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IDEA: Adding more small varieties in the game.

Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2020 4:52 pm
by SLAPPYHAPPY2000
This isn't really anything groundbreaking new, but I believe that it will help with things a lot.

First: Maybe increase the capacity of custom elements in the game? I was looking in the levels for Alan Bond's "Snake Bite" the other day, and noticed that he used up every single slot of the custom elements available. But he was still only able to make 40 levels with his resources? Imagine what he could have done if we had like 500 custom elements to use! Possibilities with more advanced levels suddenly open up, allowing for more diversity and creativity! I mean, we got a Mirror Magic engine for level creation before we got more custom element slots! No offense, but people use the regular engines more than the Mirror Magic engines, so this is probably my highest requested thing.
Group elements are also kind of worth mentioning, but group elements are not used quite as much, so I'll leave that be.

Second: MORE ENVELOPES!!! I know most people only use one per stage, but for the people who want to make something heavily story-oriented (which will be showcased in my level-set), I think that increasing the amount of envelopes from 4 to something like 20 would be pretty neat for people.

Third: I noticed that regular emeralds have an animation for getting snapped while the colorful gems sort of just... disappear? I think that adding in these small animations would be pretty nifty.

These changes are all really minor in my book, so implementing them probably wouldn't be that hard for you. And if you don't want to implement them, that is perfectly fine. But I think that adding in these small changes to the game would make the Rocks'N'Diamonds experience a whole lot better for everyone. :D

Re: IDEA: Adding more small varieties in the game.

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2020 6:22 pm
by Eizzoux
SLAPPYHAPPY2000 wrote: Thu Jun 04, 2020 4:52 pm First: Maybe increase the capacity of custom elements in the game? I was looking in the levels for Alan Bond's "Snake Bite" the other day, and noticed that he used up every single slot of the custom elements available. But he was still only able to make 40 levels with his resources? Imagine what he could have done if we had like 500 custom elements to use! Possibilities with more advanced levels suddenly open up, allowing for more diversity and creativity! I mean, we got a Mirror Magic engine for level creation before we got more custom element slots! No offense, but people use the regular engines more than the Mirror Magic engines, so this is probably my highest requested thing.
Group elements are also kind of worth mentioning, but group elements are not used quite as much, so I'll leave that be.
Yeah, that could be... I guess somewhat more useful, but yet a lot of pain in the butt to program each of them and add individual graphics for them.
SLAPPYHAPPY2000 wrote: Thu Jun 04, 2020 4:52 pm Second: MORE ENVELOPES!!! I know most people only use one per stage, but for the people who want to make something heavily story-oriented (which will be showcased in my level-set), I think that increasing the amount of envelopes from 4 to something like 20 would be pretty neat for people.
Yeah, I made a similar topic a while ago. Holger mentioned that there could be at least 8 envelopes to recreate DC3 style levels, since DC3 has 8 envelopes, not just four. I think there could be an interesting way to implement custom envelope feature for each custom element, even though that sounds as ridiculous as increasing amount of CEs.
SLAPPYHAPPY2000 wrote: Thu Jun 04, 2020 4:52 pm Third: I noticed that regular emeralds have an animation for getting snapped while the colorful gems sort of just... disappear? I think that adding in these small animations would be pretty nifty.
Pretty simple thing to change manually, I did that a while ago, here. But yeah, I agree, that is somewhat weird that some vanilla elements have no collecting or digging anims.

Re: IDEA: Adding more small varieties in the game.

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2020 7:00 pm
by Holger
Increasing the number of custom elements would be quite easy (changing a number in the source code and add some graphics definitions, which is also done more or less automatically by the build system).

But I don't think that it's necessary -- 256 custom elements is already a little bit too much for most cases, I think (even though Alan Bond and Juergen Bonhagen were able to really make use of them).

Regarding Snake Bite: The number of levels of that set does not really correlate to the number of custom elements, as those levels all use the same level template anyway.

But then... anybody who has already released something of the complexity of Snake Bite or Zelda might convince me that more CEs are really necessary. Until then, I think that the current number of 256 CEs is a good upper limit. Limited ressources will in fact help your creativity. ;-)

A few more envelopes (eight instead of four) might be useful for creating "Diamond Caves II" style levels, yes.

Regarding missing animations for collecting/snapping certain gems: Yeah, that's right. And although Eizzoux is right that you can just define them yourself, this would not fix existing (classic) level sets (although you can simply override the classic graphics with your improved ones, just like Eizzoux did). The main problem is that there are some older level sets with custom graphics (when there was no "graphicsinfo.conf" (GIC) yet) that would be messed up by just adding more "collecting gem" animations (as you would then have redefined default graphics, but still the (then new) classic style "collecting" animations).

This issue could theoretically be solved by detecting which element graphics have been redefined by replacing classic graphics files, and mark those element graphics as redefined just like the GIC approach does.

Re: IDEA: Adding more small varieties in the game.

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2020 8:26 pm
by SLAPPYHAPPY2000
Holger,

I see your point with Snake Bite having a template being made with all of the elements beforehand. My mistake :? .
However you said, "...anybody who has already released something of the complexity of Snake Bite or Zelda might convince me that more CEs are really necessary..." to which, I say,
YES, I am creating a huge almighty level-set in R'n'D, and YES, I am trying my hardest to make my level-set stand out as much as Snake Bite or Zelda, with graphical complexity and CE uniqueness (plus some stuff that has never been done before", so that is exactly why I asked for more custom elements.
I am going to try and continue making my level-set with the given resources now, but consider adding more CEs! (no pressure but plz consider).

8 envelopes was less than I was hoping for you to add, but why should complain? I'm getting more envelopes, that's what I wanted for my story based level-set.

With the colorful gems, I understand, and I will accept the fact that they might ruin other artwork for levels.

Thanks for responding to this post, and I hope you respond to this reply as well (and maybe create closure regarding CEs).