Hello again, everyone! I'm happy to say I've returned from my vacation feeling refreshed and very motivated to continue working on RPG in a Box! This past week I focused on getting the new script parser implementation mostly finished up, but (as I mentioned prior to my break) I still have some leftover updates to share from before.

I'd like for v0.5 to support item stacking in the player's inventory and item containers, so I started adding some initial functionality in preparation for this. In its current state, you can specify if an item is stackable (and its stack limit) from the Item Editor.



I've also continued to implement and test various scripting functions into the new game engine for v0.5. The GIF below shows a script being triggered to test the "while" loop, "Give Item", and "Wait" functions by giving an item to the player every half second.



As another example, the GIF below shows the "Set Group Light Color" function being tested by changing the color of the torches's light sources. This makes use of the grouping functionality available in the Map Editor to group multiple entities together.



In the Map Editor, I made a small update so that objects and navigation paths will now automatically adjust up/down when a tile is replaced with another of differing height.



Also, the scripting language and visual editor was updated to support local variables! This should make it easier to store and manipulate values that are only needed within the scope of a script.



Lastly, I went through and added helpful error messages that will display in the new debug console. For example, if you attempt to use the "Add Tile" function but specify an invalid tile name, an error message will display to indicate this.



Thank you so much for reading and for your continued support! Over the coming several months I plan to put a lot of focus on the game engine/gameplay side of things. I'll also be polishing the editors and implementing any remaining functionality still needed for the v0.5 release. Don't forget to check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my development progress in real-time!

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Thanks again! :)

Hello again! I hope everyone is having a great day. Over the past month or so, I've been putting a lot of time into the game logic side of things, in particular the implementation of scripting function logic. I'm currently up to 31 of 73 functions completed, so almost halfway there! The debug console has been really convenient for testing each function as I work through them. Continue reading for a look at a few of these in action, as well as updates on the Map Editor.

At this point I still need to implement a lot of the gameplay logic to allow the characters to move around and interact with the map, but in the meantime I've been implementing the scripting logic for functions that aren't reliant on this. I've included a few examples below!

Fade In/Out: Can be used to transition between segments of a cutscene or as a way to hide visual modifications to the scene (e.g. removing a character or object).



Add Tile: Adds a tile at the specified coordinate within the map. You can assign it an entity ID and then use "Modify Navigation" to configure navigation paths. As seen in the GIF below, I've also added commands ("nav on" and "nav off") to enable/disable the display of navigation paths for debugging purposes!



Set Animation Speed: Changes the speed of an animation (in frames per second) for the specified entity. You can use this in conjunction with "Set Movement Speed" to speed up or slow down a character's movement.



Since my last update, I've also been migrating some existing functionality over to the new Map Editor for v0.5 and adding small new features here and there as I go.

Grouping and related features are now completely implemented in v0.5. By adding tiles and objects to a group, you can hide/show them in the editor, or use them for scripting in your game, for example with the "Play Group Animation" or "Hide Group" functions.



A feature that will be new to v0.5 is the Fill tool. This will allow you to easily replace tiles of one type with another. The "contiguous" checkbox can be toggled to determine which tiles are affected.



Although it's a bit uninteresting compared to other things, I think providing an Undo/Redo system is important, so I've been making sure actions can be undone when possible, for example placement of tiles as shown below!



Another small new feature is the "Override Existing" checkbox available when placing tiles into a map. Previously, tiles would always be overridden, but this option will give more control when creating the map.



I updated the collage image to include a few more screenshots of RPG in a Box projects created by the community and myself. It's exciting to see this grow, and I really look forward to seeing what else the community creates in the future!



Over the past week or so I've been mostly focused on some important script parser rework, which will hopefully result in a more optimized and flexible parser. Just so everyone is aware, next week I'll be taking a short break to get some much needed rest, but I'll be jumping right back in the following week! At that point, that plan is to finish up the script parser work and resume implementation of gameplay logic into the engine. I'll also be posting another update at that time with some additional media that I cut from this post to keep it to a reasonable length.

Thank you so much for reading and for your continued support! Don't forget to check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my development progress in real-time!

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Thanks again! :rbiggrin:

Hi again, everyone! This update is a bit later than I anticipated, but I've made great progress in the second half of June. Continue reading below for some highlights of what I've been working on!

