No discord. The documentation is available from the Help menu as well as on the website: http://vectorpoem.com/playscii/howto_main.html
That documentation covers both Art mode and Game mode. The latter includes writeups of how the example games work, which are included with the program and you can try out on your own.
Aside from one old image -> ASCII conversion howto video, I haven't done any tutorials. What sorts of things would you find a tutorial useful for?
I have some experience designing game systems in a much simpler language, so I think I could knock out some prototypes or demos in Playscii once I get the hang of it.
so far I've been playing around (trial and error), and I watched the youtube video for roguelike celebration
I'm new-ish to python and its conventions, so there's quite a lot I don't know, and a lot that I want to know (I tried Godot with scripting based on Python, and tried my hand at a roguelike and text games in terminal using a python script)
I had a look at the docs and example scripts of the included games, and there's a lot I still don't understand, sadly. The program keeps closing when I try to load a faulty script :P
I saw there are a lot of commands in the docs, but I have no idea how to go about using them, looking them up, etc.,
For example,
# CAMERA #
How can I handle the camera? How could I script a cutscene? Or if I wanted to swap the camera between multiple targets? Can I see some examples?
- I can use camera_follows_player but don't know how to change camera properties like pan speed or zoom level. Do I need a camera instance?
- I don't understand how i should call focus_object, Actually I didnt see focus_object in the generated docs, but in the "game mode" docs.
# CONROLS#
What is the advantage of Player Class? is there a way to toggle the player behaviour like moving with wasd/arrow keys? I am trying to use a Character to represent player objects instead so I can control multiple objects. Or should I use multiple Player objects?
what If the player has multiple controllable units and can swap between them, or for co-op with 2 sets of controls?
I figured out how to add my own input/ controls to control a Character rather than a player, and experimented with some HUD things okayish. That was a bit simpler.
Orthogonal/Diagonal movement is such that you move faster overall when travelling diagonally. This always bothered me about roguelikes. I like that Dwarf Fortress addressed this. I added my own function to scale x/y values appropriately. Is there an in-built way to handle this? For example, handling radial movement? I should just use trig or pythagorean theorem I guess?
I assume I would have some class fireball, then in the actor, they would have their own fireball shooting function? or i could create a function outside of the actor that multiple actors could access?
# COLLISION #
I got some basic collision stuff working by looking at the shoot em up. I got it so that I can detect when hitboxes overlap, and to add non-colliding classes to hitboxes. Very useful! I'd also like to wrangle something like Line-Of-Sight and (basic) pathfinding.
How can I attach multiple separate types of hitbox to an actor? I want to use hitboxes to represent ranges like detection, fields, or ranges for various actions, so a single actor might have several distinct hitboxes.
I thought I could use "attach_to" or "attachment_classes" for example, and attached a GameObjectAttachment, and set its collision data, but its hitbox doesnt seem to appear when I view hitboxes. Is this just a definition that I need an instance of? How would I do that?
# SCOPE #
It might be useful to know what the main intended structural paradigms are. I don't know which scope I should be working in for each task.
Main question is: Do I need an instance? for the world, camera, etc., and many other things, and if so how? sorry for noob questions.
What is the purpose of the syntax like this "self.world.HUD" in a Player (from maze)? I can access the HUD (or other things through this)? is this the world class? it can be accessed from anywhere? or for that matter "self.world.app"? what scope or space does this represent? how does it relate to other objects? This is more like the project scope which manages resources?
How would I attach an instance to another instance? Is that impossible? How can I structure my instances with respect to each other to accomplish this? Can I do that from within one of the instances, or should I do this in a room or world or at init or whatever?
# DOCS/DICT #
Is there a listing of every single command in one place? Or a way to search all of them? Where would I look to find focus_object in the docs for example?
I tried to get the __dict__ of members of a class a few times, but I dont know if this will show me all the relevant members/methods and other things, except by trying it on each object.
