Bt Builder

[Methuselas]

Dulsi,

Since multiple attacks are pretty much out of the question, can we get an import/export function for Specials in the map editor?


Also, we might want a "Create New Module" function. I haven't touched BTBuilder in over a year and I'm starting completely from scratch. I'm crashing the engine trying to hack a new module together with your Sample 2 module.

{EDIT] - Yes, definitely. I was just doing some initial tests and I added belt, boots and cloak to the itemtypes. It crashes my new module but works fine in the Sample 2.

One more thing. When we save new maps, are we supposed to use .XML or .MAP?

[EDIT 2] - The Torch and Lamp in the item.xml are the culprits - they cause the crash. The itemtype.xml works in your module without error, however?

[Methuselas]

*bump*

Any chance we can get the Gold value of items to be above a 16-bit number? I'm finding myself limited with 65536.

[Methuselas]

Caars.....


That counter switching you did with the Treasure Chests/Traps is outstanding! I read the design and applied it to my Tavern, so you could speak to random patrons for Mercenaries and people to talk to for quests or hints. It's WAY better than I hoped for my original idea and completely random.

Kudos.

[caars]

Why thank you! I really kind of need to pull together a module with all of my more sophisticated specials just to let you all see them.

More recently I put together a seriously overly long temple one that replicates the "costs scale with level effect" - although it really functions more like "costs scale with how much of the story you've completed."

At the moment the only real reason I haven't been doing much with BT Builder is I've been spending all of my time playing the remaster and BT4, but I'll be back soon enough (although longer than I'd anticipated - I don't think I anticipated how long BT4 really can get to be if you make the effort to really explore the world...)

[dulsi]

Sorry I haven't been doing as much with Bt Builder recently. Life has been busy. In addition to the stuff I've occasionally posted in off-topic, I played around with RPG Maker MV and had the cub scouts build an arcade machine.

RPG Maker MV is an impressive tool. It has given me a lot of ideas on how to improve the editor. Granted they are not necessarily easy to do. I read the Make a 2D RPG in a Weekend book for RPG Maker MV and read Yanfly's comics on making an RPG with RPG Maker MV. Bt Builder might benefit from having some tutorials.

Methuselas: Yes there needs to be a new module button. Import/export of specials I want to add. It is however a little complicated. If a special uses a monster/spell/item you would need to import/export them as well and since the "slot" that the monster/spell/item used might not be available you need to renumber things. I would really like to have a collection of specials included with the editor that you could easily place on maps.

You probably want .xml files for maps. The .map file is limited to BTCS compatibility which I doubt you are limiting yourself to.

As for higher gold value, I'll see what I can do.

EDIT: I am now on a social media site. I joined the hubzilla service run by freegamedev. It is compatible with Mastadon and other federated social networks.

https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/dulsi

[dulsi]

My wife took the kids this afternoon so I got some programming done on Bt Builder. I had started working on getting multiple attacks in. Today I got the editor working with them. The game engine still needs to be updated to handle it and I need to figure out what to do with combat AI but it is getting there.

[Methuselas]

Sorry I haven't been doing as much with Bt Builder recently. Life has been busy. In addition to the stuff I've occasionally posted in off-topic, I played around with RPG Maker MV and had the cub scouts build an arcade machine.

I know what you mean. I'm opening another restaurant. This was supposed to be the year I get to go back to college..... -_-

RPG Maker MV is an impressive tool. It has given me a lot of ideas on how to improve the editor. Granted they are not necessarily easy to do. I read the Make a 2D RPG in a Weekend book for RPG Maker MV and read Yanfly's comics on making an RPG with RPG Maker MV. Bt Builder might benefit from having some tutorials.

Ewwwww! You liked it? I didn't like it, at all. It reminded me too much of Dragon Quest/FF2 from the old NES days. I wasn't a fan of it.

Methuselas: Yes there needs to be a new module button. Import/export of specials I want to add. It is however a little complicated. If a special uses a monster/spell/item you would need to import/export them as well and since the "slot" that the monster/spell/item used might not be available you need to renumber things.

Yeah, I just copy and paste the special into the module.xml file. Then, I edit each line to make sure it works. It's how I added the new randomness to my tavern special.

I would really like to have a collection of specials included with the editor that you could easily place on maps.

You are welcome to ANYTHING that I build for my Dev Project, including modified XML files. If you can possibly add a special "Cast $$ for X# x Level in Gold", for temples. I can make a duplicate of the Temples for you. Personally, I'd rather do Temples in xml files, like the Guild/Stores to make it cleaner, but there's too many limits with that right now.

It's why I added the sample specials to the manual, which I still need to re-write.

As for higher gold value, I'll see what I can do.

It's appreciated. I was originally using Unity to market myself as a Project Lead for a few game companies. My wife has been unemployed for 16 months now. She was to be my coder. I bought a few assets to push us along, but she did nothing. Like LITTERALLY, nothing. for 16 months. Really put me in a bind, 'cos I am tired of doing restaurant management. It's officially been a decade now, that I'm out of the game industry.

I was going to use BTBuilder as the basis for a new development project, to show that I can do major design work. I have a lot of requests for updates (mainly un hard-coding as much as possible, so I can mod the crap out of it), but I didn't want to press you, or ask for much, since I can't even offer up bounties for stuff I needed (going from 100k/yr to 40k, single income is killing me - yeah, yeah. Wife finished college so she makes a better paycheck.)

