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It's a tattoo. I thought that was pretty clear.
Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks
Thu May 24, 2012 10:27 pm 
Fri May 25, 2012 2:34 am
Master K wrote:
NPC Scheduling? Like Majora's Mask? I loved how that game worked! Hopefully you'll pull it off the same as well.
I've never played that actually, hehe. But if it works anything like NPC schedules in Ultima VII, then yes, I hope I can pull it off just as well.
Spoonweaver wrote:
I love that portrait
Sadly, so do I. I love all the portraits that I got from the generator I've been using, but I have no idea what the license is, if it's public domain, creative commons whatever, copyrighted, etc... If I can find a comparable generator that explicitly provides what kind of license it's under, I'll prolly switch to that. Otherwise, I'll just have to learn to draw I guess, hehe.
TMC wrote:
For textbox linking, just pause your menu loop by running another script containing waits.
Not quite sure I understand that, hehe. Or perhaps I'm just not thinking clearly. The menus aren't scripted, I'm using the built-in custom menus and filling them with items based on what I want the dialogue to have. On the other hand, I'm probably not thinking clearly and I'm just confused about how menus work, hehehe.
TMC wrote:
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.
Not yet... Though I do plan on attempting to implement this. I also want the NPCs to do more than just wandering around. For each NPC, I'll probably create another sprite set that I can use to show what action they're doing. Blacksmiths would have a hammering animation, for example. And I'd use slices (or something) to alternate the animations. Once I've gotten that working, I'll move on to having them walk to different places based on their schedule. I'm actually thinking of reading up on different methods of path-finding, and see how feasible it would be to implement a path-finding script that would work both on NPCs and companions that are following.
msw188 wrote:
What is that thing on the side of her face?
Yup, Mogri is right, that's a tattoo. But for the portraits, I'm not going to be keeping the ones I'm using. They're mostly placeholders, so I'm not spending a lot of time on really detailed portraits. The final portraits will have the same character designs, but I'll probably have more variety (i.e. not all facing the same way) and be more detailed.
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
Fri May 25, 2012 3:52 am
Hey BMR, I'm not sure how many NPC ideas you've got worked out, but I did write an article for HamsterSpeak a few years ago that may help you figure out your movement needs and NPC functions. It breaks down 25 NPC types, including the complex ones you're trying to create, and gives you information on how to make them. I've also got a couple of sample videos on my Castle Paradox journal page if you want to see some complex NPCs in action. In one of the videos you can watch an interactive NPC playing pool, complete with working billiards.
http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue22/index.html
Read "The Mighty Fine NPC."
Oh, and I'm responding to all of this to let you know that I'm really glad that you're doing more with NPCs than simple wandering and standstill types. I'm still disappointed that most people won't create complex townies.
Place Obligatory Signature Here
http://superwalrusland.com/ohr/issue22/index.html
Read "The Mighty Fine NPC."
Oh, and I'm responding to all of this to let you know that I'm really glad that you're doing more with NPCs than simple wandering and standstill types. I'm still disappointed that most people won't create complex townies.
Place Obligatory Signature Here
Fri May 25, 2012 4:26 am
Just finished reading through the article, quite a few rather interesting insights, along with some new ideas for me to implement, hehe.
I've been trying to figure out how to make a blacksmith who hammers a sword on an anvil (complete with sounds), stops to heat the sword in a fire, returns to the anvil, hammers on it some more, set aside the sword when it's done, and then pick up another sword to work on. I'm guessing it wouldn't be too different from Buck the pool-playing cowboy, but it is rather labor-intensive, hehe. Still, end result will be well worth it.
So far, Port Alkar (the first village the player gets to) has the following NPCs:
Quentin - The a**hole dockworker. He walks back and forth from a cart and a stack of crates, moving boxes. He works late into the nights, when the other people are sleeping, he can be found at the docks working. He's extremely intelligent, but also extremely bitter that he has to do manual labor because he's poor, even though he can see many ways to improve work at the docks.
Freddy - The slightly dim-witted but good-natured dockworker. He's stationed near the dock, going back and forth moving crates. He's easy-gong, and spends a lot of time at the pub. He goes with the flow, and is a traditionalist.
Sandra - The stranded noble, she can't get back to her manor because access to the nobles' district has been closed because of a murder. She's rather ditzy, and enjoys working with magical formulas. Later on in the game, the player can learn how to craft items from her. There is currently a side-quest to get her into a romance with Quentin, even though Quentin thinks that she's absolutely insane.
Ricardo - The homosexual ship-captain who sports a spanking cool porn-stache. He's stranded at Port Alkar until the blockades are lifted. Most of the day, he wanders near the ocean. Late at night though, after going to the pub, he can be founded milling about outside the pub. If the player is nearby, he'll follow the player and try to flirt with him. There's currently a side-quest to get him into a romance with Quentin, even though Quentin isn't interested in men.
Thems - The fat and lazy dockmaster, who sits on his bum the entire day loafing about. He can be found in his house, where he is either sitting and eating, reading a book, or playing darts (none have animations yet, though the scripts are mostly in place). A side-quest exists to have him replaced by either Quentin or Freddy. If Quentin replaces him, prices go up, but a greater variety of things become available (because of increased trade and higher demand). If Freddy replaces him, prices go down, but no new items become available (because of poor trade, and low demand despite growing stockpiles).
Emil - The apothecary. He's head-over-heels in love with Sandra, but thinks that because he's just a poor apothecary, he would never be able to get together with a noble like Sandra. If the player gets him together with Sandra, he'll sell more ingredients for crafting later on in the game. This, however, will prevent Quentin from becoming the new dockmaster, so there won't be as many high-level weapons and armor available.
