Final Fantasy VI SDK - Going Social!

[rey meustrus]

Very cool! You could probably set up the Mug skill very quickly to demo the most simply use of your displacement which would be just like the demo.

Glad to hear from you and it's looking great as always.

 

[Dargor]

Thanks a lot rey! I've uploaded a new video showcasing the use of bezier curve movements with the Steal command. All movement in this video or using either linear interpolation or bezier curves. Also in this video you can see more of the Terrain system. The battle background and encounters change based on the area in which you are and the terrain on which you're walking. You can also see a fully functional Escape!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwYTUxyVSPg

Take care!
- Dargor

 

[Dargor]

Time for another update!

I'm actively working on the enemy behavior system, it's a pretty complicated system to implement correctly but I'll try to explain it in simple words.
The entire action list in the enemy properties is now obsolete and has been replaced with the event system. This allows for much more flexibility and complexity. The original game was also using something similar for enemy behavior. Those of you who've played a bit with FF3usME will know what I'm talking about but for those who don't, take a look at the screenshots below!

This is what an enemy script looks like in FF3usME:

And this is how you can script it in the FF6SDK:

For the moment, it's all done in the common event portion of RPG Maker XP, which is not ideal but eventually, everything will be located in the Enemy editor.

Now that this has been covered, there is a second aspect to enemy behavior; How all these of scripts are evaluated.
Enemies have Actions and Reactions:
- Actions: This is a list of event script. Each turn, the enemy will execute the next event script in the list.
- Reactions: This is also a list of event script. The difference with Actions is that these scripts are constantly evaluated (like a parallel process) and are used to accomplish things like counter-attacks or other special reactions as soon as possible.

These scripts will have optional trigger conditions so you can decide when a specific behavior can happen. This is especially useful for reactions.
There are many enemy AI functions that I still have to implement, but the core of the system is now up and running!

That's pretty much all for today!
- Dargor

 

[Dargor]

And here's a little teaser of what's to come! I got rid of the old school RPG Maker Database in favor of a more flexible Property Grid like you can see in the lower right corner of the image. The database is now a simple tree view (upper-right corner). When you select an item in the tree view, the property grid is updated to reflect the properties of the selected data.
When a more complex editor is needed, like an animation or troop editor, double-clicking the data in the tree view will open a specialized editor made specifically for the selected data type.



Hope you like it!
- Dargor

 

[Xilef]

Pretty good shuffling of the UI. Reminds me of an IDE

 

[Dargor]

It's a good thing because that was the goal. The objective is to have a UI that's not blocking the user from doing anything in parallel. I hate it when I can't switch back and forth between the map editor, database or script editor. You always have to close the active window and open a new window and it's annoying. Also with "dockable" panels like that you can rearrange the UI as you see fit, which is especially nice if you have more than one screen as you can spread the windows on your second or even third screen if you're that crazy.

And by the way, the tab named "Some Editor" that you can see at the bottom of the screenshot is actually a test for the script editor.
I'm probably going to list the scripts in the content tree view. Double clicking a script would open it in a new panel so you could have multiple scripts opened at the same time.

 

[Dargor]

More updates on the editor! The script editor is now fully functional and I'm now working on the event editor. It's very basic at the moment but I want to make it better than it used to be in RPG Maker so if you have any ideas and suggestions regarding the event editor, let me know! I'll try to integrate as many features as possible.

It can be anything from new event commands to more event page settings or just slight modifications to other things.

 

[rey meustrus]

Here's an idea for you: how about the ability to, with scripts, add event actions to the event editor? So that somebody could distribute a script that creates a "do X" action rather than requiring the user to use a Call Script event. Maybe even add flags this way too? Admittedly this sort of editor extensibility would be more useful in the database but you already seem to have made a system that's way more extensible than the RPG Maker database anyway. Which is awesome. The IDE-style editor interface is great. Thanks!

 

[Dargor]

That's a great idea. It's something I wish RPG Maker had for a long time. I did a little bit of research on how to do this and I ended up thinking that the best way would be to create a plugin system for the editor. The scripting side of the game would remain very similar to what it is right now, the only difference is that the user would have access to the core library of the editor and be able to write plugins.

The editor is basically a giant C# wrapper around Ruby classes; The properties you see in the screenshots are actually from a C# class and this class internally converts the data back and fort from Ruby to C#. That's why users would have to write a C# plugin if they want their new data to show up and be usable within the editor. It's a quite a challenge to do properly, but this is definitely something I want to try. Thanks for the idea!

Another thing I'd like to improve is the way we assign values in event commands. For example in RPG Maker XP, the Transfer Player Command has the option to tell which Map ID, X and Y to teleport to either using absolute values or Variables, but you can't set the Direction using a variable. On rare occasions, some commands also allow you to use a script instead. I had the idea to create a Property Value Provider where you would choose between a Constant, Variable or Script for pretty much anything.

 

[Dargor]

I made more progress on the editor! It's not possible to have an unlimited number of editors opened at the same time. You are no longer forced to see only one editor at a time, it's much more fluid and dynamic like that! Also I added icons for the various data types, I think it looks better like that.

 

[SDeluxe]

Been keeping up with this project for what feels like years, and am glad you are on Facebook now. Do sprites have any color or palette limitations?

 

[Dargor]

Sprites have no color limitations at all. They even can have as much transparency as you want.
However, I'm planning on supporting image formats with indexed colors so I can make a real color palette system with animation functions. At the moment I'm only faking the color palette animation. It works well for now but i'd like to be able to use real color palettes like in the original game.

- Dargor

 

[rey meustrus]

May I just suggest that unless the palette animation can be hardware accelerated, faking it is going to be just as good. And I am very interested to know what you come up with.

 

[Dargor]

Faking it is indeed just as good and easier to code, but the way I did it greatly lacks flexibility. But then again there's a lot of things I thought I needed to do with palette animation that I could simply get away with other tricks.

Now, about the editor, I kept working on the map editor and added most of the usual options including zoom. However I have not included other dra modes besides the pen mode (so I'm missing the rectangle, ellipse and fill tool) but it's the least of my concerns right now. I'll add them further down the road. As you can see in the screenshot below, tilesets are now 16 tiles wide. The only reason for this is to be more compliant with the original game and make it easier to import tileset and map data from the ROM. It also looks less confusing if you compare with previous screenshots.

Another thing I continued working on is the event editor. In RPG Maker, whenever you want to add or edit a command, you have to do it in a dialog window specialized for this command. I decided to get rid of that and to use the property grid to edit commands. This editor is still in an early staged but it keeps getting better after each day!

 

[Dargor]

I've been working quite a lot on the editor lately so I decided to make a video to show it off a little!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rckK05Ay0Do

Hope you like it!
- Dargor

 

[amazonwalrus]

So how do i get started? i have XP and VX ace and 2k3. Im a musician so i am making my own Sound Tracks. And making a Story. I dont have any rpgmaker installed on my computer right now. the 3 makers are on my external hard drive. What is my first step?

 

[Dargor]

Hello amazonwalrus!

First of all, note that this is still in production and has not been released yet.
You will not need VX Ace to run the editor since it's 100% detached from RPG Maker but you will need is a legal copy of VX Ace to run your game (all the details will be explained in due time).

- Dargor

 

[Imzogelmo]

Anxious to see the next phase of this project.

 

[Crombinator]

Been following this project since it was on the .webs address! Looking forward to some updates. Hope you had a good holiday!

 

[Imzogelmo]

I've been following it for years, and I'm always glad to see the progress.