Edge behavior in rooms

Chris H.'s Ultima / ACS-style game development system!

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rld
Posts: 223
Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:17 am
Location: Dallas, TX

Edge behavior in rooms

Post by rld »

There is a hard-coded limit for room regions that keeps the player from stepping on the outermost ring of tiles, unless they lead to an overlapping room, in which case the player can walk up and down the edge row/column once they have triggered the room transition.

It turns out that fixing the engine so that all tiles in a room are passable including edge rows/columns (whether or not they lead to another room) is trivial, so I am testing to see if this breaks anything else. With this change, the room transition only triggers when the player 'bumps' against the edge of the room.

Interestingly, a similar limit prevents creatures from stepping on the outer ring, and this is also easy to remove, and if you make this change you can actually get creatures to follow you from room to room in a room-type region, although they won't show up in the new room unless they are already standing on the overlapping row/column when the player 'flips' to a new room. Still very interesting, as I had thought there was no way to do this in a room-type region.

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Garth's Equipment Shop
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Post by Garth's Equipment Shop »

I hope it doesnt break anything, this could be super useful! I hadn't really thought about it before but enemies chasing the player from room to room was part of the fun in ACS games.

joebonk
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room change

Post by joebonk »

I had to remake some maps as the same space that entered the room would not allow going back the way i came. This sounds like the fix :)

rld
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Joined: Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:17 am
Location: Dallas, TX

Post by rld »

Random notes on the room-style map, tinkering around with things:

ACK will not let you make a room smaller than 3x3.

The total size of the room region map is 80 columns wide by 40 rows deep. This is unfortunately 1 row shy of what you would need to stack sixteen 16x11 rooms (the maximum size) in a 4x4 grid with the room edges overlapping.

You can have more than one room overlapping another one on a given edge. For example, a room can have two neighboring rooms adjacent to its north side.

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