Official "A Whiff of Steam", the LövelyRPG project topic

[giniu]

I wonder why MiddleClass was chosen to be the OO lib, not that I complain, I just want to know the reason.

It wasn't, it was choosen for first prototype, because it was offered, in prototypes we can change anything anytime - we can make one prototype on one and, second on other one, and choose one that better suits us for engine, when performance and flexibility will matter, so lets say we will evaluate both

By the way, speaking of the first prototype, does anyone have any good links to information on trimetric projection and how exactly that's implemented in a game. I don't really know much about that. Thanks!

Check http://www.significant-bits.com/a-layma ... videogames and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimetric_projection - check examples, under the house there are already projected tiles. All that is left to do is some measuring or drawing on top and then creating already projected tile on square image with 0-1 transparency. Tricky part is alignment and choosing right size, but I think it can be done when we do lines by hand, i.e. do 2 and 3 pixel steps manually one after another or some, to not let gimp do it. We should create one tail template, and atrists will build on top of white tail. I think it could work that way - maybe not best, but might be enough for prototype

I mean something like this, or something else, looks white - right? So I added green one. probably someone could pick better size though, but it almost fits Oh, and I say we leave more vertical space on top of tile, so artist can make grass or so, then we draw from top to bottom and grass could be on top of other tiles, we could use certain (set) number of pixels on some sides, to make it correct, 2^n length. Just idea though, anyone have something better?

[Robin]

Note for future: if I use the Joker smiley, which I rarely do, the whole post up until that smiley is not related to reality in any way, and was posted just for a play on words.

[willurd]

I wonder why MiddleClass was chosen to be the OO lib, not that I complain, I just want to know the reason.

It's just what I've been using for my projects. It was the first OO lib I tried and it worked and had everything I needed so I didn't bother looking any more. We don't have to use it though. We should explore all options.

[willurd]

I'm no artist, but I took a crack at creating some tiles for people to use when working on the first prototype. I pretty much used the same angles as in Fallout 2 because I like the way it looks. I figured this was alright, even if it's just for the prototype. I made sure all the sides match up on the tiles so they can actually be tiled in a map correctly.

Because there's a 3 file limit, I attached a sample tile, a zip with all the tiles, and a sample map so you guys can see what the tiles look like when they're put together. The zip includes textured and solid color versions of "grass", "stone" and "water" so devs have at least a little variety to work with if they want.

So are these tiles ok? Or are we looking for something else?

Edit: Made the tiles pngs instead of gifs, per giniu's request.

[giniu]

I'd say it would do for first prototype, unless we find better angle. I think it would be best to throw it in, and when we give it a shot with some temporary foliage scaled to proper size and maybe some road signs to catch 3'rd dimension, we will be able to say if this angle fits us - for now, I'd say it's OK unless anyone has better idea/angle/size

[kalle2990]

Just a quick question, I know how to commit to my own fork and push that. But how do I push to the original project, is that possible?

to do that, you need to be developer, when we add you to project and docs, you get permission to push to project. This is minimal size of security we decided to employ to protect integrity and stop spam flowing in

And how do I supply for a gameplay coder?

[giniu]

And how do I supply for a gameplay coder?

simply Check current version of repo - http://codaset.com/lovelyrpgcommunity/a ... eam/source - especially http://codaset.com/lovelyrpgcommunity/a ... oto/proto1. Then prepare something we can merge into this, if stuff you do integrates well and looks OK, then it will be merged into code. Stuff merged into code = contribution made. In documentation, especially check B.4 and B.5 about contributions and becoming developer In your case, that is lots of posts on forum, it should be enough to bring in one contribution. I looked into your fork of repository and didn't noticed anything new other than bartbes conf and main, that later was modified by willurd.

So, when you have your contribution ready, contact any developer - you can contact Chucks, or other Coders. If Your code is pushed into official repository (and this can be done also by already accepted coders in case of coder contributions), someone with Chuck role (like me or xnellex) will contact you to get your personal details into documentation and give you developer permissions on project page. Hope it explains it

[kalle2990]

Thanks for the explaining
The main.lua and conf.lua added before was just a thing I did to update my working dir and in the meantime test if the pushing worked.. Anyway, I did a little example of the name.png if you want to check it out

[willurd]

I'd say it would do for first prototype, unless we find better angle. I think it would be best to throw it in, and when we give it a shot with some temporary foliage scaled to proper size and maybe some road signs to catch 3'rd dimension, we will be able to say if this angle fits us - for now, I'd say it's OK unless anyone has better idea/angle/size

Sweet.

So I whipped up a scrolling map tonight and added a little bit of editing functionality in there as well just for kicks. It's not the cleanest code I've ever written, but I wasn't worrying about that too much I checked it into the repo and also attached it to this post. It seems pretty close to what we're looking for for the first prototype. It can scroll for a whole screen in any direction (which takes about 2 seconds) and the tiles are about 1/8 of the height of the screen (didn't quite work out to 1/8 for width). Is this close to what we're looking for? Thoughts?

Edit: Added zooming to the map/editor.

[giniu]

Thanks for the explaining
The main.lua and conf.lua added before was just a thing I did to update my working dir and in the meantime test if the pushing worked.. Anyway, I did a little example of the name.png if you want to check it out

Hmm, so you want position of concept artist? Well, why not, but artistic contributions are also checked for stylistic consistency, could you make something more industrial or dark looking?

So I whipped up a scrolling map tonight and added a little bit of editing functionality in there as well just for kicks. It's not the cleanest code I've ever written, but I wasn't worrying about that too much I checked it into the repo and also attached it to this post. It seems pretty close to what we're looking for for the first prototype. It can scroll for a whole screen in any direction (which takes about 2 seconds) and the tiles are about 1/8 of the height of the screen (didn't quite work out to 1/8 for width). Is this close to what we're looking for? Thoughts?

nice nice Will check it more closely later today, one thing though - we should avoid formats like gif, which are not totally open. For this project we should prefer png, they also have transparency and loose-less compression. Same goes for fonts, we should use only open fonts and stuff

Oh, and one more thing - lets leave out rivers for now, I'd say rivers and roads could be drawn on top in different manner, planned them from iteration 2 or 3