What are you working on? (Game Making Thread)

[coyotecraft]

Investigating the MUGEN fighting game engine. Has anyone here messed with it before?

 

[Xilef]

Investigating the MUGEN fighting game engine. Has anyone here messed with it before?

Once you hit the limits of the engine you'll get very frustrated and then everything becomes a mess of resource, I'd rather create a more flexible fighting engine with a good scripting system than use Mugen, however it's good for regular street fighter clones, just don't expect to be able to do something amazing in it.

 

[DJ]

Spoiler: Huge Image

This a part WIP is one of the maps for my project. Since it's now kinda open-world style,
Village, Roads, Forests and Mountains, and other stuff is all put into one map.
Currently i have this map sized 500 x 500, But i may reduce its size if i don't need more space to build the map.

 

[coyotecraft]

I wonder if using blank tiles in areas that aren't observable would conserve resources. You know like the computer can render 100 blank tiles faster than 100 grass tile, or is it all processed at the same speed?

 

[Xilef]

What RPG Maker should be doing is composing only the visible screen and drawing the tiles to a buffer, so the buffer scrolls and updates the edges as new tiles come to view.

If it's not doing that then it has failed as a tile-based engine.

In this design, it shouldn't matter how big your map is as it should just be reading the edges of the visible area and caching it all onto a compositor. I think this is called Adaptive Tile Refresh?

 

[coyotecraft]

Pretty sure that how vx ace works.

 

[DJ]

I wonder if using blank tiles in areas that aren't observable would conserve resources. You know like the computer can render 100 blank tiles faster than 100 grass tile, or is it all processed at the same speed?

Maybe yes or no. But i think it depends more on the size of tileset bitmap since RM will load the tileset anyway.
Also it would take more time when map is very big (Like 500 x 500).

The biggest resource strike must be these two, From what i've experienced.

But i guess it may take more time to draw he map if the map is very complicated. Especially when it comes to RMXP,
Which has poor ass optimization while being able to render 3 layered maps (+ Event Layer).

I did not look up to the exact Tilemap method, So i'm just guessing from what i've experienced.

 

[coyotecraft]

I suppose if the blank tile is part of the tileset. But the empty tile on the top row is separate. It shouldn't use the tileset to draw blank tiles.
Going with that, I think you can assume it would be better to keep the tileset as small as possible by putting some graphic by themselves as event graphics.

Edit: well, created a 500x500 map and filled it with crap. Thinking it would cause some lag, but I guess it's 2013 and I've gone through 2 computers since the last time I did something like that. On today's computers it's not going to make a difference.
Also, turning off smooth mode actually made the screen look smoother. I noticed some screen tearing at 40fps with it on and didn't see any at 20fps with it off. This was in RMXP. But RMXP doesn't run the way is should on my windows7 laptop. Like it doesn't start instantly, instead I stare at a black screem for about 15sec before the tilescreen pops up, and after winning a battle there is a delay before the victory music starts.

 

[Xilef]

Woo hoo, finally finished up a single-pass skybox renderer

 

[DJ]

I suppose if the blank tile is part of the tileset. But the empty tile on the top row is separate. It shouldn't use the tileset to draw blank tiles.
Going with that, I think you can assume it would be better to keep the tileset as small as possible by putting some graphic by themselves as event graphics.

Edit: well, created a 500x500 map and filled it with crap. Thinking it would cause some lag, but I guess it's 2013 and I've gone through 2 computers since the last time I did something like that. On today's computers it's not going to make a difference.
Also, turning off smooth mode actually made the screen look smoother. I noticed some screen tearing at 40fps with it on and didn't see any at 20fps with it off. This was in RMXP. But RMXP doesn't run the way is should on my windows7 laptop. Like it doesn't start instantly, instead I stare at a black screem for about 15sec before the tilescreen pops up, and after winning a battle there is a delay before the victory music starts.

That's mostly because RMXP was not designed for 64 bit OS, or new architecture of the OS up to Win 7 ~ Win 8.
Also it seems I have same problem, but setting "game.exe" 's compatibility mode to WinXP SP2/3 will sort it out.

In my case, I have Windows 8 x64. When i run a project with RGSS100J.dll, It crashes instantly.
Also i have that titlescreen lags and battle music lags, Since it seems playing MIDI files in Win7 / Win 8
is definitely a pain in the ass. It requires at least RGSS103J/E dlls to run it properly,
and compatibility mode set to prevent those shitty lags.

