Class Suggestions for my new project.

[mjohnson092088]

ooooh purdy. i really really can't wait for this.

if it's steam-punkish, you just KNOW you have to have a massively-exoansive and overly-intricate metropolitan cesspool of crime, debauchery, and, of course, machines. plenty of gears. and pipes. and don't forget the steam.

also, don't forget the city in the sky. i see the aforementioned city being in the sky, as it is not restricted by the laws governing the "ground-dwellers". but it's up to you.

[Mogri]

PASSIVE SKILL IDEAS:
Offensive Engineer: Items that damage enemies do 1.5x damage. (if possible)

Yeah, you can do this. Base item damage off an unused stat (Ctr) and give the Munitions Expert a 50% higher value than the rest.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Whoa, those town graphics look great. Walkabouts are good, too.

A lot of the class names sound kind of awkward and too-long to me, though. I mean, there's a few I can't find any problem with (Mad Scientist, Iron Lung, Troubadour, Maestro); they're not typical RPG classes by any means, but the names sound good and they just kind of "work."

But most of the rest just seem unnecessarily long. The clockwork robots for example--is it really necessary to have "Clockwork" in their names? That could probably be figured out by looking at them, or there could be some mechanically-inclined NPCs here and there that talk about how the robots work.
And "Avant-Garde Composer" as a class title is just bizarre. I'm not sure exactly how I'd go about compressing that into something more like a class name (just Composer?), but that's got to be the weirdest-sounding one of the bunch.

Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of the longer class names kind of remind me of the names of extra optional classes that hardly anyone uses from those Dungeons & Dragons add-on books. I seem to remember a lot of those having odd, long names that just... don't quite work as class names.

Of course, at least part of this is probably just a personal preference thing. I like short but descriptive, rolls-off-the-tongue-well class names rather than overcomplicated ones, especially when a shorter name is just as good at describing something as the longer and seemingly more specific one. And I figured some of the names are probably still kinda placeholder-y (since there's one or two here and there actually labeled "haven't decided on a title yet"), but I thought I should at least mention it, since other than that the project looks pretty amazing so far and I wouldn't want something like class names to be that one little annoying flaw that holds the game back.

[shakeyair]

Variable width text, take 1:



boxes, punctuation, advanced linewrapping (the example just happens to work) and capital letters forthcoming.

Yes, the letters are border sprites. Yes, they type in as they show up. Yes, i will release the script when its finished. Yes, they can have as many colors as you would like. No, i don't know if this will be in this game, as it will make the text during battles look awfully strange.

However, it has me considering digging up my old earthbound style battle system and seeing if i can make that work for this project. (and finish it, haha)

Thinking of maybe a Mother 3 style of textbox. I had it working waaaaaay back in The Aftermath's first take, and that was cool.

EDIT: ORRRR. speech bubble style, where theres a little point coming off from the textbox pointing at the NPC. This might be cooler, if a little more work.

Can we vote on textbox options/suggest new ones?

...This is why i never get very far with anything.

[Baconlabs]

Yes, the letters are border sprites. Yes, they type in as they show up. Yes, i will release the script when its finished. Yes, they can have as many colors as you would like.

Oh hell yes, I was just reminiscing over how nice this stuff would be in an OHR game. Specifically, having different colors within the same line of text. I could give important words important-looking colors to help them stand out, thereby more efficiently delivering information to the player.

Having stuff typed in at whatever pace you deem comfortable would be awesome too. That is, the speed is variable, right? It'd be great to give the player a "text speed" option too.

As to what text box style you should use, the most important thing is that the player is able to read text clearly and can easily figure out who or what is talking. Mother 3 did this well enough that I don't even remember what the boxes themselves looked like. Speech bubbles seem like way too much work.

[shakeyair]

Oh hell yes, I was just reminiscing over how nice this stuff would be in an OHR game. Specifically, having different colors within the same line of text. I could give important words important-looking colors to help them stand out, thereby more efficiently delivering information to the player.

I am definitely planning on implementing this. I'm not totally sure how i want it to go. Definitely a command hidden in the string (or textbox you take the string from, which is probably how this will work in practice)

What sort of syntax would make sense? I am not familiar with coding outside of hamsterspeak. So... probably something like

${T###}

with T standing for text color? But if something using a T were to get implemented for real, that would get confusing. Maybe:

$${C###}

In either case the ### would be replaced by the PALETTE you want the sprites to use. I sort of like this idea, using a separate kind of syntax, (even though its basically the same) because theres a few other things i want this to do.

$${C###}: change color.
$${W##}: wait desired amount of ticks. (useful for a ". . ." where you want the typing to slow down)
$${T#}: changes whether words type in or show up right away. (useful for exclamations "WHAT?!!!" could show up all at once, with a short wait after it, then afterwards words continue to type as normal.)
$${R}: drop to next line early.

Anyway, all of that is really pretty easy. The difficult thing will be making word wrap work by word, instead of by letter. But I'm thinking if I make a new 'word' container every time there is a space in the text, then have that shift down as a word when it gets too long?

