Poke Island (SE)

[Kine]

Sep 26th '08 Notification: I updated Creative Worlds with a bit more information than I've probably written through the five pages, but it would sum it up as opposed to reading through all five. I'm not telling anyone "hey visit my site!!", but I'm just saying you'll benefit more by reading up on progress, specific information, and other stuff in a more organized fashion, especially since this the original text is nearly year old. It still doesn't really seem dire enough (for me) to just copy and paste the info here, either, considering turnabout.

Below, I've added a couple of screens for the more finalized version, and added a little to the assistance area. Otherwise it's the same as it's been about year ago.




Original Post:
It's been years since I've last been here. Busy with a lot of stuff, but one thing I've been working pretty hard on is this here game I'm gonna present. I also dunno if this is even the right area within Game Dev... =|

Title: Poke Island (Special Edition)

Made With: RMXP, unless someone can suggest something that outdoes this 100 fold (and give me more sprite flexability).

Intro: Poke Island was a fan game I made back in 1999, even though it wasn't very thorough (in terms of game play and the system). Nevertheless, I still liked it, a least enough to keep the series going long after the game, making the Poke Island series in and of itself a sort of trilogy (the last two were comics, though). A lot of people have been curious about the series, so recently I announced I'd bring it back, but the only way I'm getting Poke Island (the game) out there is to remake it, because the old version is awkward and antiquated and won't run on modern systems.

Story: If you know anything about me, you know I don't give anything away. All I can give you is a sort of teaser story you'd see on the back of a game box or long before a game is released:

Strange things are happening! Pokemon from all over the world are mysteriously being transported to a hidden island in the Pacific, known as Poke Island. Away from human eyes, the Pokemon have lived social lives much like the humans themselves, but with the population instantly increasing, the influence and suggestions of human life increases as well. But for what reason have the Pokemon been transported to this island? Who could be behind this, and what is the purpose?

Honestly the game has about 4 subplots, pretty much interconnected. I just can't say what that is unless you're behind the scenes or the game is finished.

Features: If you've ever touched a MOTHER game, you already know how this works. Basically, the game is based almost exclusively on EarthBound's system. After I had played through EB the first time, it was one of the best gaming experiences I've had, and I guess I was spoiled by it. Making Poke Island (original) like EarthBound was actually more like a tribute and huge inspiration.

PISE isn't any different, except with MOTHER 3's release came new graphics, cutscenes, interactive battles and many things EB didn't have, so now the standard has been upped to MOTHER 3's way of doing things (but the core system for PISE is still very much EarthBound, I won't even attempt sound battles).

If you aren't familiar with EarthBound, I'll try to list some key ideas:

- game is based on a sort of romantized 1990's, complete with an alien invasion
- overworld enemies, many of which are offbeat or satirical
- game itself is a satire of RPGs
- equipable weapons include yo-yos, slingshots and baseball bats
- rolling HP meter gives you the edge on winning battles
- several attacks and status conditions that are pretty silly (such as a Cold)
- soundtrack includes many sampled tunes from US culture
- a lot of Beatles references
- Pokey Minch


Ideally, Poke Island has the same core ideas. I mean, Pikachu doesn't use a Yo-yo but still.

Actually, on the Pokemon side of things, the creatures, types and attacks are taken from the RBY games. This game was made in a time before GS existed, and the story itself hasn't changed. I can't add any more than what few new Pokemon were revealed at the time, with the exception of Pichu (as the original game had a very young Pikachu, and well Game Freak retconned that one so I guess I have to comply there).

That said, hopefully it won't bother anyone that the game is set in the era of the 1st generation. To be honest, though, that keeps thing SUPER simple, because I really really really don't think anyone wants to make a kajillion sprites for 480+ Pokemon and variations of them.

You may also remember the days when Bite was a normal attack and Poison was S/E on bugs. Well, it's here too. There's only 15 types (to add any more doesn't just mess up the era, but the story itself), and each is pretty much how you remember. The only difference is that Psychic types won't trump everything, as that barely matters in this situation, and the stats themselves will differ from the old HP, ATK, DEF, SPC, and SPD. There's some other exceptions, too, such as held items introduced in GS actually appear as useful items here, etc.

Screens:
Newer, closer to final stuff:
Here's some shots of some areas.
http://www.creativeworlds.net/PIStuff/PISE-GreenTown1.PNG

http://www.creativeworlds.net/PIStuff/PISE-PokeForest2.PNG

http://www.creativeworlds.net/PIStuff/PISE-FernGarden1.PNG

Old concept movie:
Dev Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90b_U2-ps1k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcreativeworlds%2Enet%2FPokeIsleSE%2Ehtm)

As a rule, I've learned that you never announce a project without getting something done yourself. Sometimes this is as high as 50%, but for this, there's way too much to do alone.



And with all that said and done...
Assistance:
Generally, I need whatever talent anyone has. So fields are open for anything but mapping and story, those were done in the original and won't change. Details?

- Overworld sprites for NPCs. There's a lot of them. A LOT OF THEM. 157 Pokemon total, but a whole lot of species have variations (male, female, child, businessguy, salesman, shopper, doctor, etc).

- Props. Because there's probably too many of these, too.

- Battle sprites. It's possible, I may do all these myself. But there's a lot of bloody enemies too. They go into 4 categories: Common Pokemon, Strange Pokemon, Original and MOTHER. Commons are just everyday Pokemon that resemble old official anime art. Strange are Pokemon with personality (disorders) or Bosses. Note that not all Pokemon (common or strange) are enemies. Original are original enemies that I made for the game, like Demonic Relic or China Plate (the less sense they make, the better). MOTHER means some MOTHER 1 & 2 enemies reappear, like the Filthy Attack Roach or Titany.

- Scenary. This takes a long time, too. A lot of it can be ripped from MOTHER 3, but I'm thinking even more of it is from scratch, a least it's been in my experience.

- Scripting. I'll be working in Sphere, which uses Javascript. The last thing I can do is code. Trust me, I've been trying for about 6 years. If I ever get a job in Game Dev, a programmer is NOT what I'll be. If you can make a catch-all script that's pretty much EarthBound in a nutshell, that's all I really need. But I'll also need stuff like sprite allowance (how many sprites I can have per character as opposed to 4 for all), a party of 5 in battle, etc.

- Stats for enemies. Again, there's a lot of them, and that means a lot of stats to assign, such as total HP, Offense, etc. This also includes weaknesses, resistances, and susceptabilities (such as one may be easily paralyzed or poisoned compared to another).

- Musician. A weird one. I will need to find someone who makes music somewhere, somehow, because a few songs I absolutely NEED to be original. The rest of the game can have an original (for the most part, there's a few standards I need to keep) score, but it's not dire. I'll end up using selected music from MOTHER 2/3 among others otherwise.

There's probably more aspects that I can't think of, but as you can see, this game is very much "build from the ground up", with the only presets being location and mapping, how the story goes and what elements of scenery I can mooch from MOTHER 3 (and battle BGs from 2/3 on top of that).

The key thing to remember is that the overall style of the game is MOTHER(EarthBound) + Pokemon. The overworld will mostly look like a MOTHER game, battle images and other close ups should resemble the official style of the series, however with EB wackiness mixed in depending on who it is.





Last words...
I appreciate any and all help/support I can get on this. The sooner it's done, the better for all (especially those who are waiting for Poke Tales/Legends). Also, I'm getting old, people. It won't be long before I gotta concern myself with mortgages and the IMRF (well, I'm not THAT old but the time is coming). So I really could use the extra boost so that I'm not still attempting to do this when I'm 35. >_> (that's many years off but still.) Any help is good help, so long as it's coordinated.

... plus, I'm still trying to get a fighting game out. =B

If you want any more information that I undoubtably left out, or want some insight on the original Poke Island, you can check this out (http://creativeworlds.net/PokeIsleSE.htm) if you haven't already seen it.

Thanks for your time, I'm off.

[Avatar]

This is easily one of the better looking projects on the board at the moment (both in form of the graphics, and the presentation of the game itself)
I can't say much on the scripting aspect.

I really like the Mother 3 inspired look (I'm very much a fan of the Mother series myself) you've created.
And did I catch a little Earthbound reference there during the battle system part?

I also noticed a little layering error in the video at 00:21 when you walk past the tree and up to the Raichu.

[Kine]

Thanks, and yeah, that'd be one of the MOTHER enemies in the game. Actually I ended up recreating that battle image (considering most EB enemies that made it into 3 were cleaned up some, so I had to follow suit).

Also, I noticed the clipping thing too. I'm not quite sure how to approach that one just yet. I can adjust the priorities, but that's all I know to do, and that's assuredly not enough.

[Neo-Dragon]

Really impressive looking. You seem to have done a good job with the game so far. Shame you need someone to help you code as the code is well the main thing of the game lol. Hopefully someone will help you so this project will get a release in the future. I would help but I'm an Rm2k3 man myself.... lol.
Good luck.

[Olly99]

If you don't mind me saying, this looks like it relies really heavily off EarthBound. Not a bad thing though, looks like it could be interesting.

[Nastara]

Amazing work. Simply amazing. I don't know what else to say.

[Alistair]

Very good. You have captured the true essence of Mother in the form of Pokémon. The maps, sprites, tiles, dialog (well, everything) looks exxcellent. Keep up the good work.

[Kine]

If you don't mind me saying, this looks like it relies really heavily off EarthBound. Not a bad thing though, looks like it could be interesting.

I remember when I had first conceptualized the game back for the original version around 8 years ago, it sorta did. However, as I worked on it, I ended up writing and rewriting a whole lot of stuff to make it it's own. In the end, it still had some elements that seemed direct from EB, just rerouted, though.* A lot of the game itself is it's own, though, and the overall story is quite different too (trust me, it's not "Giygas strikes from beyond the grave", and even if he did, what the heck does that have to do with this? I had to do a lot of logic checking in the day...).

Of course, if you mean systematically (and graphically), then yes. That's intentional. I was probably easily amused by everything in EB that wasn't in any other RPGs at the time, and I actually still am what with M3, except I'm not going to even try the complicated new features in the 3rd game. The only thing I may have to forgo is rolling HP (just a countdown is good enough), which is a neat health system but heck if I know how to approach that (in my head I can think of how to code a countdown, but in application my codes almost never work).

The largest problem is that the series continued afterwards, further developing characters and the island itself, and that I'm not the biggest fan of retcons (even if I'm better at creative writing now than I was years ago), so even in this remake I cannot make further changes (not huge ones) or else it causes a huge tsunami of inconsistancies down the line.

