Castle Paradox

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 11:35 am Post subject: About plotsprites

As you may already know, the current nightly builds support a new feature that Mike added called plotsprites. This feature was not included in the xocolatl stable release.

Plotsprites allow you to load hero pictures, walkabouts, enemies, attacks, etc. and manpulate them with plotscripting in a layer above the map.

I am planning on re-writing plotsprite support to sync up with the 'Plan for slice tree', but before I get too deep into it I would really like to know who has already been working with plotsprites?

If there is a lot of code being written already that uses plotsprites, then I need to make sure my changes are backwards compatible with existing code

However if nobody is using this feature yet (or if the people using it don't mid rewriting some things) then I can make things easier on myself by changing and simplifying some implementation details.

If anybody has any demos of code that uses plotsprites, I would love to see them. it would make my testing a whole lot easier. (and if you have something that you aren't ready to release publicly, would you consider e-mailing it or PM'ing it to me?)

ShakeyAir · Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 93

I have used plotsprites for 2 things in my game so far, and both are fairly simple implementations. (One is a cursor on the title screen, one is a small dust animation)

And since (I have not released screenshots of this yet) I now have a custom textbox engine, I plan to use plotsprites for portraits but as of yet I'm not. (In the plotscripting dictionary, it seemed that plotsprites can only use hero sprites as of yet?)

I would not mind sending you the game I'm working on, but it is far from ready for demo release. Would you want just the game, or the scripts too? Or just the scripts using plotsprites?

And certainly, if it makes it easier for you, I'd say change the implementation. I have no problem going back and fixing any sort of break that could happen.

Moogle1 · Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:09 pm Post subject:

I haven't used plotsprites at all. I was passively dreading having to learn them for the SS101 after this one, the HUD article. So if you make changes, you should do them before I write that and engrave the Old Ways into impressionable minds.
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The Drizzle · **Who is the Drizzle?** Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 432

I had no idea this even existed but I'm happy to screw around with it.
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Spoon Weaver · Joined: 18 Nov 2008 Posts: 421 Location: @home

oh.... I making one of the attacks for my Tim-Tim game with plotsprites when I saw this.

when will the changes be done do you think?

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 8:55 am Post subject:

I'm not sure. I'll keep you posted with the progress in this thread.

So far, I received some test code from Mike, and I have started work on the conversion.

I am now drawing a slice layer for plotsprites, and I am revamping each plotsprite-related plotscripting command one-by-one.

Once concern I have is the re-usability of old handles.

The current plotsprite code allocates plotsprite handles like this:

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:13 pm Post subject:

Okay, I finished the conversion. It went more smoothly than I expected. I am currently forcing an early nightly build in case anybody wants to try this out now. Your existing scripts that use plotsprites should work exactly the same without need of modification. If anything suddenly breaks, please do tell me.

The only thing that should really be different right now is that instead of using plotsprite handles you are now using plotslice handles. The reasons why this is cool will not become manifest until:
A) I implement commands to manipulate other slice properties
B) plotslice handles for other slice types become available.

Currently I am using the scheme that allows recycling of old handle numbers, which is a bad thing. I still want input on how this might be done better.

Moogle1 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:25 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure it's a bad thing. It's not a great thing, but it's a better thing than some of your alternatives.

A) Do plotsprites preserve from map to map? Between saves? If both answers are yes, then even a slow memory leak is probably unacceptable.

B) This makes it way easier to screw things up than the current method.
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Bob the Hamster · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:40 pm Post subject:

Moogle1 · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 3:14 pm Post subject:

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 3:56 pm Post subject:

Bob the Hamster · Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 11:00 am Post subject:

I fixed some more bugs, so be sure to pick up a fresh nightly.

So far I have only made one change to the way that plotsprites work, which is that I change them to default to visible instead of invisible. You can still make a sprite invisible with "set sprite visible(false)"