Way to tired...

Last night I got stumped by a really stupid problem. Some days I swear I can feel the smart slowly being stolen from me by the tiredness.

Anyways, quest screen works sort of right now have no way to advance quests so can't really full test it. That will be the work in the next day or so incorporating quest advancement to the system. Also initial entrances to shops and street events. More fun I swear then maybe a working local example for everyone to play with and see about adding there own quests and junk.

Daisy

Quest Book and Thank You.

So first look at the new quest book. Looks about the same just in its own .swf. Internally its very different. Also got the data structure built and the parser.

XML Example

The basic theory behind the new quest is that it only has 2 variables. Has the quest been started? Has the quest finished? All other pieces should be handled by the event system. Though the event system can load and change those variables at need (not implemented yet). So the only thing that needs to be parsed in is the label (that which is pulled and checked by the event system) a name that is displayed and what text's to display.

I want to give a thank you Mr. Enigma who updated all the item xmls to allow for easier sorting and player made shops. Thank you again.

Lastly, yes I know the xml from yesterday was broken. When I copied and pasted I missed something, on the other hand no one noticed so...

Daisy

Events in Shops and Adding Button

So now that we have shops it would be really cool to be able to add event buttons from xml. But to do that You would need an event system that could process the event call from the button and then feed that event to a text system. If only we had such a system... oh wait we do. Adding a button is simple... see the example below.

http://pastebin.com/AT5Waq6i

Note I build a label text system so that you can use generic buttons easily with out having pre-made buttons. It's that simple. And then anyone should be able to add there own button or there own event or hopefully with a little more luck there own quest.

Also built the rest of the shops added there xml and background. Tonight the actual shop shop parts I think... or more accurately the boring part. Or I may work on a new quest book screen...

Daisy

Town to Shop

Town to shop and back now works. Now onto doing even more fun stuff adding buttons in shops and the actual shops etc. I really don't have anything more to say, working hard to get new features and contents up and running.

Daisy

New Shop Navigation

The pictures are tentative I am going to find better I swear.

Shop navigation at least works enough that you can actually build a shop walk around in it and if you press the info button get info on the room you are currently in. Next up linking the town to the new shops and then actually building the shop feature. So much fun...

Still looking for someone interested in updating the items xml to a new sorting system. Send me an e-mail.

Daisy

New Town Navigation

Changing navigation to a more dungeon explorer method. This will allow easy hot keying also multiple rooms in houses. Hoping to have a way to allow exploration in the casino and the sex based guilds. Who doesn't want to visit the cat garden behind the cat paw's trader?

The town is already done besides the linking. Which is quite a fast little update from a hard scripted to an xml based system. And will allow the addition and easy navigation of even more streets and shops.

If anyone has any free time over this vacation I am looking for a victim, I mean volunteer, to change the sort system on items xml to allow for easy creation of new sorts which allow for easier new shops. IE a gun shop needs to sort and sell only guns the current method is to hard code gun = true, i want to change that to an xml sort = "gun" etc. Anyways please send me an e-mail if your interested.

Daisy

Mains Street Rebuild

So it seemed to be that people want more content so working on a super new town through xml.

For the xml:

Pastebin

basically allows the addition of new shops and streets at will. Which should create some awesome new content also the changing streets will allow for more events. The main thing there being more event triggers. Such as trying to enter a shop, going onto a street, etc. Well anyways I am having fun. Hoping to make more streets and start working on xml shops in the next day but christmas means every customer in the world has to call in.

Daisy

Housing working main screen

Okay it works and its a little hard to see but the rooms are updating correctly. All images loaded on the fly. Which is just plane fun. Now for so many new houses possible... I like it.

Could probably release soon. Just need to go through the bug list. I really don't want to do bugs... or I can work on events and add a few quests and item adding and a whole lot more to the events system. Any preference release or add more content?

Daisy

Finally got the new event system to work in the actual game.

Oddly enough if you don't load the events into the game the event system won't work. Only took me an hour to figure that out, I just kept thinking the listeners in the buttons weren't working... they were working fine.

As for the image above that is just some nice price checking. The best part is one line of code shows the message and pulls it from xml.

ringmaster.storyPlay("housingnotenoughmoney");

the xml is pretty straight forward as well...

story
name = "#namerealtor"
label = "housingnotenoughmoney"
fgcenter = "realtor"
namecolor = "#ff6699"
next = "end"

page line = "I don't deal with poor people."
story

(tags removed to show code)

note that just about everything is replaced... the name and the image. That means easy updating or changing later on.

Tonight fixing an infinite loop if you hit the fast forward button... seems to be related to the float system. Working on the top menu.

And finally a question for everyone... I'm thinking of making the quest book a separate .swf... would you guys like it to be a book that floats on top of every screen? Or just accessible from the main screen like it is and its own screen? Don't know if I am explaining this well...

A quick mock up of a floating quest book. Either way going to have to re-do the quests to allow for xml adding otherwise an event system is rather pointless...

Daisy

Working on Integration

Stupid bugs... Got to love them.