In addition to this, I've also begun work on a system that checks how much different NPCs like the player. Each level is stored in a global variable, and different things are opened up (new gossip, side-quests, etc...) depending on how much the NPC likes the player. I have a similar system in place for companions, and as it's already working perfectly, it'll be a simple matter to convert it to work with NPCs as well.
There are also guards who wander the streets. The script I have now checks the time of day to see how many guards should be patrolling. During the day, there are fewer guards than at night. Right now, the guards follow a circuit along the roads on the map, so where they'll be is relatively predictable.
I'm also planning on adding background NPCs who don't have much to say, but spend their time working (e.g. moving crates, manning ships, repairing walls, etc...) though that will require quite a bit of sprite making, hehehe.
Anywho, I've rambled long enough, cheers!
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
I've been trying to figure out how to make a blacksmith who hammers a sword on an anvil (complete with sounds), stops to heat the sword in a fire, returns to the anvil, hammers on it some more, set aside the sword when it's done, and then pick up another sword to work on. I'm guessing it wouldn't be too different from Buck the pool-playing cowboy, but it is rather labor-intensive, hehe. Still, end result will be well worth it.
So far, Port Alkar (the first village the player gets to) has the following NPCs:
Quentin - The a**hole dockworker. He walks back and forth from a cart and a stack of crates, moving boxes. He works late into the nights, when the other people are sleeping, he can be found at the docks working. He's extremely intelligent, but also extremely bitter that he has to do manual labor because he's poor, even though he can see many ways to improve work at the docks.
Freddy - The slightly dim-witted but good-natured dockworker. He's stationed near the dock, going back and forth moving crates. He's easy-gong, and spends a lot of time at the pub. He goes with the flow, and is a traditionalist.
Sandra - The stranded noble, she can't get back to her manor because access to the nobles' district has been closed because of a murder. She's rather ditzy, and enjoys working with magical formulas. Later on in the game, the player can learn how to craft items from her. There is currently a side-quest to get her into a romance with Quentin, even though Quentin thinks that she's absolutely insane.
Ricardo - The homosexual ship-captain who sports a spanking cool porn-stache. He's stranded at Port Alkar until the blockades are lifted. Most of the day, he wanders near the ocean. Late at night though, after going to the pub, he can be founded milling about outside the pub. If the player is nearby, he'll follow the player and try to flirt with him. There's currently a side-quest to get him into a romance with Quentin, even though Quentin isn't interested in men.
Thems - The fat and lazy dockmaster, who sits on his bum the entire day loafing about. He can be found in his house, where he is either sitting and eating, reading a book, or playing darts (none have animations yet, though the scripts are mostly in place). A side-quest exists to have him replaced by either Quentin or Freddy. If Quentin replaces him, prices go up, but a greater variety of things become available (because of increased trade and higher demand). If Freddy replaces him, prices go down, but no new items become available (because of poor trade, and low demand despite growing stockpiles).
Emil - The apothecary. He's head-over-heels in love with Sandra, but thinks that because he's just a poor apothecary, he would never be able to get together with a noble like Sandra. If the player gets him together with Sandra, he'll sell more ingredients for crafting later on in the game. This, however, will prevent Quentin from becoming the new dockmaster, so there won't be as many high-level weapons and armor available.
In addition to this, I've also begun work on a system that checks how much different NPCs like the player. Each level is stored in a global variable, and different things are opened up (new gossip, side-quests, etc...) depending on how much the NPC likes the player. I have a similar system in place for companions, and as it's already working perfectly, it'll be a simple matter to convert it to work with NPCs as well.
There are also guards who wander the streets. The script I have now checks the time of day to see how many guards should be patrolling. During the day, there are fewer guards than at night. Right now, the guards follow a circuit along the roads on the map, so where they'll be is relatively predictable.
I'm also planning on adding background NPCs who don't have much to say, but spend their time working (e.g. moving crates, manning ships, repairing walls, etc...) though that will require quite a bit of sprite making, hehehe.
Anywho, I've rambled long enough, cheers!
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
Sat May 26, 2012 6:02 am
So, after going through Pepsi Ranger's articles and all, I decided to completely rework a bunch of my sprites. And because of the way I have my scripts structured (they were dependent on what number the sprites were) I've also gone and reworked most of sprites. I'm currently building an action system of sorts so I can just type something like:
Or something like that. Each of my commands, like npc use(npcref, direction) or npc shake head(npcref, duration) will be work based on sprite order. Each basic sprite will have 64 variations:
The last eight (57 to 64) are only for heroes. For normal NPCs, those are replaced with another series of Specials (like 41 to 48). Special sets are ones that can be unique to npcs, such as hammering a sword on an anvil, wiping a table, serving beer, etc...
I currently have a template (basically a naked sprite) for each of those. Whenever I create a new NPC, I create new layers and draw clothes, hair, whatever on it. Hair, hair embellishments, tops, pants, accessories, etc... are all stored on different layers, so for some NPCs, I can just mix and match different parts of different NPCs. Granted, it's cheating, and it may be a bit lazy, but with the number of NPCs I'm making, I think it may be justified in this case.
Sooo..... Now here comes the part where I ask for help... If I were to provide the XCF (GIMP) file and my master palette, would anyone feel like helping me make sprites?
