September ramped-up significantly, and as of writing now (since I plan on trying to mostly go after feature requests and bug fixes in the Discord), we are 98% of our way to 1.0. The only outstanding issue at this point is to add “Battle Transition Logic” for On/Current Map Battles, and then we’ll be at the official 100% mark. Funny enough, a few things from the post-1.0 list were also done in the past month. Let’s dive in.
One of the bigger requests (for quite a while now) has been to enable/support multi-select in various parts of the application… and you finally got it! There have been a number of quirks where differing items didn’t work (mostly because moving from a single-selection to multiple-selection interface requires rewriting the entire construct — and then trying to emulate looking at “one” item is even more “fun”). Multi-selection isn’t available everywhere, but I’ve tried to put it where it has been most requested… minus Scripts. That’ll be coming eventually.
The Database got updated a little bit, if you couldn’t tell from the prior screenshot. You’ll see that a “Notes” section was added to the right of almost all Database elements, and it pops out. The area that the Database Sections utilizes is a little more condensed, thanks to Avalonia getting some updates.
Importing Maps (from other RPGA projects) is now supported, as well! You have the ability to re-assign the Tileset before it gets added to the project. It is very important to note that this requires your tile data to be somewhat synced up, since tiles are saved as a composite of four quadrants, all of which are offsets in the Tileset itself. This is mostly meant for something like merging two projects together, provided the Tilesets are compatible. Don’t expect any miracles!
One of the other parts of post-1.0 was to enable lighting in 2D mode… and it turns out, after all of the other upgrades that had been made, we ended up getting it as a side effect! There’s a good chance that 2D shadows have been in for a while, but “hidden.” Regardless, I’ve “unblocked” them now, such that you can effectively get shadows in 2D mode, if you’re using multiple layers and structural tiles. Due to characters themselves being “flat” there isn’t really a way to have them project shadows, so be mindful this is highly dependent on terrain, otherwise.
A number of additions were made to the “Fixed Loop” command — you can now specify an iterator and choose whether or not to be inclusive of the end or not. What that means — the “Iterator” would be a variable that is being updated and counted. It’ll be useful to use this if you’re trying to hit an Index on a Data Source or Array, since you no longer have to set it or modify an external variable to access the Index. Further, the “Inclusive” flag basically will also help the prior case — if you make it Inclusive, it will go to the end value, while “Exclusive” (uncheck Inclusive) will make it go to ONE before. Since an Array/Count would be something like 3, with access to Indeces based on 0, you would have Indeces 0, 1, and 2 — 3 would be out of bounds. This lets you just operate in that space a little more efficiently. C-style programmers will understand and appreciate this development.
Several other feature requests were added, such as new Action Sequence Elements and how they behave. Parent Skill Types were added to Skill Types, which allows “greater” fidelity when classifying/breaking down skills for the battle menus. “Y” translation is now accepted in 2D rendering, in the event you’re trying to sync up 2D and 3D views with one Character Model. I could go on, but just take my word for it, so I can keep coding!
There were several bug fixes, almost as many as last month. A major update was made to how Physics was handled (again), which will hopefully be the “final” point, until I add something like ladders or walls that can be “stuck” to. All of the “Popups” were fixed and made to work with proper menus now (e.g. Adding a Projection Element, Adding a User Interface Element, etc), so they “theme” more correctly now. More advances, thanks to Avalonia itself being updated (and me becoming “better” with using it as well).
For October — I’m not sure I’ll get around to the “Current Map – Battle Transitions” logic, just yet. There are a number of configurations that I’d like to add there for the Heroes, Enemies, and potentially the Map/Camera. I’m still thinking about “what” that looks like. I’ll likely be working on more feature requests and bug fixes, with two longer term goals — a Dungeon Crawler Template/Sample Game and a UX refresh for the Editor.
I hear, quite often, that the User Interface/Experience in the Editor is “ugly.” It is a bit minimalist/utilitarian, but ultimately something that needs to be cleaned up before it goes “full release.” I’ve been making significant strides in improving it, per community feedback (it’s still mostly sourced by “What works for you, what doesn’t”). I wish I had the capacity and funding to hire an actual UX designer, but ultimately I’m barely in the black on this project most months (thanks to business/Steam fees, etc). If anyone in the community has background in UX and/or design, I’d be super interested in talking!
We should most certainly hit “1.0” by the end of the year, feature-wise. I still want to clean up a lot of things before “publishing” it as 1.0 and doing the final rate-hike on the released product. I’ll likely also add a “type code instead of use the visual commands” interface as well. There are quite a few things I’d really like to add before 1.0 that are probably going to round out some sharp corners of usage.
That’s it for September. You can always check the changelog on Steam and see what else was added!
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!