*That being said, that idea probably isn't any different than any game made from PK Hack. For this game, though, it's really much more expansive, which, outside of having no hacking skills, is why I had to use some old game making program to get in various locations and situations. Using RMXP now, well, at least the game will actually be an RPG this time.

[Perpetr8r]

I'm not sure if I'm a little late on the uptake here, but I would like to help.

Let me first introduce myself. Most know me as Sirus, and I hail from a small Pokemon MMO I run on BYOND. I've always been a fan of Pokemon, but my love for it has diminished greatly with each passing year, as everything onwards from Ruby/Sapphire seems to have just run the Pokemon series into the ground. For the few years it's been up, I've tried to keep my game true to the traditions of the original Pokemon games (shortly afterward I discovered the manga and was blown away by it, but that's another story).

As I'm now studying full-time for university, I've had less and less time to work on my game, and my grand visions of creating a famous Pokemon MMORPG have somewhat diminshed. You could say I lost my drive a little bit.

And then today I somehow stumbled across your site, and it brought everything back. The magic that Pokemon once held for me... your art, creativity and vision have resurrected. It was amazing. I swear I visited every single Pokemon link on that site, played every game, read every comic and stayed up way late when I should be working on this project... but I digress. The point is, what you've done to Pokemon is what I've always wished I could do; Create an immersive experience that makes you feel like you are part of the world, that makes you feel a sense of awe to watch, that draws out that creative streak we all have.

So yeah, I'm inspired. A lot. I've worked with RPG maker before... (Not XP, but I'll pick it up fast if I get the chance), and I want to actually be a part of this game. If you need programming or design help, I know I can be of assistance.

And if you want examples of my work, then I can either direct you to the game I run (I'll even show you the update-in-progress), or show you one of my old RM2k3 projects that I've saved and someday hope to return to. Either way, I offer my skills to you and hope we can work together. I think we have much we could learn from each other.

- Sirus

EDIT: Oh, and you might want to look at DM(BYOND) to code the game in. It's tons more flexible than RPG maker and if you do, you'll have someone with a lot of experience at it to back you up. But go with what you know, I just want to help!

[jonsploder]

110/100! That is great! If you want something 100 times better than RPG MAKER XP I'd chose gamemaker but I dont think that you need it.

[Kine]

Perpetr8r: Sounds a lot like me. Well, I thought RSE was better than GS but still, new games too much of the same, yadda yadda another coat of paint. The only difference is instead of a diminishing interest, I just started deviating for my own entertainment. Well, moreso, that is.

I've always liked doing things a bit differently than most people would approach. Go for the gusto, I say.

But anyway, sure if you have examples, I'd like to see what you have. But even then you're free to choose your own position, there's too much open areas for anything to really be filled.

Also, truth be told, I don't have real hold on RMXP yet, that is, there's not enough done where I have to use it. I'm not even going to start real creation until the system is worked out, so it's just like one giant debug room for now. So if BYOND is better (all around), I'll switch. Mainly I just need something that's easier for sprites and can make special battle BGs undulate and twist and such. Something that has 8 directional pixel movement w/ caterpillars as a standard is a plus, though I have a source code for that anyway.

jonsploder: I have Game Maker, and while that would definately give me the sprite flexability, I just don't think it would give me as much control in the long run. Also, I'm just not so sure with GM itself... I guess if I wanted to make any other game (can't say I do w/ this and MUGEN), I would turn to Stencyl, when that finally comes out.

[Perpetr8r]

*ahem* I had all these great things to show off but nooo, "Go get 15 posts" it says... If you want, I'll email you the examples I was going to show you since I don't really have the option of putting them up here.

But anyway, sure if you have examples, I'd like to see what you have. But even then you're free to choose your own position, there's too much open areas for anything to really be filled.

Now that I've said I'd show ya, I'll have to go dig up "Boredom". I hope you still have RM2k3 though, else things might get interesting...
As for PRPR, I don't really want to show off the current version. I mean, it's not bad, but if you really want to see what I can do then let me show you the update sometime. I'll just have to catch you online somehow and then invite you into my little test server of doom.

Also, truth be told, I don't have real hold on RMXP yet, that is, there's not enough done where I have to use it. I'm not even going to start real creation until the system is worked out, so it's just like one giant debug room for now. So if BYOND is better (all around), I'll switch. Mainly I just need something that's easier for sprites and can make special battle BGs undulate and twist and such. Something that has 8 directional pixel movement w/ caterpillars as a standard is a plus, though I have a source code for that anyway.

Well here's the specs of BYOND:

MISC
- Built on an internet interface (thus very big on multiplayer functionality... though you can make single-player games easily. Still, they are rare on BYOND nowadays *shrug*)
- Not sure if this is good or bad, but BYOND generally has 3 windows: the interface window, status/command bars and the text window. I've taken a pic of the PRPR update to demonstrate this view... BAH and I can't add it because I don't have 15 posts -_-


PROS
- Excellent sprite support. The icon squares are 32x32, but I know how to multitile icons and thus they can be pretty much any size you want them to be.
- 8 directional movement. You can actually set it per sprite, so some onely have 4 dirs or even 1 dir!
- Free exposure! If you make it on BYOND, especially if it has my "name" on it, it will get a fair deal of interest from BYOND players who like Pokemon.
- Very versatile. You can do tons more stuff than RPG maker lets you do, including write your own combat system, have status windows and use html!

CONS
- Interface is very different to RPG maker so it may or may not be good for you
- As for backgrounds, they are handled in a funny way. I'm not entirely sure if you can get what you want with BYOND. It's not so great with moving backgrounds in my experience. It's probably possible to ad-lib it but it's really a decision of whether you want the easy way or the way that whips the coder...

And uh, caterpillars? I assume you mean like trailing sprites that follow the main one around. BYOND doesn't have direct access to them, but again they can be coded.

I suppose the best way is to just show you what BYOND can do as opposed to telling you, but you at least have an idea before I show you around PRPR.

[Kine]

Well, the gist of it is I just want the game to go from looking like this (scroll for screens, no time to pull em out) (http://www.enterbrain.co.jp/tkool/RPG_XP/eng/) to this (http://starmen.net/mother2/images/screenshots/), systematically. I would've linked gameplay videos but I'm at work and YouTube just ain't happening here (sheesh, the one other time I could actually use the site...). Starmen probably DOES have gameplay vids, though. Everything you see in that game? I'd like the same function. Maybe not every last detail but still. So whatever engine can do that short of straight coding from C++ (unless the suggestee wants to do it).

I'm not to sure what to make out of BYOND just yet. I've never used RM2003 or any RPG making software before, so I'm not particularly picky, although I will say that I went right for XP just because I already had the source for moving battle BGs from Starmen for it.

For sprite flexability, well with RMXP size has never been a problem, or palletes or anything. The biggest problem is the fact that they only allow 4sprites per character. You can add sources to change sprites, extend how many is needed, etc, but this I frankly feel is stupid. Is there a source code that allows you to let you suggest how many sprites a character can have (more or less than 4 a row)? Yes, but not compatible with the script I'm using. But RPG Maker shouldn't have to force you to do this stuff anyway. I would expect a system that calls itself RPG MAKER would make some of these things standard, it's the sole focus! Why would you bother to [blah blah blah end user blah blah efficiency poor documentation on and on] but I guess beggers can't be choosers. I shouldn't turn this into my concerns with RM's interface.

Erm, anyway the sprite problem is me getting in about the 25+/- sprites I have per character just for one scene (exaggeration? It may come to that). And while I could use a self switch (like I do for NPC speaking), you can only have so many, and any detailed scene is gonna make use of unique sprites and visuals you only see once or twice, kinda giving the characters more of a diverse/personal feel and less of a "I'm pixels just standing here" idea. The game is more like an interactive story, actually, so the character actions and the like is very important.

And that, everyone, is why I'm so adamant about engines and sprite management. If I have to do it the hard way, that's the way cookie crumbles, but I just know there HAS to be some super efficient method.

That's also why there's thousands of them, outside of many many NPCs.

Actually, that whole thing was sort of an indirect response to what you said about BYOND's sprite support, Perpetr8r. If it can do that, then cool.

Then again... I gotta have my battle BGs... that's one of those visions you've had for a creation that's lasted many years, and if you have the opportunity to finally get it in, oh you're going to take it.

If you have a test game (can be a tutorial) or a video, send that to me via email so I can test the engine out, or at least see it in action.

[Perpetr8r]

Weeeeeell...

If you want to do that with sprites, BYOND handles it great. The way BYOND works is thus (god I wish I could link right now):

For starters, you create an icon file. In this icon file you can create either single states (which are basically a non-moving sprite for say terrain) or animated sprites, called icon states. The animated sprites can be set to animate by themselves or to animate only when something using the icon moves. You can have 1, 4 or 8 directions on the animated sprites and you can set the number of images in the animation.

So, you can have 4 directions but no animation for example, or 8 directions and 10 frames of animation for each one!

With regards to everything else...

It's doable. It's killing me to admit it because I know that only a really skilled BYOND programmer can pull it off with lots of work, but I AM a really skilled BYOND programmer... Those pretty text windows you have linked me to? A few months ago I wrote my own script for those windows, complete with custom border support and window/text color. I could even write a system that allows you to make on-screen selections with a cursor like that... Again, lots of work. The problem mainly with this is that if I were to get hit by a train mid-development you'd kind of be stuck unless you could get a good BYOND programmer to pick it up again, and there aren't many of those around.

Even movable backgrounds should be doable, provided you make the animations yourself. BYOND doesn't provide realtime graphics manipulation to the extent of making things distort and then put themselves back together again. I could really speak for hours on what BYOND can and can't do and not be finished, so instead I'm going to open up PRPR 4.0 and fraps and record you a demo movie of some of the stuff BYOND can do. Still, I'm happy to go RMXP for you if you want, we'll just have to deal with it not being perfect I guess.

[Kine]

Actually I don't know if RMXP can do that with BGs. It doesn't matter right off the bat as the battle BGs are just ripped images from MOTHER 2 and 3. It's just for the last battle that I'd need a new BG, as it would follow suit of the last bosses of 2 and 3 (mainly 2's, 3's version was cut and replaced, only to be found through hacking). Actually if I can find a program outside that can do that anyway I can just save the results frame by frame (even if that means a zillion print screens), kinda like what the Battle BGs are like now anyway (that said I don't actually use a zillion BG images. THAT would slow the game down).

