Iso Grid ... WORKING?!

As you can see I've gotten farther with my stuff, I have a moveable character and an isometric grid, but there is something off with the way the pixel art is rendering as it's not crisp and beautiful as I want it to be. It's probably because I just don't know what I'm doing with the camera and units yet. I'll look into it more later. The tiles are all placeholders, so is the character - though that is actually my own art.

I think I want to have the map layout zigzag style as opposed to the diamond style though. Figuring out this stuff was extremely difficult considering the only examples were poorly explained, had no comments, and written in languages other than C# or included code with no unity C# equivalents (such as sprite batch, which I still don't really know how that works).

What I ended up doing was Instantiating prefab tiles(cloning a pre-made tile) instead of what all the examples I found were doing - which was finding a sprite within a sprite sheet. I was able to get a top-down square tile type map to work absolutely fine so if I can't get the finesse of the isometric tiles to be what I want I may just scrap the iso theme and stick with something simpler. I've come this far though, so I think there's a good chance I'll be able to do what I originally wanted to do- beautiful iso tiles!!!

Update: Well it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would, and I found errors and issues that I also fixed, but I have the isometric map drawing like I want it to. Now to implement a way to change up the tiles.


Update2 : I can use Tiled to create my maps and then use the data saved in the txt format for the actual maps within Unity. I'm doing this for now because the idea of writing a tile map editor that does Iso tiles... just no. This work around will be very nice and I'm fine with doin' it this way for sure.

Tiled maps and such

So I've moved on from the inventory portion and the profile portion to trying to make an actual level or tiled map. I've run into a problem in that all the resources I've found that go over any sort of tile or map engine or whatever you want to call it, all of them are using XNA. Now that alone isn't really all that problematic, but I've run into something called SpriteBatch. Now I kinda know what it does, but not enough right now to figure out how to make a unity equivalent.

~Sigh~ So I'll be tackling that. I would just use uTiled and then use Tiled maps, but I need to know how to make a character navigate using the tiles and indexes, so I need to know how such things work under the hood so to speak.

Then again maybe I'm over complicating it.

Layering, Color changing, and string to Color32 done!

So I've done the layer of the images as a layering of a sprite, that way I can easily turn on and off the sprite renderer to show coats and what-not. 

 As you can see here I've moved the shading layer to expose the other layers which just have color information. The actual layers will need to be white so that changing the tint won't obscure what color it turns out to be. The colors here are just for my own visual confirmation.

Basic layers a dragon profile picture would have is the body layer, the hair layer, the extra layer, and then shading. Nothing happens to the shading layer.

When I press play to test out my color changing system it works! I've only applied it to the base  body layer, but what you don't see is that I take a string that holds the rgb colors and then turn them into a working color32. What I don't have working yet is getting the colors from the dragon image database (Database that holds all the information needed to create the images of that dragon).


I've also gone ahead and created a menu that draws the user's dragon party. Right now I'm struggling with some simple GUI controls, but I should have that figured out in no time.

After I get that portion done, I want to change gears and start creating a navigational field and see if I can do it with the normal isometric map using Tiled and uTiled. We'll see how well that goes.

So! What I have done this week is more ... research. Well I did some other things too like more coding stuff and more writing my own versions of what I learned. I was able to layer the images to get the results I wanted as well. I'm not too sure about performance right now, but so far it looks good. I also set up a virtual database so I can start laying down the meat and potatoes stuff. It worries me that I'll have to learn about php, encryption and so on. It still seems way over my capabilities right now.

One thing at a time! Right? I'll be focusing on database structure right now so that I can use that to create more functionality. From there I'll focus on the image creation system. Then I'll go to combat. Those are the two big ones. Well... the combat stuff is HUGE. Image creation is more like a warm up. Actually I think almost any of the features would be warm up to getting the combat portion done. At least right now I know that everything I want to do is possible and I have a way of doing it. From reading the case of characters to determine breeding, to logging age, and layering images. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get the image system to work without having to learn how to code custom shaders. I may need to do that still depending on how I'm going to handle the player's units on the combat map. I could layer sprites- them being small and all the alpha sorting wouldn't be too much draw I would think. We'll have to see.

I'll have to update this with some pictures later on ^.^

Sunday, sunday.

I told myself I wasn't going to work on anything this weekend and relax given that I was starting to dream in code, wake up early to work/learn, and at the same time seeming to not get rid of a bug that's made me feel pretty meh for a week now (Like a mild lingering flu, probably something Dan unknowingly took home from the studio).

Even though I set down that rule for myself and had every intention of keeping it, I found myself sitting here at 5pm, notes open, wiki open (the wiki is the work-in-progress Andicuri game design doc) and attempting to get something done. I don't understand what's wrong with me. In any case I've discovered whole areas of the doc that still need to be fleshed out and corrected, or translated into something I can use code wise. While I would attempt to close my notebook and stop, I know I'd just go back to working in some shape or form- whether it's cleaning/ house-making/ chores, modelling/ creating store assets, or working on the game. It might as well be the one I want to do most.

As for the code thing, I've discussed, thought, and researched ability systems for RPGs. For the game I'm doing I believe the simplest thing to do would be the classic rpg turn style, but the monotony of such a style isn't really something I want. I've looked into the tactics style turn based vs the classic style in terms of fun, and tactics - also being my favorite type other than real time - wins out when pitted against the classic style. The problem is that the tactics style battle would be much harder for me to code considering my current level. SURE I've gotten better by leaps and bounds in like... a week, but who knows if that'll continue. I may just peak out at intermediate to junior type levels and never be able to get any better. In any case I did actually research the tactics battles more. I know what I would need to do, but I don't know how to do what I need to do. I also don't understand the why behind some of it as well, but more on that later.

Currently as it stands I need to figure out abilities regardless of classic turn style or tactics turn style. This is what I have so far:
I want the player units (dragons) to have two sets of abilities.
One set is a constant unchangeable set, though the abilities inside the set can change.
*Second set I either want the player to be able to assign or the unit inherits the set from the parents.
Abilities can be leveled
Abilities will earn experience for that ability when used
Abilities will need to be learned either by leveling another ability to unlock
**Special combo abilities will be unlocked and learned @ leveling two abilities from different sets
More abilities may be added later

* - This I think I'd need opinion on

** - So far I know that most abilities will be able to be stored in a database, with the level and current experience being stored somewhere else. Say maybe something like having a small table or list for an individual unit/dragon that stores the ability information, but adds an ability to that list dynamically, as it's learned. The other idea is having a list that's already there, as in technically the dragon "knows" all the abilities in the entire game but what the list stores is the level and experience of the abilities- then only displaying the abilities the unit can actually use based on the current sets and the current levels.

If I go with inheriting the abilities so that the secondary set of abilities never changes, then the list of potential abilities is much smaller and I can probably store that somewhere more easily perhaps? If I want to add more abilities later, it would be more difficult to add them as each table that holds abilities would then need to be added onto, and it would be a rather large table. Should I break down that information even more?

These are just some of the things I'm running into that I know I'll need to come up with a solid design for that just isn't there right now. Anyways I'm off to try and figure it out.