eventually I shall continue on Reuben :P
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You owe that to the community. :P You started it now you have to finish it.
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Ok so what I was talking about, I call them hooks. They are called before updating the screen and must handle map rendering. And actually it's the magic solution to all the problems an RPG can encounter :
-Teleportation/hub menu trigger. Just a matter of loading a new map and/or setting cordinates, or calling a routine.
-Objects on the ground. Alter the rendering and add key/position checks.
-Events. Duh.
-Cutscene trigger, yes these will be code.
-Tons of awesome sh*t like fancy grapical effects. :D
Also to make data creation easier, 0 in the vector table will make the engine call the default map renderer.
By the way the vector tables and routines that go with them are the only things that will go in the executable. Unless I make them into an external program disguised as an appvar and have the main engine as an app. This will be last resort if both can't fit in the app.
I'm finnishing off the map engine before I work on these.
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Thankfully, for objects on the ground, in this game there is usually just one object or event per dungeon or one at a time. :P Sometimes there might be more but I think that only really started appearing in Illusiat 12 when one dungeon could have multiple tilesets depending of your location in it.
That said, if you decide to make villages graphical, then there will be two or three doors in them, depending of how many item shops there are.
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Yeah I'll add graphical villages eventually but at first it will be menus.
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Did some cleanup + merging. The map engine as it stands is 1057 bytes, but that includes some data that will be moved to an appvar. Hopefully the strategy I came up with to make these on calc is good enough.
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Awesome to hear. By the way, I wonder how large do you think the final map data will be?
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The map data (only the terrain pics) are pulled from the original and the appear is about 4.5k (probably less, I don't remember). And it will be permanently archived. I think the user RAM requirement will be much lower than Reuben due to the simpler nature of Illusiat. For example, the map engine runs 100% from safe RAM. The data it needs is preloaded in the appropriate area.
About progress : I added a very bare title screen (the pic AoC made but with no menu) and the terrain data has been merged into a single appvar. I figured out I didn't need an ultra flexible way to generate appvars from scratch so I make them by hand. :)
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Ah ok, I assume you still use picture-based map data, right?
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Yeah right but I merged them in one appvar to rule them all. :P Also it doesn't take up all your pic slots anymore.
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Indeed, it's better this way. I wish that xLIBC would eventually add a new tilemap option that supports Illusiat style mapping with options (such as choosing between Illusiat 11 and 12 style and even Zelda, where it detects left/right walls too). Maps would use binary with 8 tiles taking 1 byte and event sprites would have to be stored separately.
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By the way this is going to be an app if either of these conditions is met :
a) The engine is small enough that I can squeeze all the data into the app and all that would almost fill the page (unlikely but bleh).
b) The engine almost fills the page by itself and the data will remain external. More likely but still.
If I don't meet any of these requirements then it will be a program with external data. Unless I hit a RAM issue which is unlikely.
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Expect something. Just sayin'. :P
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/me waits :P
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The game is finished and ready for release tonight? O.O
Jk take your time lol :P
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LOL. ;D
However I just hit an issue so I'm not so sure to release that something tonight. :/
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wait, is the game finished now or not?
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No it isn't. I was just teasing for an update and DJ was joking. :P
To make it clear : it's far from being done. I'm still working on the map engine after all that time. :P
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Are there battles yet?
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No battles. That will come next. Also, hooks (almost) work ! :D
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Just don't do it like me and after the battle calculation send your project for a few months into hiatus :P
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It's already been in hiatus for a few months. <_< Anyway, I'm done with the map engine. However I can't post what I wanted tonight because it's too late. I'm making a backup on another calc to be safe and then heading to bed. ._.
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Ok so what I was talking about, I call them hooks. They are called before updating the screen and must handle map rendering. And actually it's the magic solution to all the problems an RPG can encounter :
-Teleportation/hub menu trigger. Just a matter of loading a new map and/or setting cordinates, or calling a routine.
-Objects on the ground. Alter the rendering and add key/position checks.
-Events. Duh.
-Cutscene trigger, yes these will be code.
-Tons of awesome sh*t like fancy grapical effects. :D
Also to make data creation easier, 0 in the vector table will make the engine call the default map renderer.
By the way the vector tables and routines that go with them are the only things that will go in the executable. Unless I make them into an external program disguised as an appvar and have the main engine as an app. This will be last resort if both can't fit in the app.
I'm finnishing off the map engine before I work on these.