I'm excited to say that I've been working on a brand new and improved Dialogue Editor design for v0.5! The overall usage will be similar, but I think the new design will be better suited for writing dialogue. The nodes will be stacked in a vertical flow and can be collapsed, for example to only show a specific route in the dialogue that you're focused on. More to come on this in later updates!



The scripting language in v0.5 will now include a function to print information to the debug console as desired. This function can be used to check the value of a property while the game is running, for example, or inserted into a script to troubleshoot a scenario that isn't working properly.



Another set of features I've been working on recently relates to game localization. Firstly, I added the ability to import a translations spreadsheet via a CSV file, similar to the current version. In addition to importing, you'll now also be able to edit your translation data or add to it from with the Game Configuration dialog.



I also just finished up implementing the option to localize your game's item data. This will be a new feature to v0.5! When localization is enabled, you'll be able to switch between your game's configured locales and populate the item names and descriptions directly within the Item Editor.



The "Cursors" section of the Game Configuration dialog for overriding built-in cursor images and setting up custom cursors is now migrated over to v0.5. This functionality will be mostly identical to the current version, but it's nice to have one more feature out of the way!



Lastly, I wanted to share a screenshot from "The Dungeon of Astryon", a game currently being created with RPG in a Box by community member Jiminus. The dungeon looks like it will be a lot of fun to explore, and I'm looking forward to seeing his game progress!



Thank you so much for reading and for your continued support! Don't forget to check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my development progress in real-time!

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Thanks again! :)

Hello everyone! I decided to go ahead and post an update mid-June since I've collected enough interesting GIFs and screenshots so far. :) I'm still pushing forward on migrating everything over to Godot 3.0 (with the occasional new feature) for the v0.5 release planned for sometime later this year.

One new feature for the Map Editor that should be quite useful is a "Fill" tool for replacing existing tiles with a different type. This will include a "contiguous" option for limiting which tiles are affected.



The "Randomize Rotation" option is now implemented in the new Map Editor as shown below. This isn't a new feature entirely, but it will work along with the new "box" mode (making it easier to get a satisfactory pattern when placing a large area of ground tiles, for example).



The new Voxel Editor now displays a "ground" surface underneath the model by default. This is to help preview light source settings and generally give a better sense of space. The ground can be toggled on and off as desired. The bioprinter model is from lectronice's Phalanstery, a game being developed with RPG in a Box.



I've also been making some improvements to the Script Editor. The most notable is the ability to manually edit a script's source code. Once changes are applied, the visual graph will be automatically updated. Also, support for "while" loops was added to both the currently available version (v0.4.9.18) and v0.5.



I may have briefly mentioned this before, but I will be in v0.5 as your guide if you ever need any help! Simply drag and drop my icon from the top right corner onto a component to open its related documentation if available. Of course, always feel free to contact the real me as well!



This week I've also started building out the new Dialogue Editor - more to come on that in my next update! As with the other editors, I'll be making some improvements as I work through the effort, in particular similar usability improvements that were made to the Script Editor since they share a lot of functionality.

I finally took a bit of time here and there recently to finish up the little desert racing game I was working on (which will be included in the Demo Game Hub soon)! Some of the base assets were originally created for a Getting Started tutorial, but I thought it would be cool to expand it into a small example game where you could race other NPC cars. More on this in my next update, as well! (Click the image below for a larger version.)



Thank you so much for reading and for your continued support! Don't forget to check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my development progress in real-time!

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Thanks so much again! :)

Hi again! I hope everyone has had a great month. I've mostly been focusing on editor-related tasks, in particular for the Theme Editor, Main Menu Editor, and Credits Editor. At this point I now have a lot of their primary functionality implemented now for v0.5, so it will be nice to move back onto some more interesting features!

As mentioned in last month's update, the new Theme Editor will include support for multiple themes, for example to allow a unique theme for each character, game area, chapter, etc. The video below gives a brief overview of the Theme Editor and shows some of the new settings that are available!

https://youtu.be/Ykkae4OEas0
The updated Credits Editor also includes some new settings to allow better customization of your game's credits roll, as well as a feature to preview the credits as they will appear in-game.



This past week I also finished up the base implementation of the new Main Menu Editor. There's still some minor work yet to be completed on this editor, but it's mostly ready to go!



To help prepare for the upcoming effort of getting the game engine re-implemented for v0.5, I started creating an improved debug console for testing scripts and such. As with the current version, this will be an option in your game configuration that can be enabled to help debug or test scenarios for your game. The console should be more user friendly and will include a log and command history.



