Gigas-engine 0.7.0

[mattmagoo]

could u do it so that if Object X, is pushed to spot Y, then Door Z will open, or Item A will appear?

 

[c0ncept]

@Piriotic:

Would it be possible to hard-code the entitys name BUT also to have a trigger so that the name changes? That way you could have a character that is just called '????' until, say, you give him/her an item or perform a task when they become 'bob'.

Hardcoding the names would be useful as it would stop stupid mistakes and also the tedium of adding the name all the time.

[EDIT] can't wait for this to be finished Piriotic, but I think I'll wait till the PC editor is released *crosses fingers* before I even attempt to make anything using it!!

double edit: appauling spelling...

 

[Rico]

Keep it simple - I'd just hardcode the entity's name into the narrative. You could have a custom conversation function that allows you to specify the name as well as the text, for any other eventualities.

 

[Octavious]

hmm
sounds very promisiing
and the entity collisio is needed to have a grand war.. AHHHHHH
and not have all stuff look gay ( ha ha I walked over you )

~Octavious

 

[Enslaved]

Hey you should give us the ability to put small portraits for the stats menus and next to the text box when a person is talking.

 

[Pirotic]

could u do it so that if Object X, is pushed to spot Y, then Door Z will open, or Item A will appear?

uhuh, i'll add a new hotspot trigger which is "if entity <x> steps on hotspot" - entitys dont always have to be people, and that way you can push them onto an area and have it do whatever you want.

 

[Pirotic]

just spent the day coding text/conversations/dialogs in, u can now make text appear during cutscene and make entitys talk.

needs polishing up before the release, the editor and virtual keyboard are very messy but at least its working as planned.

 

[Q-Wi-Q]

you're doing great keep up the nice work

 

[Tobriand]

just spent the day coding text/conversations/dialogs in, u can now make text appear during cutscene and make entitys talk.

needs polishing up before the release, the editor and virtual keyboard are very messy but at least its working as planned.

This is where, I think, for me, Gigas becomes more than a potential dungeon-crawl maker, and suddenly hops into full depth-rpg possibilities

Well done; looking forward to 0.7 in due course

 

[Pirotic]

just spent the day coding text/conversations/dialogs in, u can now make text appear during cutscene and make entitys talk.

needs polishing up before the release, the editor and virtual keyboard are very messy but at least its working as planned.

This is where, I think, for me, Gigas becomes more than a potential dungeon-crawl maker, and suddenly hops into full depth-rpg possibilities

Well done; looking forward to 0.7 in due course

i agree, its pretty hard to have an RPG without any dialog - the legend of mute, etc.

something which is growing more apparent as i add more features in is that its harder and harder to link them all together as a user.

for example, if i make an entity i have to assign him an attack, assign him a conversation, assign him an animation - and in most cases all these things i need to assign to him are identified via an index number.

so conversation 32, attack animation 12.. and unless your that guy who can memory 12 decks of cards for a living its means constantly popping in and out of the different menus to 'find' which one you want, then back into the entity menu to assign it.

now that conversations are almost implemented, i could release it - but i think i'll hold it back another week (or two) in order to simplify everything, not so much dumb it down - but just make it easier to find what your looking for.

something i've done is started assigning names to everything, and that way when your applying settings it'll not only show you the index number but also a name, which makes things alot easier

 

[sebastian_insua]

something i've done is started assigning names to everything, and that way when your applying settings it'll not only show you the index number but also a name, which makes things alot easier

I was gonna ask you to do that a while back but i thought you might find it to difficult to do (i'm impressed, good work )

 

[Pirotic]

names are stored in a seperate file and just loaded on demand, would be a waste of RAM having it remember the names for everything during gameplay etc.

I've also made a few of the old features only load when required, at first i thought the SMC would be to slow but now that its optimized and running alot faster (the load times for maps became non-existant) i realised it'd work

cutscenes are loaded on demand from the SMC, as are avatars, images, conversations and some of the graphics - and its still 2x faster than the old version when playing so long as the files are not huge and dont cause hiccups im planning on going back and rewriting some of the older functions to make use of the SMC more.

checked my todo list, and i've done everything which is planned for 0.7.0 now - going to write some proper documentation for it, make a proper website and polish up the coding and gui for all the existing features.

would really like chatboard support (the virtual keyboard can be slow) but can't afford to buy one atm

 

[papapopalung]

I remember ages ago when i first got my GP32 and GIGAS demo was in a compo...

super-nice then, sounds amazing now...

i just hope i can be arsed/have the brains to do something good with it...

the side-scrolling possibilities will open up a whole new world of ideas... (side-scrolling super marioworld/RPG, anyone?)

is it possible to have BIG sprites in this?

go pirotic i never doubed ya

EDIT: what's the framerate like on this? in the first version it slowed right down when there was a building on the screen... i think i read it had been optimised by a few hundred percent... what's it like nowadays?

 

[Pirotic]

hiya, the 15 day contest version was just a few hours work - i wanted to do a quick tilemap viewer on the GP32 to see if i fancied developing a proper RPG maker for it.

the current Gigas-Engine shares no code with the original demo used for the 15 day contest, i think the original demo used about 10kb of source, at last check i've coded about 500kb of code by hand now so its come alooooooooong way (can't beleive i've typed half a meg of code by hand!)

from what i remember, the original demo ran at 15fps and slowed down as soon it had to start drawing tiles from layer 1 or 2. so when a building came on screen it started to chug, lol - that was back when i was using pauses to regulate the framerate (owch!)

the current version runs at 40fps and even on pretty big maps and 40 odd enemys on screen it doesn't slow down, and its even clocked to a lower speed than the 15 day version, thats pretty good progress

come to think of it, its running faster than i ever expected it to i remember back when i was starting on it my "aim" was to get it 30fps when fully optimized,

give it a try mate, 0.6.5 is out and can be downloaded.

 

[Q-Wi-Q]

mmm... that's some progress I wish I could do stuff like that

btw: about music, is there a .spc support possibility? For the actual RPG feel which I think .mid won't give

sorry if I'm trying to push you you don't HAVE to listen to me

 

[Pirotic]

.spc and .midi support will both be tricky, as the Gp32 doesn't have any built-in midi functions (or instrument samples) that i know of, so it would take up a fair bit of ram. but i'll see what i can do i may try to make a .smc .midi player library which i can then use in gigas and let other people use in the music players

 

[Q-Wi-Q]

.spc and .midi support will both be tricky, as the Gp32 doesn't have any built-in midi functions (or instrument samples) that i know of, so it would take up a fair bit of ram. but i'll see what i can do i may try to make a .smc .midi player library which i can then use in gigas and let other people use in the music players

hmmm... but if both are tricky, what was on your mind for music?

 

[PinkSpider]

I would just animate the game field.

 

[Pirotic]

.spc and .midi support will both be tricky, as the Gp32 doesn't have any built-in midi functions (or instrument samples) that i know of, so it would take up a fair bit of ram. but i'll see what i can do i may try to make a .smc .midi player library which i can then use in gigas and let other people use in the music players

hmmm... but if both are tricky, what was on your mind for music?

i figured all music formats can be converted to mp3 nowadays as the tools are all freeware and most people are familair with the mp3 format.

atm only .wav is supported but i haven't really even begun the audio system yet, i'd like to get .ogg, .mp3, .midi and .spc supported - i'll see how it goes

 

[Q-Wi-Q]

.mp would be the best! reason I hadn't mentioned that was because I had no idea it'd even be possible!

another thing: my town is finished, I've started working on inhabitants however, if they "wander" around at SPEED=1, they're still going WAY to fast. Is there any way to make them walk slower?