Another month, another update… progress slowed a bit to tackle bugs and quality of life features, per our requests in the Discord. Let’s get started.
Localization strings are now supported in many parts of the engine. You have the ability to come up with multiple languages and their respective translations, as you run through building your game. For now, things are relatively simple — there is no massive translation tool (though there will eventually be one in the future). There is no command (yet) to switch the localization, but it will be coming very soon.
A number of “simple” features were also added. Doodads now support light emission. List elements in the User Interfaces will now update themselves in regard to Disable effects, as is necessary. Battle counters are now supported as trait targets (e.g. a skill could update a target’s battle counter to “slow” them down). Y-Plane-shaped objects (Entities, Doodads, etc) now show beneath things in 2D, as opposed to rendering based on Z/X orientation, as well (this will help a number of 2D games that want to render a “trap door” or something else on a floor).
Another large update was supporting Z-Index in the Picture/Video/User Interface layers. As these are all run in the “same” frame buffer, it only made sense to allow for them to be sorted, such that pictures may appear above or below a video — and consequently above or below a User Interface. Assume that all User Interfaces run at the Z-Index of 0, unless otherwise stated or configured.
A number of machine translations were added to the editor this month. RPG Architect now has translations in the editor for Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Portuguese (Brazilian).
The “Add Enemy” element was added to Battle Programs — enemies can now spawn more enemies as part of a battle. Maybe you have an enemy that can spawn “bits” to help it attack or defend or maybe a wolf howls to summon more friends? The options is now included!
Data Entries is a new database section, which isn’t complete yet, but is starting to show up. Data Entries are used to configure things like Mission Logs, Monster Details, etc. The idea is that they will be a generic database entry that can be leveraged as a data source in User Interfaces, and will be somewhat freeform. There will be more on it next month!
There were numerous bug fixes this month — about fifty in general. There were issues with pixel font rendering getting broken, skill sorting inside battles, rendering issues in general with battles, performance related to particle effects, shop selection, updating doodads from database, and vehicle movement in 3D — to name a few off the top of my head.
December, I hope to finish up work started in November. Localization commands and Data Entries should hopefully both be done, in addition to more bug fixes and quality of life updates. We are not on track for 1.0 releasing by the end of 2024, but as I had stated before, I’m not concerned about getting by a certain date — it’ll be ready when it is ready (and the updates will continue as well)! Hopefully in December I’ll knock out more on the Roadmap — we’re at 78% right now. A number of these items are very small — it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that if everything goes well in December, that we shoot up past 90% on the Roadmap.
That’s it for November!
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!
