May’s just about over, so it’s time for another update. Like April, this was another month of laying foundations. But unlike April, I have a little bit more to show this time.
Game Flow
One slightly boring but very important addition is all of the scaffolding needed for the main menu. This includes letting the game track and adjust its state, which means that getting a ‘game over’ can actually take the user back to the menu to try again (or load a save, once I have those)… before then, losing would simply close the game!
Sprites and better Movement
A more interesting addition is sprite animations. I added a basic animation system that makes it very simple to animate existing elements in the game. It’s not applied everywhere yet (there’s no combat animations yet, for instance), but walking around is a lot nicer now that you can actually see characters walk. Even with placeholder sprites, it definitely adds something:
Another detail you may or may not have noticed, movement is a lot smoother than it was in my first demo. I reworked the movement and collision code a bit to allow sliding off solid surfaces instead of just stopping, and that makes the controls feel a lot better!
Cutscene Scripting
One last important addition to the code is a system for cutscenes! This is definitely needed for an RPG like this, and the new system is pretty nice. By giving it a relatively simple script like this:
context:show_dialogue("course/entry.lua")
local player = context:get_player()
context:fade_out(0.2):await(false)
context:move_to(player, 1, 0, true)
context:change_map("course.lua", 10, 29)
local npc = context:get_actor("dude")
context:fade_in(0.2):await(false)
context:move_to(player, 0, -1, true)
context:show_dialogue("course/welcome_sign.lua")
context:move_to(npc, 1, 0, true)
context:wait(0.20)
context:turn_towards(npc, 180)
…we get a cutscene:
That’s all for this month! Things are really starting to come together on the tech side, I don’t think it’ll be too much longer before I can start on real game content instead of test data and placeholders.