Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: jsj795 on December 10, 2009, 07:47:18 pm
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Okay here is the screenshot for the side scrolling in action.
btw [ * ] is supposed to be a portal that will bring you to other parts of the map, like forest, desert, other cities, etc.
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That looks really nice! Does it run faster on calc like the other screenshots? Also, are you still using [A] for colision detection?
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Viewing under firefox, it is pretty same on calc tho. I think all other screenshots ran same speed as calc on firefox... :-X
And it still does use [A] for collision detection, and string for fast output.
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Nice, for the house, though, I would change all walls to the char "L" and the roof (including the diagonal lines) to "F", or something like that
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Well, I tried making the objects as realistic as possible using ASCII, and somehow using Ls and Fs for the house doesn't look like a house... Also that will make the name of the building harder to see, especially if the name of the building contained L or F. However I will test them out to see which one looks better and easier for recognition ^^
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oh yeah true x.x
I just didn't really like how the | and = for example can't be aligned with the other ascii chars used for walls and roof.
However, in my RPGs (like Illusiat 13) I didn't use names for buildings like INN so it wasn't a big issue if I used the following as house:
FFFFF
FFFFF
LLLLL
LLALL
(and sometimes some "+" symbols for windows)
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yeah that's true... and I know about u r buildings from I13. The thing is that I think my maps will have many similar maps (since it will be side scroll) that i should define what each building is for. Using
FFFFF FFFFF
FFFFF FFFFF
LLLLL LLLLL
LLALL LLALL
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
might confuse people which building is which, especially if there are multiples of them in a row :P
I am still trying to find the combination to make the house look better :)
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well, usually, I just use symbols for building types
In most cases, / will be weapon shop (/ is often used in ASCII games for sword slashing in battles), Theta will be item shop, another symbol might be magic shop, and so on. These are defined in readme. It makes it easier. For buildings where you just talk to NPCs I use no symbol and for ones that are locked down, I just have the door be a H instead of A, for example.
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Since there will be many types of buildings, and the NPCs and their quest stories will involve in getting into random buildings in different cities, I think using symbols for each one of those will be pretty hard. I like the locked down door "H" tho, i guess gotta experiment with different characters and such. I realized that I never really tried using lower case letters and numbers :X
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yeah ASCII requires a lot of experimenting. It might be easier to use since you don't need to draw sprites, but you need to try multiple combinations of chars
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I'm thinking about making better graphic TLM using Xlib or something either as a sequel or a remake ;D
Well, now that walking and event engine seems to be pretty much set, gotta work on my battle *groan
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Okay, here's the screenshot with the battle scene. The battle doesn't do anything except run, b/c I didn't implement any magic, items, and animations and monster AI... The menu system is almost done, except the party menu needs some finishing touch, and I think it's gonna be similar to ROL4 menu.
Now, I gotta work on the magic and item system, party menu, and the animation for the battle :P
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Wow, I'm loving EVERYTHING except the Help menu. It was kinda hard to read, but good enough for it's purpose, I suppose.
Regardless, great job. That menu at the bottom of the screen thing is genius. =D
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Okay, I think I'll change the help menu. anyway, it wasn't finished. I plan to implement the tutorial on the battles, menus, and other things like that^^
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Wow, that looks great! I really like the character change feature. I agree that the Help Menu needs some Help (Sorry, bad pun), but everything else looks AMAZING! You've done an awesome job!
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Nice! I especialy like the in-battle menu :D Using uppercase to highlight is genius :)
(except you do need to work on the help menu :P)
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looks nice so far. Can you jump outside battles btw?
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Yes, I think you can. Watch the begining of the gameplay in the screenie to see what I think is jumping.
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oh yeah right that part, i didnt look hard enough and noticed the ladders/stairs, so i was not sure
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Looking great. A lot of inspiration put there. (upper-case highlight, graphics)
The help generally comes in a text file to save space on calc. Maybe you could keep the help in a separated program on the calculator to some delete it?
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The help generally comes in a text file to save space on calc. Maybe you could keep the help in a separated program on the calculator to some delete it?
Yeah I guess, I'm planning to make the help program interactive tutorial, where the user actually presses stuff calculator tells them to do. I guess I'll make a separate program then~
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I generally advise against having an entire readme on calc or all instructions. Just a small summary is enough, unless you have the help file deletable. Else it adds a lot to the total file size
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I'd have to agree with DJ Omnimaga. That, and alot of people don't read them anyway. XD
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Yeah...but I don't think anyone has made an interactive one, that would be cool! But make sure it's separate so they can delete it.
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yep! didn't the final fantasy on calc do that? well, it was a prologue video, but it still was deletable. I guess I'll do something like that :P
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I don't exactly remember if the FF clone did, I know one game in particular did, though, and it was not needed to play the game. It may have been The Verdante Forest.
