Tag: Player

Post-Summer progress report

Nearly 5 months again without an update. But it was summer, so we were more outside instead of coding inside :). A short summary of latest additions:

For Players:

  • RPG2k3 Status Scene (#127)
  • Fix Picture rotation (was rotating around the wrong spot) (#132)
  • Other minor fixes

For Developers:

  • Fixes in the build process for Linux distros (#128)

Furthermore lots of development is done in branches (A branch is developed independend from the main codebase and is merged into it when ready):

  • mruby by take-cheeze: Featuring RGSS-like embedded ruby scripting (as you know from RPG XP and co. but for 2000/2003 in our case). It also adds a game browser to allow starting games that are not in the current directory. Furthermore a new lcf file reader is provided that is more lightweight (comparison: Hero’s Realm needs around 200 MB RAM in RPG_RT and a bit more in Player and only 50 MB with the new reader).
  • battle by Ghabry: Featuring RPG Maker 2000/2003 battle systems. The 2000 system is working in most parts, 2003 is currently at the beginning of the development. Both systems are quite similiar except that 2003 is not turn based so many code can be shared.
  • debug by MarianoGNU: Adds the debug scenes (that you can call via F9 in TestPlay mode). Development finished, merge is pending.
  • SDL2 by Ghabry: Adds support for SDL2. That is the newest version of SDL (we are currently using 1.2) and provides abstraction for Graphics, Audio and Input, was just released a month ago featuring hardware acceleration (= speedup) and official iOS and Android support. Currently only the rendering on the screen is done via hardware, rest is in Software (Pixman)

Our jenkins build bot was down for some weeks because of a software failure. Some nightly builds are back up now.

Video of the battle system. The video is quite old and doesn’t show the current development state, for should be enough for a proof :). (sorry for the bad video quality)

(Download the Video)

Bugfix Release 0.1.1 (EV0002)

As promised we want to speed up our release process. Today we want to release a minor update that fixes some bugs that were encountered in EV0001, so this is basicly EV0002 and provides some additional features.

If you don’t want to read about the changes you can grab the program directly in our download section.

Now the changelog:

  • Linux: Support for detecting the RTP path by reading the Wine Windows registry (this means you can install the RTP via Wine)
  • Fixes for the Android build system (still not working, are you an Android developer? Contact us!)
  • Wii support
  • Windows 98 support (compile with VS2005)
  • For developers: Switched to Javadoc comment style and updated Doxygen documentation with new features (e.g. call graphs) (issue #67)

Gameplay related: (when this fixes an issue in a specific game it is mentioned in [brackets])

  • Fake Battle System. The battle itself doesn’t work but you can select the outcome (Victory, Defeat (only for scripted defeats, doesn’t trigger a Game over) and Escape). Far away from being perfect but better then terminating like in 0.1
  • Fix integer overflow on large maps (resulting in incorrect passability checks)[Hero’s Realm]
  • Don’t restart BGM if the song is the same [Hero’s Realm]
  • Fix passability check for event layer chipset tiles (issue #121) [Dragon Warrior 1 Remix]
  • Fix transparency of autotiles (resulted in an orange tileset when parallax backgrounds were used, issue #104) [Dragon Slayer Gaiden] [Yumme Nikki]
  • When a party member is on the maximum level, instead of displaying “——–” the current experience is displayed now, because this was confusing
  • Adjusting music volume (needs support in SDL_mixer, probably not working for all files)
  • MessageBoxes close now when a wait event occurs, should fix many not closing message boxes
  • Experience and Level system implemented
  • Switch command: Fixed indirect switch setting via variable
  • States (Death, Poison, …): Display correct state in menu
  • Fix item count underflowing (from 0 to 99) when an item that the player didn’t have was decresed
  • Fix change hero sprite command
  • Move event: Player transparency

The Player is still not suitable for daily use, please report any bugs you encounter in games so we can make it better. Thanks!

Player running on antique Hard- and Software

In our ongoing approach to port the EasyRPG Player to highly important platforms we want to provide a glance at our newest port supporting Windows 98.

In 2012 the market share of Windows 98, 2000 and NT together was an incredible high value of 0.13% so a port was totally worth it.

The hardware and software requirements of the application are minimal. You only need an Intel Pentium 2 or newer or an AMD K6 or newer. Operating system: Any Windows since Windows 98.

Player under Windows 98 (Click for full size)

Player was run on a 350 Mhz Pentium II system. With resolution 640×480 the test map runs at 30 FPS, with 320×240 at 60 FPS. The strange chipset is our placeholder chipset until somebody draws a new one for us (maybe you?).

We render at 32bit, the output quality is improved compared to RPG_RT on color intensive scenes but our feature that allows playing of games from other countries (e.g. Japanese) on a european Windows is gone because of operating system limitations (limited Unicode support).

Time for some retro feeling! Get your old PC down from the attic, remove the dust and enjoy. (needs the Microsoft Layer for Unicode, place unicows.dll in the same directory as Player.exe, if it crashes on startup the DLL is missing)

And something completly different: The Wii nightly build is back and 0.1 builds for Caanoo and Pandora (thx Rikku and Kazuki) were contributed.