As promised, the
public beta is being released.. This is not a normal thing for me to do, but Misty4Life has not been active in months leaving me with no beta tester and no-one to keep me inspired, so I'm releasing this beta for you all to comment on. This is not a chance to copy ideas or just indulge yourselves with fun and entertainment, it is a public test of the map engine. If you download this, I need you to tell me anything you can about it; your thoughts, how fast/slow it runs on your PC (please also try to give processing speeds and HD capacity if you know how), camera angle limitations, etc. Keep it constructive, if you don't like something, give me an example of what you think would be better.
I have tested big maps but I don't think the whole world map would run very fast on many PC's.. Especially when I start filling the map with events. The game will definitely be made up of different maps, but I have considered making large-ish maps and transferring the player before the edge of the map is reached (like how GTA buffers the map gradually as you move through it).. I'll do some testing but I don't want too many load-pauses either so we'll see what happens...
I exhausted myself trying to make those iso sprites work so I've decided to forget about 8-directional buildings until a master spriter comes along..
You should download the beta and see for yourself, there is a 4-directional building and some plain vertical houses for comparison.
The hero from fr/lg is an example of what characters look like with 8-directions compared to Prof. Oak's 4-directional sprite.
Yeah so this is what I mean by "pseudo 3d",
Normally, mode7 is used as a static camera point to give the game some "3d" aspect (like in pokemon d/p)..
What I've done is give a "3rd-person" perspective by allowing rotation of the camera around the player. I also added custom movement to follow the camera angle (if you hold forward and rotate the camera, you will always walk in the direction of the camera (this is not recommended however, as it causes massive lag to run both of those tasks, try it and find out))
Oh before I go, I finally decided to use d/p style gfx.. I saw a lovely representation of pallet using d/p tiles combined with fr/lg buildings.. My hatred of d/p tiles was credited mostly to their ugly buildings so I'm a little suprised myself how nice it looks. I know a guy just said about mixing different gfx lol, I can't help it sorry..
I had originally mapped the entire kanto region in one map and was slowly re-mapping it to work with the engine but I lost the entire thing sadly, it would have been a pleasant suprise for everyone but didn't serve any real purpose to the game because I have my own maps to represent events in the anime..
Another thing, real quick sorry, I have been having re-considerations about the whole flow of the game.. I'm kind of over the long cut-scenes and exact transcriptions from the series.. I want there to be much more gameplay and minimal text (because I know most people just skip it).. I won't change my focus though, I want to have as many anime events as possible and keep in line with the concept of having an individual experience you can alter and change.. It will take some time and thought before I can start going over everything and shortening it without removing too much original anime content.. A guy already said that there was too many cut-scenes and not enough actual gameplay, I'll see what can be done about that!
Forgot to say, control the camera with the keyboard keys "wsad" and the zoom with "q" and "e"
Ok, here it is, the beta download link:
http://massmirror.com/c7ac09bfa4e7baba117f8f20ae1c6416.html < 6mb yay :D
Don't forget what I said and make a post if you try it out, I know where you live ;)
