Well hello there. Name's Max.
A pal of mine said I should make a post in this forum for what I'm doing. I never contributed to a forum before so this might get a bit messy.

Anyway, what's this post about? The answer is a Casing Making Engine.
Now, some might think "But aren't there already quite a bunch of 'em?". And yes, yes there are. But the thing is...I don't like them, except aaonline.fr, which is great.
Now I decided to make my own. It's still in development but I figured I might not develope it behind the curtains but open instead. Beta's in version 1.1 currently but will soon come to Beta v1.2 (Open Beta). Currently I'm looking for some more testers for the closed beta, so if you decided to take a look at it and are interested, you can contact me (contact details at the very end). But I'd also like to hear opinions on what's shown currently.

Now enough of the background information. Here's the current showcase, features and other details:

Overview:
Now, an overview of it can be found on the project page on my (VERY empty) website here
You can view the demo videos of the engine there as well. I will post a demo video there after each major update, which will be announced here as well.

Details:
Before I list up all current supported features, I'll explain how the engine actually works.
The Ace Attorney Casing Tool consists out of three parts, two of them for creation, one for playing.
These three parts are:

- The Asset Maker
- The (Code) Editor
- The Case Engine

The Asset Maker is the tool you'll use to set up your projects by adding Music, Sounds and Images. It provides various editors to set up characters + animations and locations.

Here are some example screens, on how a project setup could look like.

Character list

Evidence list

Location/Scene list

Popup/Bubble list

Music list


After the asset have been set up, you have to write the game's script.
Wait? Script? But doesn't it say on the website "With this engine you can create smaller AA styled games without writing a single line of code"?
Yes, but by that I mean real code. Programming is what I mean by that.
I've created a script "language" called Ace Attorney Casing Tool Script (AACS) or short ToolScript. It's not a complex language but rather just a bunch of instructions which tell the engine what to do next. There's a code editor which should help a bit on writing the script.

Well that's basically how you set it up. I show screens of the Case Engine, as it is shown in the tech demo on the website. Though I'll provide more details if asked, of course. But now to the list.

Full list of all features:

- Display Backgrounds (with optional foreground like desks)
- Display Messageboxes (With or without namebox)
- Displaying custom Messageboxes via images (with or without namebox)
- Displaying text in red, blue, green, purple, yellow and white
- Pausing during a speech
- Flash the scene with a white flash
- Display a penalty bar (with or without sliding animation)
- Increasing or decreasing (healing and damaging) penalty bar value (full: 100, empty: 0)
- Making a part of the penalty bar flash in yellow
- Displaying evidence thumbnails
- Displaying character mugshots
- Reveal or hide pieces of evidence or character profile pictures in the court record
- Playing and stopping music (Looping)
- Play sound effects (Looping or one shot)
- Displaying characters with emotes (Idle, Talking and Preanimation)
- Playing custom blip sounds for a character or emote
- Fade in and out the scene
- Fade in and out the background
- Fade in and out the character
- Fade in and out the music
- Display popups and bubbles
- Cross examinations
- Button choices
- Investigations
- Point selecting on the scene
- Multiple ways to end a cross examination instead of only finding a contradiction

Planned features:
- Psyche Locks (v1.4)
- Mood Matrix (1.4)
- Centered Text (1.4)
- Adjustable text speed (1.4)
- File support for opus (.ogg), AVI and maybe APNG (1.4)
- Animated backgrounds (gif only) (1.4)
- Adding and removing statements to and from a cross examination (1.4)
- Custom graphics/UI Customization (Not during the beta)
- 3D Examination (Not during the beta)
- Perceive (Not during the beta)
- Divination Seance (Not during the beta)
- Logic Chess (Not during the beta)
- Script generation (Similar to Unreal Engines graphical programming interface) (Not during the beta)

I've also changed the way versions work. Version 1.x will refer to a beta version, including the open beta.
When the product will go in the final release, version 2.x will start. (Release 2.0 won't include all the planned features above.)

I'm pushing the abbilities a bit to the back since I need graphical assets for them, which isn't my strength, so that might take a bit longer to implement.
Also if you got any suggestions on features you'd think are nice, I'll consider them.

And that's all right now. Once again, I'd love to hear some opinions about it. So if you decided to use this engine, please consider to join the discord server of the development.

Cheers.

Edit: I'm not using this post anymore cuz I'm honestly not cut out for blogs. I edited this post to reflect the new URL (debygames.com/aact instead of aact.debygames.com). There's been progress since I made the last post so a lot of this here is probably outdated by now. The development is still very much alive, just not on this forum. If you're interested, make sure to join the Discord development server.

Last edited by MaxDeBy on Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:23 pm, edited 6 times in total.

I've been wondering how long it would take to get a Dual Destinies/Spirit Of Justice era case maker...

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Well it's not really a DD or SOJ Case Maker. You can use whatever sprites you want. I just chose to use 3D Sprites, since I prefer them. But you can also use DGS Sprites or Trilogy Sprites. Whatever you want. The engine doesn't provide any presets or any assets at all.

Ah, I see. But still, it's nice to see something where we can use the 3D stuff and have it look decent.