I think I'm learning slowly and getting ideas for how I might approach things. I might create a special object to initialise the game objects using its update function, and then have it delete itself when it's done, for example?
Or create some projectiles with a lifespan, which is how I've tried to handle particle systems and projectiles previously.
I'd like to eventually get around to programatically creating "sprites" which seems extremely promising! for example visual representations of state changes to tiles or actors. and of course programatically creating maps would be cool.
I like Playscii for its versatility :P you can go from simple micro projects or have something that will scale well as a custom engine for basically ANY type of game, from management sims, to RPGs, to strategy games, to action games. Really incredible stuff.
Maybe I am a bit too ambitious, but Playscii honestly seems like it could handle any concept I can think of, and that's very exciting.
I have a little experience designing game systems in a much simpler game-engine language which doesn't have classes, so a lot of things are new to me while I'm trying to learn Python in general.
Apologies for the very long post and many questions. I also considered messaging you on twitter.
Is there a listing of every single command in one place? Or a way to search all of them? Where would I look to find focus_object in the docs for example?
This doesn't cover everything, but Playscii's documentation folder includes docs auto-generated from its own source code, which can also be found online here:
http://vectorpoem.com/playscii/generated/pdoc_toc.html
However it looks like Camera isn't one of the classes I marked for doc generation for this process. If you're wondering about properties like Camera.focus_object, I would say get the project's code by cloning the repo (unless that's already what you did to get Playscii running, ie you're not running the Windows build) so you can search the code and see where all something is referenced. For example, it looks like Camera.focus_object is mainly used in Camera.update to set the camera's position. If you wanted to do custom logic, I'd say leave the camera's focus_object as None and have some other code elsewhere that drives its position every frame, eg from one of your object's update() functions.
Main question is: Do I need an instance? for the world, camera, etc., and many other things, and if so how? sorry for noob questions.
GameWorld and Camera are singletons that are intended to live firmly in the "engine" layer, you shouldn't need to subclass either. Though I'll admit now (7 years since I made some of these architectural decisions) that a Camera could arguably be something you create several classes of to drive different behaviors.
I am trying to use a Character to represent player objects instead so I can control multiple objects. Or should I use multiple Player objects?
There are probably several places in the game mode code that assume a single player character, I have no idea how difficult it would be to add support for multiple players.
How can I attach multiple separate types of hitbox to an actor? I want to use hitboxes to represent ranges like detection, fields, or ranges for various actions, so a single actor might have several distinct hitboxes.
GameObjectAttachment was made for things like shadows and effects, so there's probably something about it that doesn't behave well if you try to make it collide with stuff. I would say just make a GameObject subclass, sync its position with the player's (or whatever it's attached to) every update, and then do your custom logic in its started_overlapping() function.
But yeah I would say your main source of truth is going to be the code, and the (hopefully adequate) comments I left in it when I wrote it. Secondary to that, the documentation (included and on the website, same docs) I wrote not too long after writing the code. And tertiarily, me in 2022 when my memory's faded a bit and my brain is occupied with other projects.
Good luck! You're not the first person to make a game with Playscii's game mode but you're probably before the 10th person or so. I apologize in advance for anything that's non-obvious, broken, poorly designed, or annoying for any other reason. :]
thanks for the great reply. i am just someone on my own journey. Playscii seems like such a brilliant tool, to me. I hope I could do it justice, in some way, and not let it down...
It's quite difficult for me to think beyond the paradigm of a main loop, i find, but also quite liberating. The design is so unique.
It really inspires me to think in different ways, whatever they may be.
i think i'm understanding a bit more about the paradigm from looking at the source, but it's rather incomprehensible to me.
what if the player object was driving gameplay by moving through rooms, something like that?
then rooms become more like discretised game segments, whatever that may be, including cut-scenes, controller set-up, whatever...
the player moves from room (game-state) to room... but i still don't know what i'm looking at anywhere i admit.
I'm just going to comb through examples until I grasp it better.
