- This topic has 5 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 3 months ago by Macmor.
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July 26, 2022 at 1:31 pm #78040OizoParticipant
<span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>EDIT: Seen the post for daytim cycles in trello just now – Sorry for the repeated request.</span>
Hi there, really sorry for the spamming today (i woke up finally, huh.) but here’s a question.
Imagine that you want an actor to perform a certain “routine” – would that be possible ? I mean there is the “patrol behaviour” wich is amazing to integrate some kind of “free will” looking actor with the random movements. So … is there a way to write a routine ? Like imagine the actor sits on the table in his house. First action “use healpotion” to make it look like the actor drinks something. Then, stand up / walk away from the table.
Then, Change appearance (from dress 1 to … f.eg. “Woodchuck dress”), then leaving the house. then equip with an axe. Then make him move to a spot on the map where you place some logs and cut wood etc and make him “swing” the axe randomly in the scenery for a time XYZ ?
My Idea behind this question was (If there is a daytime, night time cycle possible) to make some npc’s available during certain times and have different options available.
Simple example: the hero meets the woodchuck in the woods during his works. on touch – dialog about the hard work and if he has some logs left for some small fees (because you’ll buy them right here – he doesn’t need to transport them and you need them NOW, not in a day). So while the woodchuck is in this routine phase of working, he logically does have wood to sale. (give token funktion for wood etc). so IF this contact happens during this phase – some dialogs would be available and others wouldn’t.
I’m not sure if that makes sense or is editable with the existing functions or if I look waay to far. Thats why I’m posting this here.
Thats the last one (for today), promised ! 😉
Oizo
July 30, 2022 at 8:29 am #78598MarbyModeratorI fear more complex programming constructs are not possible yet with RPG Playground.
Up to now, you can assign number (floating point) or boolean (token) variables and compare them with constants but not with other variables. Other data types are not available and you cannot build more complex ones. There’re only a few events available (OnWhenTouched, OnAfterPickedUp, OnWhenHurt). But there is no OnTimer event and not even an OnActionKey event. We also have no user defined functions and not even loop-statement as well as no recursion yet. There is a trick to invoke a recursion, but this is rather cumbersome to use. Also the access to the hero’s and actors’ properties is rather limited. You cannot check e. g. in which direction an actor currently is looking. You can change your hero’s and your actors’ appearance, but you cannot upload your own graphics so this also is very limited.
But with the events available you can change the speed, force an actor to move, change allignment (good, neutral, evil), power and health of actors or of your hero etc. Have a look at the designer and “insert action” button to get an overwiew.
Meanwhile, you e. g. also can check if some item of your inventory is in possession or equipped and react to it using an if-statement. This is connected to your hero’s properties. Not all properties are accessable by screenplay yet.
If you’re interested in programming you could have a look at my tutorial for RPG Playground. You can find it by clicking [More, Help, Where can I learn more on how to make games?, Read the advanced tutioral on screenplay actions]. You dont need any programming knowledge in order to understand this tutorial. Everything is explained from the beginning. Meanwhile, the screenplay editor changed spaces into bullets. If you copy your screenplay to a text editor you’ll see that bullets still will be replaced by four spaces though.
July 30, 2022 at 3:52 pm #78614MacmorModerator“My Idea behind this question was (If there is a daytime, night time cycle possible) to make some npc’s available during certain times and have different options available.”
Like Marby said, routines are not really viable right now.
But, I have made a test day/night cycle and it’s working out so far…it just requires a lot of work. What I did was use a counter system and base it on 60min hours but 12hr days. That way Dawn, daytime, dusk and night last 3hrs. I have it so every time you transition screens/enter a building/perform an action that requires time, it adds 10mins to the counter (you can change that to however long you want). Next step is to have tiles at the entrances and exits that check how many hours have passed and will teleport you to the necessary map depending on that number.
Example: “level1” will require 4 maps, one dawn, dusk, day, and night. If the exit/entrance tiles see you have a number less than 179 (2hrs 59mins) it will teleport you to the dawn map, 180-359 = day, 360-539 = dusk, 540-719 = night. This way with multiple maps, you can have npcs only show up during certain times of the day.
You also need to set up a code where if the counter goes above 719, it resets back to 0. This whole thing can also be shortened to smaller numbers if wanted (add 1 for each time wasting event/screen transition, 6= hour 72=full day) and by only having day and night, decreasing the maps to only 2 copies per “level”
Like I said, it’s a lot of work but it’s actually doable. It just gets harder the more “levels” your game contains. Hopefully this all makes sense.
August 1, 2022 at 8:16 am #78736OizoParticipantThank you @Macmor & @Marby for your in-depht feedbacks , makes sense and is absolutely helpful ! 😀
Daytime nighttime really seems challenging, especially as the game is located on a server and not on a client, you cannot link it to your “local” timezone as it might differ from the server timezone. (thinking about wow servers with realtime linked to your timezone and nighttime etc.) in this case here, if you would play during timezone – switching, the map would have to reload and HOPP – you’re from day to night in a second. To make it transitionnal you would need LOADS of maps for a smoother “framing” with would become absolutely impossible (how many tilesets would this require for a smooth transition? etc) so there’s that. I think the only “smart” or “easy” solution would be to act “on event” into a new “time” as for example use the bed as actor to “go to sleep with ” until dawn” or “until dusk” and if “dawn, teleport to map “x_dawn” and if dusk, teleporto to map “dusk” – eventually there would be possible to add layers over maps ? like apply a “sunset” ‘is layer over the map to make it look more red’ish like sun is setting and a more “dark’ish” effect layer over the map when spawning at night…. but yes. This is a lot and very complex and I do perfectly understand is would demand massive background programming – maybe way to much for a browser-based application.
Really appreciate your feedback on those subjects. Thank you for your time ! 😀
August 2, 2022 at 7:38 pm #78903MarbyModeratorThere is a way to get maps darker in order to get a night effect. For this you can use shadows. I first saw that technique in one game Comprehensible made and also used it for some of my own maps. There are different shadow types available, so that it is possible to stack them and make your maps even darker. If you leave some “holes” in your shadows you even can get some cool light effects. And there are also shine and fire tiles you can use for making your light effects nicer.
However, as soon as you have placed shadows on your maps you won’t be able to change the map content below without moving or deleting the shadows. And for a real day / night cycle a timer event is surely more helpful than having to track every place where a teleport is programmed. So yeah, as Macmor stated, you can already have some amazing stuff for your RPG Playground games. Unfortunately, this often is very cumbersome and you rather might end up with managing things the engine actually should do for you. For that reason I decided to wait for better features before I continue with creating my games on RPG Playground.
Btw.: The RPG Makers provides a tint screen feature, which can make your maps darker. I suggested it for RPG Playground and deWiTTERS inserted a ticket at Trello:
https://trello.com/c/NkalaeHh/555-action-tint-the-screen
As more people vote for it as sooner we will have it.The planned particle system might be also useful for beautiful night effects. You can find its feature card at Trello too:
https://trello.com/c/b4t2sxsp/26-particles-for-fires-smoke-%E2%AD%90August 4, 2022 at 6:53 am #79166MacmorModeratorTinting the screen would be great, my dusk and dawn are shaded almost the same but I differentiate them by using birds for dawn and crickets for dusk. Having the ability to tint some red in there would help tremendously.
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