Final Fantasy VI SDK - Going Social!
- Thread starter Dargor
- Start date
Hehehe, thank you for the compliment Amy! :D
Another update regarding the exporter; I just can't let go of it.
It is now able to export the world maps, but more importantly, it can also export the tiles passage flags!
The exported maps are becoming more and more accurate. And by digging deeper into the source code, I'm also pretty sure that I could export more than just the tilemaps and tilesets.
Here's a list of things I will try to export in the next few days:
- Map Name: At least try to give a meaningful name to the exported map
- Battle Background: Set the right battle background ID to use by default in the exported map.
- Treasure Events: Any GP jars, item chests, monster in a box, etc.
- Transfer Events: Will transfer you to the right position to the right map.
- I could also try to assign music to the map but that would required the songs to have an ID in their filename like "012-BattleTheme.ogg", and then telling the map to use song ID 012.
You can expect another version of the exporter to be released soon. (... I guess i'm a little crazy!)
- Dargror
Another update regarding the exporter; I just can't let go of it.
It is now able to export the world maps, but more importantly, it can also export the tiles passage flags!
The exported maps are becoming more and more accurate. And by digging deeper into the source code, I'm also pretty sure that I could export more than just the tilemaps and tilesets.
Here's a list of things I will try to export in the next few days:
- Map Name: At least try to give a meaningful name to the exported map
- Battle Background: Set the right battle background ID to use by default in the exported map.
- Treasure Events: Any GP jars, item chests, monster in a box, etc.
- Transfer Events: Will transfer you to the right position to the right map.
- I could also try to assign music to the map but that would required the songs to have an ID in their filename like "012-BattleTheme.ogg", and then telling the map to use song ID 012.
You can expect another version of the exporter to be released soon.
(... I guess i'm a little crazy!)- Dargror
rey meustrus
Sponsor
That's some technical detail there. You're doing a really good job with all this, Dargor. I think you just might see this through to being the best quality RPG Maker-related project ever built.
@rey meustrus, Hades714: thank you very very much!
@Amy: I don't mind with it staying in Programming. It does make sense since it's a Programming project. Completed Games would not make sense simply because it's not completed yet. If you see any benefits in having it in the Projects forum then sure, why not. Thanks for the offer!
Moooore updates on the Map Exporter!
A new version is available for download: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?b0rc3yxihdbmht7
Version 1.4 fixed many issues and introduces new features. Here's the complete feature list:
- Exports both World and Standard maps along with their tilesets.
- Exported maps have more significant names. They have the same name as in the FF3LE.
- Exported maps now have the right size; Fixed a bug with them always exporting with a size of 256x256.
- Exports tile priorities and directional passage more accurately.
- Exports both Short and Long Exits. This feature will create events with a Transfer Player command in it, leading you to the right maps.
- Exports Treasures. This feature will create different events depending on the Treasure Type. It exports Item Treasures, GP Treasures and Monster-in-a-box.
- Exports dummy NPCs and other Events. This feature exports events containing only a Comment specifying the more complex event offset. It's still very incomplete and will most likely remain like that for a while.
Just so you know, I tried exporting all the 415 maps with all their events and the process took almost exactly an hour on my PC. Before you do the same, make sure you have something else to entertain you! Also, in the screenshot below you can see more export options but these are still in progress and/or not available for RPG Maker XP. Oh and don't mind the 114%, a little calculation bug.
This will probably be the last exporter update before I release the Editor. Except maybe for a few bug-fix. It already does a lot more that what I originally expected. Later, I will try to integrate it straight into the SDK Editor and it will come with more features. That's why there's a "Final Fantasy 6" export format.
Note that at the moment, this exporter will only export maps and tilesets data, nothing more. But it should be good enough for now!
Take care!
- Dargor
@Amy: I don't mind with it staying in Programming. It does make sense since it's a Programming project.
