*bump* Updates!

I've got rudimentary collision detection working for upward and downward movement. It's quite wonky. At the very least, Nanami will stop moving when colliding with an object that's considered impassible. She will, however, turn to face the object if you press in the direction of it when not facing it.

The following is a spoiler, it talks about a plot-centric functionality/feature of the original game that has been changed up for this remake+new game. If you're adamantly anti-spoiler, don't click. If you don't mind having a certain aspect of the game (you lost ) spoiled for you, go ahead and read.

The finished game map will be like a real world with grass, trees, water, Grecian/Roman pillars, brick walls, etc. It's just that I'm not going to start on any of that until the environment engine is working 100% (which should be not too far off). So, at the moment, I'm just using the title screen background as a floor and implementing simple "dummy" objects.

You're welcome

Also, for the heck of it, have some random factoids:

 - Player data is in the form of a pointed structure (a structure is a group of variables, sort of like an array but each element has its own name and data type. The pointed bit means the structure contains no data itself but points to another one that does. You can even change what it points to whenever you want). Because of this, it's possible for the player to easily switch characters on the fly. You will be able to do so between Nanami and Rika in Finality Chapter.
 - Nanami and Rika have different abilities. This will only come into play in Finality Chapter, though, but it will make for cool puzzles
 - There may or may not be multiple endings or plot routes.
 - This game, as well, will have bonus goodies released with it
 - When the release date nears, I will be giving away a special personalized edition of the game (you lose again ) to one lucky person. Said person will be whoever wins a little contest I have in mind.

 - I have plans to make 2 or 3 more Yumé games after The Eternal Dreams, one of which is a spin-off.

 - Nanami and Rika are both 10 at the start of the series.

 - The games are rated PG, so no, Genolo, there is no CP in it.

 - Japan has recently come out with a mascot named "Nanami Yume", who is a mascot for construction work.

 - Nanami's name is spelled 七生 <'seven' + 'life'>, whereas the Japanese mascot's name is spelled 七海 <'seven' + 'sea'>

Object collision and position relation seem to be working now. That is, Nanami can't walk through the parts of objects that are declared "impassible" in the interaction map, and it detects if she is in front of or behind objects and renders things accordingly.

Of course, this is using a single rectangular "pillar" object. I need to create more objects and objects of different sizes to more rigorously test the engine. Technically, I could incorporate altitude into the engine but I'm not going to for my sanity's sake.

After that, this is how it's going to go:

 - Optimization of code and routines
 - Implementation of text routines
 - Implementation of event checking
 - Actual map data and sprites

Progress is good

(note: as of the moment, I'm focusing solely on Nanami Chapter since that's my class project, so there's various engine features I'm not including right now like the implementation of character switching and character auto-movement)

Well, the way my game's engine works is that it outputs everything in layers. From bottom to top, these layers are:
 - Ground Layer
 - Character Layer
 - Character Effects Layer
 - Environment Layer
 - Environment Effects Layer? (I don't have one but might implement one)

So, by default, Nanami is always beneath the layer of environment objects. On the interaction map, whatever areas are the "in front of" for objects are colored black. The engine constantly checks to see if any of Nanami's sprite's pixels happen to overlap these black areas and, if so, raises a flag that causes the Character and Character Effects Layers to be outputted above the Environment Layer.

In essence, Nanami always walks behind objects unless the interaction map says she should be in front of them

I'm probably going to throw a lot of the engine's environment checks into a separate thread that runs pseudo-simultaneously. I'm fairly sure that by the time the engine is completely done, having everything running in the same thread might make for a very slow game

Oh, and to get ahead of myself a tad, do you want text boxes to display just the character name, a character name and portrait, or just a portrait?

Risky? How so?

When I talk about layers, I'm just referring in general terms to the order in which the graphics are outputted to the screen. When all is said and done, I've just got the one 840x480 pixel screen. If I output a graphic to a group of pixels, I'm just changing those pixels' colors. If I output a graphic over the graphic, I'm just changing the pixels' colors again. So, in essence, it's not layering like with GIMP or Photoshop, it's more like drawing something in Paint and then drawing over it. Once you draw over something, what was there before is gone.

I can rearrange the order in which the graphics are thrown onto the screen, though.


Did I explain that clearly enough? 3:30 AM makes for gibberish-y Tsukasas

Holy nightmares, that is epic!
You, JustCause, are an hero

Also, I'm visualizing the name-under-portrait style and it just looks kind of weird to me in my head

Should i still be working on the music ive been making i get ungrounded tomorrow which means more fruity loops shennagins will ensue if this is a yes