The iPhone Project

[Gan]

Mmmm, the sweet smell of progress:
http://web.mac.com/avisaria/Battle%20Sytem%20b1.swf
I revamped the tracking system so that it'd be able to handle targeting both the player and other npcs. You know what that means? Exactly, npcs can now follow and fight each other.
Simple battle system: Check.
What's next on my list? Npc talking I think...


-Gandolf

[Mystor]

when you die you should become a ghost and then have to walk back to a nearby city.

That would be cool!

Mist

[Gan]

Oooh, Oberin style. Nice. Stick it in the storyline thread, hopefully it'll go well. (By the way, now that a simple battle engine is done you guys can go a little further with the storyline. Also with each update you can add a bit more complexity to it)


-Gandolf

[Gan]

Hey Silverwind, I have you .psd file for the npc talk window but can't isolate the actual transparent window within the image. I don't have Photoshop so could you save only the window part as a png and put it up here?


-Gandolf

[Silverwind]

Sure:



I had set the opacity to 95, but that may be too hard with the iPhone.

[Gan]

Thanks, I'm hoping that it'll run just fine with any amount of transparency though I guess we'll find out.


-Gandolf

[Gan]

So for the battle system...
- Red hp bar for health above NPCs when hp is less than maxhp.
- Blue mp bar for energy below hp bar on npc.
- Red hp bar for health above player when hp is less than maxhp.
- Blue mp bar for energy below hp bar on player.
- Green exp bar right below mana bar?
- Attack by collision but limited by speed variable.
- Stats for npcs + player: Attack, Defense, hp, hpmax, mp, mpmax, lvl, exp.
- Red negative text on character when damaged.

So for the talk system...
- Bump into npc to talk?

I see a few issues. If attack is on collision, can you start attacking a neutral npc by accidental bump? Should the player be able to go on top of npcs but the npcs not allowed to go on top of the player? The map space is only so big, could an npc you can't walk on be stuck in your way from moving forward? If you bump to talk to an npc, wouldn't that get extremely annoying if you're just walking over them?
What do you guys think? Should we have an attack button?


-Gandolf
P.S. After a bit of thinking this is what I have:
The game auto-attacks for you so you don't have to try to button mash and such. Whoever you are attacking there will be a target/cross arrow on which you can change by tapping an NPC. You can walk over npcs that aren't in attack mode. In the bottom left of the screen is a transparent event button. You hit this button to pull up a transparent menu. The game pauses in the background and among the choices are Action(Used to talk to npcs/read signs), Inventory(Use potions, drop items, change armor/weapon), and Specials(Which pulls up a list of special attacks if you are a fighter or spells if you are a mage that you can scroll through, pick the auto attack that'll be what runs automatically when fighting and exit or a one time only special attack which the menu disappears and you can target a character and use it). What do you guys think?
Too complicated? Any other ways to address the problems?
Of course we could just drop magic and a large inventory so there'd only be potions and the items you fight with. Then we could make the transparent  button on the bottom left an attack/event button. Or...
Maybe this is it:
Event button allows you to talk to NPCs, while you attack by collision. You can walk over NPCs not attacking you. Now that's simple and should destroy all issues.
What do you guys think?

[Swamp7hing]

I like that.
I also like the "selection" menu.
maybe just have that at the side? potion use and move/magic selection?

[Gan]

That's possible, we could have more than 2 different displays on the toggle button.
Let's do a majority vote. Post the method you like the most.


-Gandolf

[Silverwind]

Well for simplicity's sake I'd recommend the following:

• Walking onto a space occupied by a Friendly NPC (townsfolk and whatnot) pauses gameplay and invokes a dialogue window disclosing the name of the NPC and a short speech. The entire dialogue window is a clickable button and once clicked it disappears and gameplay resumes.
• Walking onto a space occupied by an Item Vender NPC (shopkeepers) pauses gameplay and invokes a trade window containing the name of the NPC and several lines of text (each clickable buttons initiating the "purchaseItem" routine) representing the items the vendor is selling. Clicking anywhere in the trade window not occupied by an item button (most obviously the space displaying the NPC's name) closes the trade window and resumes gameplay.
• Walking onto a space occupied by an Enemy NPC (monsters and what have you) results in the "attack" routine initiating.
• Walking onto a space occupied by any class of NPC returns a non traversable collision class.
  

Simples.

EDIT:

And btw Gan, that stuff you're doing is incredible! It really is. I can't believe you've built such an engine on the iPhone!

[Gan]

Awesome! I love the simplicities of your ideas. I'm definitely going to put these in. Progress is probably going to be halted until Christmas break due to finals. Thanks for the compliment, though it's quite easy if you have a basic understanding of programming and a get the gist of the syntax.


-Gandolf

[Silverwind]

On the worldwide scale there aren't many people who can do what you've done Gan, and few indeed by your prime age! Be proud. Be very proud.

On an unrelated yet interesting note: one of the guys I work with was part of the team who designed the sonar system interface for one of the first nuclear submarines ever. Awesome!

[Gan]

On an unrelated yet interesting note: one of the guys I work with was part of the team who designed the sonar system interface for one of the first nuclear submarines ever. Awesome!

Whoa.

With a bit of thinking I have decided to hard code the event system in. That means that I can only make the events by coding instead of you guys just editing text files like for customizing npcs. The event system would consist of talking, shopping, bosses, battles, and anything else special. You'd invoke an event by sticking it to an action. Such as if player steps on this tile then run event #6 which for example could be to decrease the player's health as he had stepped onto a camp fire.


-Gandolf

[Silverwind]

Nice.

[Gan]

After a bit of further thinking I have decided to do a large overhaul in the game:
So far I've been making this game where people would be able to make and mold it just by editting text files. That's completely unnecessary and a waste of code/time. After finals week I'll start the process of hard coding everything in. Maps, npcs, items, events... This'll decrease code and processing power need and also add more customizability which should make my life much better.


-Gandolf