In order to provide greater future flexibility, I’m setting up the character/class relationship a bit differently than RPG Maker 2003 does it. In RM 2003, classes were an optional template that heroes could use for various things. In TURBU, all heroes will have a class, which will be a complete template for a hero, and there will be a script command to create new heroes from a certain class, instead of having all the heroes be canned ones that you had to setup at design-time. This means, among other things, that it’ll be a lot easier to create tactical RPGs and other, similar games where you recruit new characters.
The data structures for classes and heroes are almost identical, and the editing form for them will be as well. I’ve been working on the Class page first, and it’s almost finished. The layout’s all done, and the underlying code will be ready in a few more days, once I’ve set up the importers for Attributes and Conditions. (Heroes/Classes are probably the most complex structures in the game, and they have references to a lot of other game structures, which have to be set up properly in order for them to work right.)
One of the things this means is that heroes that don’t have a class (including all the heroes from imported RM 2000 games) will get one. The converter will take care of this, creating classes based on the character’s “Degree” name. If the character’s degree field is left blank, the converted class will be based on the character’s name, (“Bob class” or “Alice class”, for example,) and left to the designer to customize.
Here’s a preview of the (almost-finished) design page. It shows the class results from importing the “Don’s Adventures” sample game:
One thing that’s brand new is the script list. You’ll be able attach scripts to just about any event in TURBU, to customize the inner workings of your game to your liking. To give just one example, it’s been a pet peeve of mine (and of plenty of players) for years how in most RPGs, when a character leaves the party, they take all their cool stuff with them, which could otherwise be equipped on other characters or sold, but going through and unequipping everything manually every time the plot calls one of your heroes away would be a lot of extra work. Instead, you can just write up a simple script like this, and attach it to each of the heroes’ OnLeave events:
procedure unequipWhileLeaving(character: TRpgHero); begin character.unequip(all); end;
And in case there was a reason not to have one of your heroes unequip when (s)he leaves, you can just leave the script off of that character, (or assign a different one,) which gives designers a lot more flexibility than just unilaterally changing the code to make everyone unequip when they leave the party.
Anyway, once I’m done with the Attribute and Condition converters, I’ll upload a test version of the game editor for people to try out. It doesn’t do much yet, but it’ll convert some data fields from RPG Maker 2000/2003 format to TURBU format and let you edit them. This’ll mostly be for testing, to see if anyone can break the converter or the editing pages. Expect it sometime next week. (I hope.)