Phoenix Wright Calculator Case Maker (Officially Dead)

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:04 am

Good, not much to say about it except that the background is still a little to distracting.

2bookworm · Post by **2bookworm** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:54 pm

I just downloaded it. On the screen, I see the x and y axis bars. Is that right? Otherwise, it's pretty cool!

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:58 pm

it's possible to get rid of those, you hit 2nd and then zoom up at the top, cause right above it, it saids "format". then just turn AxisOn to AxisOff by highlighting axis off and pressing enter. now, no axis bars.

AxisOn

AxisOff

2bookworm · Post by **2bookworm** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 12:59 am

Thanks, forgot about that.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:12 am

you can all go ahead and divide the pauses for mouth animation and the text being posted. at the way i had it before, it looked like the mouth animation was about twice as slow, and the text was about 4 times as slow. so you can change the 1st pause to 50 instead of 100, and the second can become 25 instead of 50(the first is twice as fast to keep the the mouth open long enough to actually be somewhat visible during the animation, without just being a gray blur when he opens his mouth. so i'll speed up the mouth movement til it is twice as fast, and then divide up the animation time to have the text run fast and smooth.

also, due to minor altercations of the sprites by hardly a few pixels, it is possible to have various expressions of some characters, like normal judge, surprised judge, and angry judge

ko7 · Post by **ko7** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:56 am

The mere idea of creating a game engine in TI-Basic is mind-boggling to me. The most advanced thing I ever did was a dragon-fighting simulator. (So many goto statements to weird places... I look at that program now and the programmer inside of me dies) So this to my mind is incredible, and even though I am currently missing my link cable, I will get this on my calculator even if I have to type it in myself!!

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:26 am

trust me, what i'm doing is nothing genius... my code is still pretty sloppy and i probably use a bunch of the wrong loops sometimes.

and i'm not even close to using ASM

although... after i'm finished with the basic programs and stuff, learning, and then converting the game to use xlib or asm would make it look pretty epic...

with something like xlib i could
-replace dithering with actual grayscale
-use up to 255 separate sprites
-make seamless transitions between scenes
-make incredibly smooth animation of mouths and other stuff
-make tons of characters and such

the only downsides
-it takes time
-the users would need appropriate files for xlib (it would be hard to run it on an emulator)
-and it takes time... like a lot of time

but it'll be progressive...

info on making your own cases
*******************************
the engine program is stand alone and should only be edited should you plan on making your own character animations or modifying the engine

users make their separate programs for each case they want (well technically they could put multiple cases in one program...) with the following structure

Intro (menu, game introduction, instructions, whatnot)

line 1="what? who's there?" (line of script)
character variable 1= phoenix (character speaking)
special action variable= 0 (special actions, objection, skip pause, future additions)
run casemakr (runs the case maker engine with imputs above

line 2 ="*CRASH!!!!*"
character variable = none
special action variable = 1
run casemakr

... (and so on)

saving is up to the user's preference when they make their program. they have some methods of making saving working, like labels or if statements, but it has to be them to make the saving work, since the script is in another program then the engine

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Sat Feb 14, 2009 3:03 am

a little bit ago, i wanted to modify the case maker engine than the version that was released. in the version that was released, i just made it "work". after a bit of tinkering, i've modified the way the game displays text and animates. it looks exactly the same, but now it's possible for me to make text display much faster (to whatever speed i calibrate it to) separate from the speed that the animation goes to. it also allows me to insert extra frames of animation, should characters become more advanced than just opening and closing their mouths.

stuff till finished
-having the right timing for displaying text and animating
-judge background
-larry background
-special actions (objections) added to the engine

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:31 pm

Can you make it so that you don't need to modify the program to make new characters, or maybe a second "character database" program?

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:38 am

well, i don't really know if there's a way to make a program that changes things in a code permanently, so unless there is, editing the code is kinda the only way... the only thing i can think of is to have a program that lets you select the points on a picture that would change, i.e. the mouth which would open and close. but it would only be temporary for as long as the program was running. plus, it'd take time. but there could be a way to make a program to edit code, and if so, it could make case making and custom sprites easy without code editing.

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 1:01 am

What if you don't want to bother with mouth animation? character variable 1=pic3.8xi?

