Castle Paradox - Forum

Creative Corner :: RE: GIMP OHR

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:03:57 GMT

Author: FyreWulff
Posted: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:03:57 GMT
Topic Replies: 9

James Paige wrote:

Nepenthe wrote:

EDIT:
Also

Quote:

I have the one to allow the Gimp to open ORA files from MyPaint

I had no idea this existed, but it sounds awesome. Thanks for the heads up.

MyPaint has become my primary graphics program, and I just open stuff in the Gimp now for post-processing.

I love MyPaint. I want to marry it.

Paint.NET always the bridesmaid, never the bride!

Too bad it's locked to Windows for the time being. And the creator(s) pulled the source code off the net because too many fly by night companies were simply taking the source, changing the name and recompiling it with their own branding and selling it. That didn't piss him off though - it was that they all left the original creators website/email as the support contact instead of the company itself.
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The Arcade :: RE: Discussing "Heart of the OHR"

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:54:38 GMT

Author: Rya.Reisender
Posted: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:54:38 GMT
Topic Replies: 51

FyreWulff wrote:

Yeah, the only way to make a free game is to make it beatable in less than 8 minutes.

I heard you can override this limitation by simply adding a save feature that saves frequently.

Also I'm pretty positive that there would be quite some people actually willing to pay 80 MS points for the better OHRRPGCE games (if finished).
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The Arcade :: RE: Discussing "Heart of the OHR"

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:33:35 GMT

Author: NayusDante
Posted: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:33:35 GMT
Topic Replies: 51

Apple relaxes rules on interpreted code...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-throws-developers-a-bone-relaxes-restrictions-on-third-party-tools/38985?tag=nl.e539

It's still a bit restrictive, but it's a step in the right direction.
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The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:38:26 GMT

Author: Bagne
Posted: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:38:26 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

James wrote:

16 overlapping zones

Awesome! That will do!

The Mad Cacti wrote:

... and to be able to store paths in a variable?

Exactly. Maybe an NPC needs to repeatedly navigate a certain area, or maybe you want to record a history of your movements for some reason.
I never thought of slice paths, but that's cool. Saay ... if the user could easily define a Bezier curve in custom, they could easily assign complex movement patterns to attack graphics. In this case, it would be especially useful to scale and rotate slice paths.

The Mad Cacti wrote:

Segments of an NPC path could have additional data attached to them such as "thickness"

I was wondering about this.
Say you have some sort of A* algorithm that allows NPCs to navigate the map. If we start making big monsters by using 40x40 sprites, or stamping slices onto NPCs, you might want to ensure that your paths are 2 or more tiles wide.

NPC Bezier paths would pre-suppose non-tile-based movement?
Say, I'm curious: are there plans for diagonal hero and NPC movement?

Movement along a series of end-to-end Bezier curves makes it difficult to conserve movement speed, no?
I started laying out plans for a monster that had sprites moving along a Bezier, but I couldn't find an easy way to calculate the length of the curve. It would be nice to ensure uniform movement speed along the curve.

Oh, one last thing. While we're on the topic of defining slice movements:
...
I've recently started using Blender, it's open source software that does 3D rendering. I was quite interested to discover how 3D animation uses "armatures", a skeleton-like construction with pre-defined joints. Animation is done by pre-defining a set of armature "poses", and interpolating between poses through time.
As it turns out ...
when building the Boulderbeast, I (by accident? by necessity?) ended up developing an equivalent system. The only difference is that Blender has a fancy visual method of defining the evolution of poses through time, while my Boulderbeast script hard-codes the gestures into a long, confusing string of commands.
So ... I'm thinking this:
Slice "armatures" (either 2d or 3d), would be extremely cool in the OHR, especially if there was a Blender-esque pose timeseries editor. Multi-slice mega-boss graphics would be easy to create and animate!
The only catch is that this kind of animation would be rather clumsy without slice rotations being implemented.

Okbye!
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Working on rain and cloud formation

HELP! :: RE: Alt button

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:39:23 GMT

Author: The Mad Cacti
Posted: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:39:23 GMT
Topic Replies: 1

There's no option, but there's a way to script it: key presses are ignored if the player is suspended. So you can use this onkeypress script if it doesn't cause you other problems:

Code:

plotscript, onkeypress, begin
while (key is pressed (key:alt)) do (
suspend player
wait(1)
resume player
)
end

(Assuming you haven't enabled double triggering of scripts.)
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The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:23:52 GMT

Author: The Mad Cacti
Posted: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:23:52 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

James Paige wrote:

That would be great. I do hope to add the ability to jump to the textbox editor directly from the NPC editor.

I'm looking forward to it

Pepsi Ranger wrote:

I think he was inspired by the unreadable plotscripting mess that I use for triggering local ambient sounds and other "zone specific" things in Powerstick Man XE.

Nearly. It was the unreadable plotscripting mess in Entrepreneur that you use for figuring out which property you're mowing the lawn of, and then later I remembered a whole lot of similar unreadable plotscripting messes in Powerstick Man XE. (Hmm... lawnmower... lawnmower scripts... Uh oh!)

Actually, I've had an embryonic form of the idea for two or three years: that long ago, when I was planning to add NPC paths to ease scripting of Eldardeen (obviously never got around to it), I wanted paths to be composeable of pieces (see below) including areas. But they are much more useful as a separate feature.

