May 4, 2013

OpenRGSS Progress Report - Graphics Engine & Windows

Hey guys,

Not so long ago I made an announcement regarding my upcoming project, OpenRGSS, and told you what it was all about. Since then I've made a lot of progress, and because a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm going to share some screens with you today.


Ring any bells? Yep, this is RMXP's default title screen, except that it is run not from its featured Game.exe, but from the OpenRGSS launcher. Not impressed, are you? Want something a lil' more ground-breaking?


So, how about getting the same screen to a 800x600 resolution instead? We can do so through the built-in options menu OpenRGSS projects can access anytime pressing the F1 button.



This menu will replace the Game.exe options menu and will eventually feature control changes and stuff like that. Also, since it is part of the Ruby scripts, it means that you will be able to tweak it, and even script your own options.

Note that windows and background sprites can be set up to automatically adapt to the new resolution.

Also, you might wonder what that troublesome lil' arrow is doing in the middle of the screen. Well, that, my friends, is the mouse cursor. Of course you will be able to customize its appearance and disable/re-enable it at will.


But the interesting part about it is that windows can now be browsed using the mouse. It's as simple as what you'd expect it to be - just point & click to select an option. This is featured by default only in standard selectable windows, as shown above, but the OpenRGSS functions allow you to easily give mouse support to other window types with minimal code.


This last screenshot sums up about everything I've added to the OpenRGSS engine so far, including windows and text management, and it's all pretty self-explanatory. I should give a word about the composite windowskin feature (bottom-right window), though. The thing is I've grown tired of being always required to make edits to windowskins pictures because I liked this background and that bordersand wanted them together. So since I'm scripting my own engine, I thought it was about time I did something to improve this aspect. So what OpenRGSS does is that you can have a variety of backgrounds, borders, cursor graphics, and so on... to choose from and the engine will render windows from your choice. It is still possible to select a single windowskin picture, as you are used to, but then what OpenRGSS does is that it extracts each component from the picture and add them to its library of windowskin parts. So what I did there was to select the custom windowskin for the bottom-right window, then tell it to pick the default windowskin's borders. Also, note that windowskin components can have an arbitrary size, for example it doesn't matter if your custom background has a size that differs from 128x128, which is RMXP's standard. Though it's not implemented yet, it is planned to add support for RMVX windowskins as well.

Oh, and regarding the cut-out text in both bottom windows, it's not a glitch - it's merely that the chosen height for this screen (600) isn't divisible by 32. It's an issue with the screen size, not an engine malfunction.

Hope you liked what you saw and see you next for more updates!

4 comments:

  1. Wow!
    I discovered you few days ago, all your scripts are awesome! but your project OpenRGSS seems very impressive! It looks very good ...!
    good luck for the continuation :)

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your support and nice comments Seriwyth. I'll make sure to come up with good stuff for you to try soon.

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    2. Oh, that would be great !
      I hope you'll succeed! I think I tried everithing and all your scripts are unusual and amazing!

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  2. Looking great! You've touched on the limitations I as a developer dislike. I can't wait to see where you go with this. Looking amazing so far mate, keep up the excellent work.

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