OHRRPGCE feature requests/suggestions

[sheamkennedy]

Make in-game maps cooler than they are now.

I don't know a lot about how the editor draws the mini-map or how this process could be improved but I do think it would be cool to either have an option to export mini-map (so I could edit it elsewhere) or have a mini-map editor in the engine which allows the user to bring their own creative flair to the map (this would be nice since the user could use the generated mini-map as a template to trace over).

[Foxley]

Something that's always bothered me about the minimap (which I think is nearly as old as the engine itself by now) is how a repeated tile can vary considerably in the color of each pixel on the minimap. I believe it takes a random pixel from the 20x20 and uses that to represent the tile, but randomizes it for each tile.

It might look better if the tile were to get an average, or at least get the most common color, and consistently use that color for each pixel representing that tile. No idea how feasible that would be, though.

[sheamkennedy]

It might look better if the tile were to get an average, or at least get the most common color, and consistently use that color for each pixel representing that tile. No idea how feasible that would be, though.

Yeah something like that might make the maps look a bit cleaner.

Another point regarding having a mini-map graphics editor would also be that you could add in extra elements to the map like ancient looking symbols, scratch/scorch marks, town name in fancy text, etc...

[RMZ]

Not sure best place to report this, so doing so here...

I tried to use the nightly maybe Sunday/Monday and for some reason it renamed all of my slices in my slice collections. I also can't confirm this since I didn't save anything in that version, but it seems like the command "play sound (sound,true)" isn't working the same anymore. It's playing the sound once and cutting off. Did something change with that?

[Bob the Hamster]

Can you post a screenshot of the slice editor? By "rename" do you mean it changed the lookup codes?

I have tested play sound in the recent nighties. When you say it was not working do you mean it made no sound? Or the sound was looping ?

Which nightly did you download?

[TMC]

I agree, minimaps do look pretty bad. It's something I was actually close to changing recently as I did some work on image scaling and manipulation.
Yes, each pixel of the minimap is taken from one pixel of the map. It does handle layer occlusion correctly though (aside from erroneously drawing hidden layers and ignoring parallax effects).
Just using the same random pixel every time for a tile wouldn't look grainy, but could also look quite wrong; maybe better overall.
If you just scaled down the tilesets and then rendered each of the map layers with them, you get a (somewhat) wrong result due to occlusion (parts of a tile being hidden by other map layers), and you would need to work with 32 bit images and support fractional alpha transparency to blend together the layers... we do already have that though, so it's feasible. I think we need faster conversion back to 8-bit colour; something else I nearly started on recently.

Using the most common colour in a tile is a good suggestion. It can be done efficiently without counting every colour. But that doesn't solve any problems with map layers.

Store the strings as text slices. I agree though.

Well, the number of strings could be increased. I increased them from 32 to 100 due to previous complaints. But where's the end? Is 256 is enough? Once we get the new script interpreter, the existing string system will be obsolete, but that's still a way off.

I would like to see more (small!) animations in CUSTOM (not in such a way as to detract from the screen of course, just to give a visual indication that something is happening, working, etc.,) such as loading icons

I actually started on such an animation for fun recently. Got distracted.

A lot of your other requests, like larger attack animations are part of the plan already.
Keys to switch to a neighbouring tile would be nice. (But it would erase the undo history; not nice.)

The sprite editor needs the ability to zoom and pan so that it can edit arbitrarily-sized graphics. I see a lot of requests that are suggested workarounds for the actual thing missing from the editor.

Text import needs to (or should) implement word wrapping on import, now that textboxes can internally accept it when writing in the editor. This will make creating templates for textboxes in various word processors easier.

Reply copied from email:
I'm not actually sure how that should work. The obvious way to do it would mean that if you were sticking to 40 characters a line, if you accidentally placed 41 on a line then just that line would be wrapped, without warning. Maybe there would have to be a way to indicate which textboxes you want to be wrapped, and which you don't.

Auto re-wrapping is another possibility, but it would destroy any indentation or paragraph starts (if you sadly put multiple paragraphs/speakers in the same textbox)

Just a simple one: Can you add bitsets to enemies to make them immune to attacks that affect the status registers?

Seems like a special case of "immune to attacks targeting stat X". But, should it really be immunity (takes 0 damage) rather than failure?

