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The Plan (Roughly!)
http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=33		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  PaulD [ Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:15 pm ]
Post subject:  The Plan (Roughly!)
The adventure will be broken down into around 5-6 chapters or areas in the world. 'The Tears Of The Moon' (described in the plot) is not the first place Tarn will visit. Though this is the only place that I have fully mapped out at the moment and contains 64 locations. Thus the whole game is roughly going to have about 400+ locations to visit. Other locations at this time are 'The City Of Fire','Land of Night','Crypt Of Time' and 'The Island of Dreams'. Though these may change, be omited or added to.

Im looking at using both text and graphics, with also maybee sound. Id also like to take advantage of an enhanced Electron's with disk and 64k memory. With extra memory, ill be able to enhance the room discriptions and add more puzzles and props. The idea is to be able to load pictures off disk.

There are two posibilitys of how Im going to use pictures. The first is similar to 'Twin Kingdom Valley' where a full screen picture is shown then the screen cleared and the discription printed. The second is where the screen is split, and the picture is shown in one half and the discription in the other. Both to me have pro's and cons. Maybee people could give feedback on what they prefer??? :)

Like pictures, sound could be used to enhance the feel of the discription, clocks ticking, wind blowing, door opening or closing ect. Maybee even use speech!

At the moment, you can walk around the locations and pick up objects, Im trying to come up with a display and interface format that feels right. Ive got versions running in Mode 0,1 & 2 also Mode7 (No good obviously for the Electron, though it does look nice!) to see what looks best. Id like to use colour in the discriptions as much as possible. One idea for the interface is to incorparate drop down menus, but this may be just to hard to do. :?

Ive got pages and pages of ideas for the game, so things keep changing all the time. Basicly this will be a long project. ;)
Author:  SteveO [ Fri Feb 01, 2008 10:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
Some prefer just text, but myself I like pictures as well. Of the two you've mentioned I like split screens as used in Level 9 offerings. These were quite clever using slit mode screens as well to maximise memory.

I like you idea of adding sound to increase the atmosphere.
Author:  PaulD [ Sat Feb 02, 2008 12:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
SteveO wrote:
Of the two you've mentioned I like split screens as used in Level 9 offerings.


I also like the idea of a split screen, though to get a half decent picture using mode 1, you end up with half the screen been taken up. This doesnt leave much room for a detailed discription, exits, object ect.

As you can see..

Attachment:
File comment: Test Screen 1
dragon4.jpg [36.37 KiB]
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Author:  Samwise [ Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
Just to be different (awkward), I'll throw in my 2p's worth and say I prefer full-screen pics over split-screen.

I think the purpose of the picture should be to enhance the adventure. If the text suffers because of it (i.e. is reduced to fit on the screen), I think it's a backward step.

In my ideal, and if it were possible, I'd like to see a full-screen picture when I first enter a location with a short title of that location. Then I'd press a key and the game would return to a full-screen text adventure with a complementary, gloriously long text description. If at any point I want to see that picture again, or if I return to a location I've already seen and want to see the corresponding graphic, I'd like to be able to press a hot-key like Tab to quickly toggle between the picture and the text adventure. By toggle, I mean if I am half-way through typing a sentence and then press Tab to look at the picture and then again to return to the text, the half-sentence should still be there (i.e. the description should not be "reset").

I'd also like to see the inclusion of a command like "GRAPHICS OFF/ON" to turn off the pics, so the adventure can stand on it's own.

Just some suggestions ...

Sam.
Author:  PaulD [ Sat Feb 02, 2008 7:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
This is the sort of feedback I need. :D Also what I hoped the site would be about, where people could throw ideas into the pot, and someone could put them together. :D

samwise wrote:
In my ideal, and if it were possible, I'd like to see a full-screen picture when I first enter a location with a short title of that location.


This is what Id personally prefer, its actually easier to do than a split screen. Then more depth could be given to the location discription, enhanceing the game.

samwise wrote:
I'd like to be able to press a hot-key like Tab to quickly toggle between the picture and the text adventure.


Not a bad idea, come in handy if there was something in the picture you were typing about, which is something Id thought about ie. 'Clues in the pictures'.

samwise wrote:
I'd also like to see the inclusion of a command like "GRAPHICS OFF/ON" to turn off the pics, so the adventure can stand on it's own.


Allready thought of this one. ;)

A 3rd option, that I thought about last night was a style not unlike the 'Bard Tale' series of games. Where again the screen was split in two. The top section was divided in half, on one side the picture, the other maybe your inventory displayed as icons, which using cussor keys you could highlight when you wanted to use them. The bottom half could then be the text discription.
Author:  Samwise [ Sat Feb 02, 2008 7:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
PaulD wrote:
Not a bad idea, come in handy if there was something in the picture you were typing about, which is something Id thought about ie. 'Clues in the pictures'.

PaulD wrote:
samwise wrote:
I'd also like to see the inclusion of a command like "GRAPHICS OFF/ON" to turn off the pics, so the adventure can stand on it's own.


Allready thought of this one. ;)


No problems with picture clues, so long as that doesn't mean you can't complete it in text only mode.

PaulD wrote:
A 3rd option, that I thought about last night was a style not unlike the 'Bard Tale' series of games. Where again the screen was split in two. The top section was divided in half, on one side the picture, the other maybe your inventory displayed as icons, which using cussor keys you could highlight when you wanted to use them. The bottom half could then be the text discription.


That's an enhancement of the split-screen approach, I think. I still reckon the descriptions would have to be shortened to fit that, so I'll stick with my preference for full-screen toggled graphics.

Sam.
Author:  DaveJ [ Mon Feb 11, 2008 7:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
Would it perhaps be possible to make the top half of the screen MODE1 and the bottom half of the screen MODE0 to allow longer descriptions?
Author:  FrancisL [ Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
DaveJ wrote:
Would it perhaps be possible to make the top half of the screen MODE1 and the bottom half of the screen MODE0 to allow longer descriptions?

Then you would lose the colour which separates the location description from other text (which I like).

You could perhaps have a mechanism in place to scroll long descriptions when the player presses a key.

Kind regards,

Francis.
Author:  PaulD [ Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
DaveJ wrote:
Would it perhaps be possible to make the top half of the screen MODE1 and the bottom half of the screen MODE0 to allow longer descriptions?


I had considered this, at the start, but there are several drawbacks. Allthough technically possible it's not as easy to do on the Electron as I think, if you think back, how many games actually used it. As mentioned above you have the lack of colour in Mode 0, at the moment im using Mode 1, which gives us 3 colours on the black background, thus locations, objects and directions are all in different colours, this looks more appealing than just plain white on black. Another thing I noticed with long discriptions in Mode 1, compared to Mode 0 is that its easier to read in Mode 1, you tend to lose where you are in Mode 0, espically when there's a lot to read, though this may just be me!

I would have liked to have text and pictures on the same screen, but as the game is progressing, the amount of depth that is going into the location text, has meant that nearly half the screen is filled up. You then need lines for objects and directions plus a few lines for events that are happening, such as game characters that move around the game and ar'nt allways in the same place.

At the present time it looks like its going to be a two screen process (like Twin Kingdom Valley) where the picture is shown that has maybe a few lines of text, then the screen is cleared and the full text of the location and all the relavent info printed on screen.
Author:  Samwise [ Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: The Plan (Roughly!)
Yay. :)

If you're going to have graphic clues, a toggle switch to look back at the gfx would be very useful.

Sam.
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