Oh yeah, it can use MP3s or such, right? I just don't think MIDIs are going to cut it for this game.

[Perpetr8r]

I had a look, and the definitive answer is no. Here's what the "manual" tells me:
"The MP3 format is not presently supported by BYOND due to licensing issues. Ogg-Vorbis, however, is a good alternative. For music the module formats are also a good choice, and tend to be smaller. "

I didn't know RMXP could play mp3 files, RM2k3 could only play midis and wavs as far as I recall. Also, I dug up my games collection and was pleasantly surprised. Not only is Boredom there, but almost every other game I'd ever made on RPG maker (2k and 2k3) was there too! Even Spirit Legend which I thought I'd lost!

Anyway, I now have lots of games I could show you, though anything other than Boredom has some RTP issues which make it unplayable until I find the rest of the files needed...

[Kine]

That's gonna be a lot of music converting... I looked up OGG already and found that while you could go from MP3 to OGG, that's not the best idea. I'll find a way. I'll do more work before MIDIs.

[Perpetr8r]

Well, just let me know what you want me to do, and I'll get right on it. Having dug up my old RM2k3 games earlier today, I feel even more inspired than before! :laugh:

[Edge]

This game looks really interesting.Will you be able to choose from which pokemon you would like to play as?And are those tiles yours that you made?

[Kine]

Nope. The game is more of a interactive story (and keep in mind this story continues after the game's ending), and therefore the characters are preset. I'm wondering about nicknaming, though.

The tiles are sorta half and half, for now. A LOT of structures in Green Town, for example, I had to make myself because they simply don't exist otherwise (this is fine, I like making stuff myself). Poke Forest, though? It's pretty much whatever I can get from Teri/Sunshine Forest in M3. And Mt. Skyway's featured panoramic (they change depending on elevation) I made myself, along with some of the mountain structures (like the cliff-bridge).

Considering there's some areas I don't think a MOTHER game has ever touched, there's still a lot of unique areas to go, plus, each town has unique buildings to it (and places to go). That's a lot more work but it adds to the overall "personality" of each area.

Oh, and now that it's finally the weekend, Perpetr8r, those files you sent, are they part of the game or something? I couldn't ever get to it during the week so I don't know what I was really supposed to do.

[Edge]

Oh alright so you made some and you found some.Anways this game is looking really good try to release some screens.

[Perpetr8r]

Oh yes. You have to download them all and then unzip the first with winrar and that will unzip them all. Then you run the setup and can just play the game.

Also, there's another game I'd like to show you if you want to see more of my work. I went looking for some old games and lo and behold I stumbled across the magnum opus of my RM2k gaming-hood: Spirit Legend. It's not finished but there's about 2 hours of gameplay in it, and it has some unique gameplay elements, even though the storyline is a little uh, amateur.

I've been messing with some of my old games to get a feel for RPG maker again in case you want to use it still, and I'm pleased to say that I don't seem to have forgotten much! So yeah, all systems are go.

[Kine]

I played a bit of the boredom game. It was pretty funny, especially the part about Evil blowing things up twice.

But at any rate, I thought it was gonna be in BYOND. Is that link in your sig a game in BYOND, and would that be a good way to test the engine or what?

Anyway, it may be a while off before we ever get to any coding or whatever, I suppose if you want you can read up on how Ruby in XP works, or maybe you're good at graphics? I could always use a lot more graphic artists.

[Perpetr8r]

Eh heh.. compared to you I'm a total amateur with graphics. I DO however have the first 251 Pokemon from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon ripped and converted into 32x32 walking sprites, though I don't think that helps. And yes, if you WANT, the game can be in BYOND. Boredom was just a demonstration of my games, and the link in my sig DOES go to a BYOND game I made.

Um... what else... oh yeah, I don't mind how long it takes since I have more than enough to keep my plenty busy as is. Just let me know what you'd like to do or try and when, and I'll get onto it.

[Kine]

That I can use. Actually, if you have a sprite sheet of Pokemon from 120 to 151, Houou, Togepi, Pichu, Marill, Snubble and Donphan, that would be most helpful. Spriters Resource only has up to about 122 or something (I can never remember who all is in that group, the whole Magmar-Jynx- Scyther group), and I only need Gen 1 Pokemon plus whoever was revealed at the time (and Pichu). I won't use the sprites, of course, but PMD sprites are good for getting all angles of Pokemon, because save for the anime, you never get a really good view of them. I'd hate to just make guesses on what backsides or some such look like. This isn't a problem for Pokemon I've been drawing forever but like Blastoise or Gyarados, yeah I can only assume...

[Perpetr8r]

Well the icons are all in dmi form, which is BYOND's form of icon. However, they can be simply copied and pasted into any graphical program from BYOND (since they are stored as bitmaps in the dmi files). So yeah, if you don't mind downloading BYOND, I don't mind sharing the icons (provided you keep them to yourself/poke island, since these icons were ripped by my hard working friends). If the file doesn't end up too big, I can email them to you.

[Kine]

Fair enough. I'll let you know when I download it, which may be a while now the the weekdays have started again.

[Kine]

Bumpty

Alright, a couple of weeks later and now I've downloaded BYOND.

Now what happens? Also, I remembered I would need those PMD sprites. It occured to me again one day when I was doing more sprites and was like "wait... I don't know how this guy looks at this angle". I think it was Pinsir. =\

By the by, I think someone by the name of Mr.Accident at Starmen.net is working on some sorta battle BG extractor/editor something like that. That'll definately help with what I was meaning to do for the last battle if all works out. Just thought I'd mention that considering how I was talking about that for a while.

[Perpetr8r]

Well... BYOND has two features once installed. The first is dream seeker, which allows you to play BYOND games, such as the one in my signature. The other one is Dream Maker, which is the games making part. I'm uh... well it's been over 24 hours since I last slept so I'm kind of dizzy and not thinking straight so I think I'll go lie down now. I'll send you those sprites soon... but they are only 4 directional (just a warning)

[Kine]

Okay. I may have a chance to fiddle with it this weekend. Hopefully it's not a contrived program. Also, the 4 directions shouldn't be a problem... except where they will be (uh oh, Gyarados >_>). If I know where to find them in game (or some sort code to change the main character), then I can get the rest.

[Perpetr8r]

I've sent you the files. Sorry 'bout the lag time, it's the build up to exams and I'm pretty much flat-out studying.

[Improfane]

Module music formats are the best! I highly recommend them.

Although I doubt you'll find readily usable music. You can't easily convert existing music to it either. You'd have to get permission from the various artists or make your own, if you're good at the keyboard.

The animations on your website are simply amazing. I'm suprized you aren't a girl. If only you wrote tutorials like that and how to animate so well. I watched all the Kirby and Pokemon as a big fan of both.

[Esmas]

This is looking incredible, Kine. Actually, like Avatar said, this is one of the better looking projects on the board that has been coming up recently, so I wish you look with this. And, is this supposed to resemble Mystery Dungeon, because it looks a great deal like it!

[Kine]

Perp- No prob. Still not in any stage to code anything yet, uh... well just so you have something to do, though, tell me if tilesets are anything like RM, and if it's more or less flexable.

I plan on creating full maps, and then either importing it straight or chopping it into pieces because there's too much structure in the enviroments to just have tiles haphazardly placed all over. Especially when it comes to lining stuff up. On top of that, the game moves on a pixel by pixel basis, so I can't have everything uniformly in tiles like a traditional Pokemon game anyway.

Improfane- I actually have both ModPlug Tracker and Fruityloops, but I'm still no composer by and large. The only songs I've made was a sort of Panel de Pon esque panic song just incase I ever got around to creating a sort of PdP using later PI series characters, and a remix of the Insane level of Kirby Star Stacker, but they're far from useable quality.

I'm more than likely gonna hire a musician anyway for the several tracks I need specially composed. I'm not too worried about a full ST, though, as s/he probably doesn't have that kind of time and I know I don't have that kind of money.

And the girl thing... it never fails. There's been plently of people who otherwise had me mistaken.

Esmas - Thanks for the compliments. If anything, though, PMD resembles this (not entirely). PI existed long before then. It's closer to EarthBound, though, and in my own twisted way is related to the MOTHER series, not to a point where I'd label it a MOTHER (fan)game, but more than just some winks and refs.

It's a tie in I can get away with, though, considering R/G/B/Y was actually indeed inspired by the MOTHER games but I think beyond that it became it's own thing (considering G/S/C and up seems like a whole different ballpark), Creatures Inc once being Ape Inc, Hirokazu Tanaka, Benimaru Itoh, etc...

[Perpetr8r]

In RPGMaker, you import tilesets and they are auto broken-up for you, and you can only set certain values for them. In DM, you make your own turfs completely from scratch, and can give them any kinds of attributes you can code. You can also make turfs which are subsets of other turfs and inherit all of their basic functionalities plus more.

For example, you can make a water turf (which is only passable by water/flying Pokemon) and make a deep water turf which is the same as water, but can also be dived in. Or, without making a sub-turf you could make a secret wall doof turf which is completely different to your wall turf but has the same icon. You can even have turfs based off of turfs based off of turfs... like, well I can't imagine why you'd go that far but it's doable.

Maaaan... pixel by pixel collisions are gonna be a pain in the ass. I'm going to start looking up some libraries for it on the BYOND site and doing a few test programs to get used to it before I try implementing anything. Pixel movement shouldn't be too hard, but yeah unless you intend to have the entire tile of the ground be collide-able I'ma have to figure something out...

[Kine]

Wait, don't. Not yet.

It's getting icreasingly harder to choose which engine I want to use in the long run. What I need to do is have a sort of pros and cons list of both, and see which of the two has the pros outweigh the cons, or if that doesn't happen, which has less cons.

I think you've done this already with BYOND, at least some pros, but now I'm gonna try to see it side by side.

~RPGMaker~
Pros:
- Since most people use it, there's more support for it.

Cons:
- Sucks with sprite allowance. I absolutely need to have a lot of sprite allowance.

~BYOND~
Pros:

Cons:
- No MP3 support (music conversion's gonna take a lot of time, and I don't even know if the OGGs will even play on a person's computer who doesn't have a method of playing it...like mine)


Okay the list is thin, I forgot a lot of stuff. Both forgot and just don't know. A potential con for BYOND, though... do you have to sign up to play games or can you create an executable file? I know I'm gonna lose some people if they gotta sign up just to play it. Then again, in a way I guess that keeps the program more secure.

