TRUJIN'S PROFILE

Ratty, I really love those battlers you use =). The world map could use some work though. I was kind of pondering what seemed so off about them, but I think I got what makes it look a bit weird to me: your trees are nicely overlapping and so do the mountains when they are 2 tiles wide. However, when they are single, they are spaced out from each other a lot. Maybe you could edit the chipset a bit so the single mountains also overlap each other?

So now for my progress: school and work threw me back a little and got a bit bored of eventing the menu. So I made a little 20x15 map and opened Paint shop pro (yeah I use that XD) and tried to add some overlays to the screenshot to get/set some general feel/mood/atmosphere for my game. Since it's basicly all psp stuff I refuse to post it in the screenshot topic until I got a solid map with the effects added, but I first would like to have your guys opinion on it. Is it to much, is it too stupid, is the atmosphere bad for the kind of game I intend?

Well first some quick info about my game then: It is set at an utopia like city, but in the background there is still a lot of bad shit happening. Once you get out of the main city area's (which are intend to be both "happy" and "sad" at the same time through flowery cityfolks accompenied with some bad weather to set the "shitty" mood) you get to see the "bad" side of the city (like the sewers in the picture).

Haha Cherry, it wasn't an "attack" on your methods, I was just wondering and you just explained it perfectly =).

DHM, you are totally right about the 2004'ish oldness of the screenshot. However, while the basic layout of the menu is still the same, a lot has changed in the past month. The first version was map based since that way I didn't have to use to many pictures. After that I made a version with pictures (after finding out about the picpointerpatch) and made the basic code for those selectable menu's. Last month I started to work with rpgmaker again (after a 4 year pauze) and changed the menu's event"scripting" to made it universal to be used in any menu I would like to display.
And you are totally right about that digit display, every digit is indeed one picture.

Nice game video you posted btw =).

Hmmm, how about this: Concider a RPG that has frag granates as a utility item. You want the player to know that you can blow up crack walls with it and that you can use it in battle to damage enemies with it.

Would it be a good idea to incorporate it like this:

In the story you get caught by the enemy. They take all your equipment and throw you into a pit. You see a body lying there with 3 granates around his body which you can take. In the same room there is a crack in the wall. When you notice this you press enter at the wall and a little menu pops up with usable utility items or you can select it from the menu and it tracks the coördinates to see if you are near a cracked wall.

The wall blows up and you learned to use these granates at cracked walls. While entering the hole you created you will encounter enemies. They do you lot's of damage because of your loss of equipment and you can't harm them that bad too. So to more logical thing to do would be to check if you can use that granate to damage the enemy and so it does. You killed it and are free to go.

Would that be any good?

Hmm, well if you want some real feedback on this:

Te road is seeming to overlap the grass at the top. The grass under the road is fine, but you might want to change something about the rough cutoff, maybe put some pixels to make it look more like overlapping grass.

The trees seem a bit weird to, there is no ticker mass at the bas to indicate some roots and there are no branches or whatsover other than the top.

The grass poles you made are a nice touch, but you might want to change them with an actual structure.

You might want to try and get some diversity in the pine trees too.

Anyways, I'm not the best spriter myself, but that's what I can indicate to you, hope it helps =). I like how you worked with dimensions and perspective =).

Though I must agree with you guys when we are concidering more "uncomplicated" stuff, I certainly disagree on some points.

First of Rm2k3 is not to be compared to scripting language, it's way more inferiour to it and goes by diffrent rules. Labels are your friends and variables are even more your friends (why save them, you have a standard of 5000 of them and can even go upto 999999).

I use a bunch of labels in my common events to do loops instead of parallel processes. This is because I absolutly hate containing dataflow with switches. They tend to bug and sometimes I just want something to happen before the code runs any further. I solely use them to use auto events like the menu and a battle system initiation. Apart from that only call events for me, they are way better at containing the flow of events. I don't want any background parallels running.

So if one of you guys could tell me how to make this example flow any better or any less "laggy" (which it absolutly doesn't) please tell me:

In my item menu I need to check if variable item amount # is bigger than 0 to set the order of that item to a item order # variabel. I do this by doing the following:

set var index item amount 200
set var index item order 240
set var order = 1
label 1
set var index item amount +1
set var index item order +1
set var calculator to variable stored in index var item amount
if var calculator = greater than 0
<>set var in index item order = var item order
<>var order +1
end
if var index item amount = not 281
<>jump to label 1
end

This was inbetween an item menu to check the order of the items that you have. I could do this in a parallel proces which is initiated by a switch. But that would mean that the event that needs this information would be keep on running through (which would be weird because that only loops when a button is pressed, but let us not take that in concideration) until this loop was done by switching of the switch that initiated it.

I could offcourse by the logic of you guys do it like this, times 40:

var order = 1
if var item amount 1 = bigger than 0
<>set var item order 1 = var order
<>var order + 1
if var item amount 2 = bigger than 0
<>set var item order 2 = var order
<>var order + 1
end
(and so on till we reach 40 times)

Example two, displaying the graphics in the menu. As it is now:

(set var x and y to starting position of the item list and two variabels to check picture ID and picture to be shown)

set var index item order to 200
set var order to 1
label
set var index item order + 1
set var calculator to var stored in index item order
if var calculator = var order
<>set picture name to var index item order
<>show picture (item_0000)
<>set picture id +1
<>set order +1
end
if order =not 8 (to show only 7 items on screen)
<>go to label
end

I won't go in the more technical aspects on how to trace cursor positions and starting points. But without the loops I couldn't even hope to make a dynamic item menu in a fast way. But the list goes on:

Setting a set of dummy variabels to variables that keep hero statistics.

Would we go for the 20 set variables which clutter big blocks all over the place, or just go for:

set calculator to 0
set calculator 2 to 20
label 1
set calculator +1
set calculator 2 +1
set variable stored in index calculator to variable stored in calculator 2
if calculator is nog 21
<>go to label 1
end

And for deleting about 100 pictures? Is it that much better to do 100 erase picture commands to avoid labels or are we just going to do:

set var image id to 1
label
erase picture 0000
set var image id + 1
if var image id =not 101
jump to label
end

Please tell me why I would use cluttering parallel processes (with or without switch) if I could easily control dataflow which 2 labels and/or a call event so I know for certain which commands are being used without any background stuff going on. And why wouldn't I use variables to make my life a lot easier. Or would you suggest I would ditch my common event which can generate all my selectable dynamic "item" menu's and copy the base code like 10 times for equip, weapon, armour, quest log etc to save about 20 variables that track the size, position etc for those menus.

Which also means that if I would want to add some animation to it or find a bug in it I need to fix 10 menu events instead of just 1.

Sorry if got a bit personal on this, but I just don't see the major pros in saving variables that should make your life easier and controlling parallel processes that give you lots of background "noise" (wheater or not with switches) over labels and call events that create massive control over the commandflow without any background noise.