Legacy roadmap

Hiya, just a quick bit on my development roadmap for Legacy. I've got some of the things working, but would like to ask about the feasibility of some of the things I've got planned.

• Zone-based dynamic lighting - Working for the most part, still a few kinks to work out, but otherwise working.
  
• Dithered fading walk-unders - Working perfectly now. Implemented for ship sails and some walls in dungeons.
  
• Zone-based sound effects - This is for things like fire crackles, or water flowing sounds. This will probably be fairly easy to implement, though I haven't started on it yet.
  
• Crafting system - This would involve combining certain items. I plan to have certain enemies randomly drop things that can be combined with other items to improve their power. I was planning on using a clever combination of menus and text boxes to do this, but I was wondering about how feasible this would actually be. I eventually plan to have a large list of recipes ala Diablo II's Horadric Cube.
  
• Text parsing based dialogue - Something similar to pre Ultima VII games. Where when talking to people, rather than selecting dialogue options, you type a keyword of what you want to say. The infamous Name, Job, Bye sequence. Barring this, a tree-based dialogue option instead. This is a long-term goal though, nothing I plan on doing in the immediate future.
  
• NPC Line of sight - This would be used for detecting the hero in certain situations like trying to escape from guards, or when trying to be stealthy. I believe I saw an existing script for this, so I doubt it would very difficult to write my own so long as I study the existing script some.
  
• Randomized level-based treasures - This works perfectly now. Took some tinkering, but it works fine now. Certain items are more likely to appear at certain levels, so at low levels there's very little chance to get a very powerful item. Of course, it's possible, but you'd have to be really lucky. Later on, at higher levels, there's a higher probability of getting better items.
  
• Dynamic economy - Prices would vary depending on how many things have been sold or bought already. This isn't really essential, but I thought it would add some flavor to the game.
  
• Day/Night system - Planning on changing graphics depending on the time of day. I want to affect NPC schedules as well, along with store schedules, guard positions, etc...
  
• Zone-based lighting - This kinda works, though not perfectly. Depending on where the player is standing, I tweak the palette to make everything either darker or brighter to simulate walking in and out of shadows. It only just barely works, but with a bit more tweaking I believe I can get it working well enough.
  
• Hunger/Thirst - Haven't started work on this yet, but it's next on the roadmap. This might be a bit complicated to do, I believe I'd need to do the day/night system first. Also, depending on how I implement this, might wind up being too annoying for the player though.
  

How's this list sound so far? Would any of these things be too ridiculously complicated to implement? Or is this list reasonable? Some of the things are working already, but not all. Some are working, but slightly broken. Legacy is only at v0.1.0, and I plan on doing an alpha release soon as I hit v0.3.0 or so. Prolly another couple months or so of development I suppose.

Anywho, cheers! And thanks ahead of time for any advice!

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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I think I've seen most, if not all of these done on the OHR before. For the day/night cycle you can check out Sword of Jade, probably the most famous example of that on the OHR.

The crafting system is very feasible. I was working on one for First Fantasy last summer, and had most of the kinks worked out. There just wasn't enough content for it to be released with the demo. It used a lot of menus and textboxes, too, probably very similar to what you're thinking of. I'm pretty sure Motrya had a crafting system, too, but I may be wrong (been awhile since I played it).

All of the zone-based stuff should work, but idk how effective the zone-based lighting will be. Check out James's "Bob the Hamster and the Crypt of Baconthulu," I remember there being a lot fog-of-war type stuff done there.

The one that may be difficult to do would be the dynamic economy, I think. I seem to remember one game that tried that, but I can't recall which game that was.

Also, something you could probably do for the hunger/thirst script is somehow base it on the player's playtime. Maybe take points away from either a global variable called 'hunger' or replace the ctr stat and have it take points away from that. If you figure out a good mathematical system for it, I think you should be able to get it to work.

Some of my examples may not be the best ones, but I'm sure some older members will have some good ones.

It'd be awesome if you pull this off, and I'll really look forward to it. I've been waiting a while for someone to add some of these to their game. Interesting to see that you're considering Ultima style NPC interaction; pretty rare choice.

Afraid I don't have any advice. The list is reasonable, though ambitious, if you're competent enough. Chronoboy Adventure(s?) seems to be the only OHR game with comparable ambitions.

I've been working to include dynamic economy in two of my games, and it's the main reason why I still want shops to become part of plotscripting sometime in the near future.