It's reasons like the above as to why I can't come to any definate conclusions. I'm going to go back to spriting now. It's a safe mindless task. ^_^;

... well there's always Game Maker... '~'

[Perpetr8r]

Well, no worries about the pixel thing, I didn't get time for it thanks to exams. IN any case, I BELIEVE that you can create an exe using BYOND which allows people to run the game just fine without ever downloading the BYOND files, and I know there's an option that allows people to play without creating an account.

It's probably best if you play with BYOND a bit if you want to make that list. I can tell you stuff but it's not necessarily going to be a pro or con to you. If you personally do it you'll surely get a good idea of if you want to mess with it or not.

[Kine]

Cool. Does it come with tutorials? I think I mentioned it before but one of the suckier things about RM was that it barely had documentation. I can't just jump into a product, I gotta read up on it and do side by side projects, that is, a tutorial.

You don't know how long it took me to figure out why tilesets weren't importing right in RMXP. No docs, and apparently no one ever tells you the FULL explaination on forums. -_-

Soooo, help me avoid 2-4 weeks of trial and error, please?

[The Dash]

I'm pretty sure that Rpg Maker XP has a very large Sprite Allowance dude.. But I've been out of it for a while.

[Perpetr8r]

Yep, BYOND has tons of tutorials, including the thing I used to get started, the DM guide (I would link but again I don't have enough freaking posts >_>). Anyway, you can find the DM guide and many other resources if you go to the BYOND games page and click "Create Games" in the sidebar on the left. Also, players make their own tutorials and libraries, so you'll often have the code you need already made for you, which is pretty handy.

[Kine]

Cool beans. I'll give it a go sooner or later.

Dash- Yeah... if you can make a code for it. And even then it's gotta be compatible with everything else. That's the main problem. Remember, by sprite allowance I don't mean size, I mean quanity (trust me, I know for a fact there's going to be a scene where a character has about 30+ sprites in an event you'll see all of one time). And you only have a few self switches.

And every character is different. Pikachu's walk is four frames total, but Pidgey's hop only three. Tauros probably five... Stuff like that, I don't want to have to be tied down to a standard.

[Perpetr8r]

Did you get the gajillion icons I sent? I forgot to ask about that...

EDIT: Nevermind, I'll just assume you did

[Kine]

Yeah, I got them. Sorry for not mentioning that. I know you've gotten the email message, and I got your reply on that, too.

Otherwise...

Well, people, I edited the first page with information regarding a Creative Worlds update on this. Again, it's not a ploy to get people to go, it's because I don't see a need to write everything up again here when nothing is really going on, here.

[TotoMud]

Well the intro and the storyline is quite superb ^^

[Renagadez]

You have caught my attention,normally I would just breeze through all these "never will be finished" pokemon games but yours stuck out to me,I love your idea of fusing the style of Mother games and put pokemon with it.And the concept is great :3 you imspire me to continue on an old project.I used the same mother style...but dont worry it wasnt pokemon. I just wanted to say you have my full support im rootin for yah

[Kine]

Nah, it's going to be finished, the absolute worst I believe will happen is that I'll end up settling for a super rush job. I'd have to literally be dead for me not to do the things I want to get done (it's all for the same reason I do everything on my sites... no one else is).

But yeah, I already know the stigma of RPG ideas never getting completed, I tend to recommend people don't get started on anything unless they really know how much of their personal time and talents (and even stuff they may not know) it's going to take. This one may not be finished for a long time but that's up to everyone else's discretion if they keep in contact with this or not, I'm not going to send out reminders or anything. That's not to say I won't make an announcement of completion, but it'll probably be small.

[Perpetr8r]

Having made some games before, I know the level of commitment that has to go in. It's not such a surprise that many people drop their RPGs before they reach even halfway completion, given how much effort they take. This one shouldn't be too much trouble though, judging by what I've seen. It seems fairly manageable, unlike my personal projects!

[Kine]

Actually, I sorta thought the same. I looked at how involved some RPGs are with all sorts of extras like fishing or... hmm. It's not coming to me now but a lot of RPGs have so much little stuff to actually do that you'd have to know how to program in.

EarthBound's system always seemed extremely simple in comparision, save for the rolling HP and the Battle Backgrounds, which is actually some sort of mathematical program running that. Otherwise, you walk, talk, and beat people up. Everything is in the story, not in how many extras you can cram into one game.

That's why I can't see this being cancelled. It's just too darn simplistic. Again, the worst that'll happen is I get frustrated, and it's just full of imperfections and I have to leave out a lot of special cutscenes/reduce the sprite amount to only what is absolutely necessary. In fact, I could probably do the bare minimum and get this done within half a year (or maybe longer, depending on sprites), but that would be lame.

When it comes down to it, the only things outside of the gameplay that the game would need is a way to make characters slide on ice tiles (like Pokemon, in that they don't stop until they hit an object, and as far as RMXP goes, I have a source for that), an underwater air meter/counter, wind to blow characters around (slightly), overworld objects that can do damage (damage tiles I guess) like touching fire, and a sort of bestiary, except that it's really specific and only records certain characters after certain conditions are met (so it doesn't even have anything to do with fighting anyone).

The last thing actually seems like the only really difficult thing to implement. Probably the building of rather than the conditionals, though.

I am also contemplating whether or not I should do a slot machine. I didn't before and it's kinda of pointless, but EarthBound/MOTHER 3 sort of have one. And as far as games go, in M3, Lucas can play video games but only as something to watch him do. You hear all sorts of sound effects as he's frantically playing, just for him to end up defeated and embarassed. Neat extra touch, though. I'm thinking about just going that route, in that I really cannot see the need for a slots game in this game. If anything, it's just a throwback to Game Corner. Eh, that's a last minute detail I may or may not add in when everything else is finished.

[thompson]

Oh so this is going to have every pokemon? Or just the newer ones?

[Wichu]

If you look at the first post, he said it will only include the RBY ones, ie the first 151.

Have you tried RMXP.org for scripts? They might have something you need.

[Perpetr8r]

I almost wish I knew RMXP better, because you seem to be pretty set on using it, Kine. All of those things are doable, but it would be so much easier for me to work with a familiar system as opposed to learning everything again. Oh well, guess I'll just go with whatever.

[Kine]

thompson - Just like what Wichu said, the game's setting is still based on the past, so it only involves the first gen plus the ones who were already revealed around the time of the first movie. And Pichu.

Wichu - Yeah, I have an account there, but it's been quite some time since I checked up on it. If I were to stick with RMXP, I'd see more about getting what I need, more specifically as far as compatibility goes. But since that seems so far gone, I'm just focusing on the graphics part now.

Perp- Not necessarily, I'm just stating what I know about because it's just easier to give for examples. I'll try to use BYOND either today or tomorrow, you wouldn't believe how busy this holiday vacation has been if I told you. First, I gotta get AB updated, though.

[Perpetr8r]

Just letting you know I'm on vacation in the US until mid Feb so I probably won't be able to work on anything in that time.

[Kine]

Let me know when you get back, if not already back. I think we can start a test bed pretty soon.

[Da Man]

Are you the same kine that runs the Creative Worlds website?
Sorry for going off-topic.

EDIT: Yep I know those sigs.

[Perpetr8r]

Let me know when you get back, if not already back. I think we can start a test bed pretty soon.

Yeah, I'm back. I actually arrived back a few days ago... nice timing!

[feltpens]

Your custom character sets are incredible. What you have so far is amazing, if maybe in need of a little decoration. Best of luck!

[Kine]

I don't think anyone quite understands the multitude of character sprites that's going into this game. I plan to eventually write about this on my site whenever I feel like updating it.

I mean, there's so many Rattata and Pikachu (for examples) variations it's borderline ridiculous. I haven't really done much more with the landscapes, but I already know each area has it's own set of scenary (different houses, etc).

Little details like this make me feel like I'm probably doing a lot more work than was even put into MOTHER 3, but knowing what I know, that isn't fair to say, because MOTHER 3 had to be cut down some just to fit into the GBA cart. However, the satisfaction will be worth it, I feel. I just hope people actually notice this (maybe I should include a statement in game that says HEY! Pay attention to the scenary!) It may be minimalist, but there'll be a lot to take in.

I swear, the production time will probably take the longest because of graphics alone. Scripting events can't possibly take as much time.

And that brings me to the test bed, because I will hurt somebody, a lot of somebodies, if I end up 100%-ing the graphics and can't do anything with them (that's not supposed to be a threat, heh, but just an idea of how upset I'll be).

And I wanna be able to just get right into finishing up the game by the time graphics ever reach completion. So having everything else tested and coded on the side will make the transition and process easier/faster.

Perpet8tor, I'll probably have to get back to you on the weekend with the full details of what we'll use, but I wanted to know if you knew about this engine, as I found it while you were gone. I admit I'm still not 100% rock solid on an engine yet, but I'm going to finalize it by the end of March, that's for certain. Time is...well not money in this case, but precious life, at least!

So anyway, heard of OHRRPGCE (http://hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/index.php/Main_Page.html)? If not, it's okay. I just saw it was mentioned while reading about another not-really-useful-beyond-a-dash-function upgrade to RPGMaker topic at Starmen.

Here's some stuff off hand that we'll have to test out during the time graphics are being made:

- Battle BGs (if using Byond)
- Caterpillar style party (up to six people, although you wouldn't control that many)
- Along with the above point, making a sort of helper character that can't be controlled in battle, but can't be harmed, and does random actions on their own (people who played EB even for a minute, think King/Pokey/Picky).
- Otherwise, up to five party members in battle that can be controlled.
- Dash function
- A kind of dynamic way to change landscape (it'll change probably by a fade out, but I mean to replace a sort of daytime version with a nighttime version. It's probably really easy, but I'd manage to fumble that up somehow)
- Sliding tiles, like ice tiles in Pokemon where when you touch them going a certain direction, you keep moving until you hit an object/wall/not-ice tile.
- Damaging tiles/objects in the overworld.
- Hp reduction system (does not have to be graphically spectatulor like EB/M3, just perhaps an incremental countdown after you get hit to the new total, as opposed to just cutting straight to it. If it can't be done easily enough, no big)
- A way to sort of have an event happen just because you did/didn't do something, but it's not a real event. For example, which doesn't exist in this game, you walk off the mountain ledge and a "cutscene" kicks in of you falling down from where you walked off, fade out, fade back in to you being in some particular spot X where you get back up. Game goes back to manual, and you'll have to try climbing up again now knowing what not to do.
- Underwater air meter/timer.
- Way to replenish said meter.

That's about all that comes to mind. Beyond those particulars, the game should be fairly straight foward construction.