[Bob the Hamster]

Just a simple one: Can you add bitsets to enemies to make them immune to attacks that affect the status registers?

The easiest way to implement this currently, is to name an elemental for each status effect.

Make sure that all your stun/poison attacks have the appropriate elemental bit turned on, and then you can make enemies immune to those elements

It is not as easy as your suggestion, but it does work now.

[The Wobbler]

Thinking about getting creative with MP, would it be possible to add an option so that a spell costs a percentage of your MP rather than a set amount? So I could do an attack that's basically "Trade all of your remaining MP for a big hit." I could easily set that up with chained attacks where a follow up sets your MP to zero, but it would look weird to the player when they're selecting a spell.

[TMC]

I started adding an additional generic attack stat cost setting not long ago (I get distracted halfway through even a small change), so I guess I could go further and add that. I wonder whether to make it in addition to, or instead of, the fixed costs. (E.g. 5 + 10% MP cost)

[marionline]

Uhm... maybe it was not clever to try to put an NPC on every the trees on the map just to run a script if the player 'talks' to a tree... but would it be possible to increase the NPC limit per map?

[BMR]

Might be easier to have an on-keypress script, and when the spacebar (for example) is pressed, have it check what tile is directly in front of the player using "read map block". Then, based on that, have it call the textbox (or script, or whatever) that you have attached to the npcs.

[Bob the Hamster]

Here is how I would do it.

Use this as your on-keypress script for the map. Remove all the NPCs, and mark all your trees with zone 1

Code: Select all

plotscript, on keypress handler, begin
  variable(x, y, d)
  d := hero direction(me)
  x := ahead x(hero x(me), d)
  y := ahead y(hero y(me), d)
  if&#40;x >= 0 && x < map width && y >= 0 && y < map height&#41; then&#40;
    if&#40;read zone&#40;1, x, y&#41;&#41; then&#40;
      # This is a tree!
      show text box&#40;123&#41;
      wait for text box
    &#41;
  &#41;
end

script, ahead x, x, d, dist=1, begin
  switch&#40;d&#41; do&#40;
    case&#40;left&#41; exit returning&#40;x -- dist&#41;
    case&#40;right&#41; exit returning&#40;x + dist&#41;
  &#41;
  exit returning&#40;x&#41;
end

script, ahead y, y, d, dist=1, begin
  switch&#40;d&#41; do&#40;
    case&#40;up&#41; exit returning&#40;y -- dist&#41;
    case&#40;down&#41; exit returning&#40;y + dist&#41;
  &#41;
  exit returning&#40;y&#41;
end

You could also easily extend this script, for example, having two different zones for two different kinds of trees, or additional zones for marking lakes, rocks, whatever.

[TMC]

James' script is missing one thing: you should check whether a use key is pressed in the key handler:

Code: Select all

if (keyval(key:space) > 1 || keyval(key:enter) > 1 || keyval(key:ctrl) > 1) then (...

(Using keyval instead of keyispressed prevents the controls from being too sensitive)

Increasing the NPC limit is of course planned, but some work (a new file format) has to happen first.

[marionline]

Thanks a lot for the script!

[SwordPlay]

I'd like to be able to see where the centre of a sprite is, and having a canvas subdivided into blocks (1/2, 1/4, 1/8 etc.,) would be really handy.

Ideally, it would be full line for major divisions, and increasingly broken/thin lines for subdivisions, and one option would cycle through showing divisions, and another would toggle them on/off altogether.

What do you guys think?
You could have blocks broken up into squares of 10 as well, but it'd be a bit weird with sprites not cleanly divisible by 10

Still, I think it would mostly be useful when drawing tiles and walkabouts.
I think it would help a lot when designing tiling effects as well, and hopefully will give artists an extra tool to lend consistency/proportion to their efforts.

Please add toggle-able pixel grid overlays to the sprite editor, if you get a chance.

On this note, you could also outline sprites against transparency. It would help when you have colours nearly matching the transparent colour that are difficult to distinguish with the eyes.

Please don't make any line-effect ugly. It would need to be versatile to suit differently coloured sprites of varying brightness.
It would be nice to be able to toggle the line intensity/colour (bright/dark/transparent) for visibility purposes, such as against light/dark backgrounds.