You guys have no idea how epic of an idea this was. :P I implemented teleportation with three lines thanks to this system. That's right, three small lines of code. :D
Also, the executable stands at 1.7k with the debug features disabled. :)
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I wonder how you will implement the river ride in chapter 1? O.O
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Hehe. Hooks will do the trick. :P
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Ok good lol. In the original game I just setup the raft pattern in a list but that required a lot of RAM. Another trick I could have done is just storing an automated set of keypresses in the list or something. The problem with the original river, though, was that it was impossible to open the menu while riding the raft, so if you finished a battle with 2 HP and the next enemy attacked first you were screwed. Same if you wanted to switch battle commands.
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Well actually thanks to the way the engine is designed I could also do it in a separate loop from the main one which will also help override user input because pressing keys during the ride is obviously not a good idea. Or I could go with a water flow thingy that simulates holding a key. I still have time to figure it out don't worry. :P
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Welp, map engine beta release ! :w00t:
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Interesting so far. For the final game I definitively think that the cavern could use some different graphics. though. If you stick to flat walls, there were some useful graphics from ROL3 that you could use :P
Also the demo made me lose >.<
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Hehe THE GAME is a known issue. :P Also as I said graphics are temporary and almost none of the sprites in there will be in the final version. I'll make a sprite request topic in due time. ;)
Also make sure you check the text files and the source because there's a nice coding style to learn from it. ;)
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On a side note; one feature that would be cool but might take quite a lot of code space is if you could view a list of key items you received through the game. For example, if you got keys, plant seeds, a papyrus, etc, they would now show up in your inventory so you would know you already got them. Currently, when you find a dungeon item you can't see it in your inventory due to RAM constraints.
Also the ability to see how many items of each kind you have in battle and in the ability menu it would be nice to know which magic will get equipped if applicable.
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Looking nice :)
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The screenshot Streetwalrus wanted
(http://img.ourl.ca/illusiat11axe.gif)
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Thanks DJ. :3
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oh, also, will the character sprite be a different one eventually?
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It will. See a few posts above.
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Just started the battle engine. I'm working on the battle screen right now and would like input as to whether or not I should show the enemy's health knowing the original didn't. I'm taking inspiration from Pokémon's long existing layout as well as the original Illusiat 11.
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Good to hear, also I lol'ed at the Yu-Gi-Oh reference in the topic title. XD
As for battles, just make sure that it doesn't look like an entirely different type of game. For example, if you end up making battle meters look like Mortal kombat or Street Fighter, people who want an RPG might be turned away by the screenshots, mistakenly thinking it's a fighting game.
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Nah it's not gonna be like that. The battle screen will look completely new and yet it will still be similar enough to the original even with the internal improvements I planned.
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It's gonna be 100% menu-based? :trollface:
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Actually, I decided to throw away all the current code and make this a menu RPG. :trollface:
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-Music ! (probably gonna remix one or two of DJ's songs)
I tl;dr the majority of this thread. So, is this still in the game?
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It is more or less planned. :P That is, if I can squeeze it in there. ;)
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Do you think you could have music where sound is better than in that one music program by Squidgetx and also better than Pyoro music?
Also I think you should maybe make that signature banner different colors, such as black with yellow text or something, because pink and cyan kinda clashes together D:
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Lol yeah, I meant to troll people a bit with this banner. :P I'll change that tomorrow.
Also, if I implement music, I'll have to optimize the engine for speed and use interrupts for it (these are currently disabled as I save them for that).
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By the way, if you ever need extra inspiration for this remake, you can check Yeong's remake thread. His Grammer remake has died long ago, but there are still screenshots in the topic: http://www.omnimaga.org/ti-z80-calculator-projects/(contest)-illusiat-11-grammer-port/
(http://img.removedfromgame.com/imgs/demo_full_of_errors.gif)
That's assuming, of course, that your own remake hasn't died too. <_<
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Nah it didn't die. :P If the sprites are monochrome I might borrow some from him though. :P And also take a peek at his battle code because yours seems to be encrypted better than the Nspire's boot code.
/me runs
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Lol yeah enemy data is particularly weird since it's generated based on their levels with weird formulas.
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Not just that, but I can't see what stuff does. :P Due to the lack of comments and explicit variable naming in basic programs, reverse engineering stuff is a huge pita, that's why I asked if you still had your design drafts (if you ever made some :P).
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In other words, you are too lazy to dechiper my code? :trollface:
And sorry, Illusiat games had no design drafts (except Illusiat 13), which is why sometimes the stories are so strange. I only started doing design drafts with ROL series, but even then I wrote horribly so I doubt you would be able to understand, not to mention that I used HB pencils so the text has slowly faded in the last decade.