[feltpens]

Please accept my generic words of encouragement. You are very talented, and if not for our sake, for the Mother series' sake, the show must go on!

It's good that you have specific plans in place. This is always good.

Dude, if you need any help with overworld background graphics or something, drop me a line, PM-wise. I can try my hand at the Mother 3 style.

If not, I won't be hurt; I wouldn't let anyone else get near the graphics if I was making a game.

Good luck.

[Perpetr8r]

Ok, looks like you have a good list of things to do there. It's all looking quite possible. As for that engine, I'm afraid I've never seen it before in my life... In terms of it any any other games-making engines though, if you use it you'll most likely be able to do the game completely on your own with no assistance (which could be beneficial to you I guess) as opposed to using a coding-intensive language such as DM (BYOND). While I can definitely do all of the things you've listed so far with BYOND, it's really a decision that should be made based on what you'd prefer. I'll be fine if you don't need me in the end as well.

[Kine]

feltpens, if you'd like to try your hand at BG objects, I could have you start on something small like grade school supplies (scissors, crayon box, microscope, etc). If you wanna do it, I'll send you a lot of M3 BG objects just to get an idea. Or you can do house interiors, most of which I can probably do anyway as that's mostly game ripped.

Perp, I dunno so much if I'd wanna use something too simple, because I feel like the professional like presentation will be lost.

I did forget to mention one more thing on the list, the most important, a kind of bestiary, like a Pokedex, except that it only records important characters through events and not enemies through battle. Kinda like Astro Boy: Omega Factor for GBA if you've played it.

It's like some kind of photo album, and it's set for one of each Pokemon (157 was it?), and in two cases, 2 of the same Pokemon. So it'd be a list of 159 all together. It's not necessary to complete, and since the game is closed ended (ends when the game is over), you'd have to get them all midplay, but it's an extra that was supposed to be in the original game, for the sake of giving every Pokemon a chance to have a role, something that later, Poke Tales, would take further.

[sprugles555]

The graphics are lovely, and gameplay is hopefully good. Pleasing to the eye. Great work :)

[Da Man]

How many pokemon are gonna be in this game?

[Wichu]

-_-
It was posted 2 posts above yours. 157.

[Perpetr8r]

157? If I recall, Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow only had 151 Pokemon altogether... are there extras?

[Kine]

Yeah, remember? I didn't even mention that a page ago, it's like at the top. (| _ |)

[Perpetr8r]

Uhh... I am nowhere near a master at this, but I have a midi maker and I can actually make songs. If you'd like me to try, I'm willing to give it a shot, and then run the partially/fully completed songs by you for quality checking and feedback. That is, if there's a break in the coding or if you're not ready to start yet.

[Kine]

... The heck? Why did Pokecommunity truncate the last couple of posts?

Yeah, well I'm gonna reiterate what I said before, because it's necessary.

This game may take up to three years to complete, mainly determined by the amount of help I get on this. Sure, it's voluntary and people have other things that they want to, or have to, do, as do I. Buuuutttt, if I'm the only one doing anything, then no one can complain about the amount of time it takes to complete it.

Granted, I have some people helping here and there and I must say I'm grateful for it, because that really reduces the workload no matter how small. So it's not like I'm taking 100% credit for the effort.


I mentioned something about attacks. I'm going to use the EB PK Attack editor to make all the necessary RBY Pokemon attacks. At least that's my suggestion, so that they still look MOTHER 3-ish at best. Only other thing would be to just do it using Paint/something and drawing out the effects... unless the editor works by import anyway and it doesn't have an artistic program built in.

Either way, expect the attacks to be sort of abstract in the same way that EB/M3's PK attacks are.

And that's about it.

[Perpetr8r]

Wow, three years? Just how big is this game, or is it that you don't think you'll have the time to work on it?

Hmm... looking at all my posts, it seems I post too much. Mind you, maybe it's just because everyone else posts too little :P

[Kine]

It's not big a big game, the team's too small. That's why it'll take so long. If I had the 40-50 people Itoi had, well... we'd probably be done within a year and a half tops, and that's allowing room for people to take vacations/breaks/etc.

Of course, I don't know ANY fan game that's ever been the size of a full production team. So 40-50 is extremely unrealistic, but perhaps I can't even grasp how fast things'll go with a number that high. I honestly really can't.

About speaking too much, considering the simplicity involved in making a trainer type clone fan game (edit a few sprites, and that's kind of it beyond writing a story), more people get on board with that because... I dunno, familiarity. With this being more Mother and less Pokemon construction wise, I can't say too many people would quite understand what I'm doing in the first place.

Then again, Mother's no different than Dragon Quest, or so I know, but I've never played DQ.

[Kine]

Double Posting is bad, but the point is that once again I've updated with kind of new information. I don't think it says anything I didn't say here, though, I forget. Regardless...

This is why graphics takes so long. (http://www.creativeworlds.net/PIStuff/RattaPikaNPCs.PNG)

And that's not even all of the variations of those two, either.

[DarkPegasus]

XD So funny (yet cute), I really like the man in black/lawyer Pikachu ^^

[Perpetr8r]

Heh, now I'm posting too little! Uh anyway, I'm still here, just waiting for the go-ahead on whatever form of engine you want to use so I can start work. Until then, I'll keep working on my game, which is making good progress!

[Kine]

I've been working on a few BYOND tutorials, but I dunno, I have two questions that'll pretty much be the determining factor.

1) Is there any way to get rid of that chat window, or rather, just make a window for the game only? This should be presented like an SNES game, not an online game.

2) Maybe the tutorials just seem more code oriented, but is that all BYOND is? I mean, Game Maker and RMXP have both design and coding aspects, and what I can't really do in coding I could at least do more easily in design. Maybe the tuts I looked at didn't cover that... but if there's little to do in design time, I can't see how it'll be very helpful to me. It'll be just like my coding classes I couldn't pass all over again... too much abstract computations, not enough visualization*.


* As I recall, Visual Basic was at least sorta easy BECAUSE you could build in design time, but that's aside the point.

[Perpetr8r]

Ok, I can answer those.
1 - In the new BYOND, 4.0 there MAY be a way. I'd need to check, because I know you can't do it in 3.5, but 4.0 lets you mess with all the windows so possibly.

2 - Yes. You need to make a map file, which allows you to place things on it RPG-maker style almost. Thus, the map is the actual design/visual part, and the coding is what makes everything work. Kinda imagine RPG maker XP with the only trigger functions being made in Ruby. That's more or less how BYOND works.

Sorry for the short post, but I gotta go. I hope that explains it enough!

[StrawyBlood]

That game looks so cool! if there is a demo or something like that cause i want to play it ^^
the rattata with the pikachu hat looks cute! :3
Did you made the game with XP? cause... wow i'll never could do something like that X3

[Kine]

Whoops! Didn't know there was a post above this.

I don't think there'll ever be a demo, although I will allow several people to do error testing and such, and just general feedback on the environments. The idea is that want the game to just be 100% done before it's ever released publically, like any actual game. Now, I may make more videos, but nothing has really happened since the last video as I've just been doing graphics only, and I couldn't settle on a game engine. I think, though, that now the engine of choice is going to be finalized.

But for what was shown, yeah, that was using RMXP. It's such a graphically unfriendly program. XE


@Perp. Then it comes down to that window. It's an aesthetic that I just do not want there.

I'll manage the sprites out somehow in RPG Maker if I have too.

[Perpetr8r]

Ok well I did some research and it turns out that yes, you can remove the text window and indeed any other elements you wish from the BYOND interface. I'm not sure about the command bar at the bottom, but tonight if I feel well enough I will have a mess around with the new interface and see if I can get just the map screen going. At worst, you'll have that command bar at the bottom and the map screen on its own.

EDIT: Turns out you can remove the command bar too. Neat!

[Kine]

Oh thank God. Hey, can I get a screenshot or something of what the end result will look like without all that clutter?

OH oh, one other thing. 8 directional pixel by pixel movement (instead of tile). It can be done, right? When I was working with it, I could only manage tiles, but I assume that's just default.

[Perpetr8r]

Well, because I'm such an awesome BYOND coder (:P), I can rewrite the Move function to make the players move pixel by pixel instead, it'll just take a decent amount of coding. As for the screen, I'll need a little while to play with the commands so I know what I'm doing, then I'll post a screenshot here so you can see.

Also, my current work schedule is Monday, Tuesday and Friday, so I won't be able to do much during those days, and of course it'd be nice to have some time off otherwise. Still, I'll try and prioritize your project when I do get free time... *is typing this at 1AM*

Further note: I live in Australia. My Monday is like your Sunday night and Monday morning or something, and that works for the rest of the week too.

[Kine]

Alright, well I'll await that (pic). Other than that, the first thing I'll have you do is just the movement alone. I'm not sure which version you're using, though.

[Perpetr8r]

I'm using 3.5, but for your game I'm going to switch to 4.0 so that I can turn off the interfaces you don't want. The coding is exactly the same, at least. Anyway, I'm on my days off now so I have a little time to work on it. But first I have to sort out my girlfriend's birthday present - her birthday is tomorrow.

[Perpetr8r]

OK I'm double posting for the sole reason that I have something to show you and because of such I want to make sure it's seen.

I present to you: a very basic idea of what the game screen CAN look like without the text window or that command box. Ignore the weird graphics... I imported my character and some of the icons from my game onto it so that I could walk around and set up pixel-by-pixel movement (not done yet).

Now as a note, you can mess with the interface literally however you want, and it turns out it's actually very simple, as well as there being a massive tutorial on it too. You can change everything you see there, besides maybe that little BYOND symbol in the top left corner. Everything from the menus to the map size to the window color and size itself are customizeable. I simply filled the screen with the map because of a peculiar thing that BYOND does if the map isn't PERFECTLY the right size which causes some blurriness.

Anyway, you can add anything you want to that area: Text boxes, browser windows, stat panels, grids etc etc. I never really knew how powerful 4.0 was until I started messing with it, but it really gives lots of artistic freedom. The movement thing is what I'll be doing next, so sometime within the next few days I'll be able to demonstrate what it looks like. Also, with the graphics, you can obviously make them much more detailed than that. I'm just using my old clunky 16 bit sprites in 32 bit format XD

P.S. That's a 640 by 480 window. I set it so the player can't resize it or anything, but it can be as big or small as you want.

[Kine]

Eh, that symbol in the corner would've been there anyway... well, unless you can change icons (I think you could in Game Maker, for example). That's not a problem.