I know FFTOM series also had this
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found it. it was this game, that had the intro in separate program that you could watch to get the storyline. I guess I should make my help program like this so that people can delete it after they are done with it.
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/234/23497.html (http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/234/23497.html)
And I think my game will need the help program. Besides working in the battle engine, I am experimenting with crafting the weapons and stuff, like different crafting skill will create different stats for the weapon, and inserting a gem will result different kinds of weapon effect (kinda like diablo)
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I tend to prefer the intro included inside the game, but for help I prefer separate unless small (like in Illusiat 13, for example, you will see item small description as you select them).
Btw that FF game was awesome in this version. It's still one of my favourite calc RPGs altough not being able to cancel in battle menus was a bit annoying. 1.098 wasn't that great, though, because key detection was incredibly slow, it was way too hard and was filled with bugs x.x
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First fragment of the new game scene...
It also shows the dialogue system.
Hope you guys like it!
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Very nice! *trevmeister66 wants to see more :D
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Wow, neato!
And, funny, too. That's the best ASCII scene I have seen in a while.
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Wow very nice!
One thing, though: watch out with lowercase text. I got trapped often when using it, running out of RAM, because lowercase letters takes 2 bytes instead of 1 byte and when writing long text, it eats memory really fast.
Also if you don't mind using square window borders instead of rounded, I would make the top dialog window take the entire screen width and have the Horizontal mode line used for the bottom of the text window. You would need to draw one less line too
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I changed some words around, nothing new, and added 'going through the door' support. The hardest part of making these is actually ASCII art... :( They are really hard to draw. Right now, I'm trying to draw a little tree, but it's really hard to do.
Especially since the tree needs to be only about 3x3 ASCII character...
Here's the screen shot from the main menu ^^
Edit: I was posting and so I didn't get to read your post DJ, and I understand, but since I'm going to use XCopy, I don't think it would matter too much. I don't plan on storing more than 2 programs at the same time, by making 1 main program (I guess it acts as launcher) and the subprogram that will do all the others. Also, I used a text display routine that will drastically decrease the size of text displaying thing, because I wouldn't have to code
:text(0,0,"blah blah
:text(6,0,"more blah
: .
: .
: . etc....
Also, I found out that the box window border didn't look too nice because of the horiz mode...
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Aaah ok, I guess it's fine then, it still looks nice anyway ^^
For some reasons it reminds me Illusiat 13 but in platformer mode ^^
I kinda like it, though, because I always liked Ys III and Zelda II type adventure games (even thought yours is not real time battlers). Nice job :)
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Actually, I'm experimenting with the real time battle. It will be like random encounter, and then you get to move back and forth (no jumping) and attack. I really want to implement that, since I want the ranged weapon to have some purpose in the game. Right now, it seems fast enough, but I haven't put any monster AI, and attacking/animation, damage calculation, so I don't know if it will be feasible to do. If it seems slow, then I guess it will have to be either TI83+SE/TI84+(SE) game, or make it just turn-based...
Anyways, if the game gets really big (since I want to make it non-linear storyline) it will have to be on those calc, and emulator.
And may be because I used my main character as Omega, that's why it reminds you of Illusiat?
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Ooh I see, I guess if it's fast enough it could work. For complex bosses, you may have to use predefined movement patterns, though, since AI might be hard to code
As for Illusiat it might be the character or the graphics used, but again, ASCII games looks a bit similar sometimes ^^ (altough good, sometimes)
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Nice ASCII art. You have found new grounds to explore in TI-ASCII art. Nice. ;D
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I am kinda glad to see more variety of ASCII games too, because more will show what can simple graphics like ASCII can do and that games can be fun even on the home screen. :)
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Oooh... Genius! I'd never have thought of using that Horiz mode. I think this is going to be one of the only good games effectively using this mode.
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This is awesome! I can't wait for more TLM progress! ;D
I forgot, how do you store maps? Is it in a String and a Matrix? It looks really efficient! :D
Great job on the text also. It looks wonderful! :)
Lastly, this is an awesome game showing what ASCII graphics can do. I really like ASCII games, but this one has Incredible ASCII art in it, and I love it! Wonderful job! ;D
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It's both String and Matrix... I know that's horrible way because of memory, but it was fastest way...
especially since this is side scrolling movement. Oh well^^
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It may be huge, but it's working well for you. I have no problems with you storing it this way. ;D
In fact, I have a similar method that I use in Elmgon, but it uses two strings, and three lists. :D (The lists vary in size, and are used when something isn't default. xor lets this work. ;D )
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yeah, strings provide fast map display, but matrices, whikle being huge, provides much faster collision detection.
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The problem with strings is that they are tokenized, and not every token is the same size, so the calc has to go through ALL OF THEM to access a random point in the string. This is not much of an issue in map displaying, but with collision detection, the delays add up real quick.
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yeah, this sucks. For large strings, at the bottom of them, maps often loads slower than at the top. Sometimes, they may load like 3 times slower.