RPG in a Box News

Over the past month I've been slowly but surely making progress on v0.5 and the migration to Godot 3.0. I said this in my last update, but I can't say enough how much I appreciate everyone's patience as I work through this stage of development, especially considering the constraint it puts on adding any new major features to v0.4.x.

While I've been working on the new Map Editor implementation and general editor functionality, my wife took some time and made these awesome new dungeon assets to include in my official example game! These will eventually be included in the sample assets that come bundled with RPG in a Box.



In regards to the new editors, I've been focusing on building out the Map Editor further, various tweaks to the Voxel Editor, and the usual bug fixes. I don't have many visual things to showcase, however there are some small but interesting new features that will be useful.

For the Map Editor, I added a new shortcut key that will temporarily hide any "extras" (navigation paths, grid lines, marker icons, etc.) while the key is being pressed. This allows you to easily see what the map looks like without needing to individually disable each of the indicators from the toolbar.



Another small but useful feature coming to the Voxel Editor in v0.5 is a "frame length multiplier" setting that can be adjusted for each frame of a voxel model. This will give you a lot more control over animations. For example, for the dripping pipe below I've changed the frame length value for the last frame to a higher value so there is a delay in the animation between drips. Currently you would have to insert a lot of duplicate frames to achieve this effect.




Since I've received feedback from several people about including some sort of built-in documentation and/or guides, I thought it would be cool to implement an offline documentation viewer based on the existing wiki pages available on my main website. So I spent about a week writing a tool to automatically generate a set of UI components from the DokuWiki sources. Godot's wonderful scene system made this quite simple to do!



At this point, my tool will convert the reference pages for all of the scripting functions (including clickable links between pages), but I still need to make it a bit more flexible so it works on other documentation like guides and tutorials. I also plan to add some search functionality so you can search by keyword. I'm excited about this as it will allow me to easily include a self-contained help system that doesn't require you to be online or leave the application.




I recently updated the Demo Game Hub with a small PETSCII-style world! As with the other areas within the Demo Game Hub, there's not much gameplay-wise, but it's a great way to explore one of the many possible visual styles you can achieve with RPG in a Box. :)



With the addition of the PETSCII-style game, there are now three areas to explore, each of which can be accessed from the main hub level. The Demo Game Hub is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and can be downloaded for free on Itch.io here: Demo Game Hub on Itch.io




I don't have much in the way of other news, but as of earlier this month (March 6th, specifically) it's been three years since I first announced the start of RPG in a Box! It's hard to believe it's been that long. Now that I'm working full time on it, I'm really excited about what this next year will bring, and I expect a ton of progress to be made. Thanks so much to everyone, both those who have been following from the beginning and those who have just discovered RPG in a Box. Your support is very much appreciated!



If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Once again, thank you for reading and for your continued support! :)

Check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my progress in real-time!

Hello again! It's hard to believe it's already been a month since my last development update. I truly appreciate everyone's patience as I work my way through a lot of repetitive work to get the existing functionality ported over to Godot 3.0. I'm quite eager myself to move onto major new features, and I can imagine everyone else is as well! Things are slowly but surely starting to come together. :)


These past few weeks I have mostly been focusing on the Map Editor and related functionality. In parallel, I'm also trying to keep the game migration tools in the currently released version up-to-date to ensure that the process of migrating your existing projects will be as painless as possible.

As with the Voxel Editor, I've also been implementing some minor new features and usability improvements here and there as I go to make v0.5 even better!



Below is a closer look at the improved visual indicators displayed for the navigation paths in your map. Small cubes are displayed at each intersection now (i.e. the center of the tile) and the paths themselves will follow the terrain more closely than in the current version.



A minor new feature I added is a "crosshair" for the Map Editor that will display when placing resources into the map. This should be useful as a guide for lining up tiles and objects, and to generally have a better feel for exactly where the placement will occur.



Tiles now have a "surface level" setting that can be adjusted to make the placement of related tiles less tedious. For example, for my set of grass and water tiles, you can set their surface level to the grass height, and the Map Editor will automatically adjust the vertical placement accordingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D72_BEr0AAE
Some of the more recent effort has involved getting the Map Properties panel implemented and fully working so you can modify things like the light/shadow settings, camera override, "on load" script", etc. I've also played around a bit here and there with some of the new features available in Godot 3.0, one being GI (Global Illumination) Probe. As you can see in the before and after images below, this can really improve the way objects are illuminated, so I may have to add this as an option at some point!