So that is in actual game rather then in testing mode. Same for the menu but that needs more work. Spent a lot of time working on moving gold from cPlayer to GameData. Which makes remote testing quite a bit simpler.

Actually lots more work needed. Money needs to update, rooms need to update, menu needs to update, etc. Then playing with the event system in game... oh and popping quests giving items lots of stuff I want to do on the small before doing on the large. Oh and I want to rebuild the quest screen to a separate swf and the carpenter.

Daisy

Lazy Day

Expect lazy days most of this week as starting weekend i will be covering people on vacation most of next week.

Daisy

Boring file linking

Going from testing mode to actual in game mode and that means the ever so boring fixing all the file stuff. Basically going from a much more local control to the game wide control. Its boring but needs to be done and because I want to still be able to test in local mode I add an option for both... Anyways assuming this all gets done tonight will start working on the update top menu or going and looking at updating the carpenter.

Also need to add talk buttons to most areas so that the new talking is available.

Daisy

Super Cool an actual working event system from XML

I have succeeded in the impossible dream.

Parsed in 50 in a variable created on the fly ( realtortalk2 ). Then compared it to 50 and since it succeeded went on and subtracted one.

The compare to 50 now fails on realtortalk2 and it compares to 49 succeeds and subtracts one more.

The compare to 50 and 49 at realtortalk2 both failed. So lets instead of comparing a variable that we made an existing one 1000 gamedata.chargold we succeed and subtract a gold.

The compare to 50 and 49 at realtortalk2 both failed as well as the compare to gamedata.chargold 1000. (Yes I know its not updating the top display at this time.) Now we get a succeed on the gold 999 which means from xml I can influence variables in the main game. So freaking awesome!

Basically full xml event creation from that. Now all I have to do is add some love to push items and pop quests and were done. Anyways I think its cool.

Daisy

Working answer...

So after much thought I built a stupid answer... I still want to thank everyone who tried to help my brain farting ideas.


package otherlib.eventsystem {
import otherlib.core.*;
import otherlib.data.*;

public class classreturn {

public static function creturn(cst:String):Object {
var Definition;
if(cst == "GameData") {
Definition = GameData;
}
else if(cst == "GameQuest") {
Definition = GameQuests;
}
else {
Definition = null;
}
return Definition;
}
}
}

I hope that makes sense to everyone by doing it as a class I can re-use the code for the replacement system and the event system.

Daisy

Bah

I would have got stuff done if the damn customers would have stopped calling.

Daisy

Tonight Stuff

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions going to give them a try tonight. If not I have an alternate way not as flexible but if I can't get it to work universally I can still do a parsed class and then if statements based on that class. Not as effective but will work for about 90% of everything. That's a fall back position though.

Catch you later,

Daisy

Lazy Day...

Haven't touched skyrim in 3 days... Instead powering through my x-mas anime purchases...

Possible spoilers... but i don't think so...

Needless... was needless junk. It is hard to do Psychics right, very very few actually do it well. Needless did not pull it off. Also the fact that people constantly come back from the dead, irritates me. I think it would have been an okay story if they removed all the men and just had the females fight it out. They at least had potential but the coolest of them a psychokinetic doesn't even get to fight/bounce in the entire series. But the guys just keep duking it out and dying and then coming back to life. C

Samurai Harem... Excellent packaging confused me to the fact that I had seen it before, under its Japanese name, and it was crap before. Not much to say about it really the harem was actually uninteresting which is sad. C

MM... So far the best of the lot. Though having a masochist male as a main character was a little eh. But the harem was solid. The scenario was also fun. The main character never hit super annoying which was my worry with his super masochism. B+

Xam'd... Only about 2/3 through with this one sure I will finish it tonight and so far. Such great potential bogged down by way too many characters and not enough action. I had really high hopes for this one, and the main character has only xamd 3 times in 16 or so episodes. I expect a bit more ass kicking in what is explained as an action story. B- (Tentative)

Daisy

Still stumped...

This seemed to me like the perfect answer...

http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?t=145584

Since my idea of sending in the base stage didn't work.

With some help from

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/utils/package.html#getDefinitionByName()

I still get nothing... I'm starting to think it might be a good idea just to make 5 different versions for the classes that hold data. But I really wanted to level up with a cool new trick. Anyone got any suggestions.

I did try John's idea of making an object of it. And well the above is just a more complicated version of that neither worked for me.

I also tried compuscribes

this[data][variable] by parsing in this[classname][variablename] that failed also tried from base stage. I don't know... I feel like I'm just missing one key word or something.

Daisy

This is what I am thinking on...

So I don't think I was quite clear on my variable issue normally when parsing in the variable by a string you would use:

this[variable]

but that only works if the variable is in the local this. Most of my variables are in classes like player or data.

so i can parse in variable and do

data[variable]

but that means I have to know that the variable is in the data class but what if its in the player class...

player[variable]... instant crash

parsing in "data.variable"

even if we import data.*;

then go with

this[data.variable]... instant crash

but there has to be a way to parse in both data and variable and then set up

data[variable]

from the parse.