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
Code:
npc use(npc:Quentin, north)
walk npc to X(npc:Quentin, newX)
walk npc to Y(npc:Quentin, newY)
npc use(npc:Quentin, south)
walk npc to X(npc:Quentin, oldX)
walk npc to Y(npc:Quentin, oldY)
npc use(npc:Quentin, north)
walk npc to X(npc:Quentin, newX)
walk npc to Y(npc:Quentin, newY)
npc use(npc:Quentin, south)
walk npc to X(npc:Quentin, oldX)
walk npc to Y(npc:Quentin, oldY)
Or something like that. Each of my commands, like npc use(npcref, direction) or npc shake head(npcref, duration) will be work based on sprite order. Each basic sprite will have 64 variations:
- North A
- North B
- East A
- East B
- South A
- South B
- West A
- West B
- Take North
- Use North
- Take East
- Use East
- Take South
- Use South
- Take West
- Use West
- North Look West
- North Look East
- East Look South
- East Look North
- South Look East
- South Look West
- West Look North
- West Look East
- North Look Up
- North Look Down
- East Look Up
- East Look Down
- South Look Up
- South Look Down
- West Look Up
- West Look Down
- Closed Eyes North
- Kneeling North
- Closed Eyes East
- Kneeling East
- Closed Eyes South
- Kneeling South
- Closed Eyes West
- Kneeling West
- Special North A
- Special North B
- Special East A
- Special East B
- Special South A
- Special South B
- Special West A
- Special West B
- Raise one arm North
- Raise both arms North
- Raise one arm East
- Raise both arms East
- Raise one arm South
- Raise both arms South
- Raise one arm West
- Raise both arms West
- Standing
- Stepping
- Attack A
- Attack B
- Cast/Use
- Hurt
- Weak
- Dead
The last eight (57 to 64) are only for heroes. For normal NPCs, those are replaced with another series of Specials (like 41 to 48). Special sets are ones that can be unique to npcs, such as hammering a sword on an anvil, wiping a table, serving beer, etc...
I currently have a template (basically a naked sprite) for each of those. Whenever I create a new NPC, I create new layers and draw clothes, hair, whatever on it. Hair, hair embellishments, tops, pants, accessories, etc... are all stored on different layers, so for some NPCs, I can just mix and match different parts of different NPCs. Granted, it's cheating, and it may be a bit lazy, but with the number of NPCs I'm making, I think it may be justified in this case.
Sooo..... Now here comes the part where I ask for help... If I were to provide the XCF (GIMP) file and my master palette, would anyone feel like helping me make sprites?
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
Sat May 26, 2012 1:27 pm
BMR wrote:
Sooo..... Now here comes the part where I ask for help... If I were to provide the XCF (GIMP) file and my master palette, would anyone feel like helping me make sprites?
:O
I tell you what I have done... about 3 months back I made NeoTA's palette as a GIMP palette... (which I then forgot all about doing :S) I know that you're obviously using a custom one but seeing that reminded me of doing that...
...if I can find the palette file would anyone be interested in it?
Sun May 27, 2012 3:36 pm
Another productive day. Rewrote a bunch of my scripts and reworked a lot of routines for greater efficiency and modularity.
Sprites
A bunch of sprites have been reworked to be more compatible with my new scripts.
Guard Patrols
Using zones, all guards are now assigned to different patrol areas. They will walk preset paths throughout the zones assigned to them. How many guards patrol, and how fast they patrol, is affected by the weather, the time of the day, and the political situation in the city.
There are globals that affect what weather is currently in effect. Currently, the different types of weather that are possible are rain, wind, lightning/thunder, and snow. Different maps each have different values in their autorun that affect the chances of different weather types. Some maps will thus have a greater chance of raining for longer, or snow, etc...
If its raining, guards won't be out in as great numbers because they're not stupid enough to spend the entire night out in the cold and the wet. The guards that are out though, will choose different paths to keep themselves dry, i.e. they'll stick closer to the walls of buildings. So far, this is somewhat broken, but probably only needs a few more tweaks to get it working perfectly.
I'm currently working on line of sight for the guards. In some dungeons, rather than having random encounters, the guards patrol the area and combat only starts if the guards catch they player. Right now, combat starts when the player interacts with the guards (they are set to activate on Touch) but this is rather unrealistic as the player can stand two tiles away, and the guard won't do anything. When it's done, the guards should be able to see a few tiles ahead of them to check if the player is in range. If the player is in range, then the NPC will trigger.
Map Interaction
All maps now each have a script that is used to deal with environment interactions. After reading Pepsi Ranger's articles, I reworked all of my environment interaction to use only a single NPC. The script figures out what text box or script to call based on where the NPC is. Because I know where all of the different interactable things are, I can set what text box to call.
I've also made it so that there can be different responses based on who the current head of the party is. Right now, there are no situations where any other hero other than the main one can become the leader, but that's only because I haven't implemented leader switching yet. A lot of different mechanisms are already in place to deal with different leaders, but the only thing lacking is the opportunity (both in-story and mechanics-wise) to change who the leader is.
For example, looking at a vase of flowers with just about any character will have them only make a small blurb. If one specific hero looks at the flowers though, she'll comment that they would look good back on their ship. If her sister is not around, she will take some of the flowers and decorate the ship. If her sister is around though, the sister will say that she doesn't want any sort of girly things around the ship. A set of globals track what type of flowers have already been collected. It's a small mini-game of sorts that provides a small challenge to collect all the different types of flowers in the game. Silly, distracting, but it could be some fun.
Chests
Chests, barrels, desks, etc... are handled similarly to map interaction. A script stores what chests are where, what can possibly be in them, whether they're hidden or not, etc...
Depending on the settings of each chest, different text boxes can appear. A container can be hidden (e.g. a crack in a wall) at which point the leader of the party will first say that there seems to be something hidden, before another script triggers the actual item acquisition code. A container can also be trapped, the mechanism is in place to trigger a trap, but I have not yet worked out the actual code for the trap. I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with traps, whether they'll trigger battles, impose status effects, do damage, or whatever. The easiest, I suppose, would be to simply do health damage, though status effects would be more fun. I haven't figured out how to do status effects well yet though, so simple damage looks to be the way to go for now.