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Tue Feb 17, 2009 3:29 am

but, the biggest thing this program is about is the animation, even that part is finished.

if you change the existing pictures, and save them as the same thing (recall pic 5, change it, store as pic 5) then, as long as you keep the mouth of the original sprite, you can change it to whatever you want, and it will still work.

once the 1st release is out, that will be the major checkpoint. from there, the engine will be upgraded, it will run faster and smoother, and there will be more characters to use. and if xlib ever gets implemented to run with the code, then you can expect a pretty awesome engine.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:57 am

I asked a guy online, and he said that it's possible to make something like that in assembly programming, with the very slightest chance that it could be done in BASIC, but probably with an additional library (so there would be more commands).

i think it would be a bit more effort than necessary right now, as its not going to be hard to make your own case with the case maker, just by making a single program, especially if i make a tutorial with it.

also, look for an update today for the first release judge sprite, background and everything.

I like the judge, nice and symmetrical in every way...

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 8:49 pm

these are all the sprites being with the alpha release of the engine

if there's any changes you'd might like to be in the first release, you'd probably want to say it now.

the release is right around the corner

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:55 am

everything's finished for the case maker alpha release

now i just have to make the preparations for it's release

expect to see it released sometime tomorrow, hopefully (because i want to be able to launch it the day before my birthday)

Post by **Ceres** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:12 am

Subtle

YggdrasilsSword · Post by **YggdrasilsSword** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:22 am

It's about as subtle as a giant flaming winged hippo singing in Gaelic! *waits for mental image to appear in reader's head*

...

Oh, sarcasm! Curse you, faulty sarcasm detection. Anyway, it'll be good to see this interesting project progressing into the alpha release stage.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:23 am

well at least i didn't make it part of the thread's title... lol

but really, if there are any last minute suggestions, you guys should let me know now

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 8:44 pm

The bit right above the textbox looks a little weird.

Come to think of it, I think that's why I found the defense/prosecution distracting. Something about a few white pixels on black just seems weird to me. I'm sure it's just me though.

The judge's open mouth and edgy's inner thing both look odd to me, being solid black.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:54 pm

ehhh too late... but i can work on that on the next release

CAUSE ALPHA 1 is out

Nurio · Post by **Nurio** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 10:33 pm

meleemaster500 wrote:ehhh too late... but i can work on that on the next release

CAUSE ALPHA 1 is out

Not to be very picky or something, but isn't an alpha an "in-house" demo of sorts? Only for a very private group or just yourself to test out. What you're releasing would be a beta, I believe. :garyuu:

Still, this is nothing short of awesome! I have a Texas Instruments myself (and a Casio) and I might try this out some day. :gant:

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 11:06 pm

Excellent.

The sprites seem better in-game (except surprised judge, that was just weird).

What's the difference between skipping all pauses and skipping end pauses?

(Unimportant, but automatically going to the second line at spaces instead of anywhere would be a nice touch - shouldn't be to hard since there's a fixed # of characters per line)

The arrow looks good now too, even if I still wouldn't have put it in myself.

The case-coding looks very simple too, though I haven't tried it yet.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 11:57 pm

it's alpha, cause it's before beta...

yeah i know that beta is synonymous with it being released to the public, but i used this scheme, cause i really didn't know how to manage my progress.

alpha is the first release, followed by beta, and so forth. it's alpha 1 cause it's the first release. if i make some minor improvements, a sprite here, a touch up there, then it will be alpha 2 and so on.

but if i do something big, include xlib, then that would be beta 1

it's a weird system, but i can keep track of it better than release 1 2 3 or version 6.46
this is the system used with the release of homebrew scene stuff sometimes...

also, it's funny cause i was bored in science today, and i was thinking of an algorithm to work out formatting the line by spaces. it looks like it works out well, and i just need to change it from psudocode to regular code, then check out all the bugs until i get it right

skipping all pauses causes the oldbag effect, it causes the character to say every line with no pause at all

skipping the final pause allows you to scroll through the text at normal, but lets an unexpected skip to the next event happen, useful for objections maybe.

i also noticed a glitch when trying to press enter at the time a skipped pause would happen, it was easy to do and cause the game to somehow pause in the transition of scenes... weird

this program is highly customizable with these and added special modifiers, and if you've looked at the code for the demo you might have noticed that if you set a special modifier, character, or string1 it will only change once you declare a new one, meaning you don't always have to say g=0 for every line, just once until something different.

the special modifiers make creating the cases easy without having to know too much about coding

saluk · Post by **saluk** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:13 am

Actually, public or not doesn't have bearing on alpha beta. Closed (alpha or beta) means private, Open (alpha or beta) means, well, open :) Over time I guess everyone has mostly used beta to mean open though, but closed beta's still happen for sure.

