Castle Paradox

[ShakeyAir]

I am loving all of the new features that have sprung up since I've been gone, especially the new textbox and map stuff. And the clone tool. God that thing saves time.

But one thing that would pick up the editors (especially the map editor) is a 'replace color' tool. Like, you select a color, and then you click on the color you want to replace in your tile. Say, you have red selected, and click on a blue pixel. Everywhere that shade of blue is would turn into your red color.

This would allow much easier experimentations with color gradients and would allow you to fill a transparent area with another color, dither black into it, and replace the color with transparency. Basically, the things palettes let you do in the sprite editor.

And the other thing I would love to see if arbitrary icons in battle. Like, not things that are for status effects specifically. An option in attacks to 'apply X icon to target' and 'remove X icon from target' (if the icon is there)

This would allow you to have such things as an attack that raises defense showing that defense is raised. And then, when status effects do have icons, 'Poison' can double as say 'Burned" without actually making another affliction, just applying different icons and damage amounts to the same thing.

Preferably, a 10x10 or 15x15 sprite for each icon, probably showing up in the lefthad corner, or on the left had side directly above the sprite?

This is mostly because in long battles I hate having to remember who has what status afflictions, if an author does not want people to have to keep track in their head of who has what applied to them, they should have the option of visually showing it.

I know I should be using the Bugzilla, but I would rather have some discussion about these first to see if the ideas are supported.

Thank you for looking.

[Pepsi Ranger]

I wholeheartedly support the color swapping idea. It would make shading floor tiles and such a lot easier. And its functionality would go even further if the designer can select an area a la mark/clone to commit the changes to.

The status icons would be nice, though I'd be just as interested in having color-coded hit counters so the player doesn't think he's losing life when he's really just losing defensive points or something.

Permanent status effects, like poison, that can only be fixed with a potion would also be nice, as opposed to limited status effects, like poison, that are fixed the moment a battle ends (assuming this ability doesn't already exist outside of fancy scripting).

Yeah, I say post them on Bugzilla.
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Progress Report:

The Adventures of Powerstick Man: Extended Edition

Currently Updating: General sweep of the game world and dialogue boxes. Adding extended maps.

Tightfloss Maiden

Currently Updating: Chapter 2

[TMC]

[ShakeyAir]

Really, any sort of way to show status effects (and preferably fake status effects --i.e. 'defense down' and such that don't require a register) would be amazing.

I just don't think the player should be required to remember what he inflicted on what enemy and who in his party has what affliction.

[ShakeyAir]

And one more idea, that seems really simple to me but I'm sure there's some obfuscated reason why it's difficult. (That is why I am no coder!!):

In NPC move types, add an option to make an NPC mimic either a hero or another NPC.

This would allow for non-plotscripted couples (two NPCs next to each other, pacing the same way always), those annoying kids that do whatever you do, and....

Double high walkabouts, especially if you could set the mimic NPC to ignore walls. Hell, it would work on double wide, or triple either way.

Implementation things: If mimicking a hero, and the hero hits a wall, but there is either no wall there for the NPC or the NPC is set to ignore walls, and the hero is walking, should it continue? If possible I'd think it should be an option.

Mirror?: If it mirrored your movements either up and down or left and right, you could do those Zelda puzzles incredibly easily, where the thing blocks your way. To solve these, it would have to continue to walk if you hit a wall and continued to walk.

Double high walkabout: It definitely cannot keep walking if you hit a wall if it is the top half of you!

How are NPCs drawn over other NPCs when there's an overlap?

[msw188]

I really like the 'graphic indicators' in battle idea. It could be used tot create an illusion of all kinds of things, not just status changes. Also I believe that it should show all the time, not just when the player's turn comes up. The difficult part would be deciding how/when to turn them off, if the status wore off, or the sleeper was awoken, or the enemy used a def down spell on someone who already had def up (as opposesd to using def down on someone who was normal) etc. This could cause serious headaches for changes that were not directly tied to a status effect register.

I still like my horribly complicated concept for generalized stat buffs/conditions. It's on these boards somewhere...
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My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[TMC]

I don't like the sound of this mimicing NPCs idea much. That's really the sort of thing that should be done with scripting, not built into the engine. Also, with plotsprites/the slices system it will be easy to create NPCs/heroes with sprites larger than 20x20, hopefully without scripting required - I think that's something that should be builtin.

[NeoSpade]

Speaking of features that would be usefull, having seperate sets of walls for heroes and NPCs, so that making an NPC walk in a set area, for example having an NPC guard walk up and down a NPC walled area to make him patrol, or having NPCs not wander off a path. Having three sets of walls would be very usefull (Heroes/NPCs/both)
Would this be easy to impliment or not? Its just an idea.

[The Wobbler]

[NeoSpade]

Wow...I never thought of doing that, thanks Surlaw.

[Pepsi Ranger]

[Bob the Hamster]