Also, rather than have to worry about what level the player is and how much he should be receiving at that point in the game, what the player is given is calculated upon opening the chest. I basically have five differnt chests, Very Low, Low, Average, High, and Very High. Each of them have differnt multipliers that tell the script just how much and what to give the player. Right now, chests can only possibly give gold. How much gold is given is based on the level and the value of the chest. A low level player opening a Very High chest (Player A) will receive far more than a low level player opening a Very Low chest (Player B). On the other hand, a high level player opening a Very Low chest (Player C) could potentially receive less than player A. The fact that only gold can be received right now is not because of any limitations with the script, but rather that I have not yet finished adding all the possible items (weapons, armors, potions, etc...) to my master item list. Rather than adding items to the treasure script as I create new items, I'll instead finish creating all possible items and only then fix the treasure list.
Death in Battle
It's always ticked me off how games never explain why I can resurrect people if they die in battle during gameplay, but as soon as they die in a cutscene, they're dead for good. Classic example would be FF7 of course, but many other games have this problem. Rather than having people "die", I took the option used by other games and have heroes "knocked out" instead. After any battle, I have a script that checks if any heroes are below 1 hp, if they are, the script brings them up to 1 hp. On each step, all heroes slowly gain hp until they get up to at least 10% of their total hp. They're still weak after battle, and they're not going to naturally heal up to 100% without proper care, but they're not going to be dragging their bloody intestines across the floor on 1 hp either.
I'm still debating whether or not I'm going to have any potions that can bring back people who are knocked out in battle. It wouldn't make much sense to, in the heat of battle, force some potion down a party member's throat to bring him back from the brink of death. I will, of course, have spells that can do this, but probably not potions.
Hunger and Thirst
Now that I've got a working day/night cycle, I've begun work on the hunger and thirst system. This is calculated every minute (A single day lasts around an hour, so an in-game minute is around one second in the real world. Though I might change that...) with alerts coming up depending on what the hero is feeling. There are five stages of hunger, 1. Bloated, 2. Full, 3. Peckish, 4. Hungry, 5. Starving. The same goes for thirst, 1. Saturated, 2. Quenched, 3. Slightly Thirsty, 4. Thirsty, 5. Dehydrated. The normal (or ideal) state is 2.
Each character has a global assigned to both hunger and to thirst. Every minute, the character's level in both will go down a certain amount, with exactly how much depending on the character. Belor (the large, muscle-bound barbarian) will get hungrier more often than Jaina (the lithe and petite assassin). This is accomplished by having a global assigned to each character that provides a scale which allows the script to calculate by just how much the hunger/thirst level should decrease.
When a character loses enough in a level to reach the next level, there is a chance each minute for a text box to appear. I considered that it would be annoying for the player to be constantly bombarded with text boxes saying that the character is hungry, so I'm thinking if it wouldn't be better to instead use slices to draw an icon of some sort to the top of the screen. Even if I go the way of slices though, I'll still have at least one text box flash when a character progresses a level.
I've made a bunch of different items that each provide different levels of hunger or thirst healing. A leg of mutton, for example, will do a lot to improve hunger, but won't do much for thirst. A bowl of stew, however, would do a good deal for hunger, while still providing some relief for thirst. Other items might improve hunger, but bring down thirst, or vice-versa. Consuming salted pork, for example, will get the character more full, but lower his thirst.
Anywho, enough rambling from me for now, cheers all!
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
Sprites
A bunch of sprites have been reworked to be more compatible with my new scripts.
Guard Patrols
Using zones, all guards are now assigned to different patrol areas. They will walk preset paths throughout the zones assigned to them. How many guards patrol, and how fast they patrol, is affected by the weather, the time of the day, and the political situation in the city.
There are globals that affect what weather is currently in effect. Currently, the different types of weather that are possible are rain, wind, lightning/thunder, and snow. Different maps each have different values in their autorun that affect the chances of different weather types. Some maps will thus have a greater chance of raining for longer, or snow, etc...
If its raining, guards won't be out in as great numbers because they're not stupid enough to spend the entire night out in the cold and the wet. The guards that are out though, will choose different paths to keep themselves dry, i.e. they'll stick closer to the walls of buildings. So far, this is somewhat broken, but probably only needs a few more tweaks to get it working perfectly.
I'm currently working on line of sight for the guards. In some dungeons, rather than having random encounters, the guards patrol the area and combat only starts if the guards catch they player. Right now, combat starts when the player interacts with the guards (they are set to activate on Touch) but this is rather unrealistic as the player can stand two tiles away, and the guard won't do anything. When it's done, the guards should be able to see a few tiles ahead of them to check if the player is in range. If the player is in range, then the NPC will trigger.
Map Interaction
All maps now each have a script that is used to deal with environment interactions. After reading Pepsi Ranger's articles, I reworked all of my environment interaction to use only a single NPC. The script figures out what text box or script to call based on where the NPC is. Because I know where all of the different interactable things are, I can set what text box to call.
I've also made it so that there can be different responses based on who the current head of the party is. Right now, there are no situations where any other hero other than the main one can become the leader, but that's only because I haven't implemented leader switching yet. A lot of different mechanisms are already in place to deal with different leaders, but the only thing lacking is the opportunity (both in-story and mechanics-wise) to change who the leader is.
For example, looking at a vase of flowers with just about any character will have them only make a small blurb. If one specific hero looks at the flowers though, she'll comment that they would look good back on their ship. If her sister is not around, she will take some of the flowers and decorate the ship. If her sister is around though, the sister will say that she doesn't want any sort of girly things around the ship. A set of globals track what type of flowers have already been collected. It's a small mini-game of sorts that provides a small challenge to collect all the different types of flowers in the game. Silly, distracting, but it could be some fun.
Chests
Chests, barrels, desks, etc... are handled similarly to map interaction. A script stores what chests are where, what can possibly be in them, whether they're hidden or not, etc...
Depending on the settings of each chest, different text boxes can appear. A container can be hidden (e.g. a crack in a wall) at which point the leader of the party will first say that there seems to be something hidden, before another script triggers the actual item acquisition code. A container can also be trapped, the mechanism is in place to trigger a trap, but I have not yet worked out the actual code for the trap. I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with traps, whether they'll trigger battles, impose status effects, do damage, or whatever. The easiest, I suppose, would be to simply do health damage, though status effects would be more fun. I haven't figured out how to do status effects well yet though, so simple damage looks to be the way to go for now.
Also, rather than have to worry about what level the player is and how much he should be receiving at that point in the game, what the player is given is calculated upon opening the chest. I basically have five differnt chests, Very Low, Low, Average, High, and Very High. Each of them have differnt multipliers that tell the script just how much and what to give the player. Right now, chests can only possibly give gold. How much gold is given is based on the level and the value of the chest. A low level player opening a Very High chest (Player A) will receive far more than a low level player opening a Very Low chest (Player B). On the other hand, a high level player opening a Very Low chest (Player C) could potentially receive less than player A. The fact that only gold can be received right now is not because of any limitations with the script, but rather that I have not yet finished adding all the possible items (weapons, armors, potions, etc...) to my master item list. Rather than adding items to the treasure script as I create new items, I'll instead finish creating all possible items and only then fix the treasure list.
Death in Battle
It's always ticked me off how games never explain why I can resurrect people if they die in battle during gameplay, but as soon as they die in a cutscene, they're dead for good. Classic example would be FF7 of course, but many other games have this problem. Rather than having people "die", I took the option used by other games and have heroes "knocked out" instead. After any battle, I have a script that checks if any heroes are below 1 hp, if they are, the script brings them up to 1 hp. On each step, all heroes slowly gain hp until they get up to at least 10% of their total hp. They're still weak after battle, and they're not going to naturally heal up to 100% without proper care, but they're not going to be dragging their bloody intestines across the floor on 1 hp either.
I'm still debating whether or not I'm going to have any potions that can bring back people who are knocked out in battle. It wouldn't make much sense to, in the heat of battle, force some potion down a party member's throat to bring him back from the brink of death. I will, of course, have spells that can do this, but probably not potions.
Hunger and Thirst
Now that I've got a working day/night cycle, I've begun work on the hunger and thirst system. This is calculated every minute (A single day lasts around an hour, so an in-game minute is around one second in the real world. Though I might change that...) with alerts coming up depending on what the hero is feeling. There are five stages of hunger, 1. Bloated, 2. Full, 3. Peckish, 4. Hungry, 5. Starving. The same goes for thirst, 1. Saturated, 2. Quenched, 3. Slightly Thirsty, 4. Thirsty, 5. Dehydrated. The normal (or ideal) state is 2.
Each character has a global assigned to both hunger and to thirst. Every minute, the character's level in both will go down a certain amount, with exactly how much depending on the character. Belor (the large, muscle-bound barbarian) will get hungrier more often than Jaina (the lithe and petite assassin). This is accomplished by having a global assigned to each character that provides a scale which allows the script to calculate by just how much the hunger/thirst level should decrease.
When a character loses enough in a level to reach the next level, there is a chance each minute for a text box to appear. I considered that it would be annoying for the player to be constantly bombarded with text boxes saying that the character is hungry, so I'm thinking if it wouldn't be better to instead use slices to draw an icon of some sort to the top of the screen. Even if I go the way of slices though, I'll still have at least one text box flash when a character progresses a level.
I've made a bunch of different items that each provide different levels of hunger or thirst healing. A leg of mutton, for example, will do a lot to improve hunger, but won't do much for thirst. A bowl of stew, however, would do a good deal for hunger, while still providing some relief for thirst. Other items might improve hunger, but bring down thirst, or vice-versa. Consuming salted pork, for example, will get the character more full, but lower his thirst.
Anywho, enough rambling from me for now, cheers all!
Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.
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Sun May 27, 2012 5:35 pm
I really love the aspects of the world as an interactive entity that you have going here. The guards (I had a shoddy version of this in Tales 1), the map interactions (although I'm not sure how much is gained by having them organized in a giant script rather than by NPCs in custom, unless you were running out), the day-night system, etc.
But I'll say that the hunger/thirst system is overkill. It doesn't sound particularly fun, nor particularly realistic. If a hero's hunger changes even only by ONE each minute (which is to say, each hour in the game's world), you would have a bloated man become starving in four minutes (hours), which is not fun to manage, and is not even close to realistic. Either your five levels of hunger need to be graduated MUCH finer, or you need to re-think the whole system. Also, necessitating the player to COMMAND the heroes to eat or drink seems bizarre. I understand that it creates choices for the player on how to manage their hunger vs their thirst, but this doesn't sound like a fun aspect to have to manage, unless the game is largely focused on Survival as the main theme and end goal.
I am Srime
But I'll say that the hunger/thirst system is overkill. It doesn't sound particularly fun, nor particularly realistic. If a hero's hunger changes even only by ONE each minute (which is to say, each hour in the game's world), you would have a bloated man become starving in four minutes (hours), which is not fun to manage, and is not even close to realistic. Either your five levels of hunger need to be graduated MUCH finer, or you need to re-think the whole system. Also, necessitating the player to COMMAND the heroes to eat or drink seems bizarre. I understand that it creates choices for the player on how to manage their hunger vs their thirst, but this doesn't sound like a fun aspect to have to manage, unless the game is largely focused on Survival as the main theme and end goal.
I am Srime
Sun May 27, 2012 6:22 pm
Agreed, the hunger/thirst system does need quite a bit of work.
The formula I've got in place now works as follows:
(Oh, and to keep things clear, real world time is in blue, and in-game time is in red)
All hunger/thirst values are stored in globals, with a number from 1-1440 (the total number of minutes in a day).
Bloated: 1296 - 1440
Full: 720 - 1296
Peckish: 360 - 720
Hungry: 144 - 360
Starving: 0 - 144
Every minute, the value goes down by a certain amount. Specifically, 1 by default. Different characters will have their values decrease a bit faster than others, based on their hungerscale values.
e.g.
Belor the Barbarian: 1.5
Jaina the Assassin: .5
So, after one minute of real world playing (one hour), the amount by which their values decrease would be:
Hunger Value — ((1 × hungerscale) × 60 minutes)
Belor the Barbarian: ((1 × 1.5) × 60 minutes) = 90
Jaina the Assassin: ((1 × .5) × 60 minutes) = 60
To go fully from completely bloated (1440) to absolutely starving (1) the player would have to play for 1440 minutes i.e. roughly 24 minutes of real-world time, provided that the character being used has no a hungerscale value of 1.
Belor, or the other hand, loses 1.5 points every second, so to go from fully bloated to fully starved, the player would have to play for 16 minutes, rather than 24. Jaina, however, will fully starve after 48 minutes.
How the player controls what food is eaten is a bit of a problem for me. I want to do it Ultima style, where the player actually controls what food is eaten, but I can see how it would indeed be annoying or frustrating for the player. On the other hand, I could do it in a style similar to Tales of Phantasia, where food is automatically removed from the inventory. Granted, ToP didn't actually have a hunger system but instead used the food to replenish HP, but I could do something similar I suppose.
Part of the reason I want the player to have to manage hunger and thirst, is that a lot of the choices the player makes will affect the game world, particularly towns. I could just add flavor text to towns to show how they're doing, but if the player screws up badly and causes a city to fall into ruin (quite possible in the game), then prices for food will go up and/or become rarer. With a hunger/thirst system, the player would actually feel the effects of the poor choice, rather than just saying, "Well, sucks to be you NPCs, I'm a hero and I don't need to eat, kthxbye!"
Still, I can see how it would be overly complex or involve too much micromanaging on the part of the player, so scrapping the entire hunger/thirst management system is still an option. What with all the other things I'm working on, it wouldn't be an extremely big deal if I put hunger/thirst on the back-burner for now, or even if I were to forget the back-burner and throw it straight to the crematorium.
Aaaand.... It is 2:30 in the morning... I don't even know if I'm making sense any more, or if I've gone and contradicted myself in any of what I've just said. Sleep deprivation FTW...
[collapse]Cheers all, I sleep now![/collapse]
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
The formula I've got in place now works as follows:
(Oh, and to keep things clear, real world time is in blue, and in-game time is in red)
All hunger/thirst values are stored in globals, with a number from 1-1440 (the total number of minutes in a day).
Bloated: 1296 - 1440
Full: 720 - 1296
Peckish: 360 - 720
Hungry: 144 - 360
Starving: 0 - 144
Every minute, the value goes down by a certain amount. Specifically, 1 by default. Different characters will have their values decrease a bit faster than others, based on their hungerscale values.
e.g.
Belor the Barbarian: 1.5
Jaina the Assassin: .5
So, after one minute of real world playing (one hour), the amount by which their values decrease would be:
Hunger Value — ((1 × hungerscale) × 60 minutes)
Belor the Barbarian: ((1 × 1.5) × 60 minutes) = 90
Jaina the Assassin: ((1 × .5) × 60 minutes) = 60
To go fully from completely bloated (1440) to absolutely starving (1) the player would have to play for 1440 minutes i.e. roughly 24 minutes of real-world time, provided that the character being used has no a hungerscale value of 1.
Belor, or the other hand, loses 1.5 points every second, so to go from fully bloated to fully starved, the player would have to play for 16 minutes, rather than 24. Jaina, however, will fully starve after 48 minutes.
How the player controls what food is eaten is a bit of a problem for me. I want to do it Ultima style, where the player actually controls what food is eaten, but I can see how it would indeed be annoying or frustrating for the player. On the other hand, I could do it in a style similar to Tales of Phantasia, where food is automatically removed from the inventory. Granted, ToP didn't actually have a hunger system but instead used the food to replenish HP, but I could do something similar I suppose.
Part of the reason I want the player to have to manage hunger and thirst, is that a lot of the choices the player makes will affect the game world, particularly towns. I could just add flavor text to towns to show how they're doing, but if the player screws up badly and causes a city to fall into ruin (quite possible in the game), then prices for food will go up and/or become rarer. With a hunger/thirst system, the player would actually feel the effects of the poor choice, rather than just saying, "Well, sucks to be you NPCs, I'm a hero and I don't need to eat, kthxbye!"
Still, I can see how it would be overly complex or involve too much micromanaging on the part of the player, so scrapping the entire hunger/thirst management system is still an option. What with all the other things I'm working on, it wouldn't be an extremely big deal if I put hunger/thirst on the back-burner for now, or even if I were to forget the back-burner and throw it straight to the crematorium.
Aaaand.... It is 2:30 in the morning... I don't even know if I'm making sense any more, or if I've gone and contradicted myself in any of what I've just said. Sleep deprivation FTW...
[collapse]Cheers all, I sleep now![/collapse]
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
Sun May 27, 2012 8:15 pm
I kind of feel the same way about the hunger/thirst system as MSW does. When I first read about it, I wanted to say something, but something else overtook my focus and then I forgot about it. My feeling is that it could be okay to use if you've got the kind of game world where that sort of thing matters. But here's a question I'd want to ask:
What happens if somebody starves? You said that you don't like the way deaths and resurrections work in common RPGs, so how would the possibility of starvation affect that? If a character can die from starvation, how will that affect the outcome of the game?
I agree that too much micromanagement would take the fun out of an adventure game. It's more fun when you allow the player to micromanage a simulation or strategy game. I wouldn't have an issue with the system if you matched the hunger/thirst system with real world physics: people can usually go a week without water and five to six weeks without food. Seems to me that causing starvation daily (even if it takes 24 minutes to reach that level) is unrealistic and annoying. On the same coin, waiting 24 * 40 minutes for starvation to kill a hero means, essentially, waiting the duration of the game for its effects to take their toll. So, if you were to adopt the hunger/thirst system and keep it from becoming lame, I'd suggest that you use the current system you've outlined, but use it as a means to affect hero performance.
So, it would look something like this:
Day 1 (optimal strength and ability) / Normal hunger points apply:
Hero has 1440 hunger points. Can take a few extra hits, but he might vomit. Moves slowly.
Time passes, hero is now at 960. Isn't the tank he was earlier, but he can move at normal speed.
Hero is now at 600. Less food means he can move at his optimal speed, but he's a little more vulnerable to his weaknesses.
End of day is approaching. Hero is now at 180, 120, 60 -- He's still fully functional, but he's getting grumpy.
Day 2 (reduced strength and ability -2) / Starvation points apply
Hero has 1440 starvation points. He's exactly as he was the night before: grumpy but functional.
At 960 he's complaining about food, but he's still moving.
At 600 he becomes weaker, but lack of food increases his focus (go a couple of days without food and you'll see what I mean).
At 120 he focuses less on food and more on the mission.
Day 3-7 (strength and ability reduces by 2 each day, but focus increases)
Day 8-39 (conditions deteriorate daily)
His physique begins to change
His mood sours
He eventually loses the will to fight.
Strength is gone.
Speed is reduced.
Concentration is broken.
His shoes look appetizing to him.
Day 40 (the will to continue ends)
He either dies...
Or he leaves the team to go find a meal himself.
I think this will eliminate the urgency of micromanagement while still allowing the system to work.
I think this is a brilliant idea, and I hope you pull it off successfully. It certainly adds to the life of the town.
I gotta say, I'm glad my article connected with someone. Sometimes I have my doubts.
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What happens if somebody starves? You said that you don't like the way deaths and resurrections work in common RPGs, so how would the possibility of starvation affect that? If a character can die from starvation, how will that affect the outcome of the game?
I agree that too much micromanagement would take the fun out of an adventure game. It's more fun when you allow the player to micromanage a simulation or strategy game. I wouldn't have an issue with the system if you matched the hunger/thirst system with real world physics: people can usually go a week without water and five to six weeks without food. Seems to me that causing starvation daily (even if it takes 24 minutes to reach that level) is unrealistic and annoying. On the same coin, waiting 24 * 40 minutes for starvation to kill a hero means, essentially, waiting the duration of the game for its effects to take their toll. So, if you were to adopt the hunger/thirst system and keep it from becoming lame, I'd suggest that you use the current system you've outlined, but use it as a means to affect hero performance.
So, it would look something like this:
Day 1 (optimal strength and ability) / Normal hunger points apply:
Hero has 1440 hunger points. Can take a few extra hits, but he might vomit. Moves slowly.
Time passes, hero is now at 960. Isn't the tank he was earlier, but he can move at normal speed.
Hero is now at 600. Less food means he can move at his optimal speed, but he's a little more vulnerable to his weaknesses.
End of day is approaching. Hero is now at 180, 120, 60 -- He's still fully functional, but he's getting grumpy.
Day 2 (reduced strength and ability -2) / Starvation points apply
Hero has 1440 starvation points. He's exactly as he was the night before: grumpy but functional.
At 960 he's complaining about food, but he's still moving.
At 600 he becomes weaker, but lack of food increases his focus (go a couple of days without food and you'll see what I mean).
At 120 he focuses less on food and more on the mission.
Day 3-7 (strength and ability reduces by 2 each day, but focus increases)
Day 8-39 (conditions deteriorate daily)
His physique begins to change
His mood sours
He eventually loses the will to fight.
Strength is gone.
Speed is reduced.
Concentration is broken.
His shoes look appetizing to him.
Day 40 (the will to continue ends)
He either dies...
Or he leaves the team to go find a meal himself.
I think this will eliminate the urgency of micromanagement while still allowing the system to work.
Quote:
If its raining, guards won't be out in as great numbers because they're not stupid enough to spend the entire night out in the cold and the wet. The guards that are out though, will choose different paths to keep themselves dry, i.e. they'll stick closer to the walls of buildings. So far, this is somewhat broken, but probably only needs a few more tweaks to get it working perfectly.
I think this is a brilliant idea, and I hope you pull it off successfully. It certainly adds to the life of the town.
I gotta say, I'm glad my article connected with someone. Sometimes I have my doubts.
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Sun May 27, 2012 9:40 pm
I can't see myself not hating that unless my heroes ate automatically. QfG and Tales do it this way, with the latter not penalizing you when you run out.
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Mon May 28, 2012 1:15 am
My vote is to scratch the hunger/thirst system altogether. I don't think it's a good idea to include the possibility of the player making their own eventual death inevitable, ESPECIALLY in a long-term game involving saving progress. If you want player choices to affect towns and in turn to affect the player, there are simpler methods. If the player ruins a town, the shops close, or the price to stay at the inn goes up (under the pretense that the inn needs to feed its customers, and food has become scarce).
I am Srime
I am Srime
Mon May 28, 2012 7:58 am
I'm all for most of these extravagant systems you're mentioning, but I also wanted to chime in that the hunger/thirst system seems like a potentially game-ruining element to me as well.
Even if the rest of your game were amazing, it would never contribute to that, and would only be a case of "it's good in spite of..." It's like the kind of thing that someone would produce a hacked version of your game over, removing the hunger/thirst system and re-releasing it as a "fixed" patch, like the guy who patched Wizardry 1-3 for the SNES, removing some of the more obnoxious elements like alignment class restrictions and the fact that the back row of the party can never attack.
SPELLSHARD: THE BLACK CROWN OF HORGOTH now COMPLETE! Grab it today!
Even if the rest of your game were amazing, it would never contribute to that, and would only be a case of "it's good in spite of..." It's like the kind of thing that someone would produce a hacked version of your game over, removing the hunger/thirst system and re-releasing it as a "fixed" patch, like the guy who patched Wizardry 1-3 for the SNES, removing some of the more obnoxious elements like alignment class restrictions and the fact that the back row of the party can never attack.
SPELLSHARD: THE BLACK CROWN OF HORGOTH now COMPLETE! Grab it today!
Mon May 28, 2012 8:04 am
Here's me scrapping hunger/thirst for now then. To be honest, it was indeed getting to be a bit difficult to script, hehe.
On to the next large scripting/design hurdle, crafting!
To be honest again, I have only the faintest of ideas as to where to start here, hehehe...
I'm guessing I'll have to do something rather clever with menus. Or perhaps I could script a system to handle it from scratch, but I'm not sure if my skills are quite up to that yet.
EDIT: On second thought, before crafting, I think I'll deal with this one bug that I just noticed now. For some reason, it's raining indoors, even though all my globals are in place telling the script that yes this map is indoors, and because it's indoors, it can't rain. Gah! And the weather was working perfectly yesterday before I went and did a massive overhaul of my naming conventions... I must have broken something rather important, fiddlesticks...
Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.
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On to the next large scripting/design hurdle, crafting!
To be honest again, I have only the faintest of ideas as to where to start here, hehehe...
I'm guessing I'll have to do something rather clever with menus. Or perhaps I could script a system to handle it from scratch, but I'm not sure if my skills are quite up to that yet.
EDIT: On second thought, before crafting, I think I'll deal with this one bug that I just noticed now. For some reason, it's raining indoors, even though all my globals are in place telling the script that yes this map is indoors, and because it's indoors, it can't rain. Gah! And the weather was working perfectly yesterday before I went and did a massive overhaul of my naming conventions... I must have broken something rather important, fiddlesticks...
Being from the third world, I reserve the right to speak in the third person.
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Mon May 28, 2012 5:44 pm
I have gone ridiculously overboard, hah!
It's perfectly working, but it serves absolutely no purpose in-game. Just adds flavor. In the first area, I have two inns. One is frequented by the locals, the other is for sailors and whatnot. Each of the inns has a guestbook. The player can read the guestbook, and depending on the day and the month (both are stored, but don't usually serve any gameplay feature other than flavor) a different text box will appear, with different names and different times. Fore example:
29th of Varansi
12:12 AM - Puburn Wedcholn
04:16 AM - Repa
08:03 AM - Sozuurn
01:13 PM - Arncheel Foekiller
03:46 PM - Waralnpirtga Oghig
05:23 PM - Cholnrudhert
09:19 PM - Portnar Bal
Or
20th of Varansi
12:53 AM - Raarnmo
03:45 AM - Eghdin
09:36 AM - Aghqakthe "Underheart"
10:28 AM - Sirtfelo "Wolfthumb"
01:59 PM - Ulnrochul Rid
06:16 PM - Rululnguk Aghpaso
09:43 PM - Techjunik
The blacksmith also has a list of items that he sold, and you can read it in his logbook:
13th of Mernhas
Sales Log
13 hatchets to a guardsman
4 maces to a sailor
18 hoes to a tradesman
10 shovels to a guardsman
17 rivets to a trader
6 steels to a guardsman
So two inns, one shop, 12 months in a year, 31 days per month, I went and generated 1,116 different textboxes just for the two inns. It was very easy to implement, though the generating of the text boxes took some time. At least now, I can easily do the same for any similar book the player comes across. Also, on a more practical note, it's now simple for me to generate massive blocks of textboxes I want a different text box every day of the week, every day of the month, or every day of the year. Blargh! I am going insane!
OK, enough adding flavor for now. On to CRAFTING! For realz this time...
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
It's perfectly working, but it serves absolutely no purpose in-game. Just adds flavor. In the first area, I have two inns. One is frequented by the locals, the other is for sailors and whatnot. Each of the inns has a guestbook. The player can read the guestbook, and depending on the day and the month (both are stored, but don't usually serve any gameplay feature other than flavor) a different text box will appear, with different names and different times. Fore example:
29th of Varansi
12:12 AM - Puburn Wedcholn
04:16 AM - Repa
08:03 AM - Sozuurn
01:13 PM - Arncheel Foekiller
03:46 PM - Waralnpirtga Oghig
05:23 PM - Cholnrudhert
09:19 PM - Portnar Bal
Or
20th of Varansi
12:53 AM - Raarnmo
03:45 AM - Eghdin
09:36 AM - Aghqakthe "Underheart"
10:28 AM - Sirtfelo "Wolfthumb"
01:59 PM - Ulnrochul Rid
06:16 PM - Rululnguk Aghpaso
09:43 PM - Techjunik
The blacksmith also has a list of items that he sold, and you can read it in his logbook:
13th of Mernhas
Sales Log
13 hatchets to a guardsman
4 maces to a sailor
18 hoes to a tradesman
10 shovels to a guardsman
17 rivets to a trader
6 steels to a guardsman
So two inns, one shop, 12 months in a year, 31 days per month, I went and generated 1,116 different textboxes just for the two inns. It was very easy to implement, though the generating of the text boxes took some time. At least now, I can easily do the same for any similar book the player comes across. Also, on a more practical note, it's now simple for me to generate massive blocks of textboxes I want a different text box every day of the week, every day of the month, or every day of the year. Blargh! I am going insane!
OK, enough adding flavor for now. On to CRAFTING! For realz this time...
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