April ended up having a lot more done, feature-wise, than I had originally anticipated. It still hasn’t been as productive as I had hoped and I don’t believe we’ve really moved much on the Roadmap, but let’s get started!
So, let’s start out with the most obvious (thank you for the meme, Bert):
As I had mentioned before, I was going to spend some time in Mira… and I have been. Unfortunately, the real world (and work) has been exceptionally stressful, so I’ve been taking some time to recharge/decompress. I’m mostly through things, so May should have some of the “lost steam” in RPG Architect picked back up. That said, there are still quite a few updates I’d like to highlight.
Physics got another major update — as well as Map rendering. You can now have 3D Meshes as both a Visual and Collision layer. Your mesh should be centered at (0,0,0) with the (0,1,0) being the “Up” direction, as it is with models. Further, if your Mesh is 50 units wide (25, 0, 25) to (-25, 0, -25), then your map would need to be set to 50 x 50 tiles. This is extremely important.
Another often-requested feature has been Loot Tables. They’re now in and can be distributed as a Battle Reward from an Enemy. At some point in the future, I’m going to make it such that you can also load Items into Shops via Loot Tables, as well as just randomly reward things via Scripting Command. It should also be noted that Loot Tables support the option (at least in Battle Rewards) to get multiple things, from least likely to most likely, based on where your aggregate score is. I’ll eventually cover more on that topic in a video (or document it).
RPG Architect now supports arrays! This was instrumental to setting up some of the next things I’m currently working on (and wanting to expand into), as listed above. You’ll be able to access arrays (and set their size/count). Internally, they’re stored as JSON, so if you display a variable, you’re going to see some weird mark-up. However, I’ll eventually be adding the ability to drop different things into array format, such as Party Unique IDs, Battle Results, and so forth, such that you can have nicer ways of working with data. It’s going to be a work in progress to retro-fit some things in, but it’ll hopefully be very worth it for a number of folks.
I also added better “Blobber” controls into RPG Architect, which can be found under the Database via Maps \ Configuration (under Physics at the moment, though this may change and I may pull out all of the “Controls” into their own sub-section). This will improve functionality for a lot of the folks wanting to make a First-Person Dungeon Crawler (which I have been told are called “Blobbers”). You can control rotation, as well as the amount of time it takes for the rotation. At some point, I’ll probably make it so you can turn these on/off, since I know a number of folks probably want to make games that switch controls from perhaps a top-down “world map” to a Blobber “dungeon.”
There are a number of bug fixes — I believe about 20, and a few smaller feature adds — under 10, which made it in.
April has been very busy and stressful, but it’s wrapping up and I’m basically seeing the outside of the tunnel from where I’m at, beyond the “light at the end of the tunnel.” That should mean there will be more time to put into RPG Architect, and we’ll get closer to a 1.0 candidate.
May will have more focus on the Battle Engine, hopefully adding the opportunity for “Multiple Hits” and a “Battle Log” added into the mix. There will probably be a way to create/add Enemy Formations that are randomly assigned, much like the Loot Tables. I’ll probably try to knock out the “Battle Transition Logic” on my Roadmap for 1.0, which will just add transitions for Characters entering a “Current Map” Battle. I’d also like to expand a number of things we already have to make use of the Arrays that have been added (e.g. grouping Battle Rewards for Items together, etc — I’m looking at you Aezrin and I hear you loud and clear).
June will likely carry some of this work and have a renewed focus on User Interfaces to allow for a few more “adjustments” on things to allow for cleaner transitions on selection of an Element, etc (e.g. when you focus on an Item in a Template/Compass/ List, it may change the Text/Color/Icon/etc).
Somewhere in here, I’ll also be adding a 3D cache/rendering piece to allow for the Map Editor to render your Doodads and/or Map Layers and/or Entities in the Editor. It won’t be perfect — but it’ll hopefully be “reasonably” good. It’s on my list of things to do.
That’s a wrap for April! We’re getting close.
As always:
Thank you so much for your support so far. I’m looking forward to building this community further and giving you the engine you may not have known you always wanted!
