Developer's Log

[CraigStern]

I've created a video showing off the latest character animations in Telepath Tactics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLEp28KCCJk

I've also added in support for a common inventory. The game now shuttles the contents of all uncollected item sacks into the common inventory automatically at the end of a battle instead of entering loot collection mode. The common inventory saves and loads properly; the next step is to add an interface to allow items in the common inventory to be doled out to characters (and to allow characters to send items to the common inventory).

[hotmitts]

animations are looking really nice!

[CraigStern]

As a prelude to coding the common inventory, I'm fixing up some of the rough edges in the existing character inventory code; in particular, I'm adding support for larger character inventories.

animations are looking really nice!

Thanks!

[CraigStern]

Update: character inventories can now hold up to 54 items. The inventory screen now matches the size of the inventory more precisely; there's now code to keep it from going offscreen if it grows large. The game now enforces a 54-item inventory limit for each character; items beyond that number cannot be grabbed, and will remain in their item sacks.

[CraigStern]

I've coded the basic common inventory screen UI. It accommodates up to 130 items.

As of right now, you can inspect the things in your common inventory, but that's about it. Next, I'm going to work on making it so you can take items from the common inventory and give them to characters--and vice versa.

[CraigStern]

The Stone Golem Throw animations have been added to the game!

Fixed a bug that was causing the game to freeze when using the Throw ability.

[CraigStern]

Work continues on the common inventory system. (You can see the current version as of early this morning by using Shift + I in battle. I've updated the installers for purposes of pushing out the bug fix mentioned in the last post.)

[CraigStern]

New dialog action:

OpenInv – this opens the Common Inventory menu. It has one parameter: the name of the character currently accessing the Common Inventory. (If you want to display the entire team for purposes of swapping items into and out of the Common Inventory, use WHOLE_TEAM for the parameter value.)

Also, you can now use Common Inventory for the first parameter with GiveItem to have an item spawn in the common inventory.

[CraigStern]

You can now use Common Inventory for the first parameter with RemoveItem and RemoveItemByName to remove an from the common inventory instead of removing it from a particular character.

You can now successfully open the common inventory in both a regular battle and a static cut scene.

[CraigStern]

I now have the beginnings of a bar that shows everyone on your team and will allow you to drag items from the common inventory onto your characters to give them things.

[hotmitts]

The Stone Golem Throw animations have been added to the game!

Those are great, beautiful!

[CraigStern]

Work is continuing apace on the common inventory screen. Things are complicated a bit by the fact that it needs to work in both battles and narrative cut scenes (which work very differently in terms of how they access character inventory data), so that's slowing things down somewhat, but progress is continuing.

In other news, I've received the first drafts of the Eingeer's skill animations from Lan; those should hopefully be finished and in-game sooner rather than later.

[CraigStern]

Okay! Engineer animations are now complete and in the game. ;)

Also, the system that lets you drag items into character inventories from the common inventory is working smoothly. Tomorrow, I'll add a system to let you drag items out of character inventories and into the common inventory.

Added new instructions re: common inventory dialog actions to the manual.

Fixed a bug that was causing the game to hang when using an AOE attack that both hits an ally and a destructible object, but no enemies (this had to do with changes to the code I made while adding in a confirmation dialog for attacks on allies).

And finally: I've updated the installers online!

[CraigStern]

All right! You can now click a character portrait within the common inventory menu to open up that individual character's inventory. From there, you can Drop the item down into the common inventory. ;)

There's one last piece of functionality to add before all of this inventory management stuff is done with: allowing characters to equip and unequip items while in the common inventory menu. I'll tackle that tomorrow.

[CraigStern]

Okay! Equipping and unequipping now works in the common inventory menu in both battles and cut scenes. That was much more of a pain than I was hoping it would be, but it's done now. I've also finished polishing up the common inventory menu and fixing bugs now, so I dare say it's good to go!

Also: Tyvon has completed the Stone Golem's Smash animation, meaning that the Stone Golem animations are now finally complete! Work is now proceeding on the Bronze Golem's attack animations.

One last thing: I've added some new functionality to IfStatGoTo and IfStatRun. For most stats, you can now stick the word BASE in front of it in the second parameter to have the game ignore temporary modifiers and just check the base stat. For instance: let's say that Emma Strider has a Strength of 7, but she's used a Whet Stone in this particular battle, so her Strength is effectively 9 for the rest of the battle. IfStatRun     Emma Strider,Strength,g,8,MeetsStrengthReq will trigger the MeetsStrengthReq script, whereas IfStatRun     Emma Strider,BASE Strength,g,8,MeetsStrengthReq will not.