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Oh OK lol, I guess I'll have some work to do. The problem is not about the fact that you used colons instead of line breaks everywhere btw. :P
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Yeah, blame the extremely long wait on ERR:BREAK/2:Goto >.<. The only reason why I didn't use linebreaks was to speed up scrolling through code. That wouldn't have been an issue if Doors CS 7 had come out in 2002 instead of 2010.
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It actually took me two seconds to replace these with Axe. :P
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Holy necropost, Batman O.O
So street and I were discussing this yesterday and I offered to help him out a bit with sprites. In the end we decided that he's doing a full rewrite of the map engine from scratch, at 4lv16x16 graphics.
So I went ahead and created him some character sprites.
This project will probably be finished in 2043 or so, so don't worry we're just slow.
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I have some 16x16 tiles somewhere that could become handy if you stick to the original map layout. Maybe not if you switch to Illusiat 12/13 map layout, though. But I like this set of char sprites :D
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Wait this isn't dead? O.O
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Nope it seems :P
However, it will die if the project starts being re-written from scratch over and over like E:SoR <_< (hence why this rewrite should be the last IMHO. Otherwise people rewrite their projects 5 or 6 times and eventually lose interest from redoing the same thing >.<)
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Wait this isn't dead? O.O
It never died, it was on semi hiatus because I was into Nspire stuff for a while, and then I've just been lazy. :P
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I knew it was somewhat on hiatus although I wasn't sure if you had moved on permanently to Nspire stuff :P
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Well I also did GameCube stuff for a week or so and then moved on to gaming. :P The GC has so many awesome titles that I couldn't help slacking off.
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Hehe I remember your GC gaming spree. As long as you don't disappear for a few weeks lol. You could actually share your homebrew or hacking stuff here, though. ;)and try to run Wacky Fun Random Numbar Generator v1.000069 on your GC, since juju did it on the Wii
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I did plan to post it. I just need to crosspost from gc-forever actually. :P
and try to run Wacky Fun Random Numbar Generator v1.000069 on your GC, since juju did it on the Wii
Lol does he still have the source ?
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Probably. He posted a topic about it in the ROM hacking/console homebrew section of Omni.
EDIT: http://www.omnimaga.org/rom-hacking-and-console-homebrew/wacky-fun-random-numbar-generator-wii/
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Quick design update: We decided to reinterpret maps and stuff. For example, the first cave is going to be a
huge dungeon map with multiple levels to make it somewhat more interesting to walk through. I hope street can do some stuff on the engine this afternoon so we can show you Kin walking around :3
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Quick design update: We decided to reinterpret maps and stuff. For example, the first cave is going to be a huge dungeon map with multiple levels to make it somewhat more interesting to walk through. I hope street can do some stuff on the engine this afternoon so we can show you Kin walking around :3
Unfortunately I couldn't get a thing done today but I'll try this week end to get something running. I've already done such a tilemapper (with 8*8 tiles though) so I have a pretty clear idea of how to do it. :)
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Bah, you're such a 14ZY 8um sometimes. Get that mapper to work already so we can start making maps ;D That said could someone please list the events that happen in the first cave so I can keep them in mind while redesigning the map? That'd be great :D
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Who's the 14ZY 8um ? Just try the game in an emu lol. :P There's only one event though, that's the boss in the exit (he blocks the single block wide exit in the bottom).
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TiLEM doesn't work and I'm too la- wait <_< Anyway that's good, we might add some more thingamadiddles to make it more interesting. I'm currently trying to set up a git repo, almost done but I get some oddball error when I want to push fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/aeTIos/Illusiat-XI.git/': Proxy CONNECT aborted when trying to push. I think I messed up something in my Xubuntu install but I'm totally done with this shit so I'm installing Arch (I know some people will get happy nao)
Edit: Great, got the github repo set up! You can see it here: https://github.com/aeTIos/Illusiat-XI
Edit 2: Solved issue with github. Poked Street to work on map/walk engine so we can show some screenshots. Still waiting... I'm going to design maps tomorrow.
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Update: Art_of_camelot gave me some useful input on the sprites. I updated the sprites to reflect his suggestions. GitHub updated.
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Could you cross-post the sprites here?
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If you are working with 16x16 now, the Final Fantasy IV over world sprtes I mentioned would be an excellent reference. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest as a good reference as well. Both are 16x16. See the attached pic. :)
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I know it's not a bit unrelated, dwedit's site has some nice 8x12 sprites:
http://www.dwedit.org/sprites/
I've used those to model my own sprites after.