Scorpion Engine

[earok]

@Acidbottle cpu_wave is fully supported and tested, it's used for (as an example) the smooth curves of the bats and birds in the Pitfall demo.

I may need to give it a better name - people tend to assume it means "attack wave" rather than a "sine wave" type movement.

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New experimental update, this should be of some interest to Mixel and NEESO: Elements on Talkpad! Some notes:

- Not strongly tested yet, but it does seem to work.

- The elements get rendered *before* the dialogue box pops up (so you need to set your variable before using dialogue/say)

- You can change the variable between lines eg

* ProfileImage = 0
* Say "Hello"
* ProfileImage = 2
* Say "Goodbye"

- If your talkpad area overlaps the elements, the text will be printed on TOP of the elements. This might be useful if, for example, you exploited the behavior of numberfont to do an entirely different background for different contexts and characters.

- Has not been tested on "Dialogue Choice" options, may or may not work (not sure if anyone really uses that anyway)



Minor editor fix also, when creating a new block it'll ask you straight away to set the image.

[Mixel]

Ahaha! Thanks! Elements in the chat pad is going to be sweet! I’m not 100% certain what for yet, but something! Very tempted to double the height of my chat pad and have character portraits.

I use cpu_wave for my up/down bouncy lifts too, i need to use it for more stuff really as it moves really nicely.

[Neeso]

@earok: That's great! Now I can polish my dialogues!

[Mixel]

One thing I'm guessing about talkpad elements.. They'll all be in chip all of the time, as the talkpad is kind of universal to the whole game?

(by the end of the game) I'm guessing 20+ 32x32pixel EHB portraits would use up quite a lot of chipram (lol) so maybe I should actually limit my palette for once.

[Tsak]

Portraits in particular don't need to be in chip all of the time. Only per level. If this isn't supported currently I guess at some point Erik will add it.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by Tsak

Portraits in particular don't need to be in chip all of the time. Only per level. If this isn't supported currently I guess at some point Erik will add it.

Makes sense I’ve decided on 16x16 ones for this project anyway as the amount of disruption expanding my chatpad causes isn’t really worth it and after messing with 3 different sizes today i still prefer the tiny ones. but yup, ability to choose different numberfonts per element per level would be killer for Visual novels, etc.

[Kaizen35]

Hi ! Glad to join you here. Thanks to Breech for sharing my projects here.
I was stuck for a few days because I now know that for my Mospeada project, I have to create most of the parts of my sprites, before creating the palette.
The other problem I have is that I am new to coding (or neophyte), and I will need your help with some basic questions very soon.

[earok]

@Mixel @Tsak The talkpad and all connected images are in chip all of the time, *however* I probably should add the ability to load different talkpads. So you'd be able to have a talkpad specific to the characters on a specific level.

@kaizen35 welcome! Feel free to ask any questions, someone else may get back to you before I do

[acidbottle]

Welcome kaizen35, a relatively small but massively helpful bunch here, especially earok and mixel

Am picking up how to achieve new stuff on a daily basis so will help in any way I can, though I tend to ask more questions to be honest, like now

Is it anyway possible to have 2 ui panels, say top and bottom, at the same time? I guess no as it would be too costly in terms of bitplanes? I have tried a single panel (like a bezel effect) with a transparent center but that gave quirky results!

Good news is that creating a variety of attack patterns has been relatively straightforward, not precisely perfect but a good start and little easier than I was anticipating. Have some sprite/bob overlap issues that need addressing to.

[DaveInFL]

Went through most of this thread, quite quickly and I have to say this sounds amazing. Are there any overview videos on how to get started? What about creating graphics? I see something called Tiled was mentioned. Any tips on using this app too?

[earok]

@acidbottle

I can't recall having tested a top/bottom panel, but it SHOULD be possible to have a top and bottom panel loaded simultaneously. So far as chipram used up, it's all relative to how large the panel is, how many elements etc.

(Eg, a top and bottom panel of 20 pixels high each would be the same amount of chipram as a single panel at 40 pixels high).

Also bear in mind that panels can have a different color depth to the main game. Even if your main game is EHB/64 colors, you could use a much lower color depth on your panels to save chip.

@daveinfl

Welcome! There isn't much in the way of tutorials yet, since Scorpion is constantly changing (I need to focus on finishing the feature set first).

Tiled is a (free) application needed for making level maps, for graphics it's really just a case of whatever art package you're comfortable with - so long as your package can export 256 color PNGs and PNGs with alpha, it'll be fine.

[DaveInFL]

Ok, so I need to create the tiled graphics first, elsewhere, and then Tiled can then be used to make the levels. Is PS an option for exporting PNG's in 256 colours? Not sure what PNG with alpha means. If PS can be used anything I should be aware of?

[earok]

Photoshop should be fine. I personally used Paint Shop Pro, I can't recall what other people use (Aseprite maybe?)

By alpha I just mean the transparency layer (eg, with a PNG, some of the pixels can be made transparent. This is important for Scorpion since it uses transparent pixels to generate the transparency mask for blitting).

[acidbottle]

Thanks again earok. I did try a 4 bit depth on a top and bottom panel but it weirdly blacked out the play area. Will try a few more combos, probably just a minor tweak needed somewhere.

@Dave

You can create a map of pretty much any size and have scorpion load it into tiled. Tiled will then chop it up into 16x16 squares. You can set some other parameters in tiled to, though haven't experimented much other than placement of actors.

For most of the graphics work i use a combo of PPaint on the amiga, Asesprite and Photoshop on PC. Sounds a bit overkill but all have little features I like.

[earok]

Hmm.. I can't explain that at all. Did it work with higher bit depth top and bottom, and just failed when you changed the bit depth?

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Daily experimental check in:

- Player/Actor/Projectile "IsOnPlatform" variable is exposed to codeblocks. It should be a more reliable way of checking if your player is actually standing on a platform than using, say, actor_yspeed.

- New Player/Actor/Projectile "tag" variable. It's essentially another "actor_var" variable that you can do with as you wish.

- Slightly changed the way elements are blitted on to the talkpad, may or may not resolve some reported issues with talkpad elements.

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

- Player/Actor/Projectile "IsOnPlatform" variable is exposed to codeblocks. It should be a more reliable way of checking if your player is actually standing on a platform than using, say, actor_yspeed.

Thankyou so much! Now I can stop my slimes from jumping in mid-air occasionally. This is a really nice thing to have I think, even if I cant remember why I wanted it so much other than the slimes.

- Slightly changed the way elements are blitted on to the talkpad, may or may not resolve some reported issues with talkpad elements.

I still haven't been able to replicate the number glitches since reducing the bit depth on the numberfont, so hopefully everything's fixed doubly so now.

Originally Posted by acidbottle

For most of the graphics work i use a combo of PPaint on the amiga, Asesprite and Photoshop on PC. Sounds a bit overkill but all have little features I like.

That doesn't seem like overkill, hehe. I use Aseprite (all rounder), Pixaki (on ipad), Pro Motion NG (copper and typography), Pyxel Edit (Everything to do with tilemaps) and occasionally PPaint. They really do all each offer something useful in their own right and when I try to expand one to do more things in any of the others I've just been bouncing back.

Originally Posted by DaveInFL

Ok, so I need to create the tiled graphics first, elsewhere, and then Tiled can then be used to make the levels. Is PS an option for exporting PNG's in 256 colours? Not sure what PNG with alpha means. If PS can be used anything I should be aware of?

Hi! Photoshop will work well but if you're specifically designing a tileset in advance there are tools designed with that in mind, which will make having the tiles knit together and layer nicely so much easier. I strongly recommend Pyxel Edit for this - though -

Aseprite supports tilemaps in its public beta branch, and Pro Motion NG does too, but i find it super confusing, haha.

Depending on the size of your levels and the memory constraints you're targetting.. A few of my levels are entirely hand drawn with no concern for a preplanned tileset, just letting Tiled work it out after dumping a picture in there. It wouldn't work on big levels, but who knows what you're trying to make.

Originally Posted by Kaizen35

Hi ! Glad to join you here. Thanks to Breech for sharing my projects here.
I was stuck for a few days because I now know that for my Mospeada project, I have to create most of the parts of my sprites, before creating the palette.

Hi Kaizen, great to see you here!

[earok]

No worries @Mixel!

Forgot to mention - actor/player/projectile IsOnPlatform is technically read/write, so it might be possible to trick Scorpion into thinking the player is on a platform when it technically isn't. Not sure if that has any real use cases though, maybe for something like double jumping?

[Mixel]

Originally Posted by earok

No worries @Mixel!

Forgot to mention - actor/player/projectile IsOnPlatform is technically read/write, so it might be possible to trick Scorpion into thinking the player is on a platform when it technically isn't. Not sure if that has any real use cases though, maybe for something like double jumping?

IsOnPlatform makes doing things like "teetering on the edge" animations super easy now, I think.

Uh oh! Immediate bugs in new experimental build, hopefully nothing serious. I fall from the sky above the spawn points in the blue barge now, and my attack collisions dont work.. Eek. I can't stomp or kick the rats etc. I can walk through almost all my enemies without anything happening.

Edit: walking into traffic cones make them fly away at astromical speeds too now.

Edit again: Opening the door in the kershaw house causes the whole bottom of the screen to turn into a corrupt mess, hehe.

[earok]

Sorry about that! Not extensively tested but *should* be fixed now.

[saimon69]

I think i did asked in the past but are progressive power-ups handled?