Iconmod.... to the max & Maeva Reborn

ID:19192
 
Sep 15 2006, 12:28 pm
click to enlarge


Thanks you YMIHere for your hex conversion library. With it, I have taken Iconmod to the next level. You can now make global changes to the entire palette, which makes things like day and night a snap. Not to mention... I can also do never-before-seen effects in BYOND like black and white and color inversion. Oh.. in case you didn't notice... I'm taking yet another crack at Maeva. Entirely my own system at this point. So far I have:
  • Sexy new interface. Inventory system is entirely drag and drop. Interaction with items and mobs is done through clicking as well. Options are displayed much like... of all things, the Sims, but it's intuitive and user friendly.
  • Taller Walls! Doesn't seem like much, but it looks a lot better. More things in Maeva are, well, bigger. More detail is a good thing though.
  • One hell of an anatomy system. Iter Vehemens Ad Necem inspired me to allow dismemberment in Maeva. I've gone places I'd never dreamed of with anatomy. I can basically assemble mobs out of "parts" now. Parts have associated inventory slots and properties.
  • Night and Day, complete with modified icons. This can be based on zones, as well, so some areas might have different "lighting" than others.
  • Runtime map loading and saving. SwapMaps was an excellent library, but I really needed to make my own. I might not have as many features to it, but it seems to work a lot faster than LummoxJR's.
  • A* Pathfinding... Again, Deadron's pathfinding library was great, but I needed a more efficient version for the amount of pathfinding going on. I really don't understand how mine is so much faster, I used the exact same algorithm, in any case though, pathfinding is in effect, and it works in all 3 dimensions. (Stairs, cliffs, etc)
  • Mapedit mode, I'm not using DMPs at all anymore, so I needed to make my own map editor..... and I did. Hopefully I can use this to my advantage and host it for other people to create some maps for me.

Good things to come. I didn't really list everything here, but it's just to give some idea of where I'm at. If anyone's interested in potentially mapping for me, or contributing in any way to Maeva, I'd love the help. Music, icons, but most of all mapping would all help move this along a little better than the past 5 or 6 times ;)
Sep 15 2006, 12:31 pm
I'd definately help you out with creating maps. Now, I can't draw if my life depended on it, but I can use what icons you have drawn in order to make a nice map :-).
Sep 15 2006, 12:34 pm
STOP POSTING ABOUT MEAVA UNLESS YOUR GONNA LET US PLAY IT!

Heh, honestly though, don't tease.
Sep 15 2006, 12:34 pm
That's Maeva to you. Meava is like... I dunno... fancy Maevan coffee.
Sep 15 2006, 12:36 pm
Whatever, let me play it.
Sep 15 2006, 1:01 pm
Good work!

(I want to play it =P)
Sep 15 2006, 5:24 pm
I've gone places I'd never dreamed of with anatomy.

Ewwww. =P
Sep 20 2006, 4:38 am
That sounds awesome.
Oct 2 2006, 11:09 pm
Aye, Lummox's Swapmaps library is a tad cumbersome at times, I've found better ways to compress complex maps involving what I call the .DMPNG, which basically saves the map in something similar to the .png's method of compressing data.

You can do it yourself, what you do is this, you save in strips. Record the tile-type tree, much like the .DMP does. Then, as you go, you generate "strip fillers." I use the .DMP format to save, but instead of using letters, I use letters, symbols and numbers in order to create "mapcodes".

For each "strip" of the exact same tile type, I write the tile tree reference: for instance "aa" followed by a dash and a number, then another dash. for instance: -23-, which means that there are 23 of those tile in a row. However, this will ONLY activate if there are more than two in a row. Thus, it saves room for maps that aren't horridly complex.

There are also other things you can do, such as saving things as generatable content... For instance, you have a tree, you can save the trunk only, and have the rest of the tree generate on runtime from said trunk turf. This saves on unique tiles as well, auto-joining tiles, etc. should all save to a default value, and then generate at runtime.

Anyway, that's my $2...
Oct 2 2006, 11:51 pm
That's not quite the same as PNG compression - it's just simple run length encoding, whereas PNG uses the slightly-more complex DEFLATE encoding coupled with some funky predictive stuff. But yeah, it would definitely help.
Oct 3 2006, 9:48 am
Crispy wrote:
That's not quite the same as PNG compression - it's just simple run length encoding, whereas PNG uses the slightly-more complex DEFLATE encoding coupled with some funky predictive stuff.

Yeah, I just went and surfed around, and the entire runlength encoding was how I THOUGHT .png did it... Hrmph... Now I'm going to have to figure out better encoding for my .DMPNG library... Otherwise, it's false advertising... Thanks crisp!
Oct 4 2006, 5:02 pm
Um... I'm not really worried about saving space or anything. I sure didn't do anything fancy as far as encoding my savefiles. Neat ideas though. My trees and whatnot are stored as "trunks", but moreso because I keep track of them as unique entities. If someone wants to chop down a tree, they'll take the whole tree out, not just the bottom of it or whatever. I also do a lot of my own layer manipulation, since I have a lot of multi-tile atoms.
Oct 10 2006, 12:37 pm
I highly doubt you would need it- considering your already marvelous abilities with icons. But if you ever need graphics, i'd back you up. Sounds like an awesome game. I don't think i ever played it back in the day, if it was ever playable.
Oct 19 2006, 8:32 am
Always sounds impressive, interesting idea to move from dmps
Oct 25 2006, 5:49 am
More info on body parts, please!

I am interested how you handle this from a design perspective. Are they objects in a list that store equipment worn on them, wounds, etc.?
Nov 3 2006, 5:35 pm
they are actually datums (/attribute/anatomy, etc.) They store what equipment can be equipped for them, and how that equipment is displayed for them.