Hi everyone! I am happy to say that I already have enough content for another development update! I think going forward I'm going to attempt to stick with a bi-weekly schedule for these since that has seemed to work out well this past month. Continue reading for screenshots and information about some of the features and improvements I have been working on recently!
First-Person Mode for Map Editor
One of the more interesting new features is the new first-person camera mode that is available in the Map Editor. By selecting a tile, you can then switch to this new mode and the camera will zoom down into the first-person perspective to get a better feel of how the game will look from that view. This is particularly helpful if your game will be using that as its main camera type. You can move and look around in this mode as if you were walking around in-game.
While in the first-person camera mode, you can do most things as you normally would, like placing tiles, adding scripts - even building a house from the inside! :) At any time you can also select any tile and press the M key to move to that tile while remaining in first-person mode.
Dialogue Features
In regards to the dialogue system, I made some improvements to the visual appearance of player choices in-game as shown in the GIF below. Now they are shown within the dialogue box instead of floating above it, and you can customize the alignment (left, center, or right) from the Theme Editor. The hover color of the player choices will use the color defined for the player.
In the Dialogue Editor, the player nodes will now automatically show choice numbering when more than one is connected to the output of another node. This will make it easier to see what the ordering of the choices will be in-game.
Other Updates
Since I've never been quite happy with the way that the player precisely follows the blocky terrain (walking up stairs can be a bit jarring, especially in first-person), I took some time and implemented a couple of methods of smoothing out this movement. Combining this with the ability to override a tile's collision model, you can achieve several different variations of smoother stair climbing!
The properties panel for the Theme Editor was cleaned up a bit, specifically the Images section. All of the images that are available to edit are now in a list. You can select the image you want to change, then click the Edit button to open it in the built-in Image Editor. The Revert button will restore the image to its default appearance.
Lastly, a bit of humor to demonstrate the new "Override Animation" scripting function that was recently added!
"Well sir, I have a silly walk and I'd like to obtain a government grant to help me develop it."
Thanks so much for following my progress and taking the time to read this! Your support is greatly appreciated. :) Check out RPG in a Box on itch.io if you'd like to find out more about the tool or to try out the recently updated demo version.