Gigas-engine 0.7.0

[Pirotic]

some good ideas, i've updated the progress.

the contrast one is very cool, i made two switchs - one lowers the contrast by "-1" when you put the action button on it, the other raises it by "1" when you use an action on it.. its like having a dimmer switch when i can't see the gP32 screen very well i just walk upto the raise contrast switch and press it a few times until i can see whats going on, lol.

also added some misc options to hotspots, like "delete after use" which means once you've activated it once, the hotspot will delete itself after its done what it was told to do, this way you can have "one time only" cutscenes and diaglog.

then again, i needed to put that in as i've just gone and coded the cutscenes

you can control the camera or lock it to any entity, make entitys change states and make dialog appear so far, all in funky widescreen.. lol, going to make a GP32 built in editor for it now.

you can even have really short cutscenes which just do something silly like make your character animation change to one where hes cheering or waving or something.

u could sorta make a cartoon with it i suppose

 

[Seijuro]

is there the possibility for music support, to include mod/xm/s3m/it? because i think mp3s and especially wavs (if used not only for sound fx) are too big...maybe you thought about that already but i just want to make sure i asked for the "possibility" because maybe it slows down the engine too much if there is modplay at the same time?

 

[Pirotic]

uhuh, i need to look into music eventually - trying to get everything else done first as then i'll know how much free processing power i have.

.RAW and .OGG are dead certain, i'll have to wait and see about MP3 and MOD

 

[Pirotic]

*wipes forehead*

well thats cutscenes finished, did the coding for the feature a few days ago but spent today writing an editor for it (built into the GP32 editor).

its pretty cool (if i may say so), when you trigger a cutscene (via a hotspot) borders slide onto the screen and it all acts out perfect everytime, you can make dialog appear, make entitys change state/animation and even have a cutscene which goes across maps.

cutscenes are saved into individual files (C<insert cutscene number>.DAT), and when a cutscene is triggered it just loads it from the SMC (instant) so it doesn't take up any extra ram.

as for AI during a cutscene, when a cutscene is started it finds any entitys who are involved in that cutscene and their AI will be frozen until the cutscene has finished, this means entitys who are not involved in the cutscene will carry on doing what they do normally, such as facing the player or walking around randomly.

and just to make things a bit more fun, i've left it so hotspots can still be activated by the player during the cutscenes.

basically you configure how long you want the cutscene to last in frames (40 frames per second remember) then your given 100 actions which you use to create the cutscene, with each action you pick what you want to happen, you select at what 'frame' you want it to happen and then a context sensitive selection box appears, so if you said "start an entity walking left" it'd ask for the entity you want to move, or if you said "make the camera focus on a certain entity" it'd ask what entity you want the camera to focus on etc.

look foward to showing you

 

[declaration]

sounds very interesting ^^^^^^^^

cant wait to give 0.7.0 a try when released.

good work.

 

[Tobriand]

That sounds very very sweet. Mind if I ask if conversation is done yet? That, along with cutscenes, is *the* bit I've been waiting for

 

[Q-Wi-Q]

Sounds sweet, don't get a thing of it though

REALLY looking forward to it!

 

[mattmagoo]

Can we use cutscenes for conversation?

and the dimmer thing, do we have to make the player push an action button, coz if not u cud make it so that when they walk to a certain place it gets darker, ala Zelda

 

[Pirotic]

the dimmer is a hotspot function, so you can activate it a number of ways..

atm its just "walk on" or "action over" but i'm planning to add "weapon attack" as a trigger to so protectiles can set off hotspots etc

 

[Octavious]

also have a use button actuvate for some hotspots

~Octavious

 

[Seijuro]

cutscenes sound cool, i got a question though now that you define exactly at which frame something happens, if i do something like this:
frame 1: player go 5 steps right
frame 2: player go 5 steps left

how will that work out? does it immediately cut off the "old" action and start the new one? i find it a bit complicated to exactly define on which frame something happens, in my case you'd need to find out how many frames it takes for the player to finish the move no? why not something where everything happens after another thing has finished..? this maybe limits it a bit but, well i dunno maybe i just dont get it fully

 

[Q-Wi-Q]

cutscenes sound cool, i got a question though now that you define exactly at which frame something happens, if i do something like this:
frame 1: player go 5 steps right
frame 2: player go 5 steps left

how will that work out? does it immediately cut off the "old" action and start the new one? i find it a bit complicated to exactly define on which frame something happens, in my case you'd need to find out how many frames it takes for the player to finish the move no? why not something where everything happens after another thing has finished..? this maybe limits it a bit but, well i dunno maybe i just dont get it fully

I think it'll point itself out

 

[Octavious]

hmm.. any posiablity that you can give a date for the next ver?
release soon , as always
also, after this version, could you put out another great version by June 10?
I leave for 10 weeks with no comp on the 12 and the 11th will be a busy day....

~Octavious

 

[Pirotic]

cutscenes sound cool, i got a question though now that you define exactly at which frame something happens, if i do something like this:
frame 1: player go 5 steps right
frame 2: player go 5 steps left

how will that work out? does it immediately cut off the "old" action and start the new one? i find it a bit complicated to exactly define on which frame something happens, in my case you'd need to find out how many frames it takes for the player to finish the move no? why not something where everything happens after another thing has finished..? this maybe limits it a bit but, well i dunno maybe i just dont get it fully

Hiya, good question.

basically you dont command them to go "5 steps right", you simply tell them to "walk right" at frame 10, then "face right" at frame 30.. that'll mean they'll walk for 20 frames (40 frames per second, so thats half a second) and then change to looking right.

it can be tricky getting cutscenes to "line up" but i'm planning on adding a "preview" function where it draws everybody as dots on a little window so you can see basically whats happening.

like most of the other features, i'll be adding more functionility into the cutscene editor as time goes on, adding more events which you can create such as going to an FMV scene, or showing a image on screen for a set duration etc.

no idea when the next version will be out, been looking for work this weekend so haven't coded anything since thursday

want to get conversations added in ready for the next release atleast, possibly items too.

its coming together nicely now, progress is alot quicker as all the framework is done. so im pretty hopefully a functionally complete version will be out by the 10th for you.

when its done i can finally make myself a game!!! lol

once gigas is finished and can make RPGs, i'll have to start coding the 'platform game' specific code so you can use it for side-scrollers too (gravity, falling etc), wouldn't take much work so i might as well.

 

[dr.no]

Some way of compressing all those single files of a game to one big would be usefull to distribute them on the net and to keep your SMC tidy. It does not have to be compressed, if that would take too much loading time.

Oh and cars or horses would be cool too. Something to put characters on, so that they move faster or can walk over cliffs or water or something like that.

And if it is not already done, add some possibility to make NPCs move after you and also follow you when you change the level. Just like in Zelda, when you rescued the princess and she follows you through the whole dungeon to the top. Hmm. While I'm thinking about it: What about some Diablo-stylin-NPCs which help you in combat? You could buy them, equip them and they help you. Or you could add a summon skelleton-spell etc..

... and what about .mod playback or something similar?

That's all I can think of right now. Rock on!

 

[Seijuro]

I think vehicles wouldnt be necessary as long as you could change the player sprite to a "car" sprite and increase speed at anytime

 

[c0ncept]

AFAIK NPC allies are already implemeted.

 

[Pirotic]

a crude NPC ally is already coded, all the current AI is pretty temporary and a bit stupid.

 

[Octavious]

we could use an item editor in game
so we could select certain aspects of certain games that we want , like have a bow of something that does this and then a bow of something else that does that and finally a bow of yadda yadda that does blah blah blah
get the idea?
we need an item editor that works like the entity editor
so we could set stats for that item

have like name of item
item pic
type of item ( changes the text color ) ( like god items, secret items , and normal , and ertc.. )
buy price
sell price
etc etc

~Octavious

 

[Pirotic]

Hiya,

an item editor will be built-in my plan is to make every single thing editable using just the GP32 (that'll eventually mean a graphics editor built in etc), with the PC editors being optional.

the item thing will be a little like this

//Standard settings
Item Icon (is it a weapon/potion/spell/ etc)
Item Picture (optional)
Item Name
Item Rank (1-10 stars depending no how rare/good it is)
Item Equipable (can it be equiped? - and if so as what, a helmet, a weapon etc)
Item Change entity Graphic (will it change the entity graphic when equiped)
Item Change Attack (will it change the entity attack when equiped)
Item EXP (... you'll see)
Item Standard Price (sell price will just be say, 80% of this)

//these will be added on/reducted from the entitys stats when equiped
Item Effect Stat HP Regen
Item Effect Stat MP Regen
Item Effect Stat ATK
Item Effect Stat DEF
Item Effect Stat SPEED

thats off the top of my head, the theory is you can find a rubbish weapon such as a "Rusty Sword" which will be a one star rank weapon, then by using it and leveling it up you can then take it to a blacksmith who'll then forge it into a better weapon for a cost, this way you can have weapons or items which can only be gained thru leveling them up, such rare super weapons etc.

you could sorta explain that by some silly "the weapon has some hidden powers in it which become unlocked as it slays strong monsters" story, but the leveling up thing is optional so you dont have to use it if you dont like the idea.