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Sword as Weapon.1 on Ramza






Axe as Weapon.1 on Berserker






Shield as Shield.1 on Paladin (female)






Legendary Sword as Weapon.1 on Paladin (female)






Explanation

I don't have a GUI interface for swapping out the images used as attachments yet, and I haven't written it into the Tethical plugin that handles my sprite formats yet. However, this opens games/formats to support a lot of possibilities for interesting things (that were suggested earlier here: http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8640.0). For instance, while the image you supply for the sprite will not change (re: paladin_f.fft-type1.bmp), you could potentially attach an endless amount of things (which use images separate from the image the sprite is). Other things I'll be using it for include the "AT"/"ACT"/active turn designation. Namely, YOU could put it wherever you want without knowing how to program so long as the battle template you use depends on the sprite to show the active turn. In other words, it will attach the appropriate graphic (that it supplies) where you described in your Sprite Animator format (that you supplied). This process is the same for weapons, armor, or anything  else you're attaching.

One of the things Panda3d doesn't offer automatically is the sort of link-hover I'm pretty sure everyone is used to for buttons. You know, if you can click on it, the cursor changes to suggest that. Comparatively speaking, Panda3d already offers rollover sounds for buttons, but nothing for cursors. Anyway, there's support for that now in this engine, so you can make something hideous like the first image or something normal like the second image. And, it can change between themes. For instance, the set of cursors in the first image could actually fit in if there was a theme made around them specifically.



(or)



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Different theme/different cursor set



The 3d Model (post-processed with an outline of the geometry)

Reading a Human-Interface Device USB joystick:



If you've been following the game states thread, the lobby is now capable of showing Playstation(R) style keys on auto-generated buttons. Now, most of the time, it'll show keyboard keys (re: the letter 'v' in "v: Create Party"), but, after finishing that button feature and extending a font to include Playstation's symbols, I wanted to do a demo with joystick support. Say, an options screen that let's a user see keys/pick the control method/remap keys. You know, like a normal game. Anyway, Panda3d, the engine Tethical is built on, does not have support for joysticks/gamepads/etc. Instead, the forum posts there suggest using an entirely different game engine on top of Panda3d to get joystick support. That's ridiculous, but that's why this screenshot of my command prompt is even important to this project. What it shows is my code using a Python-based wrapper to interface with a USB backend to read the USB device and programmatically decode the HID-compliant message into x, y, z, rz, hat-switch, and button states.

