Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Discuss anything in general about the IceBlink Engine + Toolset project (or anything else) here.
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slowdive
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by slowdive »

I adjusted the save/load screen to allow one serversave, one autosave, and 10 regular saves:
IBbasic39.png
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What do you think?

The autosave will trigger before each encounter and when called by the module author via script (either trigger script or conversation action).
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Dorateen
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by Dorateen »

10 saves is nice. Would it be possible to fit the text for the Server save into the farme of the button? Maybe all lowercase letters, if that would help fit? Other than that, looks good.
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slowdive
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

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Dorateen wrote: Thu Oct 07, 2021 2:47 pm 10 saves is nice. Would it be possible to fit the text for the Server save into the farme of the button? Maybe all lowercase letters, if that would help fit? Other than that, looks good.
Lower and Upper case take up the same space in IBbasic (the font is really just bitmap images). Maybe I should change it to say "Server" instead of "ServerSave"? Or maybe "ServrSav"? I am only reserving 8 characters for that part for either "ServrSav", "AutoSave", or PcName. If the PC name is less than 8 characters, it just prints the name like "Jarek" which is only 5 characters. If the PC name is more than 8 characters, it will only print the first 8 characters like "Lord Zur" for Lord Zurak. I'm accounting for the fact that XP could go into 5 digits and time could get to 6 digits. I'm accounting for 26 characters total so 8 for name, 7 for separators and labels ( , and : and XP and T ), 5 for XP, and 6 for world time.
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slowdive
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by slowdive »

I added a tab feature to the IBbasic toolset so it works similar to the IB toolset where you can switch quickly between open areas, convos, and encounters. The "X" button will save the module and close all open areas, encounters, and convos (basically "closing" all tabs). The "A" tabs are for areas, "E" for encounters, and "C" for conversations. As you open an area, convo, or encounter the number of tabs increases.
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slowdive
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by slowdive »

I updated IBbasic to now have area music and area ambient sounds. The ambient sounds just loop forever, but the area music has a random delay time between 1 and 10 seconds plus whatever default delay time the builder selects for that area. So if the builder selects a value of 60000 ms for the delay time for the current area music delay, the end result will be somewhere between a 61 and 70 second delay before starting up the area music again. The ambient sounds will keep playing the whole time. If the builder selects 0 ms for the delay time, the engine will not add the 1-10 second random delay and the end result will be a 1ms (music player won't accept a value of 0) delay before playing the area music again.

This should be great for Hearkenwold, Raventhal, Zach's mods, and any others that have area music. I can now add appropriate ambient sounds for each area as well such as indoor, cave, creek, castle, forest, etc. I tested it out in Lanterna and it sounds great to have the two playing together. As of now, the area music and ambient sounds share the same volume level so make sure they work well together. Eventually, I'll give the player the option to adjust those two volumes separately, but if the builder sets them up well, the player shouldn't have to make any adjustments.
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by slowdive »

POLL QUESTION:
I am thinking of adding an encumbrance system to IBbasic that is at party level. It would sum up the strength bonuses of each PC and compare to the total weight of all equipped items and items in inventory. This assumes that the party will distribute the load so that everyone is equally encumbered (aka, the party works well together, haha). If they go above a certain value, all PCs will have a movement penalty in combat and more time passes on each square on the main map. If the value gets too large, it may even result in no movement (moves set to zero) in combat (like you are under a web spell) and lots of time per square on main map (large multiplier on the existing area's TimePerSquare value).

I will make it optional based on a module level flag (useEncumbranceSystem). All items will default to weight value = 1, but if your module is not using the system it really won't matter what value each item has.

Thoughts or suggestions?
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Dorateen
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by Dorateen »

I love the idea of an encumbrance system, so that sounds good to me. I suppose it is easier to handle as party-wide, rather than individual characters just for items equipped? I guess it will incentivize players to drop unneeded items, like those extra suits of armor.

On that note, do you think this might make it desirable for characters to drop items in the game, that could be picked up later? If that is even possible. Something like placing items back into a container, and then able to access the container to pick up again.
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slowdive
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by slowdive »

That's a good point. I could implement a screen that is similar to the "shop" screen where you can move items back and forth from a container. Probably have a button on the container screen that says "Place Items" which will take you to the "shop" like screen. I think containers are already able to track changes in their inventory so adding items shouldn't cause issues for save files or container changes made from the toolset after someone had a save game where they had already add/removed items from that container.
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

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I posted version 1.0.14 which should be the last beta version of IBbasic. Once all the bugs are found and fixed, I be able to release the first official (non-beta) version of IBbasic, yeah! :D

It is here at the NW Vault for PC:
https://neverwintervault.org/project/ic ... inetoolset

and here on Google Play for Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... .ibbasicjr
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Re: Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

Post by slowdive »

I copied over the code for the new General Caster AI into IB and started to play test it in "Proving Grounds" module. So far it seems like it is working as intended, but it'll need more testing I'm sure. I'll post it as v204 once I get a few bug fixes in as well. For v205, I'll try and add the d20 screen and split attacks as well as more bug fixes.
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