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[IndigoFenix]

What's wrong with Portal Stone?  Unless there's a story behind the item, of course.  Anyway, if you want to change the name later you can.  (Not the ID, but the title that appears.)  (Actually you can change the ID as well, it just might mess up your code.)

[Kamani]

Portal Stone would work if it just teleported, but it also holds every single partition for the project (4032 is probably enough), so as to prevent there being 1000 different persistent items. Also forces you to keep your choices if you don’t want to restart. Notably, it can also be used to check some of the “items” (partitions representing items) you have (thank gosh for the flowcharts), since you might want to check that. And since some of those items might be useable, that is relevant. The item doesn’t really have any lore, it is just kind of my project’s item box.

[IndigoFenix]

Yeah, that's basically the way it's supposed to work.  Here's an idea - if the characters at the hub world have a story to them, the item could be something that represents a memory or a memento from an event in their backstory, something that holds emotional importance for them (but maybe you wouldn't actually find out about that event until later).

Usable items should generally be their own actual item, since partitions won't be selectable from the menu.  Unless you want the main item to open up an option box where the options are based on the partition values.

I'm making a trailer video.  I'll probably include clips from worlds under construction in it.

[Kamani]

Eh, in this case, the item is a bit more... mass produced, I suppose. The item isn’t really too special.

Actually, I do plan to make it work with a menu, although, since most usable items won’t trasfer between worlds (and thus won’t be put in the box), there shouldn’t be too much that requires it.

Okay. I’m afraid that I’m not far enough along to have too much interesting (especially because writing the gate keepers’ dialogue took me (and continues to take me, it isn’t quite done) a while. They definitely have a smaller story associated with them, even if it will never be fully explained), but progress continues slowly. Edit: Bright side: Finished that dialogue, for now.

Edit: How big should this town be? It is a small town, but I don't know what size small towns are in games, typically.

[IndigoFenix]

Well, it varies from game to game and from town to town, but in my experience a standard RPG town has between 5-15 buildings and 10-30 NPCs (most of which will be generic sprite clones, especially if they are guards).  At a bare minimum, you'll generally have an inn, an item shop, a place where the plot actually happens (often but not always the home of the town's leader), and a couple of extra houses for flavor and exposition.  Larger towns may include minigames, special shops, or additional subplots of their own.

You can make a town seem bigger than it actually is by splitting it up into different sections.

Protea has a good example of a minimalist town that uses this trick.  There are only 5 houses you can actually enter but it feels bigger because there are 4 outdoor areas.  (And a few houses you can't enter.)

I'm going to try making a proper boss.  Expect a bunch of special effects.

[Kamani]

Okay. I’ll aim for 6 houses. Probably 10-12 NPCs. Since I refuse to just let extras be generic boring extras with no kind of really anything at all, this might take a while. I might have some sprite clones, since nobody really has any kind of notable apparel to make them look unique, but they aren’t going to be the same person or have completely generic text.

Good to know, although I probably won’t do that here.

Makes sense.

Cool.

Edit: Uh... could you look at Lusuria please? Something odd happened to it. Kind of like the diagonal room glitch again. Completely destroyed the room (utterly), so whatever this is should probably be fixed before it hits a completed room.

Edit: Bright side: Since I wasn't working on Lusuria because of that, I think I finished (assuming no random destruction) the outline for the first dungeon room. I went with a less boxy room design this time round, which I hope will look a little better. Hopefully it won't fail horribly, but this is only my 2nd/3rd (depends on how you count the original version of this) dungeon, so not everything will be perfect.

[IndigoFenix]

Hm, based on the data it looks like the tilemap was created for a 32x32 room, and changing the dimensions didn't update the tilemap data properly, throwing it off.  That isn't supposed to happen, but I'll look into possible causes.

The good news is that it's an easy fix, but I'll have to do it when you aren't logged in.

Alternatively, you can do it yourself: download the world and opening the text file in a text editor.  Then search for "Lusuria" (with the quotes), which should bring you to the room data.  You can then edit the _size to say "32,32".  You can then upload the text file and it should work.