Code: [Select] import usb.core import usb.util class findAllJoysticks(object): def __init__(self, bInterfaceClass = 0x03, bInterfaceSubClass = 0x00): self.bInterfaceClass = bInterfaceClass self.bInterfaceSubClass = bInterfaceSubClass # Due to the fact that USB devices can defer their device class and subclass to specific interfaces they have to be compatible with more than one class, it's necessary to check through all a given device's interfaces to figure out which USB devices are joysticks. def __call__(self, device): if device.bDeviceClass == self.bInterfaceClass and device.bDeviceSubClass == self.bInterfaceSubClass: return True else: for cfg in device: intf = usb.util.find_descriptor( cfg, bInterfaceClass = self.bInterfaceClass, bInterfaceSubClass = self.bInterfaceSubClass ) if intf is not None: return True return False # Get a list of USB joysticks. joysticks = usb.core.find(find_all = True, custom_match = findAllJoysticks()) def getNameOfUSBDevice(device): # Get human-readable name (ex. Logitech Dual Action). return usb.util.get_string(device, 256, 2) for joystick in joysticks: print getNameOfUSBDevice(joystick), joystick, "@ Bus #%s, Location %s" % (joystick.bus, joystick.address) joystick.set_configuration() # From the 0x81 Human Interface Device (HID) endpoint, read the 0x8-length joystick payload. eightByteJoystickStatusArray = joystick.read(0x81, 0x8) if not eightByteJoystickStatusArray is None: state = eightByteJoystickStatusArray # Bytes 1 & 2: Location (0x0 to 0xFF, 0x0 to 0xFF). # Left Thumb-Stick; 0%, 0% is all the way left and up; 100%, 100% is all the way right and down. x = "{0:.0f}%".format(state[0]/255.0 * 100) y = "{0:.0f}%".format(state[1]/255.0 * 100) # Bytes 3 & 4: Location (0x0 to 0xFF, 0x0 to 0xFF). # Right Thumb-Stick; 0%, 0% is all the way left and up; 100%, 100% is all the way right and down. z = "{0:.0f}%".format(state[2]/255.0 * 100) Rz = "{0:.0f}%".format(state[3]/255.0 * 100) # Byte 5: Buttons 1 - 4 & Hat Switch (D-Pad) Bitmask. oneThroughFourButtonBitmask = state[4] >> 4 # Move the first for bits to the right four digits, resulting in being left with only the first 4 bits. hatSwitchBitmask = state[4] & 0b00001111 # AND out the first 4 bits, setting them to 0, resulting in being left with only the last 4 bits. # Byte 6: Buttons 5 - 12 Bitmask. fiveThroughTwelveButtonBitmask = state[5] # 1 Byte bitmask for buttons 5 through 12. hatSwitchStates = ["UP", "UP-RIGHT", "RIGHT", "DOWN-RIGHT", "DOWN", "DOWN-LEFT", "LEFT", "UP-LEFT", "ORIGIN"] print "D-Pad" print "Position: %s" % hatSwitchStates[hatSwitchBitmask] print "Left Thumb-Stick" print "X, Y:", "%s, %s" % (x, y), "(%s, %s)" % (hex(state[0]), hex(state[1])) print "Right Thumb-Stick" print "Z (left-to-right), Rz (top-to-bottom):", "%s, %s" % (z, Rz), "(%s, %s)" % (hex(state[2]), hex(state[3])) print "Buttons" # Iterate over the first 4 buttons; they exist in the first half of byte 5. i = 1 for button in [0b0001, 0b0010, 0b0100, 0b1000]: # Perform a bitwise AND operation using the button's bitmask against the 1 through 4 button bitmask. on = True if oneThroughFourButtonBitmask & button == button else False print "%s:" % (i), "%s" % ("ON" if on is True else "OFF") i += 1 # Iterate over buttons 5 through 12; they exist in the byte 6. for button in [0b0001, 0b0010, 0b0100, 0b1000, 0b10000, 0b100000, 0b1000000, 0b10000000]: # Perform a bitwise AND operation using the button's bitmask against the 1 through 4 button bitmask. on = True if fiveThroughTwelveButtonBitmask & button == button else False print "%s:" % (i), "%s" % ("ON" if on is True else "OFF") i += 1

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So, long story short, Tethical wasn't set up to use event handling in a way that supported having keys bound to actions. That is, keys were treated as actions. I've got a work-in-progress rewrite of this feature done so that multiple keys/input can be bound to an action. Now, you won't be asking for some specific key, you'll be asking for an event name (ex: 'Accept' or 'Cancel'). Input tied to such an action is polled (because my HID USB device code required polling to implement) and, if it is active, it sends off the appropriate event. At any rate, no need to stuff PyGame into Panda3d now for gamepad support. However, gamepad support is quite limited, in that the device has to be installed as an Human Interface Device (versus any other USB class). This works for me and will likely work with cheap or otherwise low-button controllers (dpad + 2 thumb sticks + 12 buttons). Enthusiast controllers will not be supported with this, but the infrastructure is in there now so that other pads/classes can be added later. For instance, it would be easy to recognize edge-case devices by vendor and product ID's and then encapsulate those devices into appropriate non-HID class implementations.

By way of a quick recap, Tethical's codebase is ~18k lines of code between python and other stuff as of Spring 2012. The problem with this is that a lot of important features (i.e. menus and GUI stuff) are buried in several really long files, missing the opportunity to call the functionality from a centralized location. Why should you care? That means that things like themes and events will be more work than they should be.