I found out RGSS3 has x64/New Windows support from the start, But instead it gives shitloads of lag when i switch it
into the Fullscreen in old fashion - (Alt + Enter). Lucky that we have alternate fullscreen script to get rid of that.

(But it won't fix the Alt-Enter Fullscreen lag, Instead granting alternate key to switch to the fullscreen.)

Yeah, It wouldn't be that harsh for PC of these days to handle 500 x 500 2D Maps, While they can ran games like Crysis 3.
But RMXP still has the worst optimization, and will give lags when we start to put some events and scripts inside it.

Say, Fill your map with 150 events set to running randomly at highest speed without any Anti-lag script.
RGSS3 Can handle it, But i bet RGSS can't.

 

[coyotecraft]

Working out battle details with Dies Irea's creator. It's hard to get the right idea since I read terms being interchangeable.

 

[rey meustrus]

I know from watching what happens to a single Tilemap in a resolution-changed RMXP window that it does something like Xilef describes. Tiles simply aren't rendered a couple tiles away from the edge of the 640x480 hard-coded window size. It's not that simple though, and the vertical direction at least seems to be influenced by the computed Z value, which is affected by priority as described in part of the help file. I should know since I've worked through the kinks in reverse engineering RMXP's Tilemap class more than anyone else I'm aware of.

 

[Jadak]

Making a slow but steady progress on my project. Still in the late planning stage, though, and tile/characters sets have been taking up the majority of my time lately.

 

[Xilef]

Done some really nice stuff with my networking library, I've got unreliable packets firing across the wire really quickly with a 1 packet latency and I've got it to run around on my network with 0 packet loss finally (When I play counter-strike I have 0 packet loss with servers around Europe, myself being in London, so having 0 packet loss in my LAN is a good sign, means if I were to fire it out to one of those servers in Europe and they send one back there should be the same 0 packet loss that I have with games).

 

[coyotecraft]

Had some creative ideas on how to make LA2 more interesting. Making a proof of concept thing. My sketchbook doodles and notes don't exactly create a picture of what it'll look like in game.

 

[Xilef]

So today at university another coursework piece has been set and it's a perfect candidate for my networking library, so I am now able to work on my networking engine during university times, which frees up time to work on the rest of battle world rpg outside of university.

Today I implemented player authentication (It's 2 step right now and the only point where a client is booted is when it checks player count against maximum player count, additions are planning in the future). So this means I now have clients that are authenticated with the server and the server can start expecting commands from them through a dedicated port, excellent.

I will probably work on it some more then start testing more of it with my RPG Maker binding (http://battleworldrpg.net/hbgames/NPPtest.zip)

 

[Ellie]

Been updating my game quite a bit, remaking old functions, added a quest, some other systems, etc. Not going to announce everything because I always end up pooping out and disappointing everybody, but it's being updated.

 

[coyotecraft]

I can't really do anything until I get a new power cord. So glad I ordered a new one at the first sign of trouble. My battery only lasts 30mins now, I should probably replace that too. I let it charge, mess around a bit, let it charge some more. I can't charge it and use it at the same time because the cord has to be in the right spot.

I can probably probably work out some more keyframes on paper or draw some promotional art. But I do everything digital. So putting it on paper is about as useful as holding it in my mind. I mean, it helps clarify what I want but it's not as productive as physically working towards an end. You know? Like, I can do all this prep work but it won't change the fact that I haven't started anything. Feels like a wasted effort because I want something to show for it.

Edit: My sister has a universal adapter with the right plug that I can use. So I'm borrowing it while she isn't around.
So, back to working on sprite animations.

 

[coyotecraft]

Freak'n wasted all night trying to get AS3 in Flash to:
1- play the timeline backwards to a variable frame.
2- get a double click feature to work.

So I cheated and just extended the timeline with reversed frames. Then hunted through internet searches to figure out what I need to do to make Double click work. I had to first enable double clicking and then have it ignore any children clips.

 

[Xilef]

Why are you using flash? Did you not get the memo :p

I've been working on an input system, I was using a 3rd party library that was massively broken and was no longer being updated, I realised that I'm at the level where I can just implement my own so I'm using the goals that this abandoned 3rd party project had and slamming out my own one that will actually work on Linux and OS X (Rather than just claim it does...)