The Shining Source

Completed 11 character sprites and 7 battle animations.

From this topic on YOB.

“I suppose I’d best make an announcement about this.

Firstly, I’d like to say a massive thank-you to the people who’ve voiced their support for the project. I realise some (most) of you were just posting ‘cos people here made you, but I’ll let that count :P

Anyways, I’m sure some of you are eager to know if work on SO will resume. The old code is more than a little dated, so most of it is being scrapped. Fear not though, the new features should make up for this short delay in restarting things. There’s still some kinks in the design to work out, but it’ll all get sorted in time. As always, anyone who wants to suggest a feature is welcome to. No idea when the next demo will be out. I wouldn’t count on it being in the next few months, as I have a degree and a girlfriend to take care of. I’ll be using the worklog feature on the site to keep you all updated, so once I fix the site up you can check there to see what me and Newts are doing =)

So in other words, yes, it’s back.”

A heap of updates in this one, here’s a small list:

• Improved spell support
• Added Heal 1-2, Blaze 1-3 and Bolt 1-2
• Added support for 4 spells per character
• Implemented a VERY basic AI.
• AI will walk randomly within range and then attack whenever possible. You can enable it for any entity by setting “(entitynumber).ai=1” in the accompanying entityfile.
• Battle talk option
• Optimized Smee tile editor
• Improved import tileset and load new tileset features.
• Right mouse button can also hold a color now.
• Fixed the messy SMEE GUI on startup
• Enhanced hit point display in combat
• Additional battle backgrounds and land types :)

You can already see the screenshots below and the download link waay above. It’s still more or less a beta version, so any feedback is certainly appreciated!

I hope you guys will like it :)

Today I spent a lot of work completing the spell support and adding AI to BABS, so that you can also fight computer-controlled players in the battles.

Making screenshots of AI tends to be rather hard, but I can show you some stuff from the spells:

Choose different spells, and with different spell levels using a temporary (and ugly) interface ;)

Torture thy enemies with fire straight from the Paint Shop Pro clipart library (which in fact is worse than the Abyss)!

Stay tuned for a beta release containing these features. The engine gets along nicely all in all, but I really do need some more testing and bug reports in order to get the stuff reliable :)

Yesterday and today I added a lot of new features to BABS, but I decided to wait with the release until there are more graphics around for me to use (or until I made more stuff, in case nobody helps).

Here’s a listing of what I added (among other things):

• Added a battle talk option like in Shining Force 3. Events can be hooked up to talking opponents.
• Optimized Smee tile editor
• Improved import tileset and load new tileset features.
• Right mouse button can also hold a color now.
• Added bucket fill to the tile editor.
• Fixed the messy SMEE interface bug on startup
• Improved the spell support
• Added Blaze level 2 and Bolt level 1.
• Added support for huge range and huge area spells (see screenshot).
• Made some very poor spell animations ;)

Thought this would be an interesting sight to see :P

Anyway, I can most certainly use help in the mapping, spritemaking and animation department, as I’m very short on graphics.

Also, I’ll be gone from tomorrow until Sunday, so if I happen to be silent, that is probably the cause :)