SOLDIER: The Forgotten Soul

[vuurrobin]

[Liazon]

those sprites are fine. like cjgone said, you should start working on your engine and use placeholders for now.

[TylerMcL]

ooooo, ok... I'll start working on the movement engine I've got the rest of the week off from work, and I'm stuck in northern michigan at my cabin. So I suppose this week would be a wonderful time to start working on my map movement engine. I'm hoping that it really won't take that long... :/

I'm not exactly sure how this whole tile map procedures work, but I was thinking creatively, considering that my sprite sizes are irregular and won't evenly fit onto the screen:

Maybe something like a small "buffer" in each direction, and then somehow using the method of filling in the last bytes at the end of the screen. The buffer idea would prevent me from having to literately having to "crop" the sprites. All I'd have to do is specify the screen area, and then copy it to the LCD driver? We'll see... I'm certain that there's a more efficient way of doing all of this -- even if it is with 8x12 sprites :P

And if I have enough "spare" clock cycles in my engine, I might consider incorporating some type of real-clock to keep track how long you've been playing the game. I might just worry about this one in the sequels, and worry about perfecting the movement engine for now.

I'd hate to copy the entire screen each time, so tell me that it's not that difficult to create an engine that uses the method of filling in the last bits for the end bytes 8)

EDIT:

By the way, what does "CTI" and "atm"(not to be mistaken for ATM machine?) mean? I'm not completely sure, but I think that a few posts back people referred to me as these two? Anyone want to fill me in? (This is the first web forum site I've ever taken part of :/)

[cjgone]

[Liazon]

drawing the map and drawing your sprite are totally separate things. they don't have to rely on each other.

you draw the map w/ a tilemap routine. that routine just needs a camera view. you may choose to have this camera view based on the current location or the person, or make it fixed to certain tiles. then you draw the sprite on top based on the sprite's position. both the tilemapper and the sprite drawing routine should not ask questions about whether it's in the right place. hit detection should occur about when you handle input. your model (how you choose to represent the maps and world w/ data) affects how this is done. you can simply choose a portion of the sprite (usually the top) that is ignored for hit detection and just use the bottom 8 pixels. Or if you want to do the whole 12, you'll have to do more math.

if you stick to black and white, 6mhz is more than enough for all your rpg needs. look at Zelda, he basically has a push/pop af, bc, hl, de everywhere and it still works fast. in fact if you start experimenting now, you'll often find that it's too fast in some places.

and even though copying to the LCD takes a lot of clocks all the time, it's really insignificant sometimes. I think you're worrying too much about speed, unless i'm missing something and you want to do a Crisis Core remake lol.

the timer's probably no big deal. you'll probably need to set one up anyways to create your vblank (essentially standard rate of refresh) While you're at it, you can probably use several bytes to hold time.

edit:
cjgone: your tilemapper should basically clear the screen. there's no need to delete lives, characters, and objects since they get overwritten by the new (usually shifted over) map view. but this also depends on which type of mapper you use.

[cjgone]

The tile map and the main character is easy stuff into you get to the moveable objects.. There are a lot of tile map routines online I think.

What I mean, that the tile map is quite stationary. The tiles are every 'z' pixels, so it would be pretty ugly moving tiles around.

You need to know about structures to handle objects that can walk around, etc.

[Art_of_camelot]

Dunno about CTI, but atm stands for At The Moment. Also, your world sprites arent that bad, and the battle sprite looks good (reminds me of a modded fighter from FF1).

[Weregoose]

It was "CDI," and a case of mistaken identity: he was another programmer who once worked on a project that had "Theta" in its title. Those were CDI and Theta Fourteen, respectively.

When you said...

[TylerMcL]

Wow, two days away, and I've gotten all this help! Wow-zers! Thank you to everyone for the tilemap help! Honestly I never thought of doing the hit detection as only the bottom 8 pixels (wow, what was i thinking??) lol. That wasn't sarcasm, that was serious

And I do apologize about the confusion of the previous member... I am sorry to inform that I have no idea who he was/is, therefore, implying it is not I that they were referring to :P

And the battle sprite is indeed a moded version of the main character from FF1 I'm not the most creative artist, but I'm considering re-drawing the sprite somewhere down the road and completely re-doing the character. We'll see...

And I am sorry to announce that I am having technical problems with my laptop. Vista does not feel like functioning for me, and now I have to re-format and re-install windows to be able to use it again. I said screw it, and decided that I am going to attempt to use linux for a little while (once I can gain access to a computer that has a CD burner). I am not]/I], under any circumstances, going to format my harddrive and erase my entire project. Worse-case, I figured that I'd just back-up my files and [I]then re-install windows in necessary. I still have to call in for my vista CD that didn't ship with my computer :P

And before I go, I must agree on that the method of filling in the end bytes is the best. I don't think that I'm going to have anything more on the map than the map sprites themselves and the player sprite. I figured I'd go classic with the final fantasy userface and create a separate screen for the menus. (HP, status, equip, magic, save, ect.)

[Liazon]

you could always use WINE to run all your ASM needs. or build them from source if possible.

[cjgone]

Draw the tilemap in squares, and forget about filling in the end pixels.


You'll have suffecient speed.