Completed Games would not make sense simply because it's not completed yet. If you see any benefits in having it in the Projects forum then sure, why not. Thanks for the offer!Moooore updates on the Map Exporter!
A new version is available for download: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?b0rc3yxihdbmht7
Version 1.4 fixed many issues and introduces new features. Here's the complete feature list:
- Exports both World and Standard maps along with their tilesets.
- Exported maps have more significant names. They have the same name as in the FF3LE.
- Exported maps now have the right size; Fixed a bug with them always exporting with a size of 256x256.
- Exports tile priorities and directional passage more accurately.
- Exports both Short and Long Exits. This feature will create events with a Transfer Player command in it, leading you to the right maps.
- Exports Treasures. This feature will create different events depending on the Treasure Type. It exports Item Treasures, GP Treasures and Monster-in-a-box.
- Exports dummy NPCs and other Events. This feature exports events containing only a Comment specifying the more complex event offset. It's still very incomplete and will most likely remain like that for a while.
Just so you know, I tried exporting all the 415 maps with all their events and the process took almost exactly an hour on my PC. Before you do the same, make sure you have something else to entertain you! Also, in the screenshot below you can see more export options but these are still in progress and/or not available for RPG Maker XP. Oh and don't mind the 114%, a little calculation bug.
This will probably be the last exporter update before I release the Editor. Except maybe for a few bug-fix. It already does a lot more that what I originally expected. Later, I will try to integrate it straight into the SDK Editor and it will come with more features. That's why there's a "Final Fantasy 6" export format.
Note that at the moment, this exporter will only export maps and tilesets data, nothing more. But it should be good enough for now!
Take care!
- Dargor
MagitekElite
Member
Hades714's comment is what I'm thinking right now, so I'm tempted to just repeat his comment. :haha:
Your work is very impressive Dargor, especially your level of dedication to the project. I cannot wait to see this finished, mostly because it will be an amazing project! I am here to wish you luck yet again though, as that's all I can offer.
Good luck and thanks once again for sharing! :thumb:
Your work is very impressive Dargor, especially your level of dedication to the project. I cannot wait to see this finished, mostly because it will be an amazing project! I am here to wish you luck yet again though, as that's all I can offer.
Good luck and thanks once again for sharing! :thumb:
Thank you very much MagitekElite! It is always appreciated.
Here's a small update on the status of the Final Fantasy VI SDK Editor:
(✔) Basic Map Editor
(✔) Basic Scripting Tool (Event editor)
(✔) Ruby Code Editor
All of these features have been implemented with their basic functionalities. And that means that I am now 100% independent from RPG Maker XP! :D
Well, lets say 95%. I'll reserve 5% for the RGSS Player and Library.
As of now, my goal is to refrain from opening RPG Maker as much as possible, in favor of my own editor. Doing this will ensure that if something is not working, I won't have much choice but to fix it!
I'll be posting more about the editor in the next few days.
Until then, have fun!
- Dargor
Here's a small update on the status of the Final Fantasy VI SDK Editor:
(✔) Basic Map Editor
(✔) Basic Scripting Tool (Event editor)
(✔) Ruby Code Editor
All of these features have been implemented with their basic functionalities. And that means that I am now 100% independent from RPG Maker XP! :D
Well, lets say 95%. I'll reserve 5% for the RGSS Player and Library.
As of now, my goal is to refrain from opening RPG Maker as much as possible, in favor of my own editor. Doing this will ensure that if something is not working, I won't have much choice but to fix it!
I'll be posting more about the editor in the next few days.
Until then, have fun!
- Dargor
rey meustrus
Sponsor
Hey Dargor, if you'd like some help with that 5% for the RGSS Player and Library, I've developed a wrapper to play RGSS games with GOSU. It doesn't perform well in some situations (particularly when handling text) and some features are missing (like unified MIDI support and transitions). But I'd be glad to provide it for you. You could even work around some of the imperfections by changing the way the game code works, or you could simply use the wrapper as a base to understand GOSU and gradually convert the code to use GOSU primarily with some of what I've written remaining as helper functions. Tell me if you're interested and I'll send you the code.
