May progress report

The last report is already 3 months old, so it’s time for a new progress report, to show, that the project is not dead ;).

The devteam is currently busy with other stuff, that’s the reason for the development slowdown since the last months.

Changes since the last news post:

  • Binary and Xml Read/Write support for all Rpg Maker formats; most work was by glynnc
  • Because of the first point it’s “soon” possible to load and save games. Their are still some problems (e.g. games saved by easyrpg cause blackscreen in rpg_rt) to investigate before this is in a usable state.
  • Proper timestamp (time when the game was saved) calculation that is consistent with the one from rpg_rt was added by takecheeze
  • rikku2000 added a Makefile to compile for GPH-devices like GP2xWin and Cannoo; no idea how good this works, have fun trying ;)
  • The Psp build was updated by takecheeze and compiles again
  • And fdelapena was so kind to update the codelite project so you can compile the linux version now with a graphical interface :)
  • OpenRTP Project: The user andwhyisit submitted free system and system2 graphics, in the screenshot below you can see his royal theme.

Time for the Alpha

Hello everybody,

as usual its time for the “progress log”.

If you dont care scroll down and download the alpha ;).

For End Users:
Weather effects [glynnc]
Move command improvments [ghabry, glynnc]
Shop scene improvments [ghabry, glynnc, niltonpd]
Bugfixes in Tilemap code [glynnc]
Game interpreter optimizations/fixes [ghabry, zhek]
Unicode support [ghabry, glynnc]
XYZ support [glynnc]
Picture support [glynnc]
Fixes for 16bit rendering [glynnc, zhek]
PSP Port [zhek]
Fix Fullscreen and 320×240 (default resolution) [zhek]
Editor: All important Gui elements created [fdelapena]

Because of some missing features in SDL the new default renderer is now Pixman (xrender software fallback).

And there are of course again lots of fixes in the Event Interpreter. More and more games become playable.

For Developers:
Bitmap refactoring [glynnc]
SoftBitmap and PixmanBitmap classes [glynnc]
Sdl independent freetype class [glynnc]
utf8 fallback for systems without wchar [ghabry]
cmake support [takecheeze]
wip audio backend refactoring [zhek]

Missing features: No battle scene, no load or save, no vehicles, some menus are implemented in the Rpg2k-version only. Most of this is  planned for the next alpha (or beta?).

Encoding: Because the old Rpg Maker is not an unicode application you have to specify the encoding to play such games properly. Open the RPG_RT.ini in your game folder and create a new section:

[EasyRpg]
Encoding=codepage

Instead of “codepage” you have to write the codepage number, thats 1251 for cyrillic and 932 (shift jis) for japanese. Note that some fonts dont have the required glyphs. For japanese support you have to put the file msgothic.ttc in the Font directory.

Reporting problems: When the windows version crashes it creates a crash dump file in the same directory. You can send it to us for further analysis (together with a short note what you did).

Video (PSP version)

Thanks for reading. And now have fun :).

What is new, 2011?

For End Users:
Support for Window_Message (the MessageBox) and related commands [ghabry]
Interpreting many more events [glynnc]
Add GameOver and Title Scene calling [niltonpd]
Enter Hero Name scene [glynnc]
Shop scene [glynnc]
Inn support [glynnc]
Fix Touch events and character drawing [ghabry]
Center Player window on startup under Windows [zhek]
Many free MIDI files replacing the copyrighted ones [Juan Manuel]

For Developers:
Add missing chunks to reader lib [glynnc]
Work on savegame reader started [glynnc]
Refactor Audio to make it SDL-independent [ghabry]
Added more tests to the testmap [ghabry, fdelapena]
More SDL refactoring [vgvgf]
Replace Scene handler with a Stack machine, allows more flexible scene switching [ghabry]
Editor: submitted code refactor of event commands (page 1/3) [fdelapena]

And fixed a bunch of important gameplay related bugs. Now games are playable. Player is gaining alpha status again. A lot more stable than old player version (before code refactor).