So, over that past 4 months I've reorganized and pulled a lot of this functionality out into just such a centralized location. There's still a lot to do, because, while I've gotten all the important functionality out into the centralized location, I now have to rewrite the GUI feature to use this modular information. After that's done, it's back to real feature development.

Other changes that have happened along the way are rewrites of existing features. For one, events now need very little code (~5 lines) in the actual event file to support backtracking their way up to the base directory and running themselves through the test interface. Why do you care? The feature this rewrites is the ability to just double-click your event file and have the application launch right into testing. That same functionality is there, but now you only need that minor amount of code in your event file and the __event_backtrack__ file in the same directory as your event. That's it! Double-click your event to test it, and be on your way.

Another benefit of the rewrite/reorganization is that events now land in the same general context that the client lands in when you launch the client (i.e. the game). Once again, why should you care? This gives you access to that centralized area that holds a lot of work you should never ever ever have to do in building your own game on this platform. On top of that, the design approach will not visually break if the user switches themes (assuming you've provided more than one GUI theme for your game).

Tethical's Project Layout, 09/17/2012:


Tethical's Project Layout, 10/19/2012:

"Murder"



Images: 001, 002 (the darker part is the goal for the side).

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"Confusion"



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"Hysterics"



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"Sightless"



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These are still a work in progress, so all suggestions are welcome. These two effects are similar to what I'm aiming for: E400 and E406.

Anyway, you will get to fight these guys as monsters in some incarnation of Tethical. I needed a 3d character that I owned the rights to so that I could put it up on github once I finish writing the code that lets 3d characters be interchangeable with 2d sprites. I am only going to put a stripped down version, though. Like just the eye part. Maybe it will get beam effects.

Thanks!

I'm sorry that there are only pictures. I tried video capturing it, but it was never good enough to show off. In other words, the music matches up with the words, and recording it makes that not be the case anymore.

Video: tethical-demo-event-xvid.zip.

There are just a few limitations for events (highlighted verbosely in the event script):

• Your resources need to be beneath the application's path (C:\Tethical\master\client) and you reference things with forward slashes (lijj/events/map-name/resource-directory/resource).
• Requires knowledge of a programming language (python).

Credits (for material used, other than the event script):

• Kagebunji, the Guardian sprite used for Don José, captain of the Dragoons.
• Fosil, the Phara sprite used for Carmen, the gypsy.
• The recording of the song (public domain) offered here: La fleur que tu m'avais jetée (translation: here)
• Map and Engine, Kivutar
• Map Texturing, Lijj

Finally, here are all the resources for this event: custom006 (events).

To-Do List

Interface

• Title Screen; 100% done.
• Options Screen; 100% done.
• Game List Screen; 75% done.
• Party Formation Screen; 50% done.
• In-Battle Menu; 10% done.
• In-Battle Character Action Display; 100% done.

Battle-Related

• Unarmed Attack; 100% done.
• Attack, With Weapon.
• Throw Weapon/Throw Item.
• Skills.
• Target-Only Skill Effects; 90% done.
• Self & Target Skill Effects.
• Status Effects.

Battle Movement

• Flat Landscape; 100% done.
• Uneven Landscape Moving Upward.
• Uneven Landscape Moving Downward.
• Jumping Gaps.
• Flat Landscape, Flying.
• Uneven Landscape Moving Upward, Flying.
• Uneven Landscape Moving Downward, Flying.
• Move to Square, Water Splash.
• Move to Square, Footprints in Sand.

Map-Related

• FFT Maps; 100% done.
• Custom Maps; 100% done.
• Lighting.
• Snowy Weather; 100% done.
• Rainy Weather; 100% done.
• Chimney Smoke Effect; 100% done.
• Animated Map Texture; prototype code available.
• Animated Map Component (re: windmill animation); prototype code available.
• Starting Locations; 100% done.
• Move-Find Item Locations.
• Traps.
• Music; 100% done.

Item-Related

• Usable Items.
• Main-Hand.
• Off-Hand.
• Armor.
• Feet.
• Accessory.

Skill Category-Related

• Primary.
• Secondary.
• Reaction.
• Support.
• Movement.
• Purchased with JP.
• Learn on Condition.

Artificial Intelligence Related Options

• Manual; 100% done.
• Fight for Life.
• Run Like a Rabbit.
• Save Fading Life.

Percentage Key:

• 100%; a complete implementation exists in the main Tethical development branch; this does not mean the feature is 100% complete.
• 90%; a complete implementation exists in the main Tethical development branch, but some minor functionality is missing.
• 75%; a mostly complete implementation exists in the main Tethical development branch.
• 50%; a work-in-progress implementation exists in the main Tethical development branch.
• 10%; a placeholder implementation exists in the main Tethical development branch.
• blank; does not exist in the main Tethical development branch yet.
• prototype code available; proof of concept code exists outside of the main Tethical development branch.

Development Branch Issue List

Tethical main branch: https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/issues?labels=&milestone=&sort=comments&state=open

This idea of organizing an art direction came up between me and Lijj on #ffh. Basically, I want to add something to Tethical's tools that will help organize or codify the art effort of a game. I've never seen anything like this written down in a formal report, so I'm asking for opinions before I put this into the control panel.

My current plan is to store lots of individual art directives per game to explain common ideas.

• Art directives address a concept. Concepts may include things like the following: scale (in comparison to characters), desired colors, desired map dimensions, and themes or motifs.
• Art directives apply to certain sections of the game. Those sections categorize the directive. Examples of categories are: towns, main characters, minor characters, and transportation.
• Art directives include picture examples.
• Art directives may define the right way to do something, or they may provide the wrong way (ex. common mistakes) to do things.

If you've kept up with the development on Tethical's control panel, these things would show up in a section called "Art Directives" and be listed with a title, a description, and an optional image. This would be displayed like everything else on the right-hand side of the application.

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Now, what I really want to do is an example using FFT's "art directives", but I do not want to use FFT's material. So, I'd like to request people who have created wholly custom sprites (re: not frankesprites, considering that's someone else's material) to offer them up (only if they want to) as examples of key FFT art directives. For instance, I need several sprite frames to demonstrate poses (re: northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest). I also need some different height sprites to demonstrate scale (scale between character sprites) and monsters (scale between characters and monsters) and buildings (scale between characters and buildings). Names of contributers will be on the art directive image associating their name with their work.

Other examples of things I need:

• Text. One-line summaries of FFT art directives (ex. "Avoid 'Pillow-Shading' in Portraits", "Avoid Drawing Noses in Portraits").
• Text. One-line (or longer) FFT art directive descriptions (optional if there's a picture).
• Images. Say, a custom example of pillow-shading.
• Colors. Several lists of definitive colors, and maybe these include names with them if they can be named properly or categorized (re: "purples", "face colors").

I want to have a solid foundation for a place to put an art style in for a Tethical demo game (of the same name as the engine, victorian/steampunk style), and this will help accomplish that. It may also help the FFT community by providing solid rules for the FFT style (obviously, generated by people who know what they're doing, which does not include me); I will put an export feature into the control panel so people will be able to dowload a copy of the finished work when this completed (maybe in .PDF form).

Thank you for your time.

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Current Contributions:

• Flan, monster. Contributed by Chotokukyan.
• Palettes. Contributed by Lijj.

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Directives:

1. Art is Set to One One-Hundreth Scale (Category: "World")

Art is drawn at 1/100th of the size of actual objects, further adjusted to be only ~86% of the height to account for perspective.




2. Type-1 (TYPE1) Sprite Sheets Are 256 Pixels by 488 Pixels (Category: "Characters"; need a custom type-1 sprite for this)

Type-1 sprite sheets can have a maximum of 16 colors per palette. They are used for character states, including: walk cycles, attacking, jumping, low-health, death, and singing. This type is designed to allow for a character to have a ponytail, driven by the main character's design.




