Delphi Rad's toolkit (pre-release discussion topic)

[Xifanie]

Abilities section

Capabilities:
Ab1 sheet (Excel), Ab2 sheet (Excel), linked effect, ability name/description/quote.



It's not perfect, I'll work on it after some coding. But is that good for a design? Anyway people will be able to double click static text for deeper information on anything they wouldn't know what it would do.

Of course the real thing won't have all those black dots and the left field will be filled with all Abilities name like:

Code Select Expand

001: Cure
002: Cure 2
003: Cure 3
004: Cure 4
005: Protect
I'll do my best for the easiest navigation possible.

[Blaow]

Looks great so far!

Can I suggest you make the view of abilities on the left a tree view by job, then you can expand a job to show its abilities?

[Xifanie]

With the number of jobs compared to the number of abilities (1:4 ratio) and multiple jobs sharing the same abilities... wouldn't it get messy? Plus how would you even edit all Lucavi's second skillset?

The way FFT was made wouldn't make the editor very friendly if I were to do that.  

Good idea, but not compatible.

[VincentCraven]

So does Rad's toolkit will not only allow change in text, but also allow change in the ability effects?

Will this toolkit also allow one to change the text that explains item effects and such? That is probably the second most important change text-wise.

Design looks good. I prefer 0's and 1's over check-boxes, but anything that lets me modify the game easily is much appreciated!

[Xifanie]

The Description Memo is what appears when you press select on an ability.

If by changing the abilities' effect you mean like making Statis sword a high chance of knockback and instant break all equipment; the answer is no.

Maybe in a latter version but right now there's plenty of stuff to add before I should actually work on trying to find new things.

[VincentCraven]

I was just asking whether or not the right columns controlled the same effects that your spreadsheet does. I'd much rather have the ability to change this such as ability and equipment description.

Have you found a way yet to change the speed at which text appears? The 'little money' thing is my primary concern, but I'd like the speed at which text appears during narration to be much faster; however, the ability descriptions are more important to me, so if you haven't found anything about text speed, it's no big deal yet.

[Xifanie]

I learned pretty much everything about text. I'm more than ready to code my text editing.Your little money will get its ass kicked to the moon.

Well after I decide how I'll save the table.  

For all 2200 characters, with 16 bytes long input/display/output would give plenty of possibilities for a bit more than 100kb.

That means you could take Reflect's byte and easily make it display as {reflect} (9 out of 16 possible bytes).
Or you could make Bracelet (FFT format) display Breath, and save as Breath (FFT format).

Changing the name of a character everywhere in the game will be easy as pie with that.[/code]

[Christopher Robin]

It looks like it's made of win and god.  I like how it has the description and quote right there.

[karsten]

great to hear! finally i'll be able to enjoy some patches

[Xifanie]

Sorry, been busy all W-E.  

Work starting in ~8 hours.

Maybe I'll be able to release it within the next week but can't guarantee it.

[karsten]

i suggest you to have the program output a txt file with listed all the changes made this would make reporting patches easier and help in finding errors in the patches.

[Xifanie]

Huh, I fear that will take several updates. The amount of work for that is gigantic. I'll probably do it though... right now what i'm planning is the following & in order:

Font Editor
Text Editor & Abilities
Rest of workbook sheets
Event Study
Event Study
Event Study
Event Study
Event Study
Event Study
Event Editor ( =D )
?Patch Report

[Argg0]

Select Memo -> Object Inspector -> Lines -> Click on the ... -> Erase everything

So damn annoying seeing those "Memo1" "Memo2"... >_>

So, you have just the interface or have you coded anything?

Instead of double clicking the Labels, you could do it on MouseOver, so that a hint would appear (or put it on status bar).

[Xifanie]

I did that with comments in excel but removed them because I found them annoying. So I'd rather do it double-click.

Err, done just the interface yet. XD

....... I suck.

I really need to push myself now. But making that sort of program with my experience & starting from scratch makes things slow, unstable, and annoying at times since I don't always know what I should do.

[SephHexenWR]

Question: would this remove the need for Excel completely? I would love to get into this stuff, but all I have is OpenOffice and I can't really go about 'acquiring' Excel easily.

[karsten]

you're not the only one with this problem