Slowdive's Little Daily Blog

[cartons]

Sounds like a lot of work, even if its maps are already largely tile based. But hats off to you if it means I can carry Hearkenwold in my pocket

I'll have to test the tileset converter myself, but I imagine it'll produce unreasonably large files given how I've been drawing my maps until now. Thanks.

[slowdive]

Sounds like a lot of work, even if its maps are already largely tile based. But hats off to you if it means I can carry Hearkenwold in my pocket

I'll have to test the tileset converter myself, but I imagine it'll produce unreasonably large files given how I've been drawing my maps until now. Thanks.

I wouldn't worry too much about porting to IBbasic as IBbasic isn't seeing much activity or interest at this point. Just stick to IB and PC as that is where the focus will be going forward (IBbasic is pretty much feature complete at this point). The niche group that enjoys IB is mostly PC users. IBbasic was always meant to be an introduction to the regular IB (similar to how the old AD&D Basic sets were used to introduce people to AD&D). IBbasic is fun in its own right, but it was always meant to be a much simpler version and a fully complete and polished version of IB. The regular IB will probably never end in feature additions and updates as it is always growing.

[cartons]

Thanks for the advice. I stepped away from IB for awhile because there were some planned updates to IBbasic that I was hoping to use in my IB adventure, and I figured I'd wait until v204 before stepping back, but I've been bit by the bug again and just want to keep building, hah!

[zach_holbrook]

Just wanted to check in and say hey! Also, I haven't had a crash in a while -- I think whatever issues Windows 11 was causing might have been fixed by updates. (I hope that's the case anyway!)

[slowdive]

Great to hear that the Win11 crashes have mostly gone away. I have been silent for a bit since I have been in the process of replacing my old laptop. I picked up a MSI ge76 raider from Costco on sale a few weeks ago. I didn't want to install much on it or log into many sites until I knew for sure that I liked it. After a couple weeks of testing, I realized that it was crashing way too often while in idle mode so I reset the laptop and took it back to Costco. I picked another to see if it was just a bad motherboard or ram issue with power and this second one seems to be working great so far. So after a week of testing without crashes I am now installing chrome and logging into more places other than just microsoft and gog. I haven't installed Visual Studios or OBS just yet. So I'm slowly getting the thing setup

[slowdive]

I started playing around with the idea of a 3D version of IB. It would include the option to have 3D maps and 2D maps depending on the module's art style. It would be using Unity for rendering, audio, animations, and particle effects. So in theory, you could go pixel art style or full realistic 3D art style depending on your module. All the rest of the IB system would stay the same so existing modules would still work. For the 3D option, I would like to have first person map travel (and maybe a toggle for 3rd person) and top down combat (with rotating and panning camera as needed). So when you enter combat, the camera would rotate to a top down view. I am playing with the idea of allowing encounters to happen on the same maps as the main maps if the builder so chooses. If using separate combat maps, it would work the same as it does now with a scene switch from the main map to the encounter map.

Below is a link to a basic test of the first person movement. Of course I would use appropriate tile sets and tokens, but I'm just prototyping for now.

https://youtu.be/J3mExsAFGF0

Do you prefer the pixelated textures or the more realistic textures? I noticed that the video is not the best resolution and the real thing looks better that what is on YouTube. I like how Talespire looks and I would like for the combat view to look like a top down view on a Talespire map type of thing. That way it retains that pen and paper feel in a single player cRPG. Thoughts?

Using Unity will simplify and improve the whole graphic, audio, animation, and particle systems in IB. This should result in cleaner code for the IB game systems in the end (in theory). Of course, I'm just tinkering around to see how it may or may not work out. I spoke with Jason and Jonny (Bouncy Rock) to get some tips and a general feel if Unity could work for IB and that was extremely helpful for me. Thoughts?

[Dorateen]

I'm excited about the idea. Personally, I prefer the pixelated textures to the realistic ones. I think once you introduce any higher resolution graphics into an otherwise pixelated environment it creates a clash. Also, the pixels help maintain that old school charm of IceBlink.

I do like the Talespire look a lot. Understanding that project had been conceived as a tabletop supplement, I had always wanted to see that style in a computer role-playing game.

[Pongo]

Yeah that looks nice! I agree with Dorateen about the pixelated textures.

I hadn't seen Talespire in action before but it looks pretty cool. The combat approach looks like it would work, definitely captures the tabletop feel.

[slowdive]

I've been slowly working on testing IB in Unity to see if it will work. I was able to get area loading and drawing the layers working (not shadows, Props, grid, FoW, etc. yet) plus zoom and pan. Nothing really implemented yet, just trying to see if the main parts will work. Unity has a built in Tilemap system that is very efficient for rendering tilemaps fast. I'm trying to use it by creating Unity Tiles from the data in the IB area files. I have a title screen just to test the transition to the main map screen. I have to hit the "A" key (just for testing) to create and start rendering the tiles so that is why there is a slight delay from the black screen to the map. I have it set to 120fps just to limit it, it can run at over 1000fps on my laptop if I don't limit it

Also, I have a toggle ("B" key) to switch between perspective and orthogonal views and you will see me switching back and forth just to show that I have a 3d cube in the scene and the difference between the two modes. Regular IB maps will probably be set to orthogonal view only, but I am just playing around here to understand settings. For some reason panning only works in orthogonal view, I'll need to fix that for the 3d encounter maps (I'm starting to lean towards 3d encounter maps being separate maps just like we have now in IB).

See the link below for how it is working out so far (sorry about the weird audio noise):

https://youtu.be/8611W3-2N14

[Dorateen]

Looks interesting. I suppose there would be a way to set the fog of war distance on a map?