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Well I came back with the intention to post an update but uh...apparently I made a mistake with the version numbers.
Version 1.2 is already out, but not with the features listed above. Open-beta will be at v1.3. And the features comming with the update are listed below. (The original post will be edited as well I guess?)
Anyway, uh, here the update: 80% of the work is almost done, but the biggest parts are still in development which means the update will still take a while.

Here's the list:

- Loopable sounds (Done)
- Smoother transition between talking and idle animations, provided they are synced (Done)
- Increased performance; Characters now load much faster (Done)
- Spot/Point selection on the upper screen (Done)
- Abbility to replace all graphic elements (excluding penalty bar and selection crosshair) with custom images (Done)
- Investigations (Not started yet)
- New features for the cross examination; Multiple ending conditions and the abbility to add and remove statements (In progress)

I really loved how your showcased the features in your videos. I hope it will be made available to the public soon.

(I have no idea how forums work...this message was accodentally sent via PM at first.)

Yes, it will infact. I‘m working on the last couple of features I mentioned above. When they are finished, my current beta testers will test that version and after a week or so open beta will start, meaning everyone can access it for free. I will provide more details when the time comes.

I've lost count of how many times I've done that lol.

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You got me really surprised when I checked my emails just ten minutes ago. And as I've said, it's good news and I can't wait to try it.

Well it's been a while again. And again longer than expected. But here's an update. The update is finally finished. The update will be tested inside the closed beta for a week. Afterwards the engine enters open beta which means it is available for everyone to use.

Well the release of the open beta is sadly delayed due to technical difficulties with the release pipeline. I am waiting for a response from the Microsoft support. I hope it‘ll be resolved until next week.

Alright. Finally. The engine has reached the public open beta. If you'd like to try it out, visit https://www.debygames.com/Home/Product?name=Ace%20Attorney%20Casing%20Tool to download it. And also join the discordserver if you want to submit suggestions or feedback to the engine. The link is on the same page.

Thank you very much! I'll try this out for sure.

Alright. The list for the new and last beta version is set. The features are described in the first post. It should be done in around 2-3 weeks.

Well development will take longer since I am working together with some artists that produce graphical assets for me. And this takes a bit longer than expected. The next post here will be, when the update is about to release.

Well, I haven't posted here in a while. So I figured might as well update here.
Development of 1.4 is almost completed. Though some features had to be scratched. APNG support is not something you find a lot. So it was quite difficult for me to work with it. In the end, I had to accept I lack the knowledge of creating an APNG render component. Which means, APNG will have to wait for now and GIF animations are still the only way of animating your characters.

Also, centered text had to be striken. While it seems like a trivial matter (I mean, every text editor can do it, right?) it's apparently not as easy as I thought. Since AACT doesn't use a monospace font, I'd have to calculate the exact spaces I would have to add at the beginning of each line, to center the text. With the current implementation of the AACT text render engine, that's not possible. The concept of "lines" doesn't exist, actually. I'd have to change quite a bit before I can implement centered text.

However, the rest has been complicated, but not impossible to implement. AACT will most likely be, the very first case maker that allows you to use the Mood Matrix . Though with restrictions of course. You cannot select images like in the games, for out of control emotions. This is too dynamic and complex, to abstract it currently.

Also, due to the nature of AACTs sound engine, OPUS support would be possible, but not advisable. AACT's file handling works in a way, that prevents it from breaking down, should a file be deleted or altered when it is in use. That means, files aren't actually used. When they're in need, a copy of them will be placed in the RAM, and the original file stays untouched.
Now what does this have to do with OPUS support? AACT uses the audio library NAudio, to play the music and sound effects. There exist extensions for that library for various file formats. Opus is not one of them. So I would have to decode it to a raw WAV file and then feed that into NAudio. Not impossible, but takes about 2 seconds to decode the complete file. Though to an error on my side, stream decoding (decoding and playing at the same time) isn't possible, so I would not have a choice but to decode the whole opus track before playing it. Obviously, a 2 second delay to start a music track is bullcrap.
This will definetely be changed in the future. Though, for now, all I can offer is a converter. With the Asset Maker you will be able to convert an opus file to a .ogg file (which I accidentally added support for). You will then be able to use this OGG file during the game.

That's pretty much all there is to say. The rest works as intended and will be implemented. 1.4 will be the last beta version. The next version will be 2.0, or Release 1.0.

If you're interested in this case maker and would like to see more updates, I highly encourage joining my discord server, which is linked on the download page, which in turn, is linked at the very first post in this topic.

That's all.
Cheers.

Slight problem: I can't access the site. Do you have a working link to this site? Because, I'm quite interested in this...

Take away the "aact" in the front of the link and put it at the end after a slash. So instead of acct.debygames.com it's debygames.com/aact

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Do PLvAA sprites also work?

Hey, so I wanted to download AACT, but when I went to the website, all that showed up was a red background and text that says "Welcome! Things are in the works!". Why is this happening? And can I still download AACT?

Please reply as soon as possible.

He will probably not respond. AACT is most likely a dead project.

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I used to have AACT, but I deleted it. Is there still a way for me to reinstall it?