I mentioned my "Demo Game Hub" in the last development update, but it wasn't quite released at that point, so I thought I'd share about it again in case anyone is interested in trying it out. The hub currently allows you to try out the official example game (standard or first-person camera) and an area from Ultima V (Iolo's Hut). I'm hoping to add some more of my demo maps to it in the coming weeks!

Demo Game Hub on Itch.io: Zeromatrix.itch.io



On a note related to Godot (the engine RPG in a Box is built with), they made an announcement that the engine would be transitioning from OpenGL ES 3.0 to Vulkan for its backend, which is exciting news! If you're interested, you can read more details about the announcement here: Godotengine.org

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Once again, thank you for reading and for your continued support! :)

Hello again! I hope everyone has had a great 2018 so far. During January I've mostly been focused on "behind the scenes" type of work for the new version of RPG in a Box using Godot 3.0, and I I've recently made it through to some of the more interesting editor aspects. There wasn't really enough content to post one of these detailed updates at the middle of the month, but I have a few cool things to share now! Continue reading for some screenshots and info about what I've been working on.


This past week I've put some focus into getting the basics of the new Map Editor up and running. With a similar approach that I took with the Voxel Editor, I am taking this opportunity to make a lot of usability improvements to the Map Editor and will hopefully end up with an editor that's easier and more fun to build with! One of the areas of improvement will be the selection tool. It will have a "box" mode to let you easily select multiple tiles at once, even across multiple layers.



The "Place" tool will also be getting some much needed attention. I've implemented a "box" mode for this tool as well that allows you to easily place large areas of the same tile at once.



In addition to work on the Map Editor itself, I've also been making updates to the migration tool, which will allow you to export your existing game projects to v0.5. Currently, the migration tool will convert your tiles, objects, characters, maps, and scripts over to the new format. Maps only include tiles right now, but I will be expanding that out in parallel with the Map Editor functionality.


Earlier in the month I spent some time getting most of the functionality and UI converted over to the new Script Editor. The video below is a bit outdated already, but it's a good representation of the editor's appearance. I've also started adding some new configurable settings for each of the editors as I go, one of which includes the ability to customize the node connection line colors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0F8fHwamQ4
More recently, I implemented drag-and-drop support for inserting new nodes into the visual script graph! You can still double-click an item to add it to the center of the view, but the drag-and-drop feature will make it easier to initially place nodes where you want them. Also, the "available node" list will now be located on the "Editor Tools" tab to free up some space for the visual script.




Not directly related to development, but worth mentioning, is a "Demo Game Hub" idea I've been working on as a way for the community to try out some small example/demo games. I think this will be helpful in getting a feel for what can be made with RPG in a Box, and the hub will even be a game itself of sorts! The first release of the Demo Game Hub (which I hope to make available this weekend) will include the official example game and Iolo's hut from Ultima V.






For anyone interested in following my progress on RPG in a Box in real-time, my public Trello board is now up and running! I've been keeping the board up to date as I complete tasks each day, so it's a great way to get insight into what I'm currently working on.

Trello board for RPG in a Box: https://trello.com/b/DOouCUhR



On a different note, the Godot 3.0 stable release was on the 29th which is really exciting! Godot is a free and open-source engine and is what I am building RPG in a Box with. I'd definitely recommend checking it out if you're looking for a general purpose engine or are interested in getting into game development. Kudos to Juan and all of the developers/contributors and the hard work they've put into the engine!

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Thank you for reading and for your support! :)

Hi everyone! I created a pinned discussion about this, but I thought it would be helpful to post an announcement as well. If anyone is interested in following my progress on RPG in a Box, you can check out my public Trello board here:

https://trello.com/b/DOouCUhR

I've been maintaining the "To Do" list in real-time, so it's a great way to stay up-to-date as I work through tasks and complete them. The "Ideas/Planned" list will continue to be expanded with items from my existing notes and any new ideas that come to mind.

Thanks for the continued support, and I hope everyone is having a great week! :)