Lastly, the Asset Library was migrated over completely, including both the models and music sections. It's one step closer to the v0.5 release, which I am very eager to share with everyone!



I finally took the time recently to add some detailed information and graphics to my Steam store page for anyone wanting to learn more about what RPG in a Box is. You can view the store page here. Wishlists and follows are always very much appreciated! :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/498310



Don't forget to check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my development progress in real-time!

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here.

As always, thank you so much for reading and for your continued support!

Hi again, everyone! Over the past month I've continued focusing on the migration of functionality over for the big v0.5 release. I probably have at least a few more months of effort remaining to get everything ported and ready, but I feel like I've finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel! :)

Before I cover the development updates, I wanted to share this new collage I put together containing various games, demos, and example maps that have been created with RPG in a Box. It's exciting to see the diversity of what can be made and I look forward to seeing what else the community creates!



Although I took a bit of a break from the Map Editor to focus on other areas, I was able to finish up some improvements to the navigation system, specifically a simpler method for adding, modifying, and removing paths. This should make the process of tweaking your map's navigation and interaction paths much less tedious!



Regarding the other areas, the Item Editor has now been completely implemented for v0.5! There won't be any new major functionality relating to items in v0.5, but the interface has been cleaned up some and I added a search box to search names and descriptions by keyword, a button to duplicate an item, a button to reload the item database from disk, and a large image preview in the overview section.



The Sound FX Generator is also ready to go for v0.5! I decided to go ahead and knock this out since it's mostly a standalone feature and straightforward to put in. It's nice seeing everything like this using Godot's awesome new UI theme.



Lastly, I've been working on getting the new Theme Editor ported over. I still have a bit to finish up with this editor, but I'm excited to say that the new version will support multiple themes! Also, within each theme you can have multiple dialogue styles. This will eventually allow you to specify different dialogue styles for each character or even change the overall interface as your game progresses.



On different note, I took a bit of time and added a small new feature to the current version that could potentially allow for some interesting new gameplay options! You can now specify animations for each cardinal direction (for example, "walk_north", "walk_east", etc.) that will be triggered if available. If provided, the game won't rotate the character model to face the direction they are moving as it usually does. By combining this with the top-down camera and "sideways" tiles, you can somewhat create a 2.5D side-scrolling map.

See below for this new functionality in action! The assets were created by my wife for a game she's currently making in RPG in a Box. This feature is still experimental at this point, but with some additional time and effort it may potentially turn into something cool.





If you haven't already, I'd recommend checking out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my progress in real-time! I recently updated the board with a bunch of cards (in the "New Features/Changes (0.5)" list) with information on new features and changes that are completed and will be included in v0.5. Many of them even have GIFs or screenshots if you open up the card!



If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. You can also wishlist and/or follow RPG in a Box on Steam by visiting its Steam store page here.

Once again, thank you for reading and for your continued support! :)

Over the past month I've been slowly but surely making progress on v0.5 and the migration to Godot 3.0. I said this in my last update, but I can't say enough how much I appreciate everyone's patience as I work through this stage of development, especially considering the constraint it puts on adding any new major features to v0.4.x.

While I've been working on the new Map Editor implementation and general editor functionality, my wife took some time and made these awesome new dungeon assets to include in my official example game! These will eventually be included in the sample assets that come bundled with RPG in a Box.



In regards to the new editors, I've been focusing on building out the Map Editor further, various tweaks to the Voxel Editor, and the usual bug fixes. I don't have many visual things to showcase, however there are some small but interesting new features that will be useful.

For the Map Editor, I added a new shortcut key that will temporarily hide any "extras" (navigation paths, grid lines, marker icons, etc.) while the key is being pressed. This allows you to easily see what the map looks like without needing to individually disable each of the indicators from the toolbar.



Another small but useful feature coming to the Voxel Editor in v0.5 is a "frame length multiplier" setting that can be adjusted for each frame of a voxel model. This will give you a lot more control over animations. For example, for the dripping pipe below I've changed the frame length value for the last frame to a higher value so there is a delay in the animation between drips. Currently you would have to insert a lot of duplicate frames to achieve this effect.



Since I've received feedback from several people about including some sort of built-in documentation and/or guides, I thought it would be cool to implement an offline documentation viewer based on the existing wiki pages available on my main website. So I spent about a week writing a tool to automatically generate a set of UI components from the DokuWiki sources. Godot's wonderful scene system made this quite simple to do!



