Menu based text RPG

[Darkknight512]

Would it be a good idea to first write the game in Win32-console or just go straight to Rockbox?

How exacly am I supposed to make the game work on all LCD sizes? Is it possible to just scale everything, just try to keep the amount of text on the screen as little as possible?

[torne]

The console on a regular OS has very little in common with Rockbox - while we have the ability to print text, we really are mostly a graphical system, and this is why I had to invent a terminal-like interface for frotz to use. The ability to print text in a grid is very limited, mostly you need to think of everything in terms of pixel coordinates. Having said that, the fact that the output system might be different doesn't mean it wouldn't be easier to develop the meat of the game on a different platform first (one with a debugger, mostly) It's up to you really; how soon do you want to see your code running on Rockbox?

Making the game work on all LCD sizes depends greatly on what kind of display you are going to have. The image in my head may not match up with what you are thinking of, so I produced this mockup of what I was imagining using all of my Amazing MSPaint Skills:

If that's the kind of thing you were imagining then that's easy to scale to different screen sizes, within limits: the main text window can just wrap at whatever width and will scroll more often if the screen is smaller, and the commands and so on could pop up over the top while it was prompting you. It should fit on a pretty tiny display if people don't mind a lot of [MORE] prompts

[Strife89]

I personally like Torne's layout, but I figured I'd throw in my own program for the sake of (possibly) helpful ideas.

It's written in TI-BASIC, so I went ahead and set up a copy of Virtual TI and installed the game on a virtual TI 83. Here's a link:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1905158/virtualti-ready-to-roll.zip
(Extract the .zip and run vti.exe, then press Enter on the virtual keyboard to run the program. You can also press [PRGM], then use the arrow keys to select Edit and look at the code.)

It's not a pretty program by any means, but I figured it might give a few ideas about the battle structure. I use a LOT of GoTos, though, so you'll want to look into different coding methods, for sure.

----

Also, I have the beginning of a story idea done, if you want to look at it. It was written with a graphical overworld in mind, but it can easily be rewritten to text-only.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1905158/The%20Rockbox.txt

Let me know if you think it's crap, if it's decent, or if you'd rather try a different idea.

[Darkknight512]

A few posts back I posted my old game written in C++, by no means is it even close to complete but this was the interface I started with. What I wanted to do was to change the menu so that it is controlled by arrow keys and select button (In this case enter)



Link to Win32 EXE -> http://www.mediafire.com/?nmnnamenzfz

With some modifications, and removal of some of the useless data I think that could fit onto a display about the size or the Nano's. Maybe on the players that are even smaller, use prompts for "What happend"