[tcaudilllg]

I am so tired of working on this.

I put together a DHTML scrollling demo to get a sense of the possibilities for doing DTHML scrolling. Simply put, the CPU activity burst created by image loading makes smooth scrolling pretty much impossible with IMG elements: while scrolling can be accomplished, the pause created by it breaks the suspension of disbelief that is central to immersion. HTML 5's Canvas tag is the only way.

The problem with Canvas is that it requires some major rewrites that I'm really not sure would come out the better in the end. The real issue is Firefox's tendency to choke when dealing with more than a few hundred elements. I'm really thinking of just stopping here and hanging it up, because the simple fact of the matter is that the people who have the power to change browsers don't really care if it's easy to program a game with them. If I could put the tiles in a div and put that in a div with scroll bars, then I'd have all the functionality I need. Eh maybe they've worked on it a little... might as well try it and find out.

I'm really not satisfied not having scrolling. Right now I can do Zelda but eh, if people want Zelda they have ZC.

[tcaudilllg]

How wonderful: Firefox's Audio element is bugged. It's crashing over and over every time it plays on command.

Regarding the CANVAS element, it's pretty snappy and I think I can use it to render the map, then change the position of the element in a clipped frame to effect scrolling. One giant CANVAS element is all I need.

[tcaudilllg]

A release!

http://www10.zippyshare.com/d/40137798/8653/Gamestar.zip

GamestarEditor.html is the executable. Instructions in the zip.

Look out... it triggers an audio crash in Firefox. Trying to file a report about it...

[tcaudilllg]

Thinking about it, I think I can preserve the animation functionality of the map by only redrawing the parts of the map that are in view of the camera. I think there is a limit on the frame rate of GIFs and PNGs anyway, right?

[tcaudilllg]

Added common and persistent variables.

Looks like I'm gonna have to implement requestAnimationFrame. Hopefully that will help on the performance end.

Here's a screen shot of Gamestar:

[tcaudilllg]

An update: much more stability. And, the default sprite speed is changed to 3. It turns out that what taxed the browser so much was not Gamestar, but how I used it. Now the sound is working fine, with no crashes at all. Still, actor programming remains a tricky business. As such, I intend to install delays into the sound engine. When Firefox tries to process many Ogg Vorbis files simultaneously, the CPU becomes overwhelmed and crashes Firefox to avoid frying itself.

[Jinroh]

Pretty cool idea for a live RPG editor. I'll have to check it out when I get some time. ^^ Keep it up.
_________________
Mao Mao Games
The wolf and his mate howl, taking solace in the silver moon. Pressing ever foreward to see what the future holds.

[tcaudilllg]

To get good performance you have to kill Flash completely, including the plug-in containers. Deactivating Firebug is also important.

[tcaudilllg]

http://www18.zippyshare.com/d/64230947/46158/Gamestar.zip

This is the latest version. It has more stability but still breaks on occasion. It's possible to crash the browser if you overload the CPU by playing gobs of Ogg Vorbis files at once... still working on a way around that. The version actually has a great deal more functionality than the last, but I've not yet updated the commands list. I will do that after working out the quirks.

[tcaudilllg]

Scrolling works. Still need to write the camera focusing functiondone.

And there was a bug with the projectile restart.

For the jumping algorithm, I'm thinking of a setup where the designer elevates the actor with script, and then permits the player control of it in midair. A gravity property would be inherited from the map and would be applied at the designer's discretion: all the game would do is keep the actor going up. However, jumping is more complex than this and there would need to be a duration in frames for each application of upward force, which would be spread over the frames. The gravity variable would be subtracted from the total force -- the game would calculate the rate of ascension.

I've also noticed that the layers system isn't really working. 3D space is the next challenge. It's worth noting that 2D platformers are already possible... it's just the totally awesome multi-layered action RPGs like Terranigma that elude my ability. That's the capability I want for my games.

[tcaudilllg]

The projectile bug appears to be fixed.

The dialogue box isn't working right. I mean to overhaul it anyhow.

[tcaudilllg]

Dialogue is debugged, and scrolling is implemented. To invoke scrolling, set the Sight variable to a value greater than the dimensions of the map. There are two scrolling "modes": paint mode and test mode. In paint mode, the game screen has scroll bars which you can use to pan over the entire map and edit it. In test mode, the scroll bars disappear. Test mode applies to the Game panel; paint mode applies to the others.

Canvas support is still not implemented. The problem with the canvas is that it takes a lot of horsepower to redraw the entire map. If I want to preserve the animated GIF effect, that would be a redraw at least 30 times a second. I could limit the redraw to only the visible portion, but how would I determine that? Now of course for testing mode I could just refresh the camera itself, but it seems like a cop-out.

Oh, and I mean to add Chrome support. That means I need Google Gears, I guess, for the file leading/saving. And project management.

[tcaudilllg]

New version: http://www66.zippyshare.com/d/49812701/45013/Gamestar.zip

[tcaudilllg]

I've got a plan for the jumping/elevation system. I think I can implement half of it today. The tile jumping system isn't completely clear, however.

[Verious]

I downloaded the latest version and unzipped it to a single directory, but was unable to get it to work in IE9 or IE10 Consumer Preview. The errors I received are as follows: