[gigas] Could You Inplement....


birdofprey

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I was thinking, would it be possible to rename each map and have the name of the map located at the top of the screen at all times? So you can name each part of the world? Town A, Street B etc.
Also, is it possible to make changes you make to maps (Using hotspots to say, make a boulder blocking a path dissapear) save when you go out of the screen and back in? I'm finding it difficult to understand how I am going to make my RPG if the maps will refresh themselves every time you leave the current scene.

In case you dont understand what I'm saying, here is an example...

once you get to a certain place, you step on a button, and a path is cleared through the trees allowing you to return back to the start (the object being now you can travel from the start to your further point easier) However, once you travel back to the start, the trees have re-appeared and you can no longer use the path until you go around and step on the button again.

Also, is it possible to allow hotspots to make changes in a different map. So you can press a button on map1 and in map3, a block will appear?

Thanks in advance
 
Hiya BirdofPrey,

1.) Maps will have names, one of the first things i'll do post 0.7.0 release is add names to Entitys, Maps, Hotspots and Cutscenes - it'll make the editing alot easier as when your selecting an entity or a cutscene it'll show its name so you can be sure you have the right one select,

Also when you change map or save the game, it'll show the maps name for a few seconds on the top of the screen.

2.) Hehe, I know what you mean :) its because i haven't implemented save-games at all yet. Basically a save game will create a new subfolder in the game folder - and whenever you leave a map it'll save a copy of that map (how you left it) in the savegame folder, and whenever you load a map it'll check the savegame folder for a changed version of it before reading the original map (this means the savegames will only need to store files which have changed).

i'll add settings to each map, such as if the enemys should respawn when you revisit or if they stay dead etc, it'll be neat in that if you cut a blade of grass - it'll stay cut forever :p something the SNES couldn't do because of of the limited save space.
 
Thanks Pirotic such a fast response!

I guess im jumping too far ahead. I've designed and created whole landscape made up of about 25 maps with enemy and characters in place for storylines etc... Maybe I should be focusing more on designing attacks and things before going ahead and creating my world. Maybe leave it till we get to Version 8.5/9 or something.

Thanks again dude you rock!
 
Another question, will it be possible to, rather than making certain tiles solid (so that every time you use that tile it is solid) could you make it so that selected squares are solid? Or even that you can have solids on layer 1?

Thanks
 
Hmm... any chance of storing saves in ram rather than writing whenever you leave an area? It'd just prolong SMC life a bit, methinks. Though unless you could store only changes to maps (i.e. X, Y, TILESETX, TILESETY for each changed tile) or similar, I imagine memory would very very quickly become an issue done like that...
 
Hiya, two more questions for me eh? np

1.) uhuh, the collision method does require you to make two copys of an identical tile if you dont always want it to be solid - but sadly thats the best you can really do it on the GP32, if i saved the setting per tile the maps would be 30% bigger, and take 30% longer to load, take up more ram, and not to mention manually doing every tile would be a right pain in the ass.

and if i just made collisions on layer 0 - then people would have to duplicate lots more tiles as sometimes i use layer 1 for rocks etc, which means i'd have to have 2 versions for every ground tile incase i had a rock on it or not.

i agree with you that its a little strange how it is, but as im sure you can understand - its the lesser of 3 evils, maybe their is a better solution to it, but i can't figure it out :D

2.) agreed, i value SMC life and dont like to write to the SMC unless its really nessecary, basically its not how often you write to it - but more how much data is being written. the map file size is so small you could write it billions of times without any problems.

i've been using the same SMC for gigas for 2 years now, its only 16mb and i must of copied hundreds of maps across and saved thousends of times - and its still alive and kicking (and thats just a 16mb card!)

but uhuh, i wont make it write stuff if it doesn't need to :)
 
uhuh, i'd like to do 'back up' saves in the background, but then people may say its using the SMC to often etc :p i'll have to do a poll at some point.
 
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