Another month down, another month of updates. Let’s start!
I added a LOT of features, rather than working on the 1.0 game. Folks ask for things… and then I try to deliver. So, 1.0 may get pushed back a little bit. In the process, I tried to start incorporating some of the other items that are scheduled for 1.0, and we’ll say that there were a few hiccups along the way (that are mostly resolved at this point, but still ongoing).
After I made the “rugged” update last month for cliff walls/earth, there was a joke, “What about fire, water, and wind? We have earth taken care of now!” Well, you asked for it! I added “waves” in, which can be applied to map layers. You’ll want to create a layer for each “water” you want to render, but you can kind of take it from there.
On the prior note — we already have something “similar” to fire in the form of particles… So that’d leave wind, right?
Maps now support “wind” and Doodads and Entities can now respond to the wind. You’ll see components for wind direction, strength, etc, and objects on your map will respond accordingly.
Sprite Rigging was added to enemies — you now have the ability to distort them based on different Battle Poses. This will allow you to do things like make enemies “breathe” or “fly” by morphing the sprite in real time. The rigging works simultaneously with changes to the Battle Pose and is opt-in. If you want it, use it! If you don’t, no big deal either.
I reworked all of the modals (popup windows) that occur in RPG Architect this month as well. This is more in-line with what was going to happen for 1.0 — I’ve been plotting out the best way to do a “New Project” wizard, to streamline things. This is part of that strategy, ultimately, in addition to the adjustments of color on buttons, etc.
I added a change to “Status Effects” in the engine this month as well, which is going to be useful in the 1.0 game. That’s probably how I got off-track. Cole, the lead character (until we get Lilac, who is really the main character), will start as a high-level character with some “Status Effects” that lower his statistic scores because he’s “rusty” and “old.” As battles progress (and experience is earned), they’ll “disappear” and he’ll regain some of his prior strength back. It’ll make for a fun (and maybe realistic?) system. Ultimately, you’ll be the judge of that, though!
I also upgrade to Avalonia 12 for the Editor, which is where a lot of the “issues” we have are coming from. Avalonia 12 follows a different model, wherein each control and view within can be composited on its own thread, but there’s still only one UI thread, per most development. This leads to faster load times. Previously, RPGA would load in about 15 seconds for me — and when it loaded, everything looked “good.” In Avalonia 12, it now loads in about 8-10 seconds — so a 33% increase in speed. However, because of the aforementioned, the frames and editor show up slowly/differently — so there was an initial “pop in” effect that needed to be hidden. So, my starting speed is now around 10-11 seconds with my fix, which is still an improvement.
In addition, it also changes how things are loaded and in what order. This required a MASSIVE refactor over three days. There are still some caveats with the lifecycle that were not there before. This is why we’re seeing the issues we are in some edge cases. They’re hopefully soon to be resolved, but in some cases, may require a complete rewrite of some Editor systems. Eek!
I’ve made almost no progress on the 1.0 project, aside from a little more writing and building a few maps, albeit, there aren’t that many maps for the Dungeon Crawler — maybe 5-6 (in theory). I’m going to try to start working through the statistics and setup of characters.
That’s it for May! There were a lot more features than I wanted to add, but it is what it is. June will focus on stabilization of the existing features and the overhaul to Avalonia 12, which seem to be causing issues — but hopefully those will be resolved by the time this is “published.”
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!
