Author Topic: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth  (Read 180825 times)

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Offline chickendude

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #555 on: January 29, 2012, 06:08:16 pm »
I probably won't be able to get on IRC for a couple weeks, but i definitely am interested in talking about the project (now or in a couple weeks over IRC if that works better for you). I'm interested in seeing how everything's organized, and really it shouldn't take more than a few days to get used to the code. I think it'd be nice to get object interaction and at least a very simple battle system set up, as that immediately makes the game much more playable (and can probably bring more people in to discuss it). Was information on how the battles were supposed to work (and damage/level-up formulas) provided as well?

(Also, i'd prefer if you didn't use the pronoun "he" to talk about me)

Offline Iambian

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #556 on: January 29, 2012, 10:37:03 pm »
Okay. Here's the top level bit of the whole project.

Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth is a FlashAPP that spans (thus far) five pages (16K each). So far, the following are on each page (starting from page zero)

[page 0] (7KB free) Game startup and shutdown, menu system, font renderer, stats calculator, keyboard reading routine, decompressor.
[page 1] (10KB free) Interrupt routine, events, LCD routines, main loop, tilemapper, sprite rendering routine (incomplete)
[page 2] (2KB free) Tile bitmaps and image data. Whoops, forgot the enemy bitmaps >.<
[page 3] (8KB free) In-game descriptions, text data for menus, equipment stats. And more strings.
[page 4] (7KB free) Data used to place warp info. Tilemap data.

Almost all the game data is compressed, so it will use a spare RAM page (3) that is present on the TI-83+SE/TI-84+(SE) calculators to hold some of that data temporarily. The challenge is to make sure that the data is where it should be when it is needed.

During tilemap runs, the tile bit map is a full 8KB and rests at around the $C000 range. The $E000 and higher range is left open for other uses, but they include things such as sprite data and string data.
I'm not entirely sure what happens during menu runs, where description data (which is also compressed) needs to be loaded, but I do remember that data is juggled around practically everywhere.
During the battle system, the whole tile bitmap data can be discarded in favor of other things, such as decompressing and moving around enemy bitmaps. And perhaps double-buffering the screen if you wanted additional effects.

I probably should've said something about this before, but beyond the game startup and shutdown, there are no romcalls. The TI-OS would crash if you tried to do it due to the way memory is rearranged. In shortl, I shuffled stuff around to give me $8000 to $8EFF, all consecutive "free" RAM. There aren't too many free RAM areas that are left for use. Those that still exist will be defined somewhere. Not sure where, tho.

---
I would want you to work on the battle system, but there just isn't enough information available for that to happen. So in the meantime, you should get familiar with some of the documents that this project revolves around, in addition to how I originally thought the battle system should flow based on what was described.

I suppose I need time to figure out how to explain everything. Here's a little bit of info attached to this post with regards to what I could find. I'm not going to post the entire source quite yet. (gotta make sure the source will actually build)
« Last Edit: January 29, 2012, 10:37:26 pm by Iambian »
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Offline Eeems

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #557 on: January 30, 2012, 12:11:21 am »
(Also, i'd prefer if you didn't use the pronoun "he" to talk about me)
What would you prefer?

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #558 on: January 30, 2012, 12:55:26 am »
The only other alternative to he would be to repeat his nickname over and over. Had he ever released his RPG, an Omnimaga news about it would then look like this:

Quote
Chickendude releases stunning graphical RPG for the TI-83 Plus

A few days ago, Chickendude has finished his RPG project, after years of work and hiatuses, and then Chickendude uploaded it on Ticalc.org, who approved it just now. Featuring great artwork by Chickendude, the RPG features hours of gameplay, great story and more! Here is a screenshot about Chickendude game:

<insert pic here>

You can download Chickendude RPG here(link).

I'm sure other people, at least the ones who did not work on Zero Wing's english translation in 1989, will love to read our posts if they look that way.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2012, 12:59:33 am by DJ_O »

Offline chickendude

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #559 on: January 30, 2012, 02:59:03 am »
(Also, i'd prefer if you didn't use the pronoun "he" to talk about me)
What would you prefer?
Generally  "they" as a singular pronoun or a non-gender pronoun, typically "ze". :)

@Iambian: Yeah, it seems like the best way to understand it all (especially how things are stored in memory, which seems to be one of the more complicated issues) would be looking at the source along with your explanations. Also, thanks for that file, is it the same as the information available on the google code site? Anyway, i'll look through it, thanks. Take your time, there's no rush. And i don't want to take the control of the program (especially the creative control) away from you, i just want to help you finish it the way you envision it, so we'll se what we can do :)

@DJ:
Quote
Chickendude releases stunning graphical RPG for the TI-83 Plus

A few days ago, they finished their RPG project, after years of work and hiatuses, and uploaded it on Ticalc.org, who approved it just now. Featuring great artwork by Chickendude, the RPG features hours of gameplay, great story and more! Here is a screenshot of the game:

<insert pic here>

You can download the RPG here(link).
;) I hope you'll be able to post that one day!

Offline Iambian

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #560 on: January 30, 2012, 03:34:45 am »
[...]
@Iambian: Yeah, it seems like the best way to understand it all (especially how things are stored in memory, which seems to be one of the more complicated issues) would be looking at the source along with your explanations. Also, thanks for that file, is it the same as the information available on the google code site? Anyway, i'll look through it, thanks. Take your time, there's no rush. And i don't want to take the control of the program (especially the creative control) away from you, i just want to help you finish it the way you envision it, so we'll se what we can do :)
[...]