I am kinda lost here. Am I missing the link to the project or something. I go to the main website for this and the latest update I see there is back in like 2011? sorry if I am missing the obvious. thank you for your attention to this cause I would love to be able to use this if possible.
@Imzogelmo
Thank you very much, I always appreciate! I hope to be able to release some kind of demo soon, at least a debug/showroom so everybody can take a look at what I've done so far, since I'm almost done coding all menus, systems and gameplay elements.
@Rey
That sounds really interesting! I was thinking about using OpenGL/SFML, combined with GLSL for shader effects to achieve that. I've heard of Gosu but never took the time to work with it. I'd love to take a look at it. However, I'm not planning or rewriting the renderer just now. It's a very tempting idea but would be a somewhat separate project I would start only after the SDK is done.
@Bladezuez
Most of the links are probably dead and I haven't updated the site in 2 years. Clearly I suck at maintaining a website. Unfortunately, no new version of the SDK is available at the moment for many reasons. Back in late 2011, I restarted the project almost from scratch and decided not to release any demos until I really have something working and usable. However, I come back here as often as possible to post updates and keep people informed of the progress I've been making.
UPDATE!
In the past weeks I've changed my focus from gameplay to optimization. There were many places where the FPS would drop considerably and it was getting more and more annoying. So I decided to fix stuff. I've also change many things in the code that doesn't really impact the user or the gameplay but will make the code cleaner and easier to use.
That's all for today!
- Dargor
Thank you very much, I always appreciate!
I hope to be able to release some kind of demo soon, at least a debug/showroom so everybody can take a look at what I've done so far, since I'm almost done coding all menus, systems and gameplay elements.@Rey
That sounds really interesting! I was thinking about using OpenGL/SFML, combined with GLSL for shader effects to achieve that. I've heard of Gosu but never took the time to work with it. I'd love to take a look at it. However, I'm not planning or rewriting the renderer just now. It's a very tempting idea but would be a somewhat separate project I would start only after the SDK is done.
@Bladezuez
Most of the links are probably dead and I haven't updated the site in 2 years. Clearly I suck at maintaining a website.
Unfortunately, no new version of the SDK is available at the moment for many reasons. Back in late 2011, I restarted the project almost from scratch and decided not to release any demos until I really have something working and usable. However, I come back here as often as possible to post updates and keep people informed of the progress I've been making.UPDATE!
In the past weeks I've changed my focus from gameplay to optimization. There were many places where the FPS would drop considerably and it was getting more and more annoying. So I decided to fix stuff. I've also change many things in the code that doesn't really impact the user or the gameplay but will make the code cleaner and easier to use.
If you've worked with RGSS3 in RPG VX Ace you probably have noticed the new Modules (SceneManager, BattleManager and DataManager). They seemed a bit weird to me at first, but taking a deeper look at them, I think these are pretty clever classes! They basically do what they say they do: Managing Scenes, Battles and Data. The most important here is the SceneManager; thanks to this class I can get rid of the $scene global variable. Scene switching is all done in this new module! It's a lot cleaner and has many cool functions.
When I test the SDK, I almost always test will all items, spells, equipments, etc. So the item windows are always full. However, the more item you have, the longer it takes to the window to refresh itself. This is because I was still using RPG Maker's dumb way of drawing items in a list, meaning they simply redraw everything at once instead of drawing only what's visible. This lag can be noticed in RPGXP too, it's not unique to the SDK! In fact, it will happen with any window that has around 200+ items in it.
Since the item window is used in many places (equipment menus, shops, battles), taking around 1.45 seconds to draw it was unacceptable. The optimization I did here is to draw only what is visible. When you press a key to move your selection, it will automatically detect if it needs to draw something, and if that something has already be drawn. In the end, the window now takes only 0.39 seconds to draw!