Alright, that's what I want the screen to look like.

I asked about the version, so that way we'd be on the same level. What I will/was gonna do was to place some of the graphics in the game already (since I can do the design elements), and then just send that your way via email. Then we just pass that file back and forth with more graphics as needed and code and such.

Of course, I'll have to both download version 4, as well as get used to the design part in general. I'm gonna work on it on this side very basically (like how to get a character to move facing the correct directions and all), using the default settings. Although I'd have the diagonal directional sprites imported, for me understanding this, I probably won't use them. I'll also try see if I can do key presses, maybe to run or something (which'll also cause the sprites to change). I just want to be sure I can do some of the basic stuff myself, if worse comes to worse, AND because I don't want to burden you with all the coding work, unless I cause more problems than alleviate.

[Perpetr8r]

Ok, before we go too far, let's make sure I can get pixel-by-pixel movement working as required. I've been playing with it and have had some interesting results, none of which have been what either of us have really wanted. While I still have a few avenues left unexplored in terms of coding possibilities, if I can't get it to work right it may throw a giant wrench into the BYOND works.

Mostly, my problem is that it won't animate when they move now, and even though I can force the animation, the next problem is they don't actually move so much as teleport. Anyway yeah, if you can wait a day or two I'll know for certain if I can get it to work right or not.

As for the rest, that sounds good. I'm commenting everything I code so that you might be able to understand it basically enough to mess with it, and furthermore I'll add things in such a way that you can use them without having to know too much about the actual code. (For example a screen message system that simply displays the text on-screen, and all you'd have to do is call that system from within your own code)

Anyway, I'm late for work now, so I'll get back to this later. I'll also show you what I've learned about the layout so far so you can play with it at that time as well.

As a final note, I can send you my current code which is VERY simple, and you can work with that if you want, so you have a base to begin from.

[Kine]

You'd think someone would've made an engine where all this nonsense is standard by now. >_>

[Perpetr8r]

Truly... anyway, just a status report for now. So far, I've managed to make a few things work better, at the cost of a few other things. At this point, there's nothing that I can offer that's working and doesn't look weird, but I've been asking around on the BYOND developer forums etc in order to get more info on the subject (the programming language is angry at me for abusing its inbuilt systems).

So far, they haven't been all that helpful, however, if I can just fix this animation thing I should have it all working nicely. I'm going to watch that intro vid you made again, just to make sure I have this set up right.

EDIT: Ok, I'll try not to get your hopes up, but it seems that I have a pretty decent idea of what I'm doing now and it MIGHT be working properly. Now, I need to sleep before I finish this, so 9 hours from now I'll be back up to finish turning the algorithm into actual code. But in any case, I have gotten fairly fluid movement AND pixel-by-pixel movement happening alongside each other, and now I'm working on making the speed work correctly. If I can do that, the rest is history. I swear, it'll be the only BYOND game to offer that level of fluidity if it works >_>

[Kine]

Now a good time to reiterate what I said in my last post. Well it WOULD be.

Well, I'll just wait on the side lines for the time being. I should go check RMXP forums again just to see if there's a source code for 'allow as many sprites as necessary, and change them as necessary' or something like that.

That is, Pigdey has a three frame walk (technically hopping, so I couldn't use frame 2 as frame 4), I don't want to put a filler frame as number 4 to screw things up. Tauros has a five frame walk. Charmander has like a 9 frame idle animation. Yeah, I said this before but I'm reiterating for the people who are looking in on this from the outside. So yeah, that's why I'd like to avoid this program if at all possible, not that the game itself should be any harder to put together. And I just haven't seen any source code (up to the point I made that video) that allows multiple sprites as well as compatibility with other co...

ARGH. Compatibilty. Yeah, THERE'S another problem.

Screw it I'll say it again, you'd think someone would've made an engine where all this nonsense is standard by now. I'm guessing these guys have never touched a non tile based not very lively 2D RPG. Doesn't make sense, whoever's developing these had to be old enough to play a Super Nintendo...

While I realize beggars can't be choosers, or rather, if you can't code it yourself you probably shouldn't complain, isn't it just a bit strange that it appears none of these RPG Engines' creators have even conceived the THOUGHT of making pixel-movement/eight directional/tag along partners/BLOODY SPRITE ADJUSTMENT, at least all in the same engine?

[Perpetr8r]

Compatibility? With what?

Anyway, after a ton of coding, I have succeeded in making a partially successful walking system, where the player doesn't move at a snail's pace and yet does pixel-by-pixel movement. Currently though, I broke the walking animation in order to make it work, and now I can't get it going again. Also, the camera movements are a TINY bit jerky, which I can't control, though I did my best to reduce the jerkiness. There's no collisions yet, so you can walk through things, and last but not least for some reason if you hold down the movement button the player does a sliding-on-ice effect and continues moving for a few steps AFTER you release it. I think it actually stacks subsequent calls to movement on top of each other, so it builds up like 5 or 6 extra movements in its little queue (which NATURALLY I can't touch) while you're holding the button down.

Freaking BYOND... Of course, I'm still messing with it, and I've dealt with more impossible-seeming problems in the past. My success so far has been heartening, and I may just be able to get you what you want. However, if by now you're utterly terrified of me torturing this system into working for you, let me know so I can stop messing with it.

[Kine]

By compatability, I mean how one person's code doesn't work with another's. Not that they should ALL work together. I think, however, the last time I used the pixel movement code for the PI test, it was still being worked on were it would allow other code compatibilty. That's why I should check up on it. The pixel movement source was HUGE, and had a lot of stuff (heck, most of the game's special features run on that one source). So if it's been upgraded, I might be able to find and throw in a sprite de-limiter. Of course, I need many other things like overworld enemies that chase you (pixel movement), respawning of enemies (because as of now, once you kill them, they're gone for good, which doesn't make for a good leveling up system), icy ground, dangerous ground, etc. And while I've seen things for each of them, I can't throw them in hodge-podge and expect it to work (too much conflictions).

Otherwise, without compatibility, you sort of have to code all the features of your particular game yourself, because then you know everything works with your system.

As for what you're doing, I guess it comes down to what's easier for you. Don't work yourself over if things don't seem to work out just right. I admit I'm concerned about the problems that'll come down the line, though, by messing with just the walking alone.

[Tré]

whoa!!this is great pokemon plus inbound!!! its great!!!

[Perpetr8r]

Rrrgh... For whatever reason, my version of BYOND has completely stopped working. I can't even get it working when I reinstall it, and it's kind of screwed me over at this point in time. I have acquired a pixel-movement system that works though... I just can't set it up because my BYOND crashes everytime I open it. *sigh*

[Kine]

Tre_Al: Hah... inbound, that makes me laugh. It's EarthBound.

So how's the engine coming along? Still crashing or what?

At this point I can't do anything, as I have to focus solely on getting material for this convention I'm going to, so... you can use this time (it'll be about a month) I guess to either figure everything out, or in the case that's just not going to work, look into possible other engines.

I'll still check back here to see what's going on, though. I'm just saying nothing's going to be worked on for this game from me until the weekend of May 16th is over.

[Perpetr8r]

Ah, it's good to know I have some time. Yesterday I finally, FINALLY, got my BYOND to work again. Over the next little while I'll be pretty busy myself, since I have to look after my brother and the house all on my own, but I'll begin putting the pixel movement engine into the game base and testing it etc. Anyway, I'll keep you posted here about what I've managed to get going and if you feel like sending me some icon files to add to the game then feel free; I'll put them in, provided I get the other system working.

Have fun at the con!

[Kine]

Aight, I'm back now. How's it workin' out?

I'll send some things to you when I get situated. I'll send the diagonal sprites soon, too. Make sure those can be displayed.

[Perpetr8r]

Well, I fell in a large puddle of real life, which sometimes and without warning tends to clog up my otherwise pristine computer time. Aside from my usual chef work, my mum went out for a week and a half and left the house to me to look after, then I had a big award ceremony for a games project last semester (which was a waste of time to attend) and then we got a notice for a house inspection so I spent several fun-filled days pulling weeds out of pavers.

Also there was a decent amount of slacking off in there, but since you're back now I should really get back to work... It helps that all the award ceremonies and chore piles are done with for now.

I have to say, I do love how simple RPG maker makes things, but I can see how it won't really do what you're hoping for without tons of programming - which makes it moot since BYOND involves programming anyway and is more versatile. I think it'd be nice for both of us if more programmers volunteered, else you're gonna end up waiting on me at some point or another (either from slow progress or just from me being too busy to create system X or Y straight away). Still, I'll do my best to keep things smooth for you and get stuff done on time.

I'll have a status report on the new movement system somewhere within the next few days. If it works or not, you'll know by the end of this week tops.

[Kine]

Sure enough, what you said is true. I've always felt that way, and on top of that, I really don't like putting all the work on one person. It just feels like a lame thing to do. =(

Well, considering no one else here volunteered, and I don't think anyone at Pokemon Elite responded at all, I'm going to try Starmen. I think EB fans are a bit more decent anyway (hey, before anyone get on me for that, well, observational wise... eh, just read that Nidorino comic collection I made. I don't feel like explaining it).

I figure someone might lend a hand, but first maybe I should have a bit more done. Like, say another town or so. Or even the first town.

On a more personal note, I hope it wasn't all too much for you to handle. Especially if you got the notice while your mom was away!

[Perpetr8r]

No, fortunately she got back a few days before it came, but that may have been worse. You should see the chore list she made!

Sheesh, people are lazy. I'm surprised there aren't more people willing to help out, especially when there's such a great artist on the other end of the game. I guess they are all off doing their own things?

Ugh anyway, I plan on putting this system together tomorrow (for me, which is Thursday). It's gonna be a big day 'cause there's STILL more chores to do and I randomly decided to make my own little card game yesterday at work and I'm trying to finish it now because it's such a fun idea.

Aw hell, lemme open this up now...

*sigh* Seems there are issues with it as well. I'm really at a loss for options now. See, the icons don't animate right now. Everything else more or less works, but it seems like a tradeoff between one and the other. I can't honestly see a way around this at this point, and I'm too tired to mess with the programming too much tonight.

Tomorrow I'll have another shot. If I get it working, great. If not, I think I'll have to concede defeat on this. Fingers crossed.

[Kine]

I think people just want more of the same. Consider how many Pokemon GS remakes you see...

Then again, I've always been the oddball when it comes to creating stuff. I usually do things I would have imagined someone else has done, but for some reason I always end up surprising people with my concepts (but why? Why am I supposedly the only one who imagines this stuff?).

