  learning to script | 
Posted - 6/29/2005 9:52:14 PM | LUA
so yeah. this is what i'm going to learn for scripting. i might be getting a little ahead of myself, but i'm not getting any of the content done, so i might as well do something useful in the meantime. i've compiled it with gcc so its ready to use with dev-cpp (thanks lua community!) and now i need to play with it. into the docs with me, i guess! [working]
ok, i got to thinking a little. i'm going to use scripting for just about everything related to the content - excepting things i need to have in the backend. those things are the hardware communications routines, like timing, sound, graphics, and input. i need to expose that stuff to the scripting. as i think more on it, i suppose i don't want to force a bunch of it - like for instance, the title screen, inventory, and stuff like that. any kind of 'action' or 'thinking' sequence needs to be scripted.
i've read a bunch of the stuff about how to use lua, but i haven't read anything about how to use its api from C. what i want to do as my first test is have a program that loads a picture and bounces it around the screen until the user presses a key. i want to have lua pick the picture, and be in complete control of the movement. having it check for input is also going to happen from the script. the rest of the stuff, the actual hardware stuff, the picture load/unload, and the timing lock-down are going to be handled in the 'backend'. i think i'll skip to the api docs. [working]
ok wow. i can't seem to wrap my head around this stuff anymore. i'll have to try again later..
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| drawing | 
Posted - 6/27/2005 9:35:12 PM | finished up the outlines for the sg vs phoe pic.
SG vs Phoenix
so yeah, its not bad, but theres alot i don't like. such is the way of the artist, i guess. line thickness on sg in the upper left is glaringly bigger than the rest. i got phoe's glasses/eyes just about right, though. thought i'd botch that most.
i tried coloring it with the paint prog i use, and the thing is worthless for that. you saw what i did to the 'washu's journal' comic -- the color is shite. i can't figure out how to get solid colors using the damn thing. red works great, and apparently green and purple do too. i guess i'll have to play with it more before i try to color this again.
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| draw draw draw | 
Posted - 6/21/2005 10:10:56 PM | here's a few sketches i did. i want to figure out how i'm going to draw some of the people i might want to do comics on later. obviously the first one is of me. i thought i'd be harder to do, but i'm actually satisfied with this..
steelgolem sketch
i wanted to give a guess at how i'd be drawing april. i sort of imagine her with a teacher/secretary look. give her a businessy look and a clipboard and stick a pencil over her ear, and you get..
april sketch
i realize theres some problems with the drawing, but again its just a concept sketch. i can easily see her using either of her props as weapons ^_^ also keep in mind, april's a small woman. she's likely going to be looking up at most of my characters 
i'm working on a bigger thingy now, i figure i'd drop the working sketch in here to give you an idea of what i'm aiming for. its pretty close to what i wanted. i doubt i'm going to "nail it" as well as any professional artist could, but if its clean and the color doesn't suck then i'm going to be happy.
sg vs phoenix sketch
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 6/20/2005 3:15:00 PM | HydraIRC
wow. above and beyond mIRC, the only thing left (in my mind) is to give the beast scripting capabilities. i tried to change my name across the 4 servers i had open, and had to do it manually. no aliases, no scripting. but its on the todo list, i just gotta wait a bit. oh wells
Gameboy Hardware Specs
i'm using only one source as a reference here, but who cares. it can't be far off. original gameboy specs (what i'm aiming this game at) says:
CPU type: Z80 8-bit CMOS
CPU speed: 4.19 Mhz
RAM memory: 64 Kbit (8 Kbyte)
Max resolution: 160 x 144 pixels
Colors Available: 4 colors (greyscale)
Max colors at once: 4 colors
Max sprite size: 8 x 16 pixel or 8 x 8 pixels (switchable)
Max sprites: 40 sprites
Min/Max Cart Size: 256 Kbit - 16 Mbit
Sound: 4 Channel
i'm going to have to do a bit of magic to push some of these numbers, but i don't see this game really needing much more than that. the 4 color part was the real Q i had, i already knew the res. i suppose knowing that the cpu runs at 4mhz and that i've got about 8kb ram to work with is good. 
