TURBU

Coding the event system has taken several months of hard work. I’m almost done with the second page, as RPG Maker categorizes them. There are still 11 second-page commands to go, though, and they’ll be hard work. But after that comes the third page, which is mostly fluff, from a programmer’s perspective. I should be able to finish the third page in much less time than the first or second pages took. Then I just have to put the finishing touches on the event system and move on to implementing multiple maps.

The teleport-related commands were a piece of cake to code. (The Memorize Location command isn’t currently working, though, due to an error in the script compiler. I’ll add it once an updated version comes out.) Next on the list are vehicles. Half the code for them is in place now. It took me about two hours to figure out why they weren’t showing up on the map yet and get them to appear, but now they’re working. That’s the easy part. The hard part is to make the hero enter them and get them to move right. That’ll probably take up the rest of the week, but I should have an update ready on Saturday.

No, the project’s not dead. It’s not vaporware. I’ve just been too busy with Christmas and coding to write much on here lately. But finally I have something worth writing.

I just finished creating and testing the shopping system. It works, the menu system revamp works, and the menu scripting system works. It’ll take a lot more work to get the menu system to be as customizable as I’d like it to be, but this works well enough for now. (The full system, which will give users full control over the layout and functionality of the menu system, will require so much work to code that it’ll most likely not be available in the free version.)

Now all I have to do is code the Name Input box and I’ll have the next prerelease version ready. Now that all the heavy lifting is behind me–revamping the menu system codebase was a real killer, but now that it’s done it makes adding new menu screens much easier–this part should be done within a couple days.

I got started with adding the new shopping system, and it became clear very quickly that I’d need to rewrite the menu system eventually. In my haste to get something that would run, I hard-coded all the menus together, which works well until you try to extend the system. But since extensibility and customizability are some of the main design goals, I’m rewriting the entire menu system as a component system based on Delphi’s form designer. It will only use hard-coded commands for the most basic common functionality (how to draw itself to the screen, how to move the cursor around, etc.); everything else will be run by the script engine, and accessible to the designers once I get an editor built.

What this means, in the immediate term, is that the update I was hoping to have ready tomorrow… won’t be. It’ll probably take me all day tomorrow to finish rewriting the menu system. Then I’ll start working on adding more features.

Now that I’ve got the menu system written, I’m going back to coding the event system.  The features planned for this week’s release are going to be two rather complex event commands, and in a bit of a break from tradition, neither of them will work exactly as they worked in RPG Maker 2000.

First, shopping.  The shopping event code has already been implemented as a do-nothing command in order to fix another bug.  Now that I’ve got a working menu system, I can build on that code base to build shops.  But the shopping system will include one thing that, in my opinion, is an essential feature whose absence from RPG Maker greatly hindered gameplay: the ability to access the “Equip” menu from within the shopping system.

The other event command will be the one to input hero names.  This command is badly broken in RPG Maker’s English translation, trapping the player in an input box that it’s impossible to leave, because the program was designed for the Japanese language, which for technical reasons handles letters on a computer in a different way than we’re used to.  I’m going to design this in English, but in such a way that translating it to run properly in other languages shouldn’t cause compatibility problems.

I’ve spent most of this week (when I’m not working or playing DragonFable or MechQuest) working on the menu system. I’ve almost got skill use working, I caught and fixed a couple glitches with items, and I coded a handful of under-the-hood refinements to the menu system that’ll make new menus easier to code in the future. I should have a release ready by tomorrow.

It’ll also contain a minor update to the RPG Script system: Label/Goto label will be working. I would have had this several weeks ago, but a glitch in the PascalScript compiler kept labels from working properly under certain conditions. I reported it to the author, and he says he’s looking into it, along with a handful of other things. But the PascalScript system is published with the source code available (not exactly the same thing as “open source software,” but close enough for many purposes) and another programmer went and created a patch, which I’ve incorporated into RPG Script until an “official” fix comes from the author. (Which may well be simply taking this other guy’s patch and making it official.)

Mason

As part of my ongoing work to get the menu system running, it’s time to write the code for items.  This is a major part of an RPG, probably as big as the menu system itself.  I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to work on it this week, but when I get this release done, you’ll have a working menu system and be able to select and use out-of-battle items from it.  Hooray!

I’ll try to have another release on Saturday.  Here’s the features I’m going to shoot for.

1. Finish all the event commands for page 1.
2. Get system sound effects working.
3. Get hero translucency working.
4. Complete the Inn routine.
5. Implement the menu system
6. Implement the shop system.

Kind of a lot on my plate here, but I think I’ll be able to get it all working by the end of the week.

I’m not sure yet if this will become a regular thing, but I’ll have a new release ready this Saturday.  I’m ironing out a few details at the moment, but the main change will be to ensure that all RM2K events will compile properly.  There are a few event commands right now–most noticeably the fork (if) command–that cause the script compiler to bail out.  This is because they aren’t implemented yet, so no code for them gets inserted, but the “end” opcode that RPG Maker puts at the end of the “if” block is the same that it puts at the end of each script, so the compiler thinks that the script’s over before it should be.  I’m implementing those commands now, so that they will work properly and not confuse the compiler any more.

I’ll also release the latest version of the Map Evaluator.  Much as the Map Viewer currently in the downloads page is the game engine in embryo, the Evaluator is a tool I use that forms the core of what will eventually become the game editor.  It will allow users to see information about RPG Maker maps, including viewing events and seeing how they translate into RPG Script.  I hope you all enjoy it!

This is a version release I’ve really been looking forward to. It was so big, in fact, that I went and set up a website for it! This release is where I introduce TURBU users to what will be the core of their game: RPG Script. For a few months now, the map viewer has been taking Events from maps it evaluates and translating them to RPG Script code on the fly, behind the scenes. But now, with the inclusion of a Debug Console feature in the map viewer, the users can start learning to use RPG Script for themselves. I’ve included a bunch of information on what RPG Script is and how it works in the helpfile I wrote for this release.

Now back to the event translating. I’m about a third of the way done. Once I finish translating the event codes, all I’ll have to do is:

1. write the battle system,
2. code support for multiple maps,
3. create a save-game system,
4. separate the TURBU game engine code from the RPG Maker project import code (the two are sort of lumped together right now)
5. finish the editor, which I’m writing in parallel with the game engine,
6. completely rewrite the map engine in SDL, to make it cross-platform compatible
7. add in support for RPG Maker 2003 importing and RM2k3-specific features, especially the different battle engine, and…
8. figure out what to put in next!

When the first 4 are done, TURBU will be at version 1.0. I can’t wait!

Mason