Now that Rockbot is reaching the 1.0 version (ETA first semester of 2014), it is time for other people to start making games by using the editor. As, for what I know, this was only used by me, the user interface can be confusing. So I will explain the basics of editing players, enemies, bosses, objects, maps with this tool in hope someone find useful. The posts on this series will not follow the tab order, but a logical one, as there is no sense in creating an enemy without a map to put them.

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Game Properties:

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Name: the name of the game you are creating/editing

Special Item #1: Remember Mega man 2 items #1, #2 and #3? Rush Jet/Coil? Same thing. Pick, between the items you created the one player will be able to call upon selecting on weapons menu. The items can be created at “Objects” tab.

Special Item #2: Same as above.

Semi-Charged Shot: The editor allows you to create projectiles at “Projectiles” tab. You must create one that is the semi-charged and set it here. Why this is here and there isn’t the full charged shot? Because this one is common to all players, while the full can be set differently for each player.

Stage-Faces: Remember the Mega Man 2-10 stage select screen with 8 bosses and later Dr. Wily face? Well, here you can set the icon image for each stage. The stage name is editable at “Stages” tab. For each stage, you set an image.

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Stages:

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A stage consists of three maps, that can be linked (remember climbing a ladder on Mega man and the screen scrolls up-down slowly? This was a map transition) between themselves. The stage tab edit have a name, usually the boss name, and, for each player, two diaglos; one in the stage beggining and another when reaching the stage’s boss. You can set, in this tab, the stage name, boss name, boss face (that will appear on the dialog, not to be mistaken with the stage select face), answer player is where you select witch player you are editing the dialog for – the boss dialog is the same for them all, but the player text is not. Also stage dialogs is used on start of the stage, while boss dialogs is the one used when you reach the boss room to face him for the first time. If a stage is already beaten, no dialogs will be shown, as the boss room is now empty.

Note that boss face can be any face you like, the player can speak with someone else, like a companion or communication center, like in Megaman X series.

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Players:

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Here you can edit some aspects of the character the gamer will control while playing your game.

Name: Player name. This will appear on dialogs the player speaks.

Hit Points: Hotal damage points the player can receive. Default is 28, we recommend to keep this way or lower only, as the game does not support other values much well because of the number of lines in the energy bar.

Has Shield: If the player can use a shield button to avoid being hit by projectiles.

Max Shots: How many simultaneous projectiles from regular weapon (special weapons taken from bosses hay their own limit) the player can fire up at same time in the screen (one one of those vanishes, you can fire up more).

Touch Damage Reductor: The player can take less damage from touching enemies. Minimal damage is always 1, but if the touch damage is 4 and you set this to 1, the player takes only 3 points of damage reduced from his total energy points.

Jump Gravity: This is the value substracted from player’s jump speed each frame he is moved when the jump if going from ground to up, or increasing speed when going down in the jump. Higher values make the jump shorter, while higher values make is longer and slower.

Jump Speed: initial jump speed. You can combine this value with gravity to make a really slow or fast jump. Player with both and find values you like.

Move speed: how fast the character moves. Two is a value similar to Mega Man, higher is faster.

Can Slide: If enabled, the player will slide can can pass small holes of only one tile size where normally the player can’t fit; otherwise it will dash and the player height isn’t affected by the movement.

Charged Shot: The projectile this player fires when fully charged.

The graphics used by the player can’t be set from the editor yet, instead it uses the pN.png file from data/images/sprites folder, where N is the number of the player, eg p1.png, p2.png.

[lang_pt-br]No dia em que o 12º doutor (Doctor Who) é anunciado, o 5º beta do Rockbot também é!

Peguem na nossa página de downloads enquanto ainda está quente como pão da manhã.[/lang_pt-br]

[lang_en]The 12th Doctor (Doctor Who) is announced, the 5th beta of Rockbot is also announced!

Grab it while hot in our downloads page.

[/lang_en]

UPDATE: Fixed missing links in downloads page, sorry for that 🙂

This long awaited release has been delayied several times for adding support for a new platform, the Playstation portable (PSP) and making sure it is a solid, with few bugs version. I hope the delay will pay off and you will enjoy a great game, that still have problems and is not finished, but is finally taking shape enought for a decent test-run, as now you can finish the game from start, or simply input a password and go right to the final stage 😉

Go to the downloads page, and get it for any of the platforms supported: Windows, Ubuntu 12.10, Linux(TGZ), PSP, PS2 and Dingux (we’ll also try to make Open Pandora packages soon) give a try!

New Features:

• Memory leaks fixed
• Killing NPCs drop items
• Editable colorcycle
• Editable link to final boss teleporter room (one has 8, other has 9 teleporters)
• Editable “can fly” property for NPCs
• Better edition for boss faces on stage
• Do not show empty dialogs
• Editable Artifical Inteligences for non-boss NPCs
• Fix the old scroll-lock (screen not moving) bug
• Disappearing blocks
• NPCs returning after dead when out-of-screen
• Logic in editor for jet and coil items
• Logic in game for drop items
• Save on quit/leave
• Fix sound in PS2
• Can set NPC weapons (2) on editor
• New font, new music, new graphics
• SEVERAL, and I mean really SEVERAL bug fixes
• Interrupt charging on door, death and when leaving stage
• Save Castle stages
• Password system
• PSP Port
• 5 Skull Castle stages (with no NPCs yet)

Known Issues:

• Apebot’s stage is abnormally slow in handhelds
• Using L/R with no boss beaten shows an invalid weapon with skull as icon
• Placing Coil item to your left makes player under it, being not able to move until it disappears

This release is a tribute to all people of the beloved city of Santa Maria (Saint Mary) where I lived for more than 10 years and suffered a horrible tragedy yesterday. Rockbot is with all the families and victimis at his mechanical heart.

Get it, as usual, in the downloads section.

Today is a very special date, as Rockman (Megaman in USA) celebrates it’s 25th anniversary!

Watching the release of Street Fighter vs. Megaman that was made by a fan and now supported by Capcom-Unity also makes a homebrew developer like me smile a bit and again focus on working in Rockbot’s code once again after a while.

And for that special date, I need to write an explanation on Rockbot’s current status:

The lack of news was due of me being a bit tired, as a single person developing almost everything into a game sometimes becomes boring, you have no one to exchange ideas with or some support when doing hard tasks. With day-work requiring much of my strenght and causing pain in my spine due to long hours sitting in a chair in front of a PC, Rockbot work was put aside for a few months.

In the last week I was finnaly able to resume working on it, and already coded all of Ape Bot’s Artificial Inteligente (AI) and great part of Daisie Bot’s too. Most of work is to create small functions such as “jump_to_player” where the enemy will execute a jump in the direction of the player, function that will be used not only by robot masters, but also small enemies. Another area of work are special attacks and improving a lot of the  projectiles system, so it supports a large number of attack types and variations. In short, a lot of boring work that will drasticaly improve all enemies on the game and, when you play our next beta and face Ape Bot, you WILL undoubtly understand 🙂

So, when is the next release? Well, I have 10 days of vacations in this year’s ending, that probally win’t help much, as I will travel and won’t have much time to code, but in february I’ll get more 20 days, so expect something in middle-march. Our plan is have all bosses working fine – instead of just standing there – and special weapon (coild, jet) working again, and with some luck, get sound working on PS2 and get a build for PSP.

That is it, good christmas and happy new year to everyone!