CUPdates 6: Dialogue, Battle System, and Background Locations

Wow, these weeks really flew right by! I realize that one extra week to CUPdate really makes a difference, since this time I don't have quite as much to show. But that's due to a lot of it being writing and programming.

So first, I spent an entire Sunday morning/afternoon writing a huge portion of my prologue in the form of an Eventure! I skipped ahead to the Compass World parts because I had more ideas on how I wanted to write that, so I wrote that in its entirety and converted it to a Google Doc, from the original .log file that mIRC creates. So far that translates to 17 pages in Google Docs, which is a pretty decent amount. Based on how some other Eventures translate over, they're usually around 30-40 pages at least, so considering this is only about half or less, it seems that each "chapter" or "eventure" of the game will be roughly the same, if I base that assumption off of the prologue so far.

I ended up spending a lot of time trying to optimize my code so I didn't need to use so many event commands for a single line of dialogue, because I realized this could end up looking pretty messy down the line when I start to import dialogue into RPG Maker. So I cleaned it up a bit by making my own text codes in the VisuStellaMZ Message Core plugin, and Eliaquim made a plugin for me to help manage this even more! It's finally getting to a reasonable length, though I'm still working to make it compatible with the Ink Integration plugin that theartofme created.

From here, I was able to start experimenting with how I want to import text into RPG Maker. I'm planning to use the Ink Integration plugin, because it'll go a lot faster to just convert the Eventure formatting into Ink formatting, rather than copying each line into individual message boxes. I remember that was always my least favorite part of turning stories into games, was that long process. So I'm aiming to cut down on dreading the dialogue porting into the game itself. I had a few bumps along the way, but I did get this dialogue system pretty solidified! So first I did a test where some of the transitions were still missing:

Oh and as you may have noticed from the video above, I exported all of my existing character sketches out as charsets so that I can put those placeholders into the game as actual events, instead of just being on the background layer. I found this program that made exporting these quick tests a lot quicker for when I only have one direction sketched out.

 

Luckily there were some updates to the Ink plugin that now allow me to optimize my code even more! Everything can be imported straight from Ink into RPG Maker, and character variables and expressions are all set up in Ink.

After that, I decided to play around with some dialogue effects, so I can play little animations over the text to further spice up the dialogue a bit more! I added a sighing effect around 25 seconds into this video:

And then I made a lot more progress on my battle system! I re-ordered the sprites to be diagonal and added a new UI to fit with this style, just like I had initially sketched out. Also, thanks to Eliaquim's help, I was able to get variable bars fully working through event code, and picture files that dynamically change based on a variable. From there, I made some of my code more efficient so it's easier to edit it all at once, like the move routes that are controlled by variables and common events.

Then I finally decided to work on some art for the past few days. I started by making some layout sketches for The Link Between Worlds, based on the maps that my brother made for our GGJ project back in 2019. I loved how those looked, and wanted to carry over that design here a bit as well!

Then I started to lay out the maps I made for the interiors. I made the Saku house and Ragger/Braves house in The Sims a while back, so I started with the Saku house! Having The Sims reference for the floor plan was super useful and I actually kind of ended up enjoying drawing a background in the end, which is super rare! I usually struggle and don't enjoy backgrounds, so I'm glad I'm starting to figure them out with references. I imported the background into RPG Maker and recorded Gair exploring it.

I also already made The Gek's World entirely in RPG Maker MV back in 2018. Back when I made The Gek's World map, I made each area be its own map, but I'm planning to create one massive map to explore for each floor in this version instead. So I started by taking the floor plan I had, and reconstructing each map into where it would roughly be, so I can further figure out how I want this to look. Next time, I'm planning to actually draw this all out and further reconstruct it, so it'll be ready for the next part of the game.

I realized while I was writing the prologue that there were a few characters I forgot to draw in my initial character line-up, so I doodled a few more of them.

And lastly, as a bit of a sidetrack, I uploaded all of my previous progress videos to YouTube so that I didn't have to rely on various social media embeds anymore. You can view that playlist here! And I'll be uploading there going forward.