3. Monster (MON) Sprite Sheets Are 256 Pixels by 744 Pixels (Category: "Monsters")

Monster sprite sheets can have a maximum of 16 colors per palette. They are used for monster states, including: walk cycles, normal attack, special attack, low-health, and death.




4. Portaits Are Contained in Sprite Sheets (Category: "Portraits", "Technical Requirements")

Portraits are stored in sprite sheets. They require their own palettes. They're stored rotated 90 degrees (clockwise).




5. Avoid 'Pillow-Shading' in Portraits (Category: "Portraits")

Avoid shading objects as though the only light source available is one directly between the viewer and the object you're shading. Consider using a light source located to the left and up from the object or scene.




6. Portraits Require a Certain Color to be First in it's Palette (Category: "Portraits", "Technical Requirements")

Put beige (#A8A088) as the first color of portrait palettes in sprite sheets.




7. Portraits Are Done in a Three-Fourth's View (Category: "Portraits")

Draw portraits in 3/4 view with the character's view point never directly facing the viewer.




8. Character Sprites and Portraits Should Use a Spectrum of Desaturated Colors (Category: "Characters", "Portraits")

(text)

(images/s)


9. Maps Should Use as Few Colors as Possible per Square (Category: "World")

Use 2 to 4 colors to accomplish a map square's detail. Do not include lighting; lighting is added in an automated post-process.




10. Avoid Drawing Noses on Sprites and Portraits (Category: "Characters", "Portraits")

Do not include noses in portraits. They do not receive enough space to be a consistently viable target for shading.




11. Sprite Sheets Have Five Palettes for Characters and Five Palettes for Portraits (Category: "Characters", "Portraits")

Sprite sheets have 2 sets of 5 palettes (of 16 colors). They correspond to the following (in order): a player's party members and/or guests; NPCs in "Hokuten Knights" (PSP: "Order of the Northern Sky"); NPC's in "Nanten Knights" (PSP: "Order of the Southern Sky"); NPC's in "Death Corps", "Bart Company" (PSP: "Corpse Brigade", "Baert Company") and rogue NPC's; and, "Temple Knight" NPC's (PSP: "Knights Templar").

As some of you may know, Tethical is already at a playable stage in development. That is, you can log into a Tethical server process, create or join a game, and be assigned a party of characters at random. You can then move your party members and attack other party members via a menu system. The game informs you whether you've won (all the other player's characters are at zero HP remaining) or you've lost (all your party members are at zero HP remaining). This is a tactical RPG's basic form, and this is what Tethical is right now.

As a reminder, Tethical aims to clone what FFT did before it. As such, the infrastructure for rules that govern gameplay is being developed. However, there are too many rules to incorporate into the next iteration of Tethical. That is to say, the format is written in a manner that is easily confusing considering it relies heavily on indices (which are numbers as opposed to human-readable information like "STR" or "SPD"). Furthermore, we have to consider that this will be a platform for further game development (rather than engine development), meaning that there should be a serious focus on a person's ability to add, remove, and change the information that Tethical uses to run.

I propose we start working on a Tethical control panel application. You may or may not be familiar with my other project related to Tethical's development, but I submit that to you as evidence of my effort and desire to accomplish such a thing. What I need from everyone are ideas for the design of such a program's interface while work on the game continues. From here on, I'll just refer to Tethical as "the game".

In my opinion, this should be the only program you need to edit the game. Yet, you are tasked with providing ideas to make editing the game manageable for the average person. It will need to encompass a variety of game mechanics, like character statistics and classes, along with network-related settings, like what port the server process might run on, and user management, like the player logins, their characters, and statistics related to gameplay. I expect this design process to take at least several months after which point implementing the features of the program will begin. Though, it is very likely that I will begin on an early prototype before then for my own personal development use.

