OHRRPGCE feature requests/suggestions

[Sparoku]

A word replace feature, maybe? You could add it on to the text box search feature!

Replace "John" with "Harry" sort of thing! It would also help with finding and replacing misspelled words a lot faster!

[SwordPlay]

A word replace feature, maybe? You could add it on to the text box search feature!

Replace "John" with "Harry" sort of thing! It would also help with finding and replacing misspelled words a lot faster!

There is the feature of exporting/importing textboxes, so you could do this if you really wanted.

[Sparoku]

A word replace feature, maybe? You could add it on to the text box search feature!

Replace "John" with "Harry" sort of thing! It would also help with finding and replacing misspelled words a lot faster!

There is the feature of exporting/importing textboxes, so you could do this if you really wanted.

Oh really now? I'll have to tinker with that then!

[SwordPlay]

How about a way of swapping the contents of 2 sprite canvases in addition to copy/paste/transparent paste? CTRL+S maybe?
I create lots of blank canvases and copy/paste back and forth to order my sprites.
I don't want to accidentally paste over my work. Or is there an easier way to do this?

[TMC]

I'd love to be able to copy NPCs in the NPC editor. Lots of times I make new NPCs that are modifications of existing ones, would save a lot of time to do that similar to how the Attack Editor asks if you want to add a new one or a copy.

It seemed easier and more powerful, so I opted to do this by adding Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V to copy-paste npcs in the definition editor instead of "add copy of existing NPC".
You can copy-paste between maps too, but that's crude compared to James's plan for truly allowing NPCs to move between maps.

And while I was at it, jumping from NPC placement straight to the NPC editor was long overdue!

Wait a day for nightlies to be rebuilt.

How about a way of swapping the contents of 2 sprite canvases in addition to copy/paste/transparent paste? CTRL+S maybe?

That's a good idea. However Ctrl+S already means either Save or Search. And the way the spriteset browser is implemented actually makes this a pain to implement. So I'll put it off until that editor is rewritten.

I should reply to another of older posts here too...

[The Wobbler]

It seemed easier and more powerful, so I opted to do this by adding Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V to copy-paste npcs in the definition editor instead of "add copy of existing NPC".
You can copy-paste between maps too, but that's crude compared to James's plan for truly allowing NPCs to move between maps.

And while I was at it, jumping from NPC placement straight to the NPC editor was long overdue!

Wait a day for nightlies to be rebuilt.

Awesome! Pumped to try this out.

[Pepsi Ranger]

I've been trying out the upcoming mouse features found in the SPAM folder and adapting my park building game to the move hero with mouse-click command, which I have to say works really well, minus the occasional one-tile overshot that may or may not be the fault of my scripting, and has a pretty robust pathfinding algorithm. It's basically what I tried and failed to script on my own a few years ago, and I couldn't be happier to have it now.

That said, using the feature has given me some case studies to consider, and if you could implement them as you work on mouse features, it would make point-and-click control all the better:

1. Pause/Resume Hero Movement
Similar to suspend/resume npcs, this would stop the hero's movement toward his mouse-click destination, and then resume the journey on the script's command. This would simplify turn-based strategy games where an action, timer, or action point exhaustion would interrupt the hero's movement until the next turn.

2. Close Menus with Mouse
Right now we can open menus, but we can't yet close them. It also looks as though custom menus aren't fully selectable with the mouse yet. I'm sure this is already planned. Note: Choice boxes don't yet work with the mouse.

3. Pathfinding Timeout for Mouse-driven Heroes
Works like the pathfinding timeout for NPCs, but given to heroes. This is probably already intuitive behavior, but when the script has custom controls (WASD and number pad movement, with arrows controlling camera, for example), the script locks up if you don't write a contingency script for safeguarding against inaccessible destinations (which I did, successfully).

4. Suspend/Resume Mouse-Click
Basically the same thing as #1, but works at a script level rather than a hero level. Could also be called REPEAT LAST MOUSE ACTION.

5. Grab Slice/Sprite/NPC/Hero with Mouse
Good for Tycoon style games where the player has the freedom to place objects with the mouse. Basically, the selected object will move with the mouse until the player drops it. This might already have a scripting workaround, but a general function for it would be better.

So, that's good for now. I think the ability to suspend and resume movement without ending the trip early is the most important feature on this list. Thanks for implementing better mouse function.

[kylekrack]

Would there be a possibility for the A* pathfinding implemented recently to include zone data at some point? When I was reading about the A* algorithm, I remember it mentioning assigning a sort of "difficulty" value to each location/tile before seeking the shortest route.

I don't actually know what I'm talking about because I tried and failed to script Dijkstra's algorithm. However, in some cases, like the tactical RPG I'm working on, there are terrain types that come into play. In this game, there are bush tiles that cost 2 moves instead of 1 like the grass tiles. Currently, the AI in the game is pretty accurate about finding the best way to reach the heroes, but they sometimes choose a suboptimal path because they don't know there's a bush in the way.

I'm not sure how you'd include those arguments into the script commands. For zones, I mean. Still, it'd be awesome if there was some way to communicate zone data to NPCs while they are pathfinding.