I've found that the best way to create a dynamic economy is to first set a GNP for the game world to a global variable, and then change the value any time you talk to a shopkeeper or add something to your inventory (as opposed to actually buying something from the shop, which you can't check for in plotscripting yet), or any time you send a random NPC into a shop (which you may want to do if you want to also include a "living" town, which I'd recommend you add to your "Do" list). Whenever that number is affected, change the type of shop that the shopkeeper opens for you to reflect the new list of modified prices. Normally, it would be better to wait for plotscripting to have the capability of changing the prices internally so that you never have to make more than one version of a single shop. But that hasn't happened yet, so you'll have to make copies of the same shop that feature altered prices. If you set a percentage range for your GNP, like 5% change below the original GNP might raise prices by $10 each, or 5% above will lower prices by $10, and so on, then it'll be easier to decide which copy of the shop is called when you talk to the shopkeeper.

Option #2, which I've done for Entrepreneur: The Beginning, is to create your own shop style from scratch. I can show you how I created my shops if you're interested, but my shops are scripting-permitted.

Sounds like you've got some neat features going into this game all around, though.

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Not exactly true. I'm pretty sure you can have shops set a tag on when you buy something, and you can also check the inventory before and after each shop visit (or even just the player's money total).

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Hmm, with all the things I'm considering, it seems like a very real possibility that I'll run out of tags.

For now, I think I'll have to put Ultima-style dialogue on hold, as I think that might use up the most number of tags, what with all the dialogue I have.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'll be back soon with updates on my progress, cheers!

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

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Well, yeah, I thought I sort of implied the inventory check with part of my answer. Checking the money values before and after visiting a shop is probably the better method, though. Good suggestion.



I wouldn't worry about that. On the tag front I've had the developers on high alert for a long time now, with two of my games well above 700 tags in use and counting, with no chance of me finishing either game at under 1000 tags used. They know an increase is needed and TMC has promised me to increase them the moment they're needed. If you reach 1000 first, even better; then I won't have to bug him about it anymore.

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Instead of spamming new topics, I'll keep all my Legacy-related posts here, unless it's something really specific that others might benefit from.

Anywho, I've pretty much finished mapping out the forest near the first village. Rather than make one ginormous forest map, I decided instead to make a few (heh... "few" he says...) smaller maps and then link them together with doors. I think I may have gone a bit overboard here...

Alkar Forest

Starting location is map A (my 12th map) and the player nees to get to map R (my 29th map). It's supposed to be big and maze-like enough that the player actually can get lost, but still small enough to be navigate-able.

So, what's everyone think? Any critique or criticisms or insults or whatever will be much appreciated.

Cheers!

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

Using Editor version wip 20170527 gfx_sdl+fb music_sdl

Wow, lots of hours to spent there. How difficult it is to navigate depends on how much help/hints you give the player. Can you see minimaps for individual pieces? Any kind of in-game map or signposts? I think having several identical maps is going too far if there are battles on these maps, because then you really will be lost for hours and hours.

Well, haven't posted in this thread for a while.



No, the player can't see minimaps. I was actually inspired to make it this complicated after getting really frustrated with this one part in Tales of Phantasia where you have to get through this battlefield, can't remember the name off the top of my head.




There are no in-game signposts or anything, but there is an NPC in town who will give you the correct directions. Of course, it's possible to get through without talking to the NPC, but it'll be rather difficult.

I've spruced the forests up a bit more, to make them more distinct from each other. That way, it'll be a bit easier to navigate.




Anywho, on to the next item on the list: Menu-based conversation

So, I've gotten this working for the most part. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, but I did run into a problem.



That's how all conversations work. It's basically a custom menu with text-boxes attached to each item. Certain items only appear after triggering other events. For example, that last item there, "Quentin" only appears after you've talked to Quentin. Unfortunately, this eats up quite a few tags, but I'll tackle that problem when I get there.

My problem right now though, is that I can't figure out how to link text boxes using this system.

The situation I have is this: When the player selects "Quentin", this opens up another dialogue option: "Quentin? But he's an a**hole!" in reaction to Sandra (The lady with a green tattoo on her face) saying that she likes him [text box 475]. After saying that Quentin is what he is, this brings up another text box [476] with Sandra saying that she thinks that Quentin is just acting like that.

The text box then checks if the player has a character, Jaina (purple tights, long blonde hair) is in the party. If she is, the text box links to another text box [477] with Jaina saying that she thinks Sandra is insane.

My problem is, I need to advance text box 476 to 477, the player needs to press Enter or something. Thing is, because the player is currently in a menu, this doesn't work. How do I go about advancing from 476 to 477 using my current conversation system? I guess I could add a script to the text box that would auto-advance it, but I'd rather it advance when the player hits a key.

Hmm... I hope that I actually explained that clearly enough...

Oh, and the portrait I'm using is just a placeholder. I've been using this to create temporary portraits for all my characters. I didn't want to use it, but I haven't been able to draw anything adequate yet. With luck, I'll manage to replace all the portraits with original drawings before the first beta release.