So, what form should your ideas take? I would greatly appreciate it if you would download and use Glade (for Windows users, the zip file you want is here: click to download; download, unzip, navigate to "bin", and finally run "glade-3.exe"). Glade is an interface designer. It not only allows you to make an interface quickly on your own, but it allows me to use what you've done in the actual program, so long as you provide the XML of your finished design. With that in mind, please do not upload such files until much later. I would prefer you take a screenshot and upload that until the designs become more complicated. Credit for significant contributions will be given within the program, and credit for feedback and quality assurance will be given as well.

Thanks for supporting Tethical with your time.

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Installation:

• Install MySQL (this is a database server):
  • Windows: go to downloads.
  • Linux: get it from your operating system's package utility, or go to downloads.
• Install MySQL Workbench (this is a database planning tool).
  • Windows: go to downloads.
  • Linux: get it from your operating system's package utility, or go to downloads.
• Install Tethical: go to downloads.
• Install the control panel application (embedded Mono runtime packages):
  
  • Windows: download.
  • Linux: download.
  • Source: download.
• Open tethical.mwb (a database planning file): download.
• Run "Database" -> "Forward Engineer":
  • Check "DROP Objects Before Each CREATE Object".
  • Check "Generate DROP SCHEMA"
  • Check "Generate INSERT Statements for Tables"
  • Anytime after the first time doing this process, check "Do Not Create Users. Only Create Privileges"
  • Click "Next".
  • Check "Export MySQL Table Objects"
  • Check "Export MySQL Routine Objects"
  • Check "Export User Objects"
  • Click "Next".
  • Click "Next" again.
  • You will be prompted to enter in connection information created during your MySQL installation.
  • Click "Next" to load the database.
  • Close MySQL Workbench (unless you intend on making changes and forward engineering again).
• Edit the configuration files for the control panel application:
  • base-locations.xml: Change the data to point to where you installed Tethical.
  • connections.xml: Change the data to connect to the MySQL database server you installed.
• Finally, run the control panel and wait for it to flip "Select Game" from disabled to enabled; you can now use the control panel to make changes (though, the actual Tethical game will only respond to the changes you make add/deleting/changing maps for now).

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Features by Program Category

General

• Multi-game support.
• Visual support for graphical elements outside of games (where applicable).

Art Directives

• Ability to provide art direction in a textual and visual form (per game).
• Ability to add an example image; name them as follows: example.png.
• Ability to export all of the directives into a combined .PDF file; example: art-directives.pdf.

Game Mechanics

• Ability to include many different types of game mechanics: permanent statistics, exhaustible statistics, raw statistics, programming-supplied values, class-specific programming-supplied values, temporary penalties, temporary bonuses, permanent penalties, permanent bonuses, class-specific, and scalar values.
• Ability to assign formulas to game mechanics.
• Ability to evaluate those formulas with arbitrary data (for testing).

Race & Gender

• Ability to make a virtually unlimited amount of races (ex: humans, animals, monsters, etc).
• Ability to make as many genders as necessary.
• Ability to assign raw statistics specifically to race and gender combinations.
• Ability to assign equipment slots specifically to race and gender combinations.
• Ability to assign name pools specifically to race and gender combinations.

Class-Related

• Ability to make a virtually unlimited amount of classes (jobs).

Targeting & Selection

• Ability to make a virtually unlimited amount of area functions.
• Ability to make a virtually unlimited amount of target functions.

Items

• Ability to make a virtually unlimited amount of item categories.
• Ability to make a virtually unlimited amount of items.

Resources

• Ability to view a list of available music (per game).
• Ability to add/remove music.
• Ability to add/remove music tags (unlimited amount).
• Ability to view a list of available bitmap fonts (per game).
• Ability to view arbitrary text in the font of your choice (roughly as it would appear in-game).

Maps

• Ability to view a list of available maps (per game).
• Ability to update many features related to map customization.

Bars: Tethical Bars (another issue on the issue list)

Default:


Themed: