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A new engine!

Started by CraigStern, June 05, 2016, 05:39:11 PM

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CraigStern

-- adjusted selfLight values for different lit destructible objects.

-- fixed a bug in which self-lit character and objects would nonetheless get the global lighting tint applied to them (resulting in visual oddities like darkened campfires).

-- fixed a typo in the selfLight attributes for spirits and lit destructible objects.

CraigStern

- gave artist feedback.

- fixed a big in which the game would not save items transferred to characters from the reserve supplies in the shop scene.

- fixed a null error bug I accidentally introduced into the unit loading routine when I implemented unit self-lighting.

CraigStern

#422
-- new dialogue/script action supported: LoadConv. This looks for a particular dialogue--if the game finds it, it immediately loads the specified dialogue, abandoning the existing dialogue. This should allow the creation of multiple independent dialogues that can all link to one another in various ways.

One parameter: the Conv ID of the dialogue to load.

-- cut scenes now have a "darkener" image that sits behind narration text to make it easier to read against lighter backgrounds. The game automatically detects if there is any non-white-space text in the current narration frame, and makes the darkener visible if there is; and hides it if there isn't.

-- standardized the UI a bit more between scenes, adding in the info bar from the top-left of the nighttime scene into the shopping and recruitment scenes.

-- updated the info bar with food and aura icons that describe themselves with tooltips upon mouse-over.

-- the shop category buttons now pop up with tooltips on mouseover.

-- added mouse-over tooltips to the Options and Reserve Supplies buttons in the shop and recruitment scenes.

-- fixed a few small UI issues in the character creator.

-- fixed a bug in which the character creator would not clear its "unsaved changes" flag after saving a character.

-- fixed a bug in which characters would be tinted black by default if a battle didn't specify a Global Lighting variable.

-- fixed a bug in which the game would freeze upon trying to run OnLoaded-triggered dialogue in battle. OnLoaded dialogue now triggers just slightly before OnTurn,0 dialogue.

CraigStern

#423
Focused on further UI improvements today!

-- after a cut scene frame with narration finishes typing out the narration text, the game will now wait a few seconds and then animate some text in the bottom-right of the screen saying "Click to continue." (You would be amazed how many new players need this prompt in order to avoid getting stuck.)

-- after a dialogue window finishes typing out the text for its branch, if there are not multiple reply options, the game will now wait a few seconds and then animate some text in the bottom-right of the dialogue window saying "Click to continue." If there are multiple reply options, the game will now wait a few seconds and then animate some text in the bottom-right of the dialogue window saying "Click a reply."

-- added new hotkeys to the map editor: Shift + S for save, and Shift + L for load.

-- fixed a graphical issue that prevented the action type / reply type from showing up in their respective slots in the Edit Branch window of the dialogue editor on some displays.

-- fixed a bug in which the game would sometimes open the New Map window in the map editor when doing things in the dialogue editor.

-- received the new Clearing background! We now have 6 completed backgrounds; as many as appeared in the entirety of Telepath Tactics. :)

CraigStern

-- updated the Reserve Supplies screen with tooltips showing character name, class, and level when you mouse over a character's personalized inventory button.

-- the character screen now shows unit morale and explains what it does.

-- added New Scene, Save Scene, and Load Scene hotkeys to the cut scene editor; mousing over the buttons for these now displays the appropriate hotkey in a tooltip.

CraigStern

-- the map and cut scene editors now warn you first if you try to exit a map/cut scene without setting the Next Scene property. If you opt not to exit, the editor will take you straight to the field where you set Next Scene.

-- the map editor now supports painting and deleting free-standing point lights on maps.

-- clicking an existing free-standing point light while in New Light mode opens a properties window where you can change the properties of that light.

-- the map editor now successfully loads and saves free-standing point lights in maps.

-- fixed a bug in which the game would not notice unsaved changes from changes made in the Cut Scene Editor's scene settings window.

CraigStern

#426
Today, I updated Unity to the latest version. (Up to this point, I've been building the game in Unity 5.5, now just shy of 2 years out-of-date!)

With the project now reimported for the new version, things are mostly working well, and a few things are actually working better--text, especially, looks noticeably sharper in the new Unity rendering system! A few things did break in the transition, but the only truly significant one seems to be the character sprite animations. Of all the systems for Unity to break, this is actually one of the better ones, as I never actually finished this up (and I've been needing to redo it with a new approach for a while now anyway).

-- fixed the character screen closing function, which Unity broke during the reimportation process for some reason.

-- redid all of the tile textures, as the shaders upon which many of them depended no longer worked the same way (or at all) upon reimportation.

CraigStern

Spent today looking into Amazon fulfillment services for True Messiah; currently awaiting a fix on the palette swapping shader I'm using from the developer.

CraigStern

-- added a Sell pane to the shop screen! This fills the shop screen with items in your reserve supplies. The selling price for an item is 50% of the item's value; if the item has a maxUses attribute, then the selling price is further multiplied by the fraction of usesRemaining on the item relative to the item's maxUses.

(For example: a sword that would normally cost 100 aura to buy would sell for 50 aura if it hadn't been used--but with 20 uses remaining out of 40 max uses, it would sell for 25 aura--50% of 100 aura, times 20/40.)

-- tweaked the formatting of multi-line names in item mouseover tooltips to make them look more aesthetically pleasing.

-- added two new weather types to the Weather map condition: Blizzard and Storm (which are basically just even more extreme versions of Heavy Snow and Heavy Rain, respectively).
-- fixed a bug in the weather system in which changing the weather would immediately switch the behavior and appearance of the previous weather's particles still visible onscreen, not just the new particles emitted going forward.

-- fixed a really frustrating bug in which the game kept rendering the reserve inventory screen non-interactable for seemingly no reason.

