Technical Discussion June 24 2009

Topic 1 - How would you develop a SNES or GBA era RPG like Final Fantasy VI or Golden Sun?

Common elements

• world map
• talk to people
• inventory
• equipment
• battle
• random/list of encounters
• story
• dialogue choices
• cut scenes

Let's focus on two systems: world and battle.

World system:

• maps
  • NxM array of tiles
  • composed of p tiles
• events
  • changing map (x, y, name)
  • trigger dialogue
  • random/scripted battles
  • chests
  • audio cues
• Zone (alternatively called level, map etc.)
  • has map (which has tile set and mapping)
  • has events
  • has entities

All the zone data is stored in an archive.

• tileset.png - unique tiles
• tileset.text - collision information
• map.txt - pattern of tiles
• events.lua - bunch of functions and events

Entities have triggers for associated events. Random encounters could be done per map (on or off) or in certain areas similar to Pokemon's grass tiles. It was suggested that Pokemon probably checks for a random encounter and then sees if the tile is grass instead of defining areas.

Battle system:

• commonly programmed first
• player stats
• probability modeling
• player team
• enemy team given to the battle system from the world
• there are many battle variations and we chose a simple one
  • Menu choice
    • attack
    • item
    • run
  • the structure of a battle can be modeled by a finite state machine.
    • player selects an action, action happens, did we win? enemy turn, did we die?

Members attended

• Ryan Bujnowicz
• Eric Raue
• Colin Hume
• Bronson Lysy