[Jiggers]

Real rough mockup. Its going to be quite a few months before I get that far, maybe. I'm really supposed to be focusing on my new job...

And, for now, just trying to kill bugs and get the game stable again after the last batch of changes, and then test out Runic properly!

Blegh, just realized my super awesome enemy AI stuff is a bit iffy. I made it so that enemies basically choose one of their spells at random, then set the high bit for the first cast, then set the whole thing to $FF on the second, as a sort of "this spell's MP is spent" thing. I mean, when does a battle ever last long enough to loop through an enemy's magic, right? If Chaos casts Cure 4 a second time... though I think that might have actually happened to me as a kid... Anyway: I'm going to need to find load up this stuff a little more sensibly. $10 bytes for every enemy. And instead of every single enemy's AI being loaded up at all times, it'd just be $90 bytes total, which is WAY better for futureproofing new things in anyway!

Runic is looking awesome, though. Just a few more tweaks and it'll be ready to go. Current bugs, oddities:
Instead of a target-all spell hitting player 1, then 2, then 3, then 4... it went 1, 4, 3, 2. That was with 4 red mages doing it. Their sword also pops into view in the wrong place to start with... And the sword is always the cursor at the moment. Enemy > Enemy magic is always green.

Frankly amazed I got the boxes and animation working so well without testing out every single step. I'm getting really good at this!

[Vanya]

Cool beans. I have to concentrate on my new job too!
Things are super hectic this week.
Anyways, hopefully I'll have some time soon to get things set up so I can at least start testing again.

That mock up looks hype.
Makes me imagine awesome things to come.

Great work on everything so far!

[Jiggers]

Thanks! Hope you can be patient with it though, 'cos fixing Stone is going to be a paaaaaaaain.

So far, I have the sprite loading set up. The active weapon/magic sprite will be at $1000, then the next 12 tiles will be for the explosion effect on enemies. Then the next 8 tiles are for warrior 1, next 8 for warrior 2, and so on. That leaves FIVE rows for loading something else as a sprite! Could be anything.

But I still have to do the logic for what to load and when, which means re-writing a lot of stuff that I already have trouble following, and making sure it plays nice.

I pushed a lot of fixes for Runic the other day, but Confusion is broke again somehow, so I haven't been able to test how Runic works with confused-casted magic. But its otherwise working exactly as intended now, and brought along some streamlining of magic code with it.

[Vanya]

5 rows of sprites left?
How about damage numbers?
The "MISS!" sprite?
Status sprites?
Mysidian rabbit?
A weasel?

[Jiggers]

Damage numbers and MISS sprite was thought of for sure. Status sprites, someone else might do 'em better than the background tile icons I have, but I'm fine with those for now. Weasel... yes. I'll make a thirteenth class that's just Weasel Wrangler and their only attack is siccing weasels on enemies! XD

Although it depends how many tiles I can load per frame. If its not feasible to swap, for instance, the cheering and standing poses for the victory fanfare, I might have to give characters another 2 rows to keep most things loaded, and only swap out for like, crouching and dead.


Update: So the most I can do is 6 tiles per frame; 8 is really pushing it and isn't safe. Luckily they don't need to update more than that except for when first loading the sprites up, and I've worked that fix in.

So there's some odd things now: When cheering, they'll do a "wave", character 1 updating first, then character 2 the next frame. There's no changing that unless I use more pre-loaded tiles.

Small bug in that dying will load the death graphics before drawing the sprite in the 3x2 style, so there's 1 frame where they fall apart Cube-style.

The music not updating for a frame during drawing messages is back, but with the in-game clock tied to the music, it should be a lot easier to track down now. Just have to go frame by frame to see where that number DOESN'T increase!

I've pushed what I've done so far... And if anyone wants to help with the battle sprite updating, that'd be great. I feel like it might be possible to trim the code a bit, but what's more important is finding those spots where things aren't updating at the right times. Weapon swinging gave me a lot of trouble and I don't know anymore if its off by a frame or not.

[Vanya]

Just sounds like it just needs some streamlining.
Wish I had more to add.
This week has been crazy.
Work is nuts.
Pushing on 50 hours by the end of day on Saturday.

[Jiggers]

Just not sure how to streamline it... yet. The issue pops up with weapon swings, too! Its easiest to see on the Fighter. 1 frame with the top 4 tiles in standing pose, the weapon behind his back--then the weapon shifts forward, some frames go by... then the graphics update to change the top 4 tiles to hide the right arm, but you can see part of his fist with his legs in the bottom 2 tiles, just for 1 frame, before the sprites update to use tiles 5-6 for the legs instead of 7-8 as they do in the forward attack pose.

I've also got the screen split area working, but its not working for EVERY frame, so there's flickering. Again, with the undrawing and drawing of boxes. So that routine is maybe not doing VBlank right...?

Yep, its busy doing box de-compression routines and doesn't get into the wait for VBlank place... probably also why the music is skipping frames.

[Vanya]

My raw honest opinion as a programmer in general...
It feels like you need to fiddle with the order in which your code is doing things. Just my two cents. For the character graphic anyway.

Good luck figuring it out! :3

[Vanya]

Bug report!!

Ok, so a Fighter, a Thief, A Red Mage, and a Monk walk into an armor shop...
I chose the sell option, the guy at the counter said I don't have anything to sell and it went back to the shop menu.
Then I chose to buy, and when the armor list came up, it didn't draw the frame around the list.
Same thing happened in all the shops in Cornelia.

Also, I noticed that the save screen's graphics are toast.

Got into battle, animations are noticeably slow.

Here's another, when switching characters in the menu, everything swaps correctly except their graphics.
So if you have a thief in the first slot and a red mage in the second then you swap them, you end up with a red mage with the new thief palette and s red thief. Their graphics are corrected once you leave the menu and go back in so you probably just forgot to update the sprites somewhere.


SUGGESTION: I think you mentioned before something about how Runic should interact with Pray?
It should ignore Pray altogether. The spell is coming from a deity or something, not from the character that is praying. Plus i\I'm pretty sure it's consistent with summons which Runic does not affect.

SUGGESTION: I think the UP/DOWN controls on the character creation screen should be swapped.
It feels more natural to press down to go to the next graphic instead of up.
Probably because we read English from left to right and from top to bottom.

Right after attempting to STEAL from an IMP that had NOTHING, the MONK attacked a NOTHING and the game froze. Wasn't able to duplicate it again.

PS - Loved the walk in the river in Cornelia!

[Jiggers]

I'm not sure if I missed these bug reports or not... XD

So I upgraded to Windows 10... Still trying to set my programs up again. GitHub update thing may or may not work. Some programs work from the previous harddrive and their installation, but some don't. But we're also close to the internet limit so if it doesn't work, I'm not going to download it again until January.

The shop box bug is an easy fix, and is fixed on my end!

Code: [Select]

(Bank 0E)

NothingToSell:   
    LDA #$12
    JSR DrawShopDialogueBox
    JSR MenuWaitForBtn
  : LDA #$02
    JSR LoadShopBoxDims         ; erase shop box 2 (inventory)
    JSR EraseBox
--> LDA #$0
    STA shop_selling
    STA shop_listdrawn <-- ; remove the DEC things with this block
    JMP MainShopLoop   
Will need to go through shops again and make sure shop_listdrawn is 0 when that box goes away.

The sprites not updating the graphics when swapping is a whoopsie-doodle. I was trying to speed up all menu loading stuff to keep the music from skipping... So I for some reason thought I didn't need to re-load graphics after swapping. The fix for that, for now:

Code: [Select]

  (Bank 0E)

   @Select_Pressed:
    JSR LineUp_InMenu
    BCC EnterMainMenu <-- use this instead of ResumeMainMenu
    JMP @EscapeSubTarget          ; not swapped ; just reset the cursor

SUGGESTION: I think the UP/DOWN controls on the character creation screen should be swapped.

You know, that has tripped me up every single time...

Code: [Select]

  (Bank 0F)

;; JIGS-- Left/Right now change the class, Up/Down change the sprite.
    CMP #$02  ; if left is pressed
      BEQ @ReverseCharThing
    CMP #$04  ; or if down is pressed
      BEQ @ReverseCharSpriteThing
    CMP #$08  ; or if up is pressed
      BEQ @CharSpriteThingJust swap 04 and 08 I guess?

I don't think Runic interacts with Pray at all with the way I have it set up--it won't absorb spells cast by players unless they're confused. Just to be sure, I'm adding in something I should have done long ago. When a player is confused, they will stop guarding, praying, using Runic, or anything else that they shouldn't be able to do. This won't stop a Knight from protecting them though... And that should stop a Confused character from using Pray, which might trigger Runic absorbing the beneficial-to-the-player spell...

I don't need Runic to check for Confused casting for Runic users anymore either I think.

Also, I noticed that the save screen's graphics are toast.

Got into battle, animations are noticeably slow.

Yep and yep... haven't had the energy to look into it yet. Save screen uses the same kind of loading as battles do now, so I think its not getting done before Vblank ends in some cases, for some reason, even though it should all be done with the screen off and the new loading takes LESS time than before! If you swap back and forth, half the time it draws just fine. Animations are off in battle because at least one frame, sometimes 2 (for magic sprites), are used to load up the new graphics. I was trying to do that before animations even started, but... stuff is weird. And the timing of things like cheering at the end went CRAZY wrong from the changes...

Added the Stealing thing to my bug list to look into later as well.

[Vanya]

Groovy. I'm probably going to be on windows 10 when I finally get a real computer.
I'll keep at least reporting bugs as I find them.
I really want to dive into the animation issues, but I'm not sure I know enough about NES ASM to be of any real use.
My instincts are still telling me that it's probably just a matter of rearranging when certain things happen, but what do I know?

PS - All the fixes worked like a charm.
I did something slightly different to swap the up/down directions in the character select screen.
See, I have an unreasonable love of neat lists and symmetry.
So I didn't want the code to CMP 2, 8, and then 4.
Instead I just swapped the BEQs instead, so that the first one is @CharSpriteThing and the second is @ReverseCharSpriteThing.


Quick question...s
How do I change the character palettes?
And remind me, please, where is the data for the menu frames?
I still really want to shift the whole left side of the party menu over to the right like most of the other games in the series.

[Jiggers]

Another quick fix...

Code: [Select]

(Bank 04)
   LoadBattleSpritesForBank_Z:
    LDA $2002 
    LDA #0   
    STA tmp+3 ; counter for 12 classes
The reason the save/load menu was wigging out was that LDA $2002 was AFTER loading 0 for the counter... 'cos I'm dumb! Now this can be used for new game sprite loading and save more space, too!

Nah, I think you're right. I maybe tried too hard to keep the original flow of loading things up and displaying them. So long as the new tile loading is happening in Vlank, which I'm pretty sure it is, the issue is how the game then loads sprite data into the buffers. I think THAT isn't happening at the right time, so the sprites update 1 frame before the buffers do?

See, I have an unreasonable live of neat lists and symmetry.
So I didn't want the code to CMP 2, 8, and then 4.
Instead I just swapped the BEQs instead, so that the first one is @CharSpriteThing and the second is @ReverseCharSpriteThing.

Exactly what I did in mine. XD

So the palettes, for classes, there's different ones... Bank C has lut_InBattleCharPaletteAssign, for in battle. That chooses one of the three after the colours are set. For out of battle battle sprites, Bank 1F has: lutClassBatSprPalette

To set the colours, for map sprites, in Bank 12: lut_MapmanPalettes, and for battle sprites, in Bank 1F again: LoadBattleSpritePalettes

Menu boxes are in Bank 0E: lut_MainItemBoxes, and cursor positions are DrawMainMenuCursor (for X position) and lut_MainMenuCursor_Y, and lut_MainMenuSubCursor for picking the character in submenus.

DrawMainMenu has the orb and gold box stuff too, you'll have to go through the Orb box stuff to move the attribute bytes over... Hm. Should be easy actually. I think it'd be changed to $23CE here:

Code: [Select]

  ; Attributes for all orbs
    LDA $2002    ; reset PPU toggle
    LDA #>$23C9
    STA $2006
    LDA #<$23C9
Looks like the Github program works, so I'll be updating these little fixes soon. I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the overworld getting bugged out after winning a battle! The "InBattle" variable is not getting set to 0 correctly when its over... Should be fixed in the update, if it actually did update!

[Vanya]

You're not dumb! You're brilliant and have done a hell of a lot more with this my raggedy old ass ever has.

Thanks for the info! :3

I actually didn't see the OW bug out at all, at least not as far as I noticed.

BTW, any thoughts on animated OW tiles like in GFF?


I tweaked the 3rd palette colors for something a bit more like a traditional thief/ranger style.


https://photos.app.goo.gl/GjE6a2GEvwRmEdby8


https://photos.app.goo.gl/h4pVpt4Zr4FstpH37

Looks pretty good with the original color scheme too.
Just green hair, instead of blue + a nice tan.


https://photos.app.goo.gl/kBtakWsiziyQBNLH9


PS - Almost done. Where do I go to change the sprite positions and the timer?


https://photos.app.goo.gl/vz9AsmMgFJNmBS2t5

I'd still like to rearrange the right side a bit.
Menu at the top.
Orbs/Crystals next.
Then the time.
And gil on the bottom.
But I think I'll be able to manage that on my own once I get the sprites and timer situated properly.

[Mari42]

You're not dumb! You're brilliant and have done a hell of a lot more with this my raggedy old ass ever has.

Thanks for the info! :3

I actually didn't see the OW bug out at all, at least not as far as I noticed.

BTW, any thoughts on animated OW tiles like in GFF?


I tweaked the 3rd palette colors for something a bit more like a traditional thief/ranger style.





Looks pretty good with the original color scheme too.
Just green hair, instead of blue + a nice tan.




PS - Almost done. Where do I go to change the sprite positions and the timer?



I'd still like to rearrange the right side a bit.
Menu at the top.
Orbs/Crystals next.
Then the time.
And gil on the bottom.
But I think I'll be able to manage that on my own once I get the sprites and timer situated properly.

There is no pictures on the bottom......

[Jiggers]

DrawMainMenuCharSprites - for the sprites!

DrawGameTime - dest_x and dest_y there

M_OrbGoldBoxLink - string for the box connectors. I think the $01s are double line breaks, $05 is a single one, so you'll have to edit that as well. If it goes Orbs, Timer, Money, then probably just delete 6 of the $01s in the middle line.

I'd like to animate a lot of tiles actually. Flickering torches, waterfall, streams... Maybe oceans, not sure how I feel about that, but I should make it possible at least.

Have you noticed the battle text flickering? If you haven't seen the overworld get bugged out after a battle, maybe you're not using the latest...

Part of why I decided to take a little break was that the only fix I can find for this is to re-write how battle messages are buffered before drawing them. My head hurts just writing that!

[Vanya]

There is no pictures on the bottom......

Added links for anyone that can't see the posted images.

DrawMainMenuCharSprites - for the sprites!

DrawGameTime - dest_x and dest_y there

M_OrbGoldBoxLink - string for the box connectors. I think the $01s are double line breaks, $05 is a single one, so you'll have to edit that as well. If it goes Orbs, Timer, Money, then probably just delete 6 of the $01s in the middle line.

I'd like to animate a lot of tiles actually. Flickering torches, waterfall, streams... Maybe oceans, not sure how I feel about that, but I should make it possible at least.

Have you noticed the battle text flickering? If you haven't seen the overworld get bugged out after a battle, maybe you're not using the latest...

Part of why I decided to take a little break was that the only fix I can find for this is to re-write how battle messages are buffered before drawing them. My head hurts just writing that!

Thanks!!

I actually have a suggestion for the water animation.
Instead of the usual pixel shifting that most games and hacks from this era use, I think it would be better to use a palette animation. In real life when looking at the ocean from far away and high up in broad daylight, it looks like glitter, not so much like discernible waves.

I downloaded the newest zip from the github page. So idunno.
I'm running it on Mesen if that makes any difference.

[Jiggers]

Well it should be fixed. I use Mesen for everything!

Heck I wasn't even really thinking about pixel shifting, I was just gonna load up 6 new tiles every frame... Really should learn about pixel shifting though. Glittery would be interesting, but I guess it'd have to be more of a blue with white/light blue/pinkishpurple dots instead of the swiss cheese (as someone called it) ocean, to get the right effect?

I like the green-tunic thief! The reason I made him brown was so the Ninja wouldn't be wearing red pajamas... Green pajamas are much better still.

I re-did a bunch of the graphics loading--shop graphics, orb graphics, menu text, and overworld. Trying to get the music lag down to none when swapping screens. So the overworld, for instance, waits for Vblank, does music, then tries to fill in half the CHR data, which takes up about a frame; so wait again, do music again, load up the rest, wait again, do music, load up sprites, music again! Phew. I think it adds a slight lag to the blackness between exiting the menu and loading the overworld, but music does play for a bit longer. Also it chirps when exiting town, so I need to fix that...

[Vanya]

Coolio!

Here's the results of all my tinkering.
I added a couple of text labels and removed the "G" from the gold counter.
I suppose this just illustrates how much customization can be done with relative ease.
With a bit more work I could have it look more like the SNES menus with all the boxes separated, or more like the PSX games with overlapped boxes and the time and gil boxes merged into one.


https://photos.app.goo.gl/u4qYQeH1azMRApgD6




https://photos.app.goo.gl/gbNeTcWLY92ajGZ96

One thing I had a bit of a hard time with was trying to make a separate subroutine for the timer box instead of having it be all splayed out in the DrawMainMenu routine.
I basically copied the DrawMainMenuGoldBox to work off of and placed right after the original, but it went all wonky for some reason I can't fathom at the moment.


PS- Just noticed I'm not gaining XP from battles.
I'm going to grab the newest zip and see if it occurring there too.

Yeah, the XP in the status menu isn't updating.
Double checked, and sure enough, I;m not gaining XP, only cash.

I also noticed that in the Inn when it takes me to the save screen all the character sprites are black.

Game Over screen has the bottom half all scrambled.

[Jiggers]

Phew; everything fixed. Also fixed a bug where the BlackBelt/Master equipping anything would act like it wasn't. It turns out EXP was being added to gold too, so that's not doing that anymore. There's so many pointers in the level up stuff, I don't know why... the game has like 8 different variations of accessing character stats to edit them, when it only really needs the 2--the zero page pointers and the stat to edit in Y, and the one where X is $00, $40, $80, $C0... But its just really not that big an issue for me to go re-write everything yet.

Those menus look good! Still weird to me to not have the menu on the left, but that's me. Are you gonna be able to work out the orb lighting stuff?
 


If my eyeballing is right, it's using Attribute byte $23E5 (right sides), $23E6 (both sides), and $23E7 (left side)

So Orb 1 lit, $23E5 would be $33. Orb 3 lit and Orb 2 NOT lit would also be $33, for $23E6. Orb 2 lit, but NOT Orb 3 would be $CC. Both 2 and 3 lit would be $00. And Orb 4 lit, $23E7 would be $CC. And this is why I didn't bother moving the orbs, myself... Should be possible though!

I just realized, the various boxes don't need to be drawn at all. You only need one big tall box, then the string that draws the connectors fills it in. Or take out the string and layer the boxes like you said. So for me, I'm going to go comment out that box drawing stuff and hope that speeds up menu loading. Edit: Just did that. So you might wanna skip the latest update on Bank 0E, don't let me overwrite your work!

[Vanya]

No worries about overwriting my work. I'm keeping things in a separate folder and documenting my changes in a separate document.

I was thinking the same thing about not needing so many boxes to get the job done.

I have a request! Could you add in a 3rd set of separator tiles that is centered vertically?
Or I could do it myself, but I think it might be generally useful for all users to have those available out-of-the-box.

Second thing. How can update my branch n the github to match your current version?

PS- Downloaded the latest again. Characters are gaining XP, but not leveling up.