-- got the fix for the palette swapping plugin; sprites are displaying correctly again!

CraigStern

-- created 13 alternate greetings for the shopkeeper in the in-game shop, to be selected at random every time you visit.

-- created the greeting for the recruiter in the recruitment office.

-- created the initial conversation with the arena manager in the arena.

CraigStern

-- created an editable XML data format for shops so that you can create shops that are distinct from one another (as opposed to the current setup, in which there is a single, hard-coded shop).

This is how the game's default shop ("Agarwal's") looks in XML form. The cost to buy any given item is unchanged from the item's default value; the base sale price is 50% of an item's default value; item quality varies between terrible (0) and really good (4); and food costs 3.0 aura per unit, rounded to the nearest whole number. This shop has 14-19 randomly chosen weapons, 14-19 randomly chosen armor pieces, 2-5 randomly chosen pieces of Misc. equipment, food in varying quantities, and all of your basic consumables every time you visit. On any given visit, it also has a 50% chance of a battle primer; a 20% chance of 1-5 advanced weapons; a 20% chance of 1-5 pieces of special armor; and a 20% chance of an orb:

<Shop costMultiplier="1.0" baseSalePrice="0.5" itemQuality="2" qualityVariance="2" foodCost="3">Agarwal's
<Stock type="Weapons" materials="Bronze/Iron" num="14-19" chance="100">GEN:Axe,GEN:Bow,GEN:Crossbow,GEN:Knife,GEN:Lance,GEN:Mace,GEN:Spear,GEN:Sword,GEN:Wrench</Stock>
<Stock type="Weapons" materials="Bronze/Iron" num="1-5" chance="20">GEN:Flail,GEN:Halberd,GEN:Javelins,GEN:Longbow,GEN:Rapier,GEN:Throwing Axes</Stock>
<Stock type="Armor" materials="Leather/Boiled Leather/Wood/Bronze" num="14-19" chance="100">GEN:Helm,GEN:Winged Helm,GEN:Boots,GEN:Plated Boots,GEN:Vest,GEN:Mail,GEN:Plate,GEN:Small Shield,GEN:Kite Shield</Stock>
<Stock type="Armor" materials="Leather/Boiled Leather/Wood/Bronze" num="1-5" chance="20">Armored Plating,Light Plating,GEN:Main Gauche,GEN:Wing Armor</Stock>
<Stock type="Consumables" num="0" chance="100">Adrenaline Pills,Apple,Bandages,Caffeine Pills,Eye Drops,Focus Pills,Lead Ointment,Splint,Thermal Paste,Whet Stone,Wine</Stock>
<Stock type="Consumables" num="1" chance="50">Novice Battle Primer,Novice Battle Primer,Novice Battle Primer,Novice Battle Primer,Novice Battle Primer,Novice Battle Primer,Intermediate Battle Primer,Intermediate Battle Primer,Intermediate Battle Primer,Expert Battle Primer</Stock>
<Stock type="Misc." num="2-5" chance="100">Binoculars,Bowman's Gloves,Fur-Lined Cloak,Grapple Chain,Lockpicks,Shadow Cloak,Steamthopter</Stock>
<Stock type="Misc." num="1" chance="20">Blood Orb,Blood Orb,Blue Orb,Energy Orb,Energy Orb,Orange Orb,Power Orb,Power Orb,Swift Orb,Foreseeing Orb,Crystal Orb</Stock>
<Stock type="Food" num="0" chance="100">1,5,10,25,100</Stock> <!-- num="0" means "generate each item listed exactly once" -->
</Shop>


-- created new script action: ShowShop. This grabs the XML shop data for the specified shop, generates stock for it, and pops up the shop interface. (Note that this currently only works in cut scenes--calling ShowShop in battle will do nothing.)

-- fixed a bug in which the game would screw up if you left certain parameters blank in an AddPortrait action.

CraigStern

-- migrated the shop interface to the "Cut Scene" Unity scene so that it can be used as part of custom campaign cut scenes.

-- finished implementing the AddPortrait action in cut scenes.

-- the options menu is now accessible within cut scenes.

-- added new ShowInfoBar and HideInfoBar actions; these cause the info bar (the thing that shows the player's current aura and food, as well as the current date) to appear and disappear from the top-left of the screen during cut scenes.

-- added predictive text entries and descriptions for the new actions.

-- the dialogue menu no longer shows a "Click to Continue" message on 1-reply branches when it's opening a shop interface.

-- fixed a bug in the way that the game was capturing the shop name from within <Shop> tags.

-- received the Ship cut scene background!

CraigStern

-- began working on a Shop Creator within the cut scene editor.

CraigStern

-- the cut scene editor now successfully loads and saves shops found within a cut scene.

-- the cut scene editor now successfully displays all shops in the cut scene via the Edit Shops window, and previews their properties on mouseover.

-- when the game creates XML files, it now adds additional line break and tab formatting to produce much more human-readable files.

-- you can now create a new shop (or edit an existing shop) via the Edit Shops window in the cut scene editor. Everything except editing and manipulating stocks is currently working.

CraigStern

-- the cut scene editor now supports adding, removing, editing, and swapping around stocks of items for any given shop you're editing. The stock editing window comes with its own sub-window showing every item existing in the campaign for you to choose from when deciding which items the shop will stock; you can click each item to add it. (Unlike the version of this sub-window found in the character creator and map editor, this one supports placing procedural equipment!)

-- created "shadow" versions of the images for all types of procedurally generate-able equipment, used in the above-mentioned item sub-window.

-- all custom campaigns now come with a single example shop named "Default Store" in their Introduction.xml file, ready to use in the campaign (or simply use as an example).

-- fixed a bug in which the cut scene editor would sometimes trigger menu hotkeys while one was typing things into input fields.