How to learn to do these more advanced BYOND things?

ID:1599419
 
Jun 14 2014, 8:13 am
(See the best response by Lige.)
Problem description: I know you can do these things in BYOND as I saw some games do have them but I don't know how. I can do many simple things in BYOND but not these. Maybe you can point me to the right libraries or demos for these things I want to learn to do that I need for the games I'm making:

1) Create bars that you can manipulate. I want to have bars that you manipulate to give priority to the thing you market and create. I am making a business simulation game and you need to design something that will take a certain amount of priority so some bars will have higher or lower than others.

2) Have a professional menu appear. I want a way for an in-game menu like in any video game like pokemon and final fantasy or other rpgs.

3) I want a way for text to appear in an area in a game like a gaming text. Not on the output nor like input or alert texts but texts like regular rpg games.

4) Cutscenes. I wants an ability for characters to move, fight and talk on their own or when something is triggered.
Jun 14 2014, 8:40 am
Best response
TheDarkChakra wrote:
Problem description: I know you can do these things in BYOND as I saw some games do have them but I don't know how. I can do many simple things in BYOND but not these. Maybe you can point me to the right libraries or demos for these things I want to learn to do that I need for the games I'm making:
Most of what you want is relatively easy. I can't suggest any libraries, unfortunately. Here's a list of basic references you should probably keep an eye on for the following.

1) Create bars that you can manipulate. I want to have bars that you manipulate to give priority to the thing you market and create. I am making a business simulation game and you need to design something that will take a certain amount of priority so some bars will have higher or lower than others.
By "bars", I'm assuming you mean the interface.

Otherwise:

2) Have a professional menu appear. I want a way for an in-game menu like in any video game like pokemon and final fantasy or other rpgs.

3) I want a way for text to appear in an area in a game like a gaming text. Not on the output nor like input or alert texts but texts like regular rpg games.

4) Cutscenes. I wants an ability for characters to move, fight and talk on their own or when something is triggered.
Jun 14 2014, 8:54 am
Can you tell me more for me to get started?
Jun 14 2014, 11:06 am
Which of the four are you still struggling with?
Jun 14 2014, 11:14 am
In response to TheDarkChakra
TheDarkChakra wrote:
Can you tell me more for me to get started?

You can't learn the more advanced stuff until you learn some of the basics. Unless you do that, everything will be forever a mystery to you. Unfortunately I feel you, like most people have fallen into the trap of impatience, but there's somethings there is just no way around. I feel that if you focus specifically from the beginning and learn each piece bit by bit, you will become infinitely better instead of working to piece together things through other's code and trying to accomplish tasks that you might not be ready for-code wise.

That being said, all of the things Lige mentioned are basics that you need to learn to use, once you become accustomed to using them, you will then begin to see how all of them fit together to make the things you want to a certain degree.

But then again..I've mentioned this all to you before :p
Jun 14 2014, 12:59 pm
In response to Dariuc
But I know many basics. I just don't know these. I did use client.screen and screen_loc vars before.
Jun 14 2014, 1:41 pm
I'm looking at these definitions and not knowing what to do.
Jun 14 2014, 1:53 pm
TheDarkChakra wrote:
1) Create bars that you can manipulate. I want to have bars that you manipulate to give priority to the thing you market and create. I am making a business simulation game and you need to design something that will take a certain amount of priority so some bars will have higher or lower than others.

I don't know what this means.

2) Have a professional menu appear. I want a way for an in-game menu like in any video game like pokemon and final fantasy or other rpgs.

Ok, when you say "professional menu" and then say "pokemon," I get the impression you think anything that doesn't look awful is professional. The bar is not that low, man...

Second, menus are a combination of clicking and program state management (usually, I think). On BYOND, we can handle them with physical objects (/atom) because BYOND gives us a method to draw static content onto the screen using them, via client.screen.

So, since we know how to draw what we want to the screen (/atoms and client.screen), the next step is clicking. And that's just client.Click().

3) I want a way for text to appear in an area in a game like a gaming text. Not on the output nor like input or alert texts but texts like regular rpg games.

Same as the above. Text on the screen can be handled with a physical object placed on the client's screen. In the case of text, it's many objects.

4) Cutscenes. I wants an ability for characters to move, fight and talk on their own or when something is triggered.

There are 2 kinds of cutscenes. One is scripted events, the other is animated video. You're not going to do animated video, so the last option is scripted events. And just like it sounds, a scripted event is just a set of instructions for actors to follow.

var/mob/a = somemob
a.moveSomewhere()
sleep(5)
a.eatCandyBar()
sleep(10)
a.jumpOffABridge()
sleep(with the fishes)


I just wrote the guts of a cutscene.