Rathmor preview Aug 2010 (Updated 19/8/10)

[Verdite]

Just a sec diver... The grass i posted is my grass. Its not the SoM grass. The SoM Grass i agree has way too many pixels.

[Verdite]

Updated the first page.

[dmpdesign]

Good news indeed.

So when is the big day we see a demo?!?! :)

[Holy_Diver]

Som's item capacity is pretty huge.

Just remember, first rule for game artists. Pick a standard and stick with it. If one item looks better than the others, that means you either have to make all the others look better, or make that item look worse. Consistency is more important than any single graphic. Just some general advice for anyone in this sort of situation.

[Verdite]

I need more than 249 item slots ideally.

Is there any way to increase it?

[Holy_Diver]

You can always save some of those for the sequel!? Or attempt the elusive "multi-disc" game... assuming some of the items become obsolete. Seriously, that's a lot of items to play with

[Verdite]

I was thinking more potentially than for the prologue. While im on this subject, the items that look a bit different to my more recent ones will be included, mainly because the prologue is the intro and in essence the test subject for the main Rathmor, and i would prefer it if most of my work made it into the game somehow.

Because i wont be using alot of permanent objects in my game, there will be object type items, that will be linked via counters.

[dmpdesign]

I know ways to get around 1024 map pieces in a single project, however I dont know a way to get more than 250 items.

I suppose you could 'try' to edit the actual item.prm and item.pr2 files to make room for more, however you would have to do all the editing via a hex editor and not through the SOM editors. ‎  Whether or not the game.exe can reference information past 250 is beyond me (my guess is it cannot, but you never know until you try).

[dmpdesign]

Thinking a bit more on this Verdite...if you can indeed mod a .prm and .pr2 file to go beyond what was originally intended (say 500 items instead of 250) it will actually be a heck of a lot of work to get it functional in game, maybe to the point where the current SOM editor could not be used.

The reason I say this is everything referencing the item (any events that reference it, its placement on the map, in your inventory etc) likely are limited to the 250 count. ‎  When you create the map where the item is received for instance, to even place the item on the map you would need to be able to add items beyond the 250 capacity via the editor. ‎  I suppose it is feasible that if you added item 249, then edited the map.prx file (the file that tells SOM what items/objects etc are on the map) with a hex editor and changed the reference to an item (say item 300 for example) you might get it to work...but I wonder at what cost. ‎  I would wager if you were able to fool the system in this manner, that at the very least, the map would be considered corrupted if you attempted to do anything with the item via the map editor.

I can toy with this sometime soon if it is a definite must for your game, but if you can squeeze your item list down to 249 etc that would probably be the best choice.

[Holy_Diver]

If it were possible to extend those numbers it would require a lot of work. It is possible in technical terms, but very probably far from practical.

If you had to go over 250 items, and like you say (I think) a lot of your items are temporary in nature. Then it would be more reasonable to pursue a "multi-disc" game. Never been done, but it should be theoretically possible.

Basically to do that you just make two projects / two game builds. The counters must be identical. And the map numbers cannot overlap. So like if you needed the same map in disc2 you would have to copy it into an unused map slot in the second project space, and probably you'd want to change it up a little, because the monster spawn info would get lost for example.

Beyond that the only items which must be on both "discs" are the ones the player can carry over across discs.

There's no guarantee it will work, but I think it will. And if you get that close I could try to do some stuff with Ex to make it work, but I think it would work without Ex.

It's multidisc in the sense you'd lock the player in on their last save spot. Then they'd have to start the next game with the same save data.

You could either edit the file paths in the exe image, or use Ex to have a common save directory.