Tonypa's tile-based tutorials - Comment and Question

[Kayol R.Hope]

Tonypa's tile-based tutorials on gotoAndPlay() were long, well organized an in depth series of articles that cover all the aspects of tile-based games: moving, jumping, scrolling, shooting and much more!

Although, I'm stumped on how to build a PA system. I've seen tuts for one in art based and I've just started getting into tile base actionscript for Flash games.

By PA system I mean a way to have a movable sprite walk into or stand next to a NPC and have a text box pop up like in many RPG games. I've seen a couple art based games where you can move the sprite next to a NPC and press space bar (or whatever key press desired) to engage the text box and after you circle through all of the message the box turns invisable or disappears. I beleive that tut was made by Ed Mack? How do you do that in title base? I really think you'd cover all the basics with that added in.

Thanks,
Kayol

[tonypa]

Thank you for the comments

I havent done any text box tutorials, because I think it has little to do with tiles. But if you are looking to create such system, you could do it this way:

*if your NPC is moving around, you need to detect first if it is close enough to player. You can use coordinates of the hero and coordinates of NPC to calculate the distance between them. This is same as in art based game.

*if you have NPC standing still or something like sign, you can attach it directly to the tile. Then you check all the tiles near the hero (1 left, 1 right, 1 above and 1 down for example).

*once you discover the NPC (or sign) you can attach dialog box above everything either automatically or if player has pressed certain key.

You could search this board for some more, I remember making something like this once. But since there are too many different ways to make texts appear, its hard to create some sort of meaningful tutorial about it.

Good luck

[Kayol R.Hope]

Well, I guess your right about different ways to doing this although I must admit that understanding what your saying to me and actually knowing how to do what your suggesting are two way different things to me. I wish I knew how to do that. I don't imagine that you'll make a tut in the future to help people make more complex stuff in games. Other features people might want to make would include the following:

• NPC
• Bonus levels or next world instead of walking through door after door
• boss enemies
• and weapons that don't shoot

I think alot of people give up on they're projecst because they can't design the cool features past the basics, I know I do. If I were to make an RPG there would be a wide range of weapons, stats, maps, and equipable armor plus weapons. I know it can be done because I've seen things like that in Flash games (not very many though) and thats what I want in mine.

I've seen tuts on FK on how to setup a servers for multiplayer games although if someone gets stuck after the basics then the project will be scrapped before it becomes multi player right? I personally just like making simple games although a simple one with a few intertaining features would be nice.

[mbenney]

Check my footer, theres a zelda opensource with a pa system in it

[Kayol R.Hope]

Dude, thanks!

I'm sure I've seen the exact tut before when I was trying to make an art based game and I couldn't figure out how to make the PA system with a scrolling text effect too. Sweet open source and now I should get an understanding of how it all works for short ranged weapons, PA, and its in tile base, which is what I'm learning now. I'm still trying to learn everything I can though. I was wondering what books are out there that would actually teach Flash MX 2004 actionscript with pictures and stuff, like a tut but the actual scripting so as I might become truly knowledgable and master it?

[luxregina]

You can still go the Ed Mack way : it is just the proximity test you have to change :

declare the AI of the sprite in the XML map (like <sprite x="10" y="5" model="priest" ai="priest" (...)/>

Then, in the AI function, just do something like :
TBW.prototype.priest = function(clip)
{
if (Math.abs(this.settings.player.set.x-clip.set.x) <= 1 && Math.abs(this.settings.player.set.y-clip.set.y) <= 1){
clip.sendMessage(this.dialogue.myMessage); (...) }
}

I know the code i have given is incomplete, as it lacks lots of function, but you should definitely download Ed Mack iso source on his site ( go to the second floor, i think it's when you step on the second square ...)
If you want to see a finished game based on that source, click on 2 Kingdoms, in my signature , it is loosly based on Ed's tutorial

[tonypa]

Originally posted by Kayol R.Hope
I was wondering what books are out there that would actually teach Flash MX 2004 actionscript with pictures and stuff, like a tut but the actual scripting so as I might become truly knowledgable and master it?

Only Flash book I really liked, was Jobe Makar's "Flash MX Game Design Demystified". He has written newer version for Flash MX 2004, which should be released by now (or soon now). I havent seen the MX 2004 book, but MX book was covering well several types of games. It might of been little heavy on physics, but then again, you will need physics in every game. I doubt you can find book about Flash RPG games.