[community project] RPG

[Sorunome]

Thanks !

I need to find time to look at everything more in details now

Also we really need to get graphics

Yes, we need graphics. And somebody who can compose music, heehe.
Be sure that you'll need my GB_Fat library to build.

What's the point of that if all the data is read from the sd card anyways, that wouldn't add any overhead?


Also, after benchmarking the read speed it seems like we can safely assume at least 140 KB/s which is more than enough for loading data on every screen transition. More detailed benchmarks here.

Ok cool. Interesting that the 2gb sd card was actually slower. What class sd card is it?

It doesn't really matter, the card probably isn't the bottleneck. Keep in mind we are talking about kilobytes, heehee.

I wasn't thinking about how it's all streamed from the sd card, but that allows for much more than a basic text intro. Something like a cutscene complete with music and transitioning images augmenting the text.

Exactly, the possibilities are only limited by ram! If we don't have enough progmem for code we could also make the code swappable, so that maybe the title screen / intro run on totally different code than the actual game.
Such a technique could actually make minigames quite possible, now that I think of it. Anyhow, we should probably focus on the main game first anyways

[Sorunome]

I'm in

Ok for an A-RPG.

I think we should make some mock up before coding. We could maybe use some of the sprites from this project, if the author is ok.

So, I contacted NanoWar and he sent me all the sprites he created for it, thanks a lot NanoWar!

[deeph]

Nice, thanks NanoWar

Can you send them to me ? I need to know how many frames has the player sprite while moving etc... before starting to code.

I've been able to compile the project so far, but I need to make an .img of a fat16 SD card with the data files in it in order to test it with Simbuino. Do you know if there's a way to do it without an actual real SD card (don't have mine with me right now), eventually for windows ?

[Sorunome]

Sorry, I don't know of any way to test this stuff other than on actual hardware, also, I run linux and simbuino doesn't really run on linux, plus I didn't know it supported sd cards, heehee.
For linux creating an image should be rather straight-forward, thoguh (dd if=/dev/device of=myfile.img).
Can you PM me your email so that i can send you the stuff or something?

[deeph]

Ok, done

I'll try to find something like a virtual SD card software. And too bad you can't run simbuino on linux, because it's a great tool that saves a lot of time...

[Sorunome]

Sent you the mail!
Also, no worries, I'm used to insane building / testing procedures....heehee.

As to collision, if we do end up doing that 4x4 pixel collision I think it'd be a good idea to have the player collide like this:


And if we do have a quick-stat bar that shows like HP or something, it would be the easiest to have it on the left side of the screen or on the right one, due to how the screen works that would allow for some dark magic optimizations (especially if i have to pull my last trick out of my sleeve to free up something like 256 bytes ram.....which I want to avoid if possible due to how trickery it is). This sidebar wouldn't even have to be a multiple of eight pixels wide without any speed boost

[deeph]

Thanks for the mail, those graphics are just what we need, it's just too bad that the player sprites are missing, but I'll certainly be able to rip them from some screenshots

I managed to create an .img of my original SD card (with data files on it) as explained here, and I created a virtual one too using this, but either way I can't test the program on Simbuino... Here's the best I got :



I even tried LOADER.HEX, which is said to be working (at least reading titles of the programs on the SD card), and it's not

I really need to be able to use an emu, because it will be much more complicated and long to test everything on real hardware...

[Sorunome]

[...]
I really need to be able to use an emu, because it will be much more complicated and long to test everything on real hardware...

What i do is flash over usb with the arduino ide, that still allows for a rather quick development process

[MechanicalPen]

Simbunio emulates petit_fstfs and standard SD card library directly, and since Sorunome wrote a custom SD card read library it's not going to work. It sounds like a stripped down version of petit_fstfs though, so for emulation perhaps you'll be able to replace GB_Fat and get emulation working that way.

[deeph]

Ok I've gave up trying to make it work on emu after a lot of attempts

I finally managed to flash my gamebuino over usb, the original cable wasn't working...

So I've made a commit, however the files ended up not where I wanted, so another trunk/ folder was created... I tried using TortoiseSVN but it didn't want to let me log, so I did it using the upload form. I'll look for a better SVN client.

Anyway, I started playing with the sprites, and converted them using a tool I made with PureBasic. I made a start of a map editor too (currently only for windows, sorry ), so I can create easily new data files.

I've modified the tilemapper too but I can't test it out, now I'm stuck at "SD card not found." (while it was working with the original files).

I'll try to fix it all as soon as I've time