May was a little eclectic for updates. In addition to getting ready for Comicpalooza (both booth and panel), a lot of time was spent addressing user requests and bugs. The two big “MVP” items were finished (they may need more testing) — Weather and Tile/Pixel Movement overhaul. Let’s dig in.
One of the big updates is weather! In most other engines, weather is pre-defined. In RPG Architect, I wanted to make weather versatile. So, I took a note from Functions that were implemented last month, as well as Virtual Keys… So, now you can be very particular. You have the ability to set custom scripts for when the weather starts, is ongoing, and when it ends. Local variables/switches are supported, so you could do something like have “lightning” flash randomly based on a local variable that is provided, with varying intensities. In addition, just to make it easy, you can choose to just run a full-screen animation. If you decide you want other “effects” (like a sandstorm — or leaves floating around — or meteorites falling down), you can do it all.
Tile-based movement got a big overhaul. Apologies in advance to everyone who had to “suffer” thru it. Tile-based movement is now done via volumetric analysis, instead of “simple” projection. When a tile-based move is initiated, it registers the volume of the movement and prevents further movement. There were a lot of edge cases (preventing falling off an edge, ramps — both up and down, running into walls), but they should all be fixed by now. Big shout-out to Aezrin for especially suffering thru this and providing every possible edge case he possibly could in a project form, so I could navigate it quickly.
Background effects are another big add — the ability to change and run multiple audio sources at once. Music is a “special” form of a background effect, in that there is only ever one running at a time. In addition, I also added several usability enhancements — such as a “search” box in commands, as well as local variable/switch support in messages. Selection/usage of the script editor also was improved, forcing selection of a single item at a time upon click (in the past, it wasn’t perfect). You no longer need to click and then right click for selection either.
Numerous bugs were fixed, especially with the prior mentions on tile-based movement. There were a few other issues with equipping items, save states, and countless other bugs. There were roughly 35-40 bugs fixed in the past month, as well as about 10-15 user requests. In addition, the calculation engine used has been upgraded to be faster and “better” when processing formulas. This one barely got in under the wire (or may be a day late — I’m updating this post on the 31st and I haven’t published the code change yet).
A considerable amount of work has been going into the 2D Template and the 2D RPG example that ships with RPG Architect. A number of issues were found at Comicpalooza, and I was busy at work trying to fix them, as I could.
Also, did you know that we had a panel/talk? Mondune, myself, and Bert all showed up to tell a little story about RPG Architect and how to do almost anything. It was the first time any of us had met each other in person, after a few years. It was a great time!
Next month, I’ll be working on more user requests and trying to knock things out of the roadmap. Most of the “major” items are actually done. I don’t think there are plans for anything else in the database (for now), except for Game Controllers. We’re inching closer and closer to 1.0. As a note — RPG Architect is going to increase its price in June, since it is much closer to 1.0 than it is to Early Access. My plan had always been to increase the price at the halfway point to halfway between the “early access” and “full release” price, but I got caught up in updates, instead of administrative things.
That’s it for May!
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!