[EDIT: holy shitballs! way better info here!]
Dragon Warrior
(typical game run)
we left off at garinham. we visited here for the first time, and now all we can do is wander around and get stronger until we stumble upon kol. i wonder why we're not told about it? well, they mention that the princess was taken east in garinham, so maybe thats indication enough. tell them to go east, but make them explore on their own.
- desert cave -
a trivial maze with two floors awaits. no monsters bother the player in here. when you get to the 'end' of the maze, a tablet is found, and you read it. it tells about 3 items guarded by 3 people, and you need these three things to get to charlock. on a side note, just one torch is all you need to go all the way in and out of the desert cave, even if you go the wrong way every time. i'm going to need to figure out the torch regression speed sometime.
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| draw draw draw | 
Posted - 6/16/2005 10:47:23 PM | THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM THE WASHU
washu's journal
^_^
[EDIT: blarg. i started at too low a res to do this nicer. gotta up the starting frame sizes]
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| un-draw night .. again | 
Posted - 6/16/2005 12:34:22 AM | err, i drawed agains~
noogie
but you guys didn't understand wtf was going on. so i did a quick bucket fill:
noogie (colored)
seeing what gabe was doing in his 'tutorial' wmv (found it on the forums over at penny-arcade), i tried to make a cleaner image. turned out pretty clean this time! i didn't think to just trace it on another layer. i could probably use yet more layers to color this beast even nicer, but the image wasn't worth doing any real work on.
just a quickie for Mysty! LOLLERSKATES
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| un- draw night | |
Posted - 6/15/2005 10:19:51 PM | no phoenix around again. still! i wants to draw.
tentacled washu
getting better at cleaning up, but i need to figure out how to do whatever webcomic artists do to make my lines cleaner. i think gabe's got some program that makes your image a series of vectors or something.. i'll research that someday.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 6/14/2005 9:29:27 PM | Dragon Warrior
(player death)
the only reasonable thing i can come up with is divine intervention. we don't have to deal with the gods at all, we can just have a vertical blast of light and some sparkles, and have the player's corpse relocated at full hp/mp in front of the king. (perhaps in front of the castle instead?) if you're back in the throne room, you get admonished as before, but the king might instead talk about the gods' will and whatnot. "dont waste this chance to drive evil from the land" or whatever. probably might say something about how you and erdrick are descended from god or something.. i'd hate to change the player into an angel, but i could see people revering you.
if i was going to remove the player from that, i'd probably rather stick him in front of the castle gates (spire of light again) at 0 hp, and the castle guards could take you in and the king could have a priest revive you at the cost of half your gold. we'd probably want to let this get skipped with (start) and get straight to the admonishment. we don't need any talk about gods or whatever in this scenario. i think i like it better.
why the king would put so much faith in you, over seasoned guards, is something i have to explain to myself (and likely my players). there's got to be some indication the king is relying on that you are - perhaps a likeness to your ancestors? i read over at www.dragon-warrior.com among other poor 'explanations of things not explained' that you don't have to find Erdrick's Helmet, because you start the game with it - seems somewhat plausible. is it important? heck no.
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| Untitled | |
Posted - 6/14/2005 4:24:44 PM | oh teh boredom. draw draw!
yeah i'm a paint program n00b and dont know enough about 'em to pass a class yet. but i can draws a little! (trying to draw glasses on the punk was a b1tch! no eyewear for you~)
[EDIT: wanted the (...) speech balloon originally, didn't want to fight anymore. i got it in now!]
[EDIT #2: fyi, stole the idea from MegaTokyo's capture the bear shirts. spawned from #gd chat..