Since the item window is used in many places (equipment menus, shops, battles), taking around 1.45 seconds to draw it was unacceptable. The optimization I did here is to draw only what is visible. When you press a key to move your selection, it will automatically detect if it needs to draw something, and if that something has already be drawn. In the end, the window now takes only 0.39 seconds to draw!
Until recently, animating battle backgrounds required having multiple images, and at the specified frame, swap the background bitmap to the new bitmap. Doing this almost every frames (using sprite.bitmap = my_bitmap ) was not very efficient and would drop the FPS down to around 20. Si instead of doing this, I changed my method to use use sprite.src_rect.set. Meaning that you will need only 1 image that would contain all your images, just like a spritesheet.
Animated characters are using RPGXP's animation system, so 5 X whatever cells of 192x192 pixels. However, this size limitation is not very convenient for FF6 spritesheets, so I added more flexibility to the system. You can now specify how many columns and rows your spritesheet has, and the system will automatically divide it properly. That means that you can simply copy/paste a spritesheet you made for your ROM hack into the FF6SDK!
Well, I wouldn't really call that color palette animation, but I do have the glowing effects on actors when they are in a certain state like haste or shell. Updating this effect on top of animated backgrounds would drop the FPS down to more or less 6 FPS in battles. That was really scary... But I got it working at a nice 60 FPS! The trick was not to update it at every frames; it now updates every 10 frames. Also having smaller character images (thanks to point #4 above) also increased performances a lot since there's less pixels to evaluate. The bigger the image, the longer it will take to update this effect.
I created three new game class to help manage items. The Game_Item class is a wrapper for $data_items/weapons/armors with many useful functions added to it. Game_Inventory will keep track of your inventory, how many items you own, how many are equipped and their order in the item menu (since you can sort them). Finally, the Game_Equipment class handles actors equipment. This one is very useful as it is designed to allow as many equip slots as you want, and without item type restrictions. Basically, this means that you can have 3 weapons equipped if you want, or 5 relics, and it won't be a nightmare to handle. The character stats and actions functions already take all equipped items into consideration, reducing the chances of forgetting to handle some specific cases, like jumping with 2 weapons equipped.
That's all for today!
- Dargor
It is good to know that I wasn't crazy after all then. :biggrin: Thanks for the quick reply. I am truly interested in this as I am a total newbie at game making. I just recently got my hands on RPG Maker XP and VXAce so am hoping to make something someday soon. I have been playing rpg's since I was about 5 or 6 and just love what I see here. Keep up the good work. Will be following this closely.
MagitekElite
Member
Those are some awesome updates, Dargor. I particularly love the character spritesheet update and item window one. It all sounds great, though! :biggrin:
I'll keep an eye out on the thread. Good luck again Dargor!
I'll keep an eye out on the thread. Good luck again Dargor!
clockworkbutterfly
Member
@Dargor —
Sounds good. I'm still here lurking too. In a way, it's good that this project is taking so long...... it's given me a chance to outline three great games to make with the SDK. Well, three directly related to Final Fantasy anyway.
I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we're all anxiously awaiting the completion of this project. Take care, and thanks for your steadfast devotion!
— CB
Sounds good. I'm still here lurking too. In a way, it's good that this project is taking so long...... it's given me a chance to outline three great games to make with the SDK. Well, three directly related to Final Fantasy anyway.
I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we're all anxiously awaiting the completion of this project. Take care, and thanks for your steadfast devotion!
— CB
@Hades714
Don't worry, I won't stop working on this project until it's done! I had a very busy month and didn't had the chance to put as much time on the SDK as I wanted to, but things are going back to normal and I'm getting back to work! I don't have much to share at the moment but you can expect more news in the next weeks!
Take care!
- Dargor
Don't worry, I won't stop working on this project until it's done! I had a very busy month and didn't had the chance to put as much time on the SDK as I wanted to, but things are going back to normal and I'm getting back to work! I don't have much to share at the moment but you can expect more news in the next weeks!
