Castle Paradox

[Sh4d0ws]

Anyone wanna share and discuss their suggestions for the OHR?

One of the things I'd like to see is multicolored text in textboxes. Just because, who wouldn't?
I'd also like to see:

Larger and more plentiful attacks ; attacks are the ugliest part of the OHR battle system in my opinion, and more often than not, disappoint me. If they were larger you could categorize them into three basic sizes: Small ( projectile-sized ) Medium ( Large enemy sized ) and Large ( Battlefield sized ), covering every range of attack, as well as leaving some room for creativity.
As for the amount of frames, I think 12 would be a pretty good universal amount.

Pixel based movement would be excellent. I definitely prefer the feeling of freedom offered by pixel based movement over tile based movement.

Pre-coordinated "paths" for NPCs I know this can be done with plotscripting, but being able to do it easily and right from the OHR would be great. Actually, this is never done anyways; but I think it has a heavy impact on the realism of towns and such, so making it more accessible would be excellent, in my opinion.

Engine support for playing back video files. This would be great, much better than the ( Usually failed ) attempts at making cut-scenes with a series of backdrops.

And, that's all from me for now. What about you?

[msw188]

I just wanted to throw out a refutation of NPC paths "never" getting done - I know Pepsi will want to slap you for that statement, as he uses these a lot. And certainly they are in lots of commercial games, and I'm pretty sure I've heard people discussing them in some other OHR games, but I can't remember them at the moment.
_________________
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

[Sh4d0ws]

Eh, I wasn't really speaking literally there.

I just don't think It's used nearly as often as it should be. But I'm totally gonna try some of Pepsi's games now.

[Pepsi Ranger]

I think the one that msw is talking about is for a game I haven't actually released yet, at least not publicly.

There are some videos of it on my journal page, though:

http://www.castleparadox.com/viewjournaltopic.php?t=718

I'm pretty sure that Baconlabs is using a lot of this stuff for his game(s) as well.

I wrote an article about better NPCs in the January 2009 issue of HamsterSpeak if you wanted some additional ideas. The game in my journal uses all of these examples except for the "Behavioral Enigma," which is about the most complex an NPC can get; though, I still want to implement one of these eventually, so what doesn't exist now may exist by the time I release it.

The article can be read here:

http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue22/index.html

They're not the least bit difficult to create. They just take a little extra time.
_________________
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

[Baconlabs]

[Spoon Weaver]

The only thing, that you said, that I agree with, is the attacks.
The battle system in the ohr has always been the biggest flaw in my opinion, because there's no scripting there. Add some sort of scripting and I think it'll be great.

The other things can either be done fairly easily with scripting,

Pixel movement: plenty of games have pixel based movement, but since it would break a lot of the npc/door interactions it wouldn't be easy to simply put into the engine. check out my tech demo "somekindaninja" for not only an example but the script file it uses.
Pre-coordinated paths : And since pre-coordinated paths would have to be fairly complicated to truely get what people want from it, I think using scripts is fine.
Video playback: This wouldn't work the way you would want it to. The pixel count and color limits would detroy your videos anyways. Not only that, but since this is an engine focused on making retro games, it wouldn't make since to even allow this in the ohr. lol. But seriously, if you think adding a youtube video to your game will make it at all better, you're deeply mistaken.

[Bob the Hamster]

There are some plans for allowing larger sprites and more frames (both for attacks and elsewhere) but we don't have those plans written out yet.

@pixel movement: This is planned as an optional feature in the future. Plan for non-tile-based walking

@pre-coordinated paths: making a path with plotscripting is actually pretty easy. The hard part is coordinating it with other scripts, or with more than one NPC walking at the same time. That will become easier when we finish the Plan for script multitasking, because then you will be able to just write a separate script for each moving NPC, and not have to worry about scripts blocking one another.

@video playback: No, probably not. We don't currently have any plans for movie support.

[Pepsi Ranger]

[msw188]

Trying to get back on topic, here are some suggestions:

1. More clear flexibility on item usage - For instance, having items that are consumed on use, but cannot be sold in standard shops. Or having items that teach a spell out of battle (and are consumed), but in battle have an effect and are not consumed. I understand that this is all already possible with plotscripting and weird attack tricks, but these are not very intuitive options.

2. Text string searching for menues other than textboxes (especially attacks and items) - I think this one is on Bugzilla already.

3. EXP for characters not in active party - This might be on Bugzilla too, I can't remember. For things like the wagon from the Dragon Warrior games. There would have to be a few options here:
*EXP granted to active members only
*EXP granted to available characters only, so no 'locked out' characters
*EXP granted to all characters, whether locked out of the party or not
These would ideally be an option for a map, and then overridable on a formation by formation basis.
_________________
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

[Sh4d0ws]

Pixel-based movement and NPC paths are both possible, (Especially paths) quite easily with plotscripting, I know; It's not really the addition of those features that I'd find appealing, It'd be the possibility to use them without scripting. Just so that (particularly lazy) users like me wouldn't have to "work" for simpler stuff like that.

And on Video Playback, I was speaking under the assumption that the videos would be made at 320x200 and at 256 colors. Or somewhere near that. ( For the most part, I'm sure most of the videos used would be more anime-ish, cartoon-ish, or retro than realistic. In fact, I'm certain. )

Anyways, some more suggestions:

1.) 24/32 bit high-res graphics: I know this'll more then likely stay in my wet dreams than come true, but I just thought I'd get out there. Actually, low-resness is one of the things about the OHR that makes it attractive to me, so even with a resolution boost, the highest I'd ever use would probably be about 640x480.

2.) Support for longer maptile animations Not absolutely necessary, but it would be nice to have. A larger range of animatable tiles would be nice, too.
I don't like the current means of animating them, either. I think maybe some sort of numbering system would be better;

example: Frame one is numbered "1", no matter where it is, same for frame "2". "3". "4", "5", "6", etc.
After that, the interval between each frame could probably be change via submenu, per frame.
And then, to create a another animated tile, you could just transition to the 2nd group. ( Which might be accessed similiarly to how you change layers )
And, finally, group "1", "2", and etc. would be activated by holding CTRL and pressing the corresponding number.

Might not be too intuitive, but It's an idea.

3). Harm-tile correspondence with current frame: Last I checked, the first frame of an animated tile determined whether or not it harms you.
But if say, frames 1 and 2 were harmtiles, but frame 3 wasn't, and this change was reflected as each frame progressed, that would make great for ( Easy ) trap.
Not to mention that harmtiles, in general, are quite rarely used.

That's all for now.

[Baconlabs]

[Bob the Hamster]

@24/32 bit color. - Technically the OHR already supports 24 bit color, but only 8 bits at a time are accessible. It will probably stay that way. 8-bit (256 color) sprites instead of 4-bit (16-color) sprites are definitely on the horizon.

@Screen resolutions - TMC is currently doing some cool experimental work with screen resolution changing. We haven't fully decided yet how this will be exposed to game authors.

@Longer maptile animation - My plan for this one is to allow you to hook maptile animation up to a global variable, then you can make maptile animations of theoretically unlimited length. And yes, the current animation interface sucks.

@Harm-tile correspondence with current frame - Interesting idea.

[Rya.Reisender]

All those graphical improvements will just make it harder to make the graphics. More pixels... more colours.

If the graphic settings ever get improved there should be at least some feature where you can import tilesets/other graphics in format of other RPG Makers into the OHR.

Even better would be a device that draws the graphics just from my imagination.
_________________
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[ShakeyAir]

[Ronin Catholic]

320 x 200 is the best resolution ever. Why would you want something different?