I'm not entirely sure what information is on the Google Code site, since the vast majority of the work was accomplished between me and Zera via IRC. There were some pretty big revisions, so I'm guessing the information is nothing alike.
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Offline Geekboy1011

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #561 on: January 30, 2012, 02:45:51 pm »
There is a google code for this 0.o

hey iambian maybe we should make one for cadan...

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #562 on: January 30, 2012, 02:50:35 pm »
Good idea, providing you continue keeping us updated here afterward too :)

Offline Geekboy1011

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #563 on: January 30, 2012, 03:46:28 pm »
Good idea, providing you continue keeping us updated here afterward too :)

wouldent dream of not updating here :P would just be easier to merge our chagnes as atm we are doing this really wonky deal with a ftp server lol

Offline chickendude

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #564 on: January 31, 2012, 11:39:24 am »
I started reading through the documents you sent, i like a lot of ideas (like merits and proficiency). I had a few questions but they ended up getting answered by the time i reached the end of the design doc (99 max stats just seems really low to me). Looks like there's a lot of work ahead!

I'm moving at the end of this week, so it might be a little while before i get settled/have internet access. Maybe we can figure a way to get started or decide what needs to be worked on in the meantime.

PS: I read "If %ISHIT" incorrectly the first time through :P
« Last Edit: January 31, 2012, 11:43:00 am by chickendude »

Offline Iambian

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #565 on: February 01, 2012, 11:42:12 pm »
I would like you to start working on the battle engine, despite the fact that there's nothing in the current code that even remotely alludes to it working. Most specifically, I would like you to work on the part that performs the battle calculations.

Since not everything is put together, just assume that you will have available calls to routines in the form of "call GetStat<insert_stat_type>" in which you replace the stat type with something such as "STR", "WIS", "Evade", "NumberOfPhysicalAttacks", "DEF", "HitRate", etc. I'll be adjusting the names of the routines that fetches the values to whatever you choose to name that call.

Please ignore the file "battengm.txt" since that is an incomplete document. In batteng.txt, please revise line 23 to read:
Code: [Select]
09.      If have BLIND FIGHTING, %HITRATE = %HITRATE - ( %HITRATE / 4 )
For messing around with the battle system, please refer to this copy of Escheron, complete with source, to see something that might remotely look... decent. It's actually a much more complete version of E:SoR but it was getting to be an absolute pain to work on. To build that software, you'll need to put the extracted contents of that archive in a folder called "LL2" (the project was originally "Lost Legends II" before Zera changed its name) and then put that folder inside the project folder of Dwedit's AppDev kit, then you'll want to replace "asmapp5.bat" with the one I've attached to the bottom of this post. Only then do you go into the LL2 folder and double-click the mLLII.bat file to rebuild the app.

Understand that the source that I linked to you here is completely and radically different from the revision that you are working on (maybe except some of the LCD driver routines. I worked too hard on them to ditch). The difference includes some of the data itself and its structures. In this source file, the entire engine is split between pages 1 and 5 (starting from 1 this time around) with data sitting on page 4.

This version was overall much more complete, and with a few more steps, would've been releasable as the finished product. The problem was with the compilation environment and how everything was arranged together. See, TASM has limits and I was trying to pull together hacks that would overcome *some* of those limits (but not all of them), and I ran into a problem with respect to how the code was arranged. I would not have been able to cram events in there. I had a couple of images that were missing from the source that wouldn't have made it in. Overall, the thing was a complete mess and I felt like I needed to stop that shit and restart the whole thing.

If you think you might be able to cram what needs to be done into the old source and have a pretty complete game, feel free (but I think you'd be wasting your time). So that's why I have a pretty much clean slate that allows me to put together things in a much more sane manner, and allow things to be ... "page-aware". SPASM allows me to do this. Also, SPASM just simply builds faster.

tl;dr: Try to write battle engine calculations. You can test it using the old source if need be, or to use as a reference for the new version should you want to code the whole thing.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2012, 11:43:45 pm by Iambian »
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Offline chickendude

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #566 on: February 02, 2012, 06:44:57 am »
I don't know if you actually attached the new batch file or not..?

Offline Iambian

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #567 on: February 02, 2012, 07:03:20 am »
Whoops. Sorry 'bout that. Completely forgot about it after making that post. It ought to be attached to this one.

EDIT: That and you'll want to remove the final three lines of mLLII.bat , since they refer to a setup that is specific to my machine.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2012, 07:05:29 am by Iambian »
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Offline chickendude

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #568 on: February 02, 2012, 01:49:45 pm »
I made the new source you gave me into a WabbitCode project file but ended up having a couple errors trying to compile, and i just wanted to make sure that i've got it right. Basically, in the statcalc file in p0 there were two undefined addresses (lines 107/120), AddAtoHL and statgetbuf+5. I changed them to AddAtoHL0 and statgetbuf1+5.
Also, everything looks really pretty (i love the mountains!) but it feels a little odd with the player being aligned to a grid.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2012, 01:57:08 pm by chickendude »

Offline Iambian

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Re: Escheron: Shadow over Ragnoth
« Reply #569 on: February 02, 2012, 02:04:11 pm »
I made the new source you gave me into a WabbitCode project file but ended up having a couple errors trying to compile, and i just wanted to make sure that i've got it right. Basically, in the statcalc file in p0 there were two undefined addresses (lines 107/120), AddAtoHL and statgetbuf+5. I changed them to AddAtoHL0 and statgetbuf1+5.
You're right, and I'm also kinda embarrassed that I uploaded something without checking to see if it would build at all. Aside from that, I also made another really small revision. You can see that here: http://pastebin.com/FKzmixrX (p0/statcalc.z80)
« Last Edit: February 02, 2012, 02:05:59 pm by Iambian »
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