3:31pm) <@muer> cut it out
3:31pm) * Mushu cuts it out
3:32pm) <Mushu> ph34r teh muer
3:33pm) <SteelGolem> ph34r teh cut3 mu3r
3:33pm) * SteelGolem spills some bullets at mu3r's feet and takes a pic
3:33pm) <@Superpig> hahaha
3:33pm) <@Superpig> muer-b4k4 :D
--sg!]
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 6/13/2005 1:12:44 AM | Dragon Warrior
(graphics rules)
time to set down some more rules. these are going to govorn graphics.
as i've already stated, i'm aiming at a gmb style graphics engine: real low. that means i'll have a 10x16 x 9x16 = 160x144 sized output. this is either 10x9 tiles (16x16) or 20x18 tiles (8x8). lessons learned from games i've played tell me that the average sprite size should be 16x16. larger monsters can be 32x32, but they usually left that size to bosses.
games also tend to group maps into the 16x16 grid, but often you'll see exceptions where its obvious they're doing an 8x8 but aesthetically its 16x16. its easier to make a 16x16 stamp to use over and over than to do it manually, tile by tile.
there isn't any transparency unless you make a sprite blink on and off really fast - but its cheap and it doesn't really work that well. its best to just avoid that altogether.
(typical run of the game)
lets take a good look at what you can do, right from the beginning of the game, so we can set a similar pace in this one.
- new game -
at the start of a new game, we're in the throne room. there's three chests (120G, torch, key), and people tell you: about the princess' capture, how keys work, go to brecconary and buy weapons and armor, and about getting hp back at inns.
- tantagel 1f -
going downstairs, we come to the main floor of tantagel. we are told: talk to king to save, about a town that was wiped out, and to fight monsters to gain exp and levels. several doors bar access to half the castle. we can talk to the old guy that restores MP but its useless when we don't have any spells to cast.
- brecconary -
setting foot outside, we see brecconary and enter it. a woman tells you to talk to the armorer over the counter, teaching us about that. the armorer has: Bamboo Pole, Club, Copper Sword, Cloth Armor, Leather Armor, and Leather Shield. townsfolk tell us: crossing bridges and moving further leads to stronger monsters, poison bogs are bad, walk under roofing to go inside, about charlock castle being just south of tantagel, garin's harp in his grave, that you can buy keys in a town, that you can have a curse lifted there, where garinham is relative to brecconary, need loto seal as proof of bloodline. a girl follows you around town - probably a test for later games & multichar parties.
um, i bought a club and the cloth armor. equipping the club changes the player sprite so you can see that its equipped. from what the player has learned so far, we probably want to travel northwest to garinham to check it out. we can't get there at level 1, we get beat up before we hit it, so we have to spend some time levelling up and making some cash for the better weapons and armor at the shop.
- first grind -
getting to level 2 was quick - our health doesn't change to reflect that though. thats something we'll have to change: when your maxHP changes, your current HP will be factored so that you'll still have roughly the same %HP you had before the change. you're going to lose hp enough as it is, they shouldn't penalize you for levelling up.
i tended to stick to the forest and hill areas to find monsters, they don't seem to show as often in the open field - thats a good thing to keep in mind when i get to figuring out when monsters will attack.
- noticing desert cave -
at level 3, after sleeping at the inn (or tantagel's heal/mp-wiz recovery ^_^) and purchasing some better equipment, we should be good to head to garinham. on the way there, we might pass by the desert cave, and if we go in, its dark and scary, so we'll just keep looking for garinham first.
- garinham -
at garinham, we find our weapon shop sells: Club, Copper Sword, Iron Axe, Leather Armor, Chain Mail, and Iron Shield. the item shop sells: herb, torch, dragon scale. townsfolk tell you: about desert cave, princess was taken east, how town named after garin. half the town is behind a door, so we don't have much else to do here. its odd that noone tells you about kol or that you need to use a torch (and that it goes out eventually). gonna need to give that info out before you set foot in the cave in our version.
now we can wander around and explore the land some more, level up and buy better equipment, or go to the cave. exploring the land only takes us to bridges, and near bridges are stronger monsters. south of garinham is pretty dangerous, we should probably teach the player that staying near town while grinding is probably a good idea until the monsters near the town are easy to kill. i suppose we could leave that up to the player to discover..
