Legacy:Developer Journals/FF3

Idea

Well, to start off with, its just gonna be the equiv to HLs VGUI. I'm only making the message blurbs and the status screen. Gametype and rules are next, followed by modelling (god help me) and mapping (same). I don't know what story or what general style I want to follow, so that's gonna be configurable.

Into the lion's den

First up is the message boxes.

Standard FF style is a straight box with text in it and a little down arrow when its done. I'll do this one, then add a configurable var so that you can also see the persons face who's talking if you want to. I.E.

 +-------------------------+               +----------------------+
 |  Leo:                   | <-without face|(Pic)  I just wanted  |
 |        I just wanted to |               |(Pic)  say...         |
 |        say...           | with face   ->|(Pic)                 |
 +-------------------------+               +----------------------+

I don't think this will be too hard...

5:00PM 01/07/03

Okay, started on the GUIPage, (made it a GUIPanel at first... didn't work..  :() have defaults, and have functions for changing them. Looks like its going pretty well. If only I knew more about interactions so that I could create a mutator allowing me to call up the page on a key stroke. I have the interaction code, (easy) just need help putting it in a mutator... any help is appreciated.. I'll solve this sooner or later..

P.S. Once I figure it out, is it ok if I post a screenie here? I want ppl to see what this looks like  :)

5:45PM 01/08/03

Heh... Problem found. I can't figure out how to add an interaction to the interaction master from within a mutator. Quite difficult I think... Solved.  :)

6:30PM 01/09/03

Grr.... crappy trace error that I got and posted on scrath pad if anyone wants to take a look. Also started a volume for maps to start battles in. Its quite simple right now. As soon as you enter a timer starts. When the timer hits 0, a battle starts. (they look really cool right now too) I'm working on getting the volume to start/stop counting based on player movement (like in FF games) and change the battle area based on the volume/area your in.

12:55AM 01/10/03

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Death to ME!!! little did I know that the GUI object, when forced to close, closes the current GAME as well. Oh well. Now I will try to make the same GUIPages out of HUD objects and just add(?) them to the HUD when called. *SIGH* it looked really good too...

9:06PM 01/19/03

Well, all the GUI stuff is working, I have a brand-new ingame menu, along with an inventory and stat system, and I'm working on the battles and how they go ingame. Its looking really good and I've personally never made it this far in the development of a mod before so I'm really happy with myself.  :)