EDIT: I am now on a social media site. I joined the hubzilla service run by freegamedev. It is compatible with Mastadon and other federated social networks.

https://social.freegamedev.net/channel/dulsi

I use MEWE for another project (PnP RPG - Was going to be my original basis for my Unity project). Is freegamedev good for freelance work?

[Methuselas]

My wife took the kids this afternoon so I got some programming done on Bt Builder. I had started working on getting multiple attacks in. Today I got the editor working with them. The game engine still needs to be updated to handle it and I need to figure out what to do with combat AI but it is getting there.

Tell your wife I owe her some flowers and a mani/pedi for helping me out.

[dulsi]

(RPG Maker MV comment)
Ewwwww! You liked it? I didn't like it, at all. It reminded me too much of Dragon Quest/FF2 from the old NES days. I wasn't a fan of it.

Yes. I like the old 2D JRPG games. OpenGameArt Movie Video Game is in that style. However, what I was specifically commenting on was the editor UI. There are some clever features in there. For example assuming Bt Builder had persistent flags and you wanted a special to trigger once, you would check and set a flag. You would have to write down the flag you used so you don't use it for something else. In RPG Maker MV, you could do the same thing but name the flag. Alternatively you could set the a "self switch". Self switches are flags specific to the special. Since they are specific to that special no one else can use the flag so you don't have to worry about reusing it. It's not a huge feature but it makes certain things really easy and hard to mess up.

I use MEWE for another project (PnP RPG - Was going to be my original basis for my Unity project). Is freegamedev good for freelance work?

Freegamedev is an open source game development site. They have a policy against posts looking for commissions. They do say it is acceptable if you are volunteering work or working well below market rates and the commissioned works are to be released under a permissive license. So probably not a good place for what you want. Opengameart has a place to look for freelance work but I haven't used it so I don't know if it is effective or not.

BTW your gold increase is in. I haven't decided when the next release is. Right now it is mainly bug fixes and this gold change. It would be nice to have something a little more substantial but it has been a while since an update.

[Methuselas]

Dulsi,

Have you seen this? I've been playing with the map editor and you might want to take a look at it for possible upgrades for the Map Engine. It's called Dungeon Quest and based off the old SSI Unlimited Adventures engine. I'm pretty impressed so far.

http://uaf.sourceforge.net/

[caars]

Actually it's Dungeon Craft. I've been messing around with it for about two years off and on. It strikes me as less "playable out of the box" compared to BT Builder, but with potentially a lot more flexibility (no offense to anybody here). Lots and lots of really cool graphical assets - some of the monster models for the actual tactical combat are just beautiful, but it is really fairly lacking in portraits or "encounter sprites." Likewise, frankly, I think most of Methuselah's work for dungeon walls is quite superior to what is available there. But monster customization is better than BT Builder, while spells are iffy at best - they're based on a scripting language that, frankly, just plain doesn't always work, which means it isn't always clear if your spells didn't do what they were supposed to because of a mistake you made, or if it is a bug in the scripting language itself.

Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing tool and has a huge amount of potential - but having working with both, I can tell you that (IMO) making a working 'game' with BT Builder is considerably less headache-inducing... although the counter is that the game you could build (potentially) with Dungeon Craft could probably do a lot more.

[Methuselas]

Yeah, it's Map Editor is everything I ever wanted in BTBuilder. Everything else is kinda.... meh. I used to love the SSI games back in the day, but their assets are very lacking.

[dulsi]

I know of Dungeon Craft but have never used it. They don't have linux support and I try to avoid using wine. I probably should give it a try just to see,

[Methuselas]

It's based off Dx7 so it is really antiquated but the Map Editor is far superior to what we have. If we could get our maps to use multiple tilesets, have locked doors and locked secret doors it would motivate me to render out all the 3d tilesets I made.

[caars]

Since it's been quite a while, I actually downloaded and installed the current version just to play around with it. It is greatly improved over when I was playing with it two or three years ago (I also bought a 'Gold Box pack' on the cheap with FRUA in it); I'll probably mess with it in more depth - I've wanted to just create an online AD&D 1st edition 'campaign' just for nostalgic purposes.

But it does confirm what I was remembering - it's much easier to make a game with BT Builder (and BT Builder is much easier to 'customize' into something that differs markedly from it's 'roots'), while Dungeon Craft has, in a sense, more potential to make something substantially more complex (but with less deviation from the system it is based on).

Incidentally, the main thing I'm waiting on in BT Builder is the fix to spell durations (i.e. the fact that they are relative to when you last left the guild - I've just made all out of combat spells have *really* long durations to compensate), monster saves (at the moment only a roll of 20 - at least according to dulsi - results in a successful save; my conditional is because I have yet to see a monster actually make a save to anything ever when testing my modules - something I only started to see post ver 3.17 - so I have to take on faith they've just been absurdly unlucky so far), and paralysis (a spell that applies paralysis literally tries to apply the condition once per round of its duration, and once applied paralysis is permanent, essentially making it a death spell for all practical purposes - at least according to the BTCS manual the original intent was for the duration to actually be the duration of the effect and to 'restore movement' once the spell expired; but I honestly have no idea if it ever worked the way it was supposed to even in BTCS). Still, I'm currently on level 3 of 5 in the last dungeon in the current module I'm working on (and I've already got a sequel to that one fully outlines once I'm finished). The "released" one (based on my random dungeon generator) is much more fleshed out in the first five of the eleven levels it has - it's been fully playable, but didn't really have any story at all - just dungeon levels with monsters and traps to explore. So playing it is essentially like playing a the first Wizardry. Only harder. And Wizardry was hard. So I should probably do something about that...