My current idea that is UNTESTED is to send the base stage into the class and then try

stage[data.variable]

I wonder if that will work...

Daisy

Variables by Reference as well

Okay now for something that I have working but only about 10% so. Parsing in an actual variable and then getting the information from the game that the variable calls. In the example above, charGold. But I have run into a head banger. Which is scope if you notice in the actual code (the highlighted area) I have to show where the variable is to pull it in. That right there sucks because there are dozens if not hundreds of classes now with variables and creating hundreds of different parse replacers does not seem to be agood option. So I'm open to suggestions... any ideas...

Daisy

Parsed in Events that work...

Parsed in variables and then events that happened based upon the flags of those variables. To me this is rather cool. The game creates a variable based on xml. Then searches for the flags on the called label finds a winner and then actually sets the variable flags as needed. This is step one of the new event system and it is working much better then I was expecting. User added quests should be right around the corner with the events adding items and stat changes. Now to compare and change variables that already exist in the game... so much fun so little time.

Daisy

Images by Reference

Just an example of images by reference system. This is a nice little system that should allow much easier changes in file paths and other little fixes like displaying the girl or assistant on deck. May not seem like that much but every little modification like this helps out.

A rather odd bug that happened when trying to build the image reference system... Just thought I would share.

Daisy

Tonight's plans

Depending on how insane the customers are tonight hoping to add a reference style image player to the text system. Basically you can type in "realtor" for the image name and the game will replace that with "realtor.png" this is necessary to allow for the assistant or girl on deck to be shown later on.

If there is time want to work on making a talk loop where if you hit the talk button you get 4 or 5 different messages that loop around standard NPC stuff. But a bit more complicated at the start as have to have a way to keep track of where in the loop you are. Good start to parsed in variables.

Daisy

Lazy Day

Lazy Day... damn I need one too.

Daisy

Error Trapping

Okay I was going to do stuff tonight... and then there were x-mas versions of Warehouse 13 and Eureka (by the way in the Eureka episode its Anime that saves the town... though its more of a boondocks anime.) Anyways that distracted me heavily so instead of getting a lot done I just got some error trapping working so it doesn't crash everything if a bad label is called that doesn't exist in the xml and is nice enough to actually tell you what you screwed up. I guess that's something.

Daisy

Trying to conduct the Orchestra

This took 3 hours to make it all work together... but it is slowly starting to play together. Back to using the ringmaster class from OW:Conquest (which is close to dead at the moment.) To control the different parts together. Need some sort of shared class to transfer information from one .swf to another and for that I use the ring master. Still needs more work, lots more basic work and then hopefully can start working on parsed events. Parsed events means girl events...

Daisy

Putting pieces together

So here is the question how many separate .swfs does it take to make the above screen? If you thought 3.... you were wrong its actually 4 (a loader (blank), menu, housing, text). Now comes the fun part of actually using the text system as part of otherworld. Calling entry events and talk button events and hopefully conditional events. One at a time. I'm going to be running test for a while here checking parsed in conditional events and button press events being pushed through the xml text system so don't expect much change in images for the next probably week or two.

Daisy

Menu and Housing Still

Well menu is now on its own separate .swf at least for testing. Will be more then that later on. As slowly but steadily the little layering problem is solved for the last time by doing on the fly image loading on separate .swfs. Tomorrow hopefully will show the menu, the housing, and the text system all combined onto one.... theoretically.

It was asked by demonralf in a comment if this on the .svn and yes it is. But not integrated still in testing. Want to really test this out before doing a release and yes release should be quick and dirty once it works going with the if it works release rather then waiting for tons of stuff at once.... still got to do last releases bugs.

Daisy

Housing its own little .swf

I did a bug I swear... I cleared the infinite money casino thingy. Then I got bored.

So started working on housing. Should allow about 12 houses through xml any more and I will need to add a way to change pages... does anyone really think we need more then 12 houses realistically?

As you can tell the xml works, the display works, now just nuts and bolts stuff. Yes for those wondering house bonuses and stuff are in the class information they just didn't get added today. Now your probably wondering why I am focusing on something no one cares about.... well because the two houses were driving me nuts and I need something to test calling events from my text system from another .swf. Before ripping out the entire current text system... something I am dreading with all possible fear.

Those of you interested in submitting a house now would be a good time please include and image, (anime style) and other relevant stuff. Not that we can't add other houses later since its completely XML based...

Daisy

Bugs or Housing

Played with the flickering issue and it's probably permanent. I may play with it again. But its not something I can do at work Log me in just doesn't refresh fast enough.

Tonight I am either going to do xml housing or bugs probably a bit of both. Maybe bugs for an hour then more interesting stuff afterwards.

Also on the going to change soon block is changing the sort system. Going from xml boolean to xml lists... as a precursor for make your home shops.

Daisy

Nada night

Nice Lazy day playing Skyrim.

Docclox pointed out that the float over flashes a little too much I was reloading already loaded images. Will take a look at that on Friday night. Not much more to say now.

Daisy