[TMC]

When I was reading about the A* algorithm, I remember it mentioning assigning a sort of "difficulty" value to each location/tile before seeking the shortest route.

Yes, we will add a way to assign differing costs to tiles. And it should be editable in the map editor. I don't think zones are the best way to do that since you would have to use multiple zones, which could overlap and you wouldn't clearly see what you're doing in the map editor. More likely there would be a new map mode quite similar to the foemap (it would require little more than copy-pasting the foemap editor). We would also like to be able to have multiple "costmaps", e.g. one for mounted units and another for other units.
A lookup table which assigns a cost to each tile in the tileset is another solution, but which map layer should it apply to? Not so simple. But a potential option as a separate script command.

1. Pause/Resume Hero Movement
Similar to suspend/resume npcs, this would stop the hero's movement toward his mouse-click destination, and then resume the journey on the script's command.

I haven't tested, but isn't that what suspend/resumeplayer already does? However, displaying a menu may cancel the hero's pathfinding: there's an option for it, which you would have to use if you wanted to pause the player and display a menu. So it might be a good idea to change that, actually, and instead only consider cancelling pathfinding when the player themselves brings up a menu.

the script locks up if you don't write a contingency script for safeguarding against inaccessible destinations

It shouldn't lock up. If there's no path, then A* will search up to 1000 tiles before giving up and pathing to the nearest tile to the destination that it found. Do you mean that "wait for hero" never stops waiting?

4. Suspend/Resume Mouse-Click
Basically the same thing as #1, but works at a script level rather than a hero level. Could also be called REPEAT LAST MOUSE ACTION.

I don't understand, care to elaborate?

5. Grab Slice/Sprite/NPC/Hero with Mouse

This sounds like a point-and-click puzzle game engine feature, rather than an RPG engine feature. You can script this very easily using 'slice at pixel', though.

I would like to see the various interface elements expanded a bit, to make it easier for mouse driven actions.

Yes, the buttons are rather small. The sprite editor needs some major work, for a number of reasons.

how about allowing a textbox to advance instantly or after a set amount of time, as a setting in the textbox editor?

Definitely should add that.

In the tilemapper, how about jumping to a layer with the number keys?

I'm baffled that there aren't any keys to jump to layer X. I think that a lot of map editor key bindings are badly selected. Common operations aren't given easy key bindings, and I can never remember all the keys for toggling layer visibility or disabling them. The map editor UI needs a lot of work!

Attack animations: "Ring" works entirely different depending on whether you target one character or spread, I've never really understood why. Could we have both of those options available? I'd like to use that circling Ring behavior on individuals.

Now that I think about it... it is odd that the Ring animation is so drastically different for individual vs. spread targets. Maybe call the "one animation circles the target" version of it "Orbit" or something instead to distinguish them? And I guess older games can have all spread + ring attacks automatically converted to use that one.

I wonder if the same thing could be done with Wave animations, making the single-target "big horizontal beam" version available for multi-target attacks instead of the "diagonal wave across whole screen" version? It'd look pretty neat to have a storm of giant energy beams flying across the screen and hitting every enemy like that, though that would be a lot of attack animations on screen at once.

This is a good point. It would be nice to separate Ring and "Orbit", and separate Wave and "Beam". But can we switch existing games to use exclusively one or the other, in each case? The Wave/Beam behaviour makes more sense, since a wave that only hits one enemy wouldn't make much sense. So I think it would be bad to change the behaviour of Wave. But we could rename Wave to Wave/Beam and add new Wave and Beam options, and likewise for Ring/Orbit.

In the DOS versions it wasn't possible to display loads of attack graphics (8 ring animations on 8 enemies would be 64 attack sprites) and unfortunately that limitation is still built into the battle system. It's closely related to the 8 enemies per formation limit. I don't think these are disappearing too soon.

Could we have a built-in plotscript command that shifts player control to another figure on the map?

I think this is something that's easier to implement using a script than to change the engine. Especially since the script already exists. But IIRC the script available on the wiki doesn't handle the Use key (but that's easy to add).

[guo]

Is there a way to check where tags are used? Eg scripts, textboxes, NPCs, items.

[TMC]

No, except for autoset tags (like "hero in party"), which you can see in the tag browser. Tags are used so pervasively throughout the engine that unfortunately it wouldn't be easy to implement a feature like that and keep it up to date. Would definitely be useful though.

[The Wobbler]

Is there currently an easy way to have a menu remember what the player last selected? If I've got a list of 20 menu items, I don't want the player to have to scroll back through them all repeatedly.

[TMC]

Only possible by scripting it.
That would be a nice menu bit to have.
OK, I implemented it. Get it in nightlies soon. Dang, half an hour for a bit.

[The Wobbler]

You're the best, thanks!

[SwordPlay]

How do I start editing a new game without closing the current window?
Is there a way to quit and load another project, rather than just quitting?

How about a "recent projects" link that shows previously loaded .rpg files?
It could be displayed when CUSTOM starts, to help users quickly load their games.