At this point, my tool will convert the reference pages for all of the scripting functions (including clickable links between pages), but I still need to make it a bit more flexible so it works on other documentation like guides and tutorials. I also plan to add some search functionality so you can search by keyword. I'm excited about this as it will allow me to easily include a self-contained help system that doesn't require you to be online or leave the application.



I recently updated the Demo Game Hub with a small PETSCII-style world! As with the other areas within the Demo Game Hub, there's not much gameplay-wise, but it's a great way to explore one of the many possible visual styles you can achieve with RPG in a Box. :)



With the addition of the PETSCII-style game, there are now three areas to explore, each of which can be accessed from the main hub level. The Demo Game Hub is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and can be downloaded for free on Itch.io here: https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox-examplegame



I don't have much in the way of other news, but as of earlier this month (March 6th, specifically) it's been three years since I first announced the start of RPG in a Box! It's hard to believe it's been that long. Now that I'm working full time on it, I'm really excited about what this next year will bring, and I expect a ton of progress to be made. Thanks so much to everyone, both those who have been following from the beginning and those who have just discovered RPG in a Box. Your support is very much appreciated!



If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Once again, thank you for reading and for your continued support! :)

Check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my progress in real-time!

Over the past month I've been slowly but surely making progress on v0.5 and the migration to Godot 3.0. I said this in my last update, but I can't say enough how much I appreciate everyone's patience as I work through this stage of development, especially considering the constraint it puts on adding any new major features to v0.4.x.

While I've been working on the new Map Editor implementation and general editor functionality, my wife took some time and made these awesome new dungeon assets to include in my official example game! These will eventually be included in the sample assets that come bundled with RPG in a Box.



In regards to the new editors, I've been focusing on building out the Map Editor further, various tweaks to the Voxel Editor, and the usual bug fixes. I don't have many visual things to showcase, however there are some small but interesting new features that will be useful.

For the Map Editor, I added a new shortcut key that will temporarily hide any "extras" (navigation paths, grid lines, marker icons, etc.) while the key is being pressed. This allows you to easily see what the map looks like without needing to individually disable each of the indicators from the toolbar.



Another small but useful feature coming to the Voxel Editor in v0.5 is a "frame length multiplier" setting that can be adjusted for each frame of a voxel model. This will give you a lot more control over animations. For example, for the dripping pipe below I've changed the frame length value for the last frame to a higher value so there is a delay in the animation between drips. Currently you would have to insert a lot of duplicate frames to achieve this effect.



Since I've received feedback from several people about including some sort of built-in documentation and/or guides, I thought it would be cool to implement an offline documentation viewer based on the existing wiki pages available on my main website. So I spent about a week writing a tool to automatically generate a set of UI components from the DokuWiki sources. Godot's wonderful scene system made this quite simple to do!



At this point, my tool will convert the reference pages for all of the scripting functions (including clickable links between pages), but I still need to make it a bit more flexible so it works on other documentation like guides and tutorials. I also plan to add some search functionality so you can search by keyword. I'm excited about this as it will allow me to easily include a self-contained help system that doesn't require you to be online or leave the application.



I recently updated the Demo Game Hub with a small PETSCII-style world! As with the other areas within the Demo Game Hub, there's not much gameplay-wise, but it's a great way to explore one of the many possible visual styles you can achieve with RPG in a Box. :)



With the addition of the PETSCII-style game, there are now three areas to explore, each of which can be accessed from the main hub level. The Demo Game Hub is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and can be downloaded for free on Itch.io here: https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox-examplegame



I don't have much in the way of other news, but as of earlier this month (March 6th, specifically) it's been three years since I first announced the start of RPG in a Box! It's hard to believe it's been that long. Now that I'm working full time on it, I'm really excited about what this next year will bring, and I expect a ton of progress to be made. Thanks so much to everyone, both those who have been following from the beginning and those who have just discovered RPG in a Box. Your support is very much appreciated!



If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Once again, thank you for reading and for your continued support! :)

Check out the Trello board for RPG in a Box to follow my progress in real-time!

Hello again! It's hard to believe it's already been a month since my last development update. I truly appreciate everyone's patience as I work my way through a lot of repetitive work to get the existing functionality ported over to Godot 3.0. I'm quite eager myself to move onto major new features, and I can imagine everyone else is as well! Things are slowly but surely starting to come together. :)

These past few weeks I have mostly been focusing on the Map Editor and related functionality. In parallel, I'm also trying to keep the game migration tools in the currently released version up-to-date to ensure that the process of migrating your existing projects will be as painless as possible.

