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I believe I borrowed my pike script from one of christopho's games, and I don't recall having any issues with it.
https://github.com/wrightmat/zbom/blob/master/data/enemies/pike_detect.lua

This is really smart, and I never would've considered it! Will definitely keep in mind for future games.

Finally got the chance to sit down and play this, and it's a really great start! I especially love the original graphic style, the music, and the humorous dialog. A couple of things I noticed - nitpicks really, since the game is so good!

• I can swim through the boat that's at the dock south of the tavern (over it - some other boats you can swim under but I feel like there should be a blocker somewhere).
• The player walks over the tall yellow plants instead of under them. You can probably fix this by setting draw_in_y_order
• I like that the player character actually speaks in this (very un-Zelda-like), but it should be more clear who's talking - either have some sort of face pic or maybe alternate the positioning of the dialog box when different characters speak.
• It might have just been in the initial (testing?) area, but I got the treasure message repeatedly even if I had already gotten that kind of treasure. No one wants to be like Skyward Sword :p
• The music died and sound effects kicked in right as I left the whisky cave (best place in the game!) but I didn't know what was going on until I got back to the village. I'd use a sensor to change the music/sounds later, and maybe even fade out/in.
• Quest Log: "Investigat[e] the Sodden Cormorant Tavern" is missing the "e"
• Having some sort of "action" HUD would be very helpful. Took me a bit to even realize you have to hit the action key to open doors!

I'll do my best to give it a try this week. I definitely want to play it!

Agreed. I love the visual style of Ruto - I think it's perfect. Your attention to detail really brings it all together! In the second map, the bushes seem a little light - is that intentional? Also I'm not sure the tree on the bottom matches the style of the rest - maybe just adjust the colors a bit?

The full AoL map consists of 169x118 tiles (of course a lot of that is ocean). Although the map from AoL contains the full map for LoZ, so the scale is obviously much larger than LttP.

My system doesn't exactly meet your criteria, but it could be a starting point that you could customize. Of note in my system, the lantern does not need to be equipped in order to offer the glow at night/dawn/dusk and the intensity does not change based on magic level.

Thanks for the thoughts so far!

llamazing, that's one approach, but basically I'm trying to avoid outlining the per-step movement of every NPC. I'm also trying to move the bulk of the code out of the NPC script and have it handled by an outside routine. Basically as I start applying movement to ten or twenty NPCs in a town, I don't want to spend weeks outlining the movement. It also would be nice to have some randomness in their routines, which is why I'm relying on the "waypoint" approach.

Satoh, I'm certain I didn't explain myself well! I like the syntax that I presented for local routine - it's simple and is capable of outlining an NPC's entire day in one line of code - as long as it can be parsed down the line correctly. In my example, the time between 8 and 10 would be spend pathfinding (with some random movement toward the location thrown in, mostly because of Solarus's current limitations in the pathfinding movement) from the "to_shop" entity to the "to_home" entity.
My problem arises with how to translate this into something that can execute routines at a set time for potentially tens of NPCs. My initial thought was to "register" each NPC's routine when they're created on the map, then have a function that re-arranges this routine in order to place each NPC/waypoint into an hour table. Mostly I'm not sure how to define these tables without having potentially 24 of them...

Hey all,

I've been thinking recently about how to create more interesting NPC routines in Lua without it being too complicated. Right now I'm on the idea of passing routines as a table from the NPC script to another scripts that parses it and stores it to be executed on the regular. I'm a little fuzzy on the details though, so I thought I'd throw my thoughts here!

Code (lua) Select Expand


local routine = { [08]="to_shop", [10]="to_house", [13]="to_mill" }
function entity:on_created()
  self:set_routine(self, routine)
end
Here is where I thought about encoding the routine as a nested table - with time (hours) in brackets and waypoint entity in quotes. Then I can parse that table out to get the individual parts of the routine.

Code (lua) Select Expand

  for k,v in pairs(routine) do
    game:add_routine(k, npc:get_name(), v)
  end

I think my next step would be to create a new table, or several tables, organized by hour so the game easily parse the correct table at the correct time (the add_routine routine I'm playing around with up there). If this table contains the entity name and waypoint entity name, then the movement should be able to be created pretty easily.

My main issue right now is the structure/format of the routine tables organized by time. I'm not an expert on Lua tables and I'm not sure how to make this without a bunch of if/then statements which would be best to avoid.

Anyway, I'd love to hear thoughts on the idea, and especially the execution thereof!

That's a pretty awesome solution! Great work Christopho!

That's interesting Diarandor, I hadn't heard that. Would these be global Lua variables, or even part of the GLOBAL table? Aren't those generally frowned upon in Lua scripting except in particular cases?

Don't mean to pile on, but I totally agree Diarandor!

If you want to use RPG Maker, then use that solution. But Solarus is not RPG Maker and does not strive to be. In fact, I would advocate that Solarus should go the opposite direction - that too many things are hard-coded and should be developed as pure Lua solutions (which Christopho and others are already working on).

Now one solution could be to develop these scripts and then have them as templates available in the editor. Want to add a basic menu? Click a button and it adds the code in automatically, with plenty of comments so the game developer knows what to change to get the desired result. Same with basic item types, character scripts, etc. I think this could present an interesting balance and keep the power of the editor/engine while making it more user friendly.

Clearly most people didn't actually read the article, which is really frustrating, but also totally normal on the internet. No one involved in the Solarus engine is actually concerned with DMCA because of the smart way Christopho separated the engine, games, and resources. Me, on the other hand - a little worried, lol

PC Gamer did an awesome little article on our own Christopho and his excellent engine, Solarus! If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the read! 

http://www.pcgamer.com/zeldas-most-dedicated-fan-game-developers-built-an-engine-anyone-can-use/

Great to see good work recognized, and we all know that Christopho has done some great work with Solarus!

Maximini, please log any further bugs as issues on the github page at https://github.com/wrightmat/zbom/issues. Thanks!