Now, the real confusing thing is what's going on with the tilemap data in the Town Entry room.  Seems there's some kind of object duplication bug which is caught in the world editor but remains in the data for some reason.  Going to have to fix that too.

Sidescrolling is working fairly well now.  Still a handful of bugs but not too significant.

I'm also changing the way that cutscenes work, so that feature might be a unstable for a bit, but it'll be a lot more user-friendly when it's done.

[Kamani]

Odd.

I won’t be logged in for probably an hour, and then I’ll fix it.

Okay. Thanks.

Huh? I didn’t notice anything there last time I was on. Will anything need to be fixed by me?

Great!

Okay, cool.

Edit: Oddly enough, Lusuria WAS 24x32. Then it somehow got changed to 32x32 without updating the tilemap data. The actual room IS 24 across. The stuff beyond that is pretty much extra tiles. I'm not quite sure what caused that, since I don't recall changing it, but I guess maybe I did or something?

Edit: Two questions: A. So what if someone traveled through the void and didn’t believe in the concept of a true self or form? Would they become an acolyte or something else (this may seem like a minor question, but it effects my project a fair amount).
And B. Can I make a modified version of the acolyte art to use for a certain acolyte? It has no credit listed, so I wanted to check with you specifically.

[IndigoFenix]

I would think that if someone didn't have any concept of self, they would simply cease to exist.

Altering the acolyte sprite should be fine.

I changed the way blank tiles work.  Blank tiles no longer have their own properties; instead you can define the properties of blank tiles in the layer itself.  The default is a regular floor; if you want to make blank tiles a pit you need to specify that in the layer properties.  This should be less confusing, mainly because adding a tilemap to a room will not change the way the room works without actually placing any tiles.

Still working on the cutscene system.  The basic idea is to put most sprites into "stasis" for the duration of a function, but also allow some sprites to be excluded from the stasis.  The main problem is trying to get it to work for both in-world cutscenes and item-activated ones; if two cutscenes are active at once all sprites freeze at once and are unable to proceed.  So that needs to be reworked somehow.  You can use it if you like, but you might have to go back and change it once the system is done.

[Kamani]

Hmm... I think I might do my own spin on how that works. I think I can do it in an interesting enough way, and it fits pretty well for some of my ideas.

Thanks. That should make that work pretty well.

Okay. Good to know.

I’ll avoid using it until then done then. Sounds good, but I’d prefer to avoid needing to change something once I have it done more than need be.

Edit: Harlequin Epicycle's difficult seems very high. Not really sure how to beat it. I can get it to the second phase pretty easy, but with it hitting for 10 damage whenever I get hit, I can only afford 10 hits, and that is a bit tough. Any advice on this?

[IndigoFenix]

Update!  I've gotten cutscenes to a point that I'm comfortable with.

Cutscenes basically create a "stasis rule" for all sprites in the room.  There are 5 "levels" of cutscenes, each which includes the previous rules: Combat AI disabled, All AI disabled, all physics disabled (which also disables _update events), physics and death disabled, and all animation disabled.

The sprite that creates the cutscene may have their own "rule", and individual sprites may be given their own unique rules as well using the "Add Cutscene Exception" event.  In addition, any "command" event (like walks, dashes, and jumps), as well as flash effects, that are created by the cutscene function, will be able to operate even if the sprite in question has its physics disabled.  So you can freeze all objects in a room, but still have the relevant sprites walking around and talking.

You can also exclude a sprite from cutscenes entirely.  This is important if you want to make a "trigger" sprite that checks the position of the player in its _update function; otherwise it is possible that the player may use an item that triggers a cutscene, and walks past the trigger sprite while its physics are disabled.

Cutscenes are "stacked", meaning that the rules of the last cutscene started take precedence.  If you use an item that triggers a cutscene and then another cutscene activates, the item's cutscene will pause while the new one plays out, then resume afterwards.

Player input is always disabled while a cutscene is playing.

I've added cutscenes to all existing items, since the game resumes too fast otherwise.