(player death)
.. leading me to another topic i haven't yet thought about. what happens when you die? they half your gold and restore your hp/mp, placing you in front of the king for a scripted event of him scolding you. i've actually used this tactic as a way of getting back to save when i spent all my money. i don't think you get anything special for running the game without dying, i could give it a shot sometime, i guess. not important though.
i really don't like the idea of having the king (of all people) revive you. why would he do that for you and none of his other servants? is he out in the field among the bushes, waiting for you to die so he can steal half your gold and then revive you? in later games, clerics would revive your downed members, but you had to drag their sorry asses to the church to get them raised from the dead.
in the ff games, if you died, you'd get booted to the splash screen and you'd be forced to load your last savegame. thats pretty gay. in zelda:la, if you died, you'd go to the continue/quit screen and if you continued, you'd be put at the last door you passed through, and resets the area you were in. doesn't seem 'great'.
without the intervention of the gods, there's just no reasonable way for your dead corpse to suddenly appear in front of the king. perhaps if there was a cleric or something, in the throne room (for the death event), that performed the ceremony.. half your gold would go to the cleric for services rendered, perhaps.. or the shiny coins were stolen by the monster that killed you, or your moneybag was struck during the battle. whatever, i guess. its the resurrection and corpse translocation that's bugging me. i'll have to think about this more.
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| Action RPG | |
Posted - 6/9/2005 9:10:08 PM | Dragon Warrior
did some concept sketches on my 20min break at work on some attacks our lovely little scorpion could do. i just played some Tales of Symphonia, and their scorps spit poison or acid. probably not going to do that. depends on whether my 3 scorps are different enough or not. if any of them spit, it'll definitely be the rogue scorp, spitting attacks would probably be reserved for the toughest ones.
anyways, here's a scan:
ok, so i'm thinking i need a more rigorous method for getting this done. just stabbing at it isn't getting me anywhere very fast, i need to set all my goals down in something kinda hard (stone?) and figure out what 100% actually is. as with any project, there's gonna be room to move a bit, but i need to know exactly what has to be done.
lets start with the most encompassing sections first.
1. action
2. inventory
the initial startup, the game-select, and the exit stuff is all unimportant and can be investigated after the meat (above) is ready to roll.
now what do i have to do about each section?
1. action
>> 1. player
>> 2. monster
>> 3. effect
>> 4. npc
>> 5. events
2. subscreens
>> 1. inventory
>> 2. status
>> 3. spells
>> 4. merchants
>> 5. system
i'm really writing it up quick, i don't really know about where some things should go or whether we should have 'em at all or what. just stabbing in the dark. i'm going to work on a spec doc of sorts, so i can arrange everything eventually. so much to do.. :(
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| Draw Night | 
Posted - 6/5/2005 2:36:56 AM | here's a bunch of foolishness i drew in #gamedev with Phoenix and Myst.
myst got up to go 'distract' pheonix from whatever he was doing for me, and the kitty got up on her chair and she got distracted. seemed like a great chibi idea. unfortunately, it was also just a warm up sketch and it didn't turn out worth doing.
i was constantly having my mind drop into the gutter and mysty threatened to jam cotton swabs into my head to clean my dirty mind.. after so many threats, i had to make this one up. again, a warmup and not worth putting any extra work into.
heh. phoenix needed 'distracting' from his call to MS about his xbox's broken HDD. while she wasn't distracting him, i figured i'd draw something to pass the time, and this is what spilled onto my tablet. not terrible, but again, not worth taking any time to work with it.
my pen was warmed up, but i didn't have any topics to draw. WoW took phoe and mysty and i was screwed for the night. KenVsTrent.jpg >> Phoenix vs Mittens.. should probably start captioning these things.
[EDIT: err, the mittens were supposed to have a string attaching them together, in case you're wondering what that mess is all about -- SG]
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