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

Using Editor version wip 20170527 gfx_sdl+fb music_sdl

Well, today was rather productive. Here's an update on what I've gotten working so far:

Day/Night Cycles

Working almost perfectly now. Currently, the maps darken or lighten depending on the hour (stored as global). There are 24 different variations (for the 24 different hours, duh) of shading. The problem I have, is that UI colors also change. I'm going to do a comprehensive reworking of my palette, so I can reserve colors 200-255 for the UI and perhaps sprites. That way, I can tweak the palette without making it difficult for the player to read menus and stuff.


NPC Schedules

Working perfectly now. Depending on the hour, NPCs will be at different locations and will have different text boxes. For example, at 0800, an NPC could be working at the docks and he'll tell you to get lost because he's busy. At 1200 though, he'll be at the pub and be more willing to talk to you. At 2100, he'll probably be in bed, sleeping, and you won't be able to talk to him. Granted, the door will be locked, but if you could get in, he wouldn't speak to you.

NPCs will also be, at times, restricted to certain zones depending on the hour. A baker could, for example, only move around in the kitchen from 0600-0800, but then be stationed at the store front from 0800-1200. I'm still figuring out how to add cool animations to them, to make them look like their rolling dough, or hammering a sword, or whatever. Possibly in my next update, I'll have that working.

Weather Effects

So I went and forced myself to wrap my head around slices. Actually pretty spiffy now that I have a working knowledge of how they work. Using slices and walkabout sprite graphics, I've made rain effects. Nothing fancy, just lines moving diagonally across the screen in a random pattern.

The speed at which the rain falls, the density of the rain, and how long the rain lasts, is all dependent on the map. Different maps have different percentage chances of raining, or lightning-ing, or storm-ing, or whatever-ing. I'm a bit worried about memory consumption with this one, but I suppose I'll just have to put it through its paces and see how well it performs.

Non-Caterpillar Following Party Members

I didn't particularly like how silly my companions looked following me everywhere in a straight line. Now, I have three NPCs set to "Chase You" instead. They are generally the same speed as the player, so it's possible to outrun them. To counter that, I have a script that checks with each step just how far away each companion is. When they get too far, that particular NPC instance is destroyed and a new one is generated closer to the player, that way, you won't (theoretically) lose any companions.

Problem is, sometimes the script generates them inside walls, or in places where the player shouldn't be able to get. Just a little bit more tweaking I suppose, and this will work better.

Oh, and so they don't look silly just milling about the player while he's standing around doing nothing, I also have a script that checks if the companions are within a certain distance. When they get within that distance, they stop walking and will, like the player, stand around doing absolutely nothing.

Gossip

All NPCs have a pool of different things that they can say when queried about "Rumors" or "Gossip". What is said is randomly chosen, though the time of day could affect what is said. An NPC could, for example, be more open to saying certain things while relaxing in the pub than when he's working at the docks. Generally, these blurbs are just flavor, and don't really have any gameplay value. But it's possible to unlock some side-quests if the player gets the right rumor. These are all randomly chosen, and are optional, but they are fun. So far, I've got a couple of side-quests prompted by rumors in the works, though neither are finished yet.




Anywho, that's all from me for now, cheers!

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Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.

Using Editor version wip 20170527 gfx_sdl+fb music_sdl

This thing blows my game right out of the water...

Full 24 Hour Clock Changes? I only went with four different times of change based on a twelve minute in game clock, each change at three minutes. This makes my little system look...meh.

NPC Scheduling? Like Majora's Mask? I loved how that game worked! Hopefully you'll pull it off the same as well.

Weather effects are cool as well. Although, I commend you on reading up about slices. I personally hate slices, because it's just too much for me to wrap my head around.

Non-Linear Party Members are very interesting.

Gossip is pretty interesting.

I love that portrait

Oh! I thought they were that way intentionally because you were being evil.

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For textbox linking, just pause your menu loop by running another script containing waits. If you're using timers, use a tag or something to pause the menu. I would put linking and other metadata in a hidden line of each textbox.

Do NPCs walk from one location to another when the time of day changes? OK admitedly this would be very difficult to pull off; I wanted this for Eldardeen but it was too daunting at the time.

I'm also very happy to hear about the caterpillar party! I really dislike caterpillar parties; it seems like there's no way to avoid everyone walking over everyone else.



Yeah, really too bad.

I would also like to give a HUGE thumbs up to the NPC schedules, although if they are NOT walking from location to location at the turning of the hour, and you have the day separated into 24 hours, this will probably seem pretty weird. The gossip idea is great too.

However, I'll be the one to speak out against the portrait. What is that thing on the side of her face? At first I thought it was her ear (and was gonna say that doesn't look right), and then realized that her ear is clearly further back (and also doesn't really look right). Is it an incredibly defined cheek bone? If so, it creates more shading than even her ear, which is bizarre. Is it face paint? If so, I think you ought to lighten the dark lines, and maybe add eyeshadow (it would help me recognize that she is ornamental, so maybe an earring too). This is all just my opinion, of course.

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I am Srime