Well, I'm gonna make an update possibly today that'll request more programmers. We'll see what happens down the line along with the post I'll make later.

[Perpetr8r]

Eh, I had a thought. Even if I do get the pixel movement thing going, it's going to cause more custom programming down the track since BYOND is expecting to work in tile-by-tile format. This means I'll have to code a new follow process to deal with Pokemon following you around and who-knows-what else. Bah.

Anyway, I don't think it matters because I've messed with the coding again and still no luck. Even if I do get it working, it's going to look jerky and kind of unprofessional, thanks to the way BYOND works. It's frustrating, but I think I have to throw in the towel on this one, unless of course you don't mind scrapping pixel-by-pixel movement, in which case I'm sure you would have mentioned that earlier.

Otherwise, yeah, I don't think it can be done. The movement itself is easy, but the way BYOND works is preventing it from animating properly, something I hadn't counted on. It's up to you what you'd like to do now; I'll wait to make any moves until you've made your decision.

[Kine]

Nope, I gotta have the pixel movement. I kinda figured that even if this was coded to work 100%, everything else from here would have to be redesigned.

Hmmm. I wonder what other programs exist... short of using C++. Well, not only will I ask for some extra help should I get it at Starmen.net, but I think I'll ALSO ask what engine makes RPGs play closest to EarthBound, in that perhaps they know something I don't.

I may just use RMXP, despite my reservations against it (sigh, it'd be all good if I could take the darn sprite limiter off, and every code was compatible with the rest). It would be that or Game Maker, considering those are the only two engine programs I have (barring BYOND, which I haven't made much prior use of, considering). I know sprites are "do as you please" in GM, but I dunno about it's capability to create RPGs so much, especially considering a lot of that stuff would have to be added in while at least RM has most of the silly functions standard.

I bet maps are also "do as you please" as far as placement goes in GM. Eh, I'm not to worried about tiles, I'm going to have each map made with a grid in Photoshop/Illustrator to align everything correctly, then chop it into pieces. From there I'll just stick everything together like a huge puzzle.

I suppose the single advantage to RM is that it's commonly used, so more people might be able to help. Of course, I dunno how that'll work. It is a Pokemon game (I say this with the idea that the brand carries a negative connotation), and considering I think you're the only person to offer any real assistance at a POKEMON forum (and a large one at that)... =\

Weelll, that's that. That list of things the game needs, I will need to copy it, so that way I can see what needs to be done.

[Waudby]

Nope, I gotta have the pixel movement. I kinda figured that even if this was coded to work 100%, everything else from here would have to be redesigned.

Hmmm. I wonder what other programs exist... short of using C++. Well, not only will I ask for some extra help should I get it at Starmen.net, but I think I'll ALSO ask what engine makes RPGs play closest to EarthBound, in that perhaps they know something I don't.

I may just use RMXP, despite my reservations against it (sigh, it'd be all good if I could take the darn sprite limiter off, and every code was compatible with the rest). It would be that or Game Maker, considering those are the only two engine programs I have (barring BYOND, which I haven't made much prior use of, considering). I know sprites are "do as you please" in GM, but I dunno about it's capability to create RPGs so much, especially considering a lot of that stuff would have to be added in while at least RM has most of the silly functions standard.

I bet maps are also "do as you please" as far as placement goes in GM. Eh, I'm not to worried about tiles, I'm going to have each map made with a grid in Photoshop/Illustrator to align everything correctly, then chop it into pieces. From there I'll just stick everything together like a huge puzzle.

I suppose the single advantage to RM is that it's commonly used, so more people might be able to help. Of course, I dunno how that'll work. It is a Pokemon game (I say this with the idea that the brand carries a negative connotation), and considering I think you're the only person to offer any real assistance at a POKEMON forum (and a large one at that)... =\

Weelll, that's that. That list of things the game needs, I will need to copy it, so that way I can see what needs to be done.

The sphere engine using a pixel movement system straight out of the box, and is flexible and you can do pretty much whatever you like in it.

The learning curve is slightly steeper than the RM series or Game Maker series though.

[Kine]

Uh oh. Well, I looked through the documentation for Sphere.

The good news is that it does seem rather flexible, and it claims to be stronger than RM. Also good is that I took classes in Javascript.

The bad news is that last point means nothing. I think I barely passed both classes. All it really means is that I have an idea of what some stuff means (functions, etc). Doesn't mean I know how to use them correctly.

The obvious news is that, and the documentation even states, that to use something like that, I would seriously need a team of people. It also states that it could be done alone, but considering me being in graphic design and not programming, that's... going to take a decade.

So if I did go that route, I would need to find some people who honestly have nothing better to do (than post at the thousands of forums they have bookmarked, and I'm sure that's a lot of people =P), and are willing to do whatever they can. There's never too many of any position, afterall, but I would still say programmers are the most important, in that I can't do much without them.

Musicians are still what I'm least concerned about... it's not even necessary yet.

I still wish I could hire some guys, but from what I've seen, they won't do fan games. With good reason, they need to have work done for portfolios and getting work experience, I seriously doubt that a fan game is going to look good on a resume. Still, there's gotta be a group of 16 year olds or something, where resumes are not a large concern yet, wants to make some easy money from some guy with money to spend [on and on]...

[Perpetr8r]

Hey, I think fan games would look great on a resume, provided it was professionally done :P
Personally, I'm not afraid of getting my feet wet with javascript. I'm already a moderately advanced programmer, and many of the core concepts of programming are shared between languages, which will make it easier. There's two difficulties though. Firstly, I know about as much javascript as you, probably less. Secondly, until we play with the engine a little bit we won't know if it suits your tastes. I'd hate to get midway and then discover X or Y can't be done. *cough* BYOND *cough*

Still, I'll definitely back you up with whatever option you pick, and having at least one coder will surely help. I know what it's like to be a coder without decent graphics and I'm sure it's similar the other way around. I've already downloaded sphere, and I might play with it a bit today or tomorrow to see if I can spot any potholes or if it seems like it'll work.

I have an aunt's wedding to go to tomorrow, so you probably won't hear from me until Saturday (for me).

[Kine]

Well, before I download anything else, I gotta clean some files off my laptop. Then I should get monday's assignment completed. After that, provided I made a little room, I'll download whatever this program's called again and see just how it'll work.

[Kine]

That cleaning isn't quite coming along fast enough, and I still have a lot of design projects to do. Well, that's what happens when you go to a year round school, no time for... anything but homework.

Well, I'll at least try to get a hold of it for the weekend, but I'm already planning on an AB update so I can't make too much time for it. If you've downloaded it, how does it look so far? Or a better question, how much interface is already there without me having to basically code everything into existance, including the screen itself? I gotta have a little interfacing in there, kinda like VB.

[Perpetr8r]

Well, I had a look. From what I can see, pixel-by-pixel movement is indeed in the game. The interface is well.... go back 13 years to 1995 and that's pretty much the level of graphics you get. It seems to run very large, pixel..ly sprites (which possibly is only because nobody could be bothered making finerr ones). Overall, it's looking to be a game quite similar to RPG maker, only you don't get events - you program everything by hand.

Really, you'll need to mess with it yourself to see if it's what you want or not. I can't honestly tell.

[Kine]

Well, despite the fact that I'm gonna wipe my harddrive anyway, with a bit of clean up I tried Sphere out. Well, it definately does what I want it to do sprite wise, and doesn't appear limited to palette. Now, while I couldn't import sprites (I checked the wiki and forums, but they don't tell me why I keep getting error messages), I made really crappy Kirby sprites in the editor, each with different speeds and different amounts of frames. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. No limits!

Now, the map appeared much bigger than I thought, but considering there were no custom tiles, it was gonna look weird anyway. I'm pretty sure I can have it zoomed to a degree where it's not too zoomed in, that or the tileset'll look fine anyway, whichever.

Hey, and you can import maps, which might save me the trouble of the whole "jigsaw a full map" idea I was gonna use. Unless I'm mistaken and I have to do that anyway.

Well, design wise it seems to be in my favor.

Now, functionwise, however... eh. I didn't go beyond the scope of the tutorial that comes with it, but considering you said events need to be coded, that might include collisions, battles, etc. Which... I won't be so good at. I'm guessing, though, it can do battle backgrounds MOTHER style, plus I probably won't be at RPGMaker's limitation.

By that, I mean whatever is the amount of pics you set in the code is the total amount you can show, and if battle bgs have less, thats a problem. If more, they get truncated. Now, I'm not using each and every frame, that's hundreds of pics just for a BG, but still some will flow fine with just 12 images, while others may need 20 for example.

But judging by the flexability given already, this seems like the best for all the things I want to do in theory. It just comes down to getting it to work. Again, we'll have to do testbeds first before we get in too deep. I need to learn how to import stuff at all, first.

Since this is javascript, I think this'll open a few more doors w/ programmers since it's a widely known language, but... it may also close a few who only know game program languages. Well, at least NOW I can specify, that's better than "I don't know, yet".

[Perpetr8r]

Well tell you what, if you give me something to work with, I'll try and program a bit of a base to begin working off of. It'll be faster that way, rather than me programming something then handing it to you to add icons to, then you handing it back etc. Also, I'll be out of town for about the next week, just so you know. (Family trip)

[Kine]

Sounds good. Well, I'll send you some NPC and main character sprites through email, a tileset, and perhaps enemy sprites.

The way I see it, is work with the enemy last, since we'd have to do that anyway, I'm sort of sending it ahead of time. I'll also send the battle sprite, and perhaps the BG sequence (which I'd do that even later than getting the enemy to work at all).

The enemies are overworld, meaning no random battles, but there's a probability that they will respawn (when you go a little further than off screen where you fought them). That was something I couldn't get RMXP to do, even though it probably could've been done.

As of now, I'd say talking to NPCs and minimal collision detection is all that's necessary.

[Perpetr8r]

Ok, I'm back from my trip and I got the files you sent. Now all that's left is for me to put it together and practice javascript so I know what I'm programming. I'll add more as soon as I have some progress to talk about.

EDIT: Ok, I've had a look at it and the programming language itself seems moderately easy since it's VERY similar to C in the way it works. However, it would make things MUCH easier for me if you went ahead and imported everything into sphere sprites (.rss) for me so that I could just put them into place rather than messing with the graphics utility, because I can't see an easy way of doing it. That means that it might take a long time and if I do that then everything will take even longer lol

Seems to me that the thing is even more low-level than BYOND, so we're going to have to write our own graphics routines for some of it too. I can assist with the programming part of that, but that will mean you'll also have to design what the menus look like and stuff like that. More info as I have it.