Edit: Harlequin Epicycle's difficult seems very high. Not really sure how to beat it. I can get it to the second phase pretty easy, but with it hitting for 10 damage whenever I get hit, I can only afford 10 hits, and that is a bit tough. Any advice on this?

Harlequin Epicycle was designed with a "Dark Souls boss" mentality in mind, which basically means "really hard, BUT not random - all attacks must be predictable and avoidable with skill and practice".  All of its attacks are avoidable, and most can be countered as well (you can generally land a few hits while he's using the flame ring by backing off, dodging between the flames to approach, and then escaping before they constrict, and the multi flame shot leaves an opening for one hit between each shot if you can get the rhythm right), but yeah it's tough.  Luckily, he's predictable - the trick is to watch the flashes (2 flashes before the flame shot, 1 slow flash before the flame ring).  Or just bring a ton of potions.  The third phase gets kind of unfair due to the multi-lightning attack which is a bit too random for my tastes and the "teleport into the background" ability which can't be countered, but I'm still fine-tuning it.

The plan is to give you an item that gives you his powers when you win.

[Kamani]

At all regarding cutscenes: Cool! That should come in handy.

On Epicycle: Ah, okay. Makes sense. I'll take another shot at it later. I keep forgetting I can transfer potions around, since my worlds are only set up to work with each other.

Edit: Some dialogue in my flowchart with the dialogue with Rel and Alan (the gate guards) doesn't seem to be working (exclusively when Alan tries to talk). It is currently set up weirdly, as I ran a function with Alan speaking whenever they spoke so I could copy in the version that had worked on the door (but it didn't work), but it didn't work before that change either. Any clue what could be wrong?
Side note: I don't think I am all that good at writing dialogue.

[IndigoFenix]

Yup, there was a bug there.  It's fixed.

I'd suggest giving different characters different color text boxes.  Makes it easier to judge who is talking and can even convey a bit about their personalities as well.

I'm not the best at dialogue either, but my suggestion would be to do a bit more "showing" and less "telling" - instead of explaining the characters' personalities, have them talk with those personalities.  I can give more specific suggestions later.

[Kamani]

K. Thanks. That one really had me confused.

Seems like a good idea. I’ll try it. Thanks.

I just don’t know how to make an actual (conversation? Dialogue? Not sure which is correct) between characters anyway. The showing/telling thing makes sense (same thing you hear about in composing classes, actually), but beyond the gate dialogue (which will show them a bit more if you don’t have an easy method of entry (which is currently impossible), I don’t know really how to make a dialogue that feels natural.

[IndigoFenix]

Updated!  Inventory now works individually: if you select the green checkbox next to the inventory list in the class editor, you will be able to add any items you like to members of that class.  You can make particular enemies hold certain loot, make a general shopkeeper class with variable inventories, and so on.

I've also added a new event to transfer a number of items from the inventory of one object to another.  The main reason for this was to make treasure chests.  The public chest object has been edited to incorporate this, you can now put whatever items you like in a chest.  The chest package is pretty nice now, with chests that can hold items, sparks, other sprites (i.e. monsters in boxes), turn into mimics, and trigger other sprites when opened (i.e. traps).

I'm working on improving the inventory system for transferring items to different worlds.  There is a limit to how many items you can acquire from a world, which is based on the same rules that sparks follow in that it is restricted by the time you spend in that world and the total value of the items.  Buying items in shops for their default price is "safe", since the value lost is the same as the value gained, but things beyond that can get confusing.  I may incorporate a visible "ranking" system to show players their current "value" compared to their limit, giving them a warning if they are gaining too much value, too fast (it is the world builder's responsibility to ensure this doesn't happen, but it isn't possible to restrict them outright so a warning for the player could help).  But, I still need to make sure that it isn't possible for a world to simply troll players by taking away their items, and also to ensure that "restricted" items cannot be modified by a world builder that did not create those items.

Oh, I updated the tutorial page by the way (I'm going to gradually turn it into a proper website).  It now has a page on text box commands.