As with the Voxel Editor, I've also been implementing some minor new features and usability improvements here and there as I go to make v0.5 even better!



Below is a closer look at the improved visual indicators displayed for the navigation paths in your map. Small cubes are displayed at each intersection now (i.e. the center of the tile) and the paths themselves will follow the terrain more closely than in the current version.



A minor new feature I added is a "crosshair" for the Map Editor that will display when placing resources into the map. This should be useful as a guide for lining up tiles and objects, and to generally have a better feel for exactly where the placement will occur.



Tiles now have a "surface level" setting that can be adjusted to make the placement of related tiles less tedious. For example, for my set of grass and water tiles, you can set their surface level to the grass height, and the Map Editor will automatically adjust the vertical placement accordingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D72_BEr0AAE
Some of the more recent effort has involved getting the Map Properties panel implemented and fully working so you can modify things like the light/shadow settings, camera override, "on load" script", etc. I've also played around a bit here and there with some of the new features available in Godot 3.0, one being GI (Global Illumination) Probe. As you can see in the before and after images below, this can really improve the way objects are illuminated, so I may have to add this as an option at some point!



I mentioned my "Demo Game Hub" in the last development update, but it wasn't quite released at that point, so I thought I'd share about it again in case anyone is interested in trying it out. The hub currently allows you to try out the official example game (standard or first-person camera) and an area from Ultima V (Iolo's Hut). I'm hoping to add some more of my demo maps to it in the coming weeks!

Demo Game Hub on Itch.io: https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox-examplegame



On a note related to Godot (the engine RPG in a Box is built with), they made an announcement that the engine would be transitioning from OpenGL ES 3.0 to Vulkan for its backend, which is exciting news! If you're interested, you can read more details about the announcement here: https://godotengine.org/article/abandoning-gles3-vulkan-and-gles2

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Once again, thank you for reading and for your continued support! :)

Hello again! It's hard to believe it's already been a month since my last development update. I truly appreciate everyone's patience as I work my way through a lot of repetitive work to get the existing functionality ported over to Godot 3.0. I'm quite eager myself to move onto major new features, and I can imagine everyone else is as well! Things are slowly but surely starting to come together. :)

These past few weeks I have mostly been focusing on the Map Editor and related functionality. In parallel, I'm also trying to keep the game migration tools in the currently released version up-to-date to ensure that the process of migrating your existing projects will be as painless as possible.

As with the Voxel Editor, I've also been implementing some minor new features and usability improvements here and there as I go to make v0.5 even better!



Below is a closer look at the improved visual indicators displayed for the navigation paths in your map. Small cubes are displayed at each intersection now (i.e. the center of the tile) and the paths themselves will follow the terrain more closely than in the current version.



A minor new feature I added is a "crosshair" for the Map Editor that will display when placing resources into the map. This should be useful as a guide for lining up tiles and objects, and to generally have a better feel for exactly where the placement will occur.



Tiles now have a "surface level" setting that can be adjusted to make the placement of related tiles less tedious. For example, for my set of grass and water tiles, you can set their surface level to the grass height, and the Map Editor will automatically adjust the vertical placement accordingly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D72_BEr0AAE
Some of the more recent effort has involved getting the Map Properties panel implemented and fully working so you can modify things like the light/shadow settings, camera override, "on load" script", etc. I've also played around a bit here and there with some of the new features available in Godot 3.0, one being GI (Global Illumination) Probe. As you can see in the before and after images below, this can really improve the way objects are illuminated, so I may have to add this as an option at some point!



I mentioned my "Demo Game Hub" in the last development update, but it wasn't quite released at that point, so I thought I'd share about it again in case anyone is interested in trying it out. The hub currently allows you to try out the official example game (standard or first-person camera) and an area from Ultima V (Iolo's Hut). I'm hoping to add some more of my demo maps to it in the coming weeks!

Demo Game Hub on Itch.io: https://zeromatrix.itch.io/rpginabox-examplegame



On a note related to Godot (the engine RPG in a Box is built with), they made an announcement that the engine would be transitioning from OpenGL ES 3.0 to Vulkan for its backend, which is exciting news! If you're interested, you can read more details about the announcement here: https://godotengine.org/article/abandoning-gles3-vulkan-and-gles2

If you'd like to find out more about RPG in a Box or try out the free demo version, check out my Itch.io page here. Once again, thank you for reading and for your continued support! :)