[TylerMcL]

Well the reason of why I'm trying to perfect the tilemap movement is because although I will most likely not be using the extra speed in this game, in my sequels (if the first one is good enough to continue off of) I may want to add other features without having to re-do/optimize the map engine.

For example, I spoke of having another character always trailing behind (such as Pikachu in the old pokemon yellow). This would not require that much extra clock cycles, however the planned additions may result in a butchered engine. So that is why I've been so meticulous with the tilemap engine. It may just be a waste of time -- but it's still challenging/fun for me! :D

On a lighter note: I was able to fix my laptop the other day with no problems. My files are still all intact. So this is what that means: Back to work for me! I'm really hoping to be able to really start and try to bust out the movement engine in the next few days. :D

By the way, is there any links or suggestions for Sprites that could be provided? I know I probably won't need them for a little while longer, but I figured it might take a little while for anyone to reply with any links. I really don't care what size they are, or even if they're for the calculator. As long as they're cool and they make me happy

[DigiTan]

Definately make a few backups of the game often. Maybe not every day or week, but enough to avoid a serious setback.

[cjgone]

With pixel fill in, you can't update picture changes because the tile map is essentially a bitmap.

You cannot animate pictures and you cannot change them which removes such interactions without using external objects.


Just redraw the screen everytime in squares. That's a lot less routines needed and the speed will be fine.


If you know some C, this is generally the tile method which is way better (just wrote this yesterday )

For efficiency, draw the border with a clip sprite and everthing not on the border with normal putsprite

[Liazon]

glad to hear your laptop is fixed :)

you are clearly underestimating the power of 6mhz. also, this isn't an action rpg like digitan's is it? then you should be fine if encounters happen on a separate battle screen.

[TylerMcL]

It's going to be like the original FF RPG's that load to a different battle screen for the battle sequences. I was just going to draw in separate sprites for any animations. It's really no big deal, since they're most likely going to use the same engine that the user sprite uses.

I actually started the tile-mapper last night. I kinda planned out what I'm going to do and got some ideas down. Since this is my first ASM program, it just took a little while to firmly obtain an understanding of how I am to go about with keeping the main sprite centered, yet allow it to be off-centered in places like buildings and by the sides of the map :D

I have all the user sprites typed in, along with the proper masks.

Now I just need to keep working on the sprite routine. I'm obviously going to use a "AND" method of displaying them, I just need to make a custom form of keeping track of position (because that's how I most understand it -- when I personally create all of it! )

[cjgone]

Your character's locations is displayed at the coordinates:

xcor - left_border_xcor, ycor - left_border_ycor


So if the left side of the screen is 0,0 for the tilemap and you're at 44,28 (center)
character will be drawn at 44-0,28-0 = 44,28. If the left side is at 10,0 for the tile map (tile map shifted 10 pixels) then you're character will be drawn at 44-10,28-0 = 34,28....

If that makes any sense. Your characters position on the screen is relative to its position on the tile map. Just if you're interested.

[Liazon]

[asdf]

How did your work on the tilemapper go? If you've got any questions, ask!

[TylerMcL]

truth be told... Not too swell I'm having trouble with what should be the easiest part :(

I haven't really had that much time to mess with it lately either... I've put in over 55+ hours at work last week, and I haven't seen the girlfriend yet either :/

What I'm in the progress of doing is just designing the tilemap to notice if the corner bytes are 0000 0000 or not. This is going to signify if the player's movement will deviate from the center or not, and ultimately determine if the screen should be shifted or not. This will hopefully get rid of the giant hastle of having to keep track of a x and y coordinate. I hate the x and y method on a tilemap because if you design events based on these coordinates, it makes it almost impossible to make any changes later, and also even a larger pain to code.

Oh, and one other time consumption of mine:

I've been looking for a car, and I think I'm going to buy a 2002 Grand Am SE with 57,000 miles on it tomorrow for $4,650. Hard work pays off!

So I promise to put some more time into it by the end of this week

And one final note:

The majority of this project is really going to start once i get back in school (September 2). Like I said, I'm re-taking the same Math course, so I'll have a solid hour a day to work on it. And let's not forget about the Informational Technology course that I took that is 2 hours long where I actually get to get a grade learning and making sub-programs for my game! Talk about shweet! (I was thinking of adding, in the second one, an arcade not unlike the FF7 one!

I have not gone all this time without thinking of more ideas for the game. Not gonna lie, but I did not have any type of plot until recently. So here it is, in a really crappy nutshell:

The time is before Sephiroth is created. Shinra is experimenting with creating the perfect SOLDIER. The head scientist at the time is Hojo's rival, Professor Hollander. They thought they had it right with this one, until the test subject turned to the age of 6 and they put him through the official Shinra testing. Unfortunately for them, he could not use materia (FF version of majic and summoning). He is adopted by a family in the slums who eventually move out to the country while the Player is 10 or 12. He is made fun of, yada-yada-yada. He gets upset, Creates an enormous sword. (Yes, he is to be the father of Angeal Hewley from Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core).

This is where the game starts to get interesting, so I cannot give out too much. I'll give a hint though. The first game ends with something to do with black materia. :D

And don't worry, even if you've never played any of the final fantasy series, it's still going to be an amazing game for everyone.