It would have a funky sort of look though, where you'd see the word type up to the edge of the box, then shift down when it gets too long. Maybe this is cool?

The other option would to bring the letters in invisibly, all in one tick, then reveal them letter by letter afterward. This will involve being more careful about where each letter is in the stack of children (further complicated by having word containers) but should be pretty do-able. A lot of work though, for a fairly minor fix I think.

Variable text speed was implemented in The Aftermath, and its easy easy easy to do, so yeah it will be included. It's a little different in practice than what you would think though. Basically, 'slowest' is letter by letter. 'medium' is 2/3 letters at a time. and 'fast' is about 5 or 6 letters at a time. It still looks pretty good, though.

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SUCH A LONG POST. Other questions:

ONE: How should textbox conditionals be handled? I have been requesting for a very long time to have direct scripting access to them, but there is apparently something which makes this very difficult. The Aftermath used a confusing method which looked like this (in the last 2 lines of any given textbox)

###:###,###:###,###:### etc.

which really was:

if tag ### is on:use ### textbox instead,if tag ### is on: set tag ### to on, etc etc. (using negative numbers for off)

THIS IS STUPID. There must be a better way? I am currently just planning on foregoing OHR's textboxes altogether, but that would make this sort of a piss poor excuse for a script than anybody can drag and drop into their game. (although, scripting all dialogue leaves you with some nice options, and all NPCs on a map can be lumped into one script with a simple 'switch' command based on arguments. with some decent directions i think someone with very very very limited knowledge of scripting could do it.)

TWO: Obviously, I'm using such a different font that a custom menu system would need to be realized. The current way to call in text is fairly simple:

Type (string, x, y, linelength, textspeed(not yet implemented))

And I think for my own purposes I'm going to make a menu conversion script, which I've done before to make a menu with a pointer as opposed to one where the text changes color. The question is: Do people want this as well? I will be more inclined to keep the design more generic (and program it better) if they do.

But moreso on menus, variable width text causes some issues. In my font, which is so far only lowercase, the m and the w are WAAAAAY longer (7 pixels plus 1 pixel padding) than the other letters. special characters can be ANY SIZE. they can be full color pictures. With next to no work, you could use the extra characters for any graphic and have a full color picture of each item in any size for the item menu. And have the item name after it.

This makes making it easily applicable to many situations very difficult. SO. What I want are some suggestions. For all the menus.



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TL;DR version: text code syntax. HOW SHOULD IT LOOK? conditionals. HOW SHOULD THEY BE HANDLED? IS SCRIPTING ALL NPC INTERACTION SOMETHING PEOPLE ARE OKAY WITH? (it is likely actually LESS CONFUSING) menus. DESCRIBE YOUR PERFECT (somewhat generic) MAIN MENU OPTIONS. ALL OF THEM.

(caps are only to direct attention to questions I want answered.)

[Bob the Hamster]

I should tell you guys that TMC has already done some work on having fancy font and color support as a built-in feature. It won't be in the Zenzizenzic stable release, but it will probably go in very soon after that.

here is a link to where we were discussing the text markup on the dev mailing list a few months back: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.games.oh ... vel/11947/

[shakeyair]

Would the fancy font options include variable width text? It was mentioned briefly there but it didn't look like there was any real consideration.

Not that I'm asking for all that, that would be a huge change, but its so much prettier.

[shakeyair]

Headway. Text speed is not yet implemented, so it goes slow but that will probably be the last thing I do. Color codes are in.

so far decided on:
$${C###} color
$${W##} wait this many ticks
$${T#} turns wait commands off/on
$${R} drop to next line
$${N} go to next box (the way i am doing it, any given conversation is ONE string, it is automagically divided up into multiple boxes by the script.)

color so far is all that is implemented. tech demo will happen when the rest of the codes are in. (and when the NPC's name shows up in a nice little tab which will be sized based on the length of the name above the box)

portrait support is fairly trivial to add, so i might put the framework of that in but i doubt i'll use it for this project. Box color will change to black because I am only using 16 colors and that blue purple is awful in such a large amount.

yes, the borders are a little off. not worried about it yet, thats all easy easy easy to fix.

[shakeyair]

EDIT: HOLY CRAP I TRIPLE POSTED. Sorry guys. wasn't paying attention.

First song done:

<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf ... 7"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf ... 2F13184367" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href=" Willow Outdoors</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/shakeyair">ShakeyAir</a>

A meandering 7/4 tune. Needs a better name.

And. I decided to go with speech bubbles, it turned out to be fairly easy... ish.



The text code is sloppy, but I can't find anywhere that it bugs out yet and don't feel like cleaning it up much. I'll add some comments and upload a demo if people want it.

Now, time for menus!

[Voltire]

I'll add some comments and upload a demo if people want it.

I'd like to see a demo.
Also, nice song. It's definitely background town music.