I'm not sure about the number of zones. Currently I've set an artificial limit of 9999 incase I later want to use some spare bits for something, but I could change it to 65535 if I can't think of anything. And the maximum number of overlapping zones at a tile is 15.

I'm about an hour of work away from checking into SVN the (draft) zones editor, however I have to go to bed and be up early. No matter, currently zones don't do anything anyway

Bagne wrote:

Know what would be killer?
Of course you do:
If you could store NPC paths.

So ... use an invisible NPC to calculate a path, and use the path for when moving the Boulderbea— ... um ... when moving slice sprites around.

Killer diller.

I think you mean that you want "paths" not just "NPC paths", and you want to be able to create one by calling a pathfinding function, and to be able to store paths in a variable?

Luckily for you, that is what I want as well. And I'd like to be able to use (some kind of) paths for slice movement, especially in-battle sprites. I feel like there are really two different kinds of paths that would be useful. Here is my ill-formed idea for paths thus far, feedback from people of what they actually want to do would help:

A path: composed of pieces (segments) connected end-to-end. Each segment is either a straight line or a some sort of spline, like a Bezier curve and can have an associated velocity (maybe define the velocity at both ends and interpolate linearly).

An NPC path: a type of path that is placed on a map. Its segments can be joined not just end-to-end, but can contain branches. At each joint, you can define tag-based or random conditions for which branch is taken. Joints could also contain other commands like "run a script" or "wait 10 ticks" or "face south". (I'm copying this feature list directly from the scripted NPC paths in Eldardeen.)
Segments of an NPC path could have additional data attached to them such as "thickness": how far from the path NPCs can stray according to random variations, or walking around obstacles.
Maybe NPC paths should disallow spline segments.

I don't know how distinct these two types of paths should be, but I think they could share a lot of code and be implemented at the same time.

I would love to go work on paths immediately, but I'm pretty sure I need the new script interpreter before I can do them properly.
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The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:28:03 GMT

Author: James Paige
Posted: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:28:03 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

TMC will have to correct me on this if I am wrong (cause he is doing all the hard work on these) but I think there will be a very large number allowed per map (thousands?) but any given tile on a map will be limited to belonging to a maximum of 16 overlapping zones.

I know he is making very good progress on it, but none of it is checked into subversion for the nightly wip builds yet.

The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:17:40 GMT

Author: Bagne
Posted: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:17:40 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

How many zones would be allowed per map?
You'd be able to edit them in custom, je?

Any idea when zones will apparate? I think they'd resolve a major obstacle in making my game.
OmygoshIlovezonesandtheydon'tevenexistyet!
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HELP! :: Alt button

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:10:57 GMT

Author: Bagne
Subject: Alt button
Posted: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:10:57 GMT
Topic Replies: 1

Is there an option to disable Alt as a main-menu button?

I'd like to use esc only, and reserve Alt for key-press stuff.
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Working on rain and cloud formation

The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:51:26 GMT

Author: Pepsi Ranger
Posted: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:51:26 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

I think he was inspired by the unreadable plotscripting mess that I use for triggering local ambient sounds and other "zone specific" things in Powerstick Man XE. He would have to confirm this, of course, but I remember him asking me in IRC one evening how often I use these plotted zones, and if a built-in system would be simpler. I told him a built-in system would be simpler. I think he went to work on it later that night, or at least started planning it.

Again, I could be wrong, but I think a certain horse-teethed, sunglass-wearing superhero and the gigantor plotscript code he exploits may be partly to blame for this. Either that, or the timing of the conversation was uncanny.
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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

The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:11:54 GMT

Author: James Paige
Posted: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:11:54 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

Bagne wrote:

Zones!
That's the coolest idea since slices!

Did this idea simply crop up, or are there game engines that are known to use this kind of feature?

I know, isn't it cool? It was TMC's idea, and I am not sure what inspired him.

The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:07:59 GMT

Author: Bagne
Posted: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:07:59 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

Zones!
That's the coolest idea since slices!

Did this idea simply crop up, or are there game engines that are known to use this kind of feature?
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The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:37:18 GMT

Author: James Paige
Posted: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:37:18 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

Some future goals:

One is that you will be able to attach a slice directly to an NPC. that will make it supper easy to move Boulderbeast in synchronization with an NPC, without needing to manually update his position to match the NPC in every tick using a script.

Another is the nifty new "Zones" feature that TMC is working on for maps. Map zones will be usable for many things. They allow you to mark certain tiles on the map as being part of zones, and then you can assign special meaning to zones.

Another is that there will be a new NPC movement type that causes the NPC to follow the edge of the wall. If you combine this with a Zone that the NPC is only allowed to walk in, you will be able to make free-form NPC paths on a map without any invisible NPCs.

arpgme wrote:

Why not allow text to be written in the NPC area instead of traveling all the way to text box and then going back to NPC to choose which text to use.

This would make game creating way faster.

That would be great. I do hope to add the ability to jump to the textbox editor directly from the NPC editor.

The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:22:29 GMT

Author: Bagne
Posted: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:22:29 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

The Mad Cacti wrote:

one thing we need is NPC path finding

The Arcade :: RE: Suggestions?

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:54:30 GMT

Author: arpgme
Posted: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:54:30 GMT
Topic Replies: 138

OHRRPGCE would be better if it had a simple way to do strings.

Why not allow text to be written in the NPC area instead of traveling all the way to text box and then going back to NPC to choose which text to use.

This would make game creating way faster.