Take care!
- Dargor
So I have a story written out for a fan game but I don't know where to start to get a game goin and I just found this thread using google.
If I were to start something, what materials do I need/programs do I need? I see you have alot of work put into this seeing as your first post was years ago so would you be so kind as to help me get on my way? I'm also interested in doing a bunch of spritework too.
I know i'd be wading in hip deep to start but with alittle help I'm sure I could figure it all out.
If I were to start something, what materials do I need/programs do I need? I see you have alot of work put into this seeing as your first post was years ago so would you be so kind as to help me get on my way? I'm also interested in doing a bunch of spritework too.
I know i'd be wading in hip deep to start but with alittle help I'm sure I could figure it all out.
Hello kitsunez!
Unfortunately at the moment the SDK is not ready. However, you can still work on your game using RPG Maker XP. The SDK will have the possibility to import games made with RPGXP.
Time for an update!
It'a been a while, I'm still very busy with work and life in general but I still have a few updates to share with you!
In the past few weeks I've experimented with the concept of what I call actor "displacement". To make things simple, it's an animatable object that represents the position of an actor on the screen. If you move this object, the actor will move along. This is also where the actor's shadow will be.
This feature became essential when I first started to work on battle animations like Quadra Slam and other similar things where the actor needs to travel an undefined distance on the battlefield. Eventually, event scripting will be involved in this system to tell the actor what to do and when to do it. But for the moment, i'm just using SE commands in the animation editor. An old, quick and dirty trick to add custom features to the animation system!
I tried 3 "commands":
1 - Move To Random Enemy: The actor's displacement will blend to an enemy's position (use it 4 times for Quadra Slam! )
2 - Move Back to Start Position: The actor's displacement will blend to its original position (self-explanatory!)
3 - Trigger Skill Damage: Will re-apply the damage the actor is using (useful for spells like Quadra Slam, 10-Hit, etc.)
I will try to expand more on this system in the coming weeks, adding more and more command to the currently pretty small list of animation commands we have.
That's all for now!
- Dargor
Unfortunately at the moment the SDK is not ready. However, you can still work on your game using RPG Maker XP. The SDK will have the possibility to import games made with RPGXP.
Time for an update!
It'a been a while, I'm still very busy with work and life in general but I still have a few updates to share with you!
In the past few weeks I've experimented with the concept of what I call actor "displacement". To make things simple, it's an animatable object that represents the position of an actor on the screen. If you move this object, the actor will move along. This is also where the actor's shadow will be.
This feature became essential when I first started to work on battle animations like Quadra Slam and other similar things where the actor needs to travel an undefined distance on the battlefield. Eventually, event scripting will be involved in this system to tell the actor what to do and when to do it. But for the moment, i'm just using SE commands in the animation editor.
An old, quick and dirty trick to add custom features to the animation system! I tried 3 "commands":
1 - Move To Random Enemy: The actor's displacement will blend to an enemy's position (use it 4 times for Quadra Slam!
)2 - Move Back to Start Position: The actor's displacement will blend to its original position (self-explanatory!)
3 - Trigger Skill Damage: Will re-apply the damage the actor is using (useful for spells like Quadra Slam, 10-Hit, etc.)
I will try to expand more on this system in the coming weeks, adding more and more command to the currently pretty small list of animation commands we have.
That's all for now!
- Dargor
TheMadsiur
Member
Dargor":y92lrzmt said:Hello kitsunez!
Eventually, event scripting will be involved in this system to tell the actor what to do and when to do it. But for the moment, i'm just using SE commands in the animation editor.
Interesting. I guess the same commands could be used to program battle events? I tried to work on battle events in the FF3us ROM but there is almost an unique command for every action/moves in the game since on the battle screen there is no tile I think and characters can move to every X/Y coordinates...
Are you going to create a flexible system that is going to take in account every possibility (like the event commands) or program specific battle actions?