[Kine]

Updated page one of the topic just to note about progressive information on CW. Some of what's said you can find here, but what isn't I'm not going to repost because if only one person's helping from here so far, I'm not going to waste the time to repost.

Perp: For some reason that didn't occur to me. Okay, well, considering I have to work on finals and other things this week, it may not be an instant process, but I'll try to fit some time in during the week to get that to you. If the way I did it was correct, you could actually just make a full color solid block as a sprite (like a pink rectangle), and just use that as a place holder for the time being. I think once you do one, it will fill it in for all directions.

What about the tileset, though? Is that easier than the spriteset?

[Perpetr8r]

Sorry for the lack of response. Recently after getting back from my big trip I've thrown all of my energy into finishing my current game project so that I'm free to work on things like Poke Island. As such, it might take me a week or two to be free enough to really make good progress, but it sounds like you're busy too so that works out.

Anyway, tilesheets and spritesheets work in very similar ways, so that's not a huge issue. The biggest thing for me is that I'll need time to get my head around the new system etc and it's so much easier to work with pre-made sprites and backgrounds etc than with nothing. (It's hard to do it all in my head.)
So yeah, if you get those like ready for me it'll make my work 10x easier, and I can program stuff faster. I'll comment everything I do so hopefully you'll be able to understand most of it.

[Kine]

The good news is that I learned how to import sprites now. The better news is that I'm on my one week school vacation starting next week. =) Now's my best chance to get stuff done. I'll make the rss ASAP, after Sunday, though. Site update n' all.

[Perpetr8r]

I need to apologize again, because even more stuff has come up. Just under a week ago, my uncle was killed in a motorbike accident and my whole family on my mother's side has been totally devastated by it. I've had my hands full dealing with everything and just haven't been able to focus on anything other than one foot after the other lately. The funeral will be in about 4 days and my birthday is in 2 so yeah... Hopefully things will calm down after that. Fingers crossed.

[Kine]

Well, on one hand, sorry about the circumstances. I hope you and your family will make it through. On the other, happy birthday to you. Perhaps that'll bring in a little excitement!

As I always say, take care of business, first. I can hold on to the files and such (and add more to them if necessary) until you give me the okay. Just let me know when.

[Perpetr8r]

Quick update: The funeral is tomorrow and my brother's birthday is the day after, then the day after that I have to meet my dad for something and FINALLY after that things should return to normal. Fingers crossed.

[Mar876]

I dont get this game, is there a plot?

[Kine]

Yes, but like any game developer, I can't give any major plot elements away (and considering I wanted a career in game dev. before animation, I pretty much work more in the mindset of someone in the business).

I think I wrote something on the first page or on my production info page that you could get a plot element from, but don't worry, it all ties together. Only people in the major production will know anything ahead of time, but even then it's only if you're in it for the long haul. I don't just say "Here's the plot =D" when I have no guarantee one will give anything beyond their "word".

Considering it holds the starting point of the comic sequels, it'd have to have some sort of significance, as well.

Perp: I'm currently making the final map of Green Town, so I may hold off on giving you the stuff until then. Also, there's fewer sprites than given turned into NPCs because that's a long labourious process. That could be someone's job right there! @_@

But hey, I wanted to go the whole nine yards. That's what'll make the end result stand out iMO. Like Sonic XG or something.

[Perpetr8r]

That's ok. Drama keeps piling on at my end, though I think things have just about finally returned to normal, though university is starting again soon for me. Even so, I'm sure I can deal with programming stuff for you in between dealing with my own jobs, so no issue there. It's good to have no more stuff going bad for me, too >_>

[Kine]

Okay, this is going to take too long, Green Town's pretty big. I mean, it looks good so far, but there's a lot of stuff like rivers and such I have to still account for. On that note, we'll have to look into BG objects that actually move, I forget what those are called. That way the water looks like it's moving on the coast. If those are tile based animations, I can make those when I get there, it won't be hard.

Anyway, just go with the original plan. I'll send you some converted files via email. And if using given props isn't instantly easy, just use a fill bucket and color the BG green or something.

[Perpetr8r]

Well I'm still kind of waiting in the wings, as I haven't received anything yet. I don't mind the wait, but I just want to make sure it's indeed a wait and not you waiting for me to reply before you send them...

[Kine]

Sorry about that. I've been pretty busy last week, as well as attending a funeral and a weekend vacation, so I couldn't find the time. Anyway, when I'm off of work, I may be able to send them to you.

[Perpetr8r]

No prob. Life seems to be giving us both the shaft at the moment, though I'm sure things will calm down soon enough.

[Kine]

Continuing from the email...

Well, I did the map thing anyway. Plus, I think you can fill a whole area. I mean, I know I did once. It should be the paint bucket at the top right.

Unless you're using a different version?

Back to the map, it seems to scale it up to a large but still appropriate size, in that it doesn't over pixelate everything like the tutorial the program comes with did. However, I'd still want it to be windowed by default. Also, I gotta do something about the frame rate or... whatever. It doesn't seem to move in the same sense that a console game would. It's almost WAY too smooth, and I'm going for SNES scrolling, here. Not obvious fan game scrolling.

On the plus side, I can use the obstruction tool for collision detection. Not bad! The only thing, though, is that I better choose a good tile size to start with. The default is 16 by 16, which is fine, but I may need to change that when it comes to entering doors, which I'm sure is a coded event.

So far, the only problem with importing maps is that I don't think there's a way to make certain tiles a higher priority, so that you appear behind them. However, there probably IS a way, I just saw some option with "insert code" and left it alone. Plus, when you import maps, it breaks everything up into a 16 by 16 tile, so I could probably just create a new layer and reinsert higher priority tiles in the exact same spot.

Seriously, this import map feature will definately save us time. All I have to do is make all the maps like I'm doing now. =) Glad I figured this out, and glad Sphere has the feature.

I attached a screenshot of what it looks like. I know ya'll like my bad Kirby sprite. You want it on a graphic tee-shirt.

[Perpetr8r]

Um... wth? It looks like the forum is eating my posts. Maybe I'm just hallucinating...

EDIT: Nope, not hallucinating. It ate my post -_-

Here's what I had:
Well that's good. I don't know what you did that made it work, but so long as it works, who cares? Here are those screenshots I promised, with the really shoddy map I threw together in 2 minutes. Note how the ice reflects your character (also as a note, you can't see this but the frame rate drops a bit when you run over the ice. I think it's a bit CPU intensive...). Also, in the shadow one, you can see how the shadow covers Pikachu. The problem is that when he leaves the shadow it uncovers the wrong way, so instead of his head breaking into the light first, his feet do. You'd have to use those shadows for things floating directly overhead methinks....

Still no movement on the uh... movement. Mainly, this is because I had other work to do and didn't get around to working on it, but we'll see how I go.

EDIT AGAIN: Oh, and that's what the current menu looks like. It's the sample they gave me, so I'm working with it. Once I know what I'm doing I can experiment...

[Kine]

Ugh. That menu just won't work. I better get that interface going. Not that it'll be hard. I just wonder more if I'm going to do the battle interface EarthBound or Mother 3 style (the only difference is that in the former, when it's a character's turn, their small window is raised up above the others a bit, while the later, a sprite of the character pokes his/her head out of their window).

I won't reflect ice, and if it's graphics intensive, that'd be a really bad idea for one of the area's that's pretty much solely ice. The only thing I'd use it for is a possible mirror in someone's house, and even then that's absolutely not necessary.

As for shadows, I wouldn't use it in the traditional sense, but maybe to shade characters in caves. If not a pallet switch. Or I won't do anything at all, it really doesn't matter.

[Perpetr8r]

Sorry for slow replies. I've been having a lot of car troubles and stuff, and since uni's started up again I've had less and less time to work on my projects. Nevertheless, I'll be getting back to working on SE as soon as I have the chance.

[Kine]

It's no big, I've been rather busy myself, preparing for internships and whatnot.

It's so hard to determine a good time to try to find more help. You'd think it'd be the summer, but people get lazy. During school, people are busy.

I'm not talking about you, I'm just saying in general. I'm sure statiticians know what times of the year people are most productive, I need to find out when that is, so when I make some posts about this elsewhere, it's not at a bad time.

I know one things for sure, when I finally get my next big showing out, I'm changing my rules about work. I'm tiring of the really slow help I get at times. If you can't get things done in a week (and I mean spriters), don't waste my time. And stuff like that. I'm the most busiest person I know after my own mother and I can STILL get a full set done in an hour or two if the character's more difficult, so everyone else has no real legitimate excuse AFAIK. So I'm thinking of announcing something like that.

Musicians and coders are given a lot more leniency, though, as I'm more dependant on that. But it should not take MONTHS, and I'm talking several, here, for sprites.

[Kine]

Typical quarterly update. Top of first page explains changes/additions.

Perp, I haven't heard from you in a while. Could you let me know what's going on?

Also, the new work rule is in effect, not that you have to code in a week, but now I'd like to stay posted on things, even if much hasn't been done.

[Perpetr8r]

Erm yeah, sorry about that.

I really ought to be more vocal about my decisions when you're counting on me like you are, so I apologize for giving you the run-around. I don't want to make excuses if possible, so I'll merely say that I ended up giving myself too much to work with and haven't been keeping up with it properly. Unfortunately, I am the kind who tends to be really badly organized when it comes to these things. I'll try my best to get back on board now and make up for lost ground now though.

Basically I haven't really done anything since I last showed you my progress. Me getting sidetracked aside, this project is going to require a lot of time and patience as far as the coding goes. The language is pretty low-level, all things considered, so there will be a lot of extra work for any poor programmers who get stuck with the jobs. Admittedly, I've been hoping others would step up to help out with it so I didn't have to do all the hard stuff alone. I guess that hasn't happened or you'd have told me about it, so darn. An additional block is the fact that I have to LEARN the language as I go, which slows things down a lot.

To give you an idea of what you are facing, I'd say that the programming will take an estimate of 2-3 times the amount of time everything else will take (aside from say composing music if someone gets into that). That may sound a bit too high of an estimate, but believe me, even simple programming tasks can spiral into huge odysseys that take a long time to complete, and god forbid you only have one poor programmer stuck with the tasks.

Of course, I'm not complaining (since I knew what I was getting into when I offered to help out), though you can probably see why I've been procrastinating about it a bit. Anyway, this all has nothing to do with me not getting stuff done for ages, but I'm trying t