Here's what I've always understood the terms to mean:

alpha - project is not far along, missing major components, or just not quite complete yet. The point is to see how far along it is and help guide development so that nothing is missed before it is too late or expensive to change it. The further along a problem is found, the harder it is to fix.
beta - project COULD be considered finished, except that it is probably extremely buggy and missing a lot of stuff. But if the devs had to choose to release it or delete it forever, releasing it would be OK. The point is mostly to iron out bugs and find smaller things that are missing that the dev didn't think of.

Your release method sounds sort of like mine, except that I did end up doing x.x, because my changes between versions got less and less as it became more about minor bug fixes.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:51 am

i'm doing it kinda like the backup loaders on the hacking scene, they have loader alpha beta and gamma, all because of progression. if i have a minor release, it'll be alpha 1 or alpha 2 and so on

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:56 pm

Wait, I get it. If the text is only one box, skipping final pause and skipping all pause is identical. If there's more then one box, it will only skip the pause after the last box.

Is it at all possible to speed up the text? If not, is it possible to be able to skip to the end of a textbox?

EDIT:

Use if you want, don't if you don't...

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 11:17 pm

i'm generally trying to increase the ratio of the animation to the text being added, but to achieve an effect where you skip to the end of the textbox (like in apollo justice) i think it's possible, but i haven't thought too much about the code yet.

for making code to format the text to go to the next line at spaces, it just might cause a noticeable kind of pause, but i'm not sure if it would or if it wouldn't.

i'll have a check on every space character to see if the next word (between spaces) is less than the end of the line, if yes, display it, if no, skip the line, and if the length of the next word is longer than a line, display it anyway

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 12:23 am

Or just check for the first space that comes at or before 10 characters (or however many characters there are)

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Sun Feb 22, 2009 4:52 am

yeah... that's kinda what i meant...

Post by **DeMatador** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:06 pm

Finally. How could I get to test this on my PC?

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 10:06 pm

included in the package is an instruction document, it has the instructions for playing on your pc as well

NOTE: due to the nature of the case maker, any and all cases made with the structure given in the instructions will be compatible with any version of the case maker, so don't be hesitant to start making a case, if you thought it would become outdated. but with further releases will come more features you can include in your case, which you can modify to include any time you want!

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:26 am

Random Update:

been fiddling around with formatting the text so it tries to keep words on the same line.

i basically think it's almost ready to be fused into the casemaker soon, and it doesn't seem to affect the timing of the animation at all. which is good.

i just need to find which values I need to make it completely work. and then i need to copy that block of code whenever the game is writing text on the screen.

once that's done, i'll start work on sum sprites. xlib will be implemented soon, cause taking up all 10 pics on the calculator isn't very fun... so i'll access the other 255 or so other picture slots that only xlib uses

tenentenen · Post by **tenentenen** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:02 am

All I have to say is this is awesome!!!! really ambitious and such. I have been following for a while but never posted. Now that the alpha release is out, I have some suggestions/ questions.

-There is no way to make an actual "game" in the same format as the AA games correct? all this is so far is an interactive calculator attorney STORY maker correct?
-This is what is missing for it to be able to have complete interactive cases to actually play like

=

I cant think of anything else, but as a casemaker, it only makes stories I think. no user input except the "next(>)" button. Hopefully you plan on implementing many of these things? hmm?

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:17 am

yup, dems the planned features... when i get around to putting them in...

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 1:17 am

I was thinking about this recently, it occured to me that it would be a good idea for evidence to normally not have graphics, but IF it has a check button (i.e. photo) then after clicking it you can see it.

Unrelated, do you have the backgrounds without people on them?

What will you do for Phoenix talking in the defense lobby? Frontward sprite or no sprite?

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 3:01 am

every sprite is pretty custom, and has much detail put into it. the backgrounds only are not available, but for other characters in the location, i'll remove the old character and put in a new one with that background (as a new sprite). evidence isn't necessarily used for the same case over and over again, so most evidence people view will need to be custom... but i'll make a demo evidence sprite of course. phoenix doesn't have a frontward sprite in any game (except hobo wright) so it doesn't seem that big of a priority, unless i start work on more apollo justice-ish sprites or fan sprites. so phoenix would have no sprite.

i'll also probably have some non-character sprites included, just for use's sake, like a blank "lobby" for thought narration, or a black and blank screen (with text block) for game introductions... but time will tell...

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 8:08 pm

I didn't mean including the backgrounds in the case maker, I meant posting them here.

Wait, only JUST realised that by having words appear without mouth movement is a much more obvious and better way to show that Phoenix is the one talking.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 11:59 pm

well i would... when the occasion calls for them to get used for more than one character (once i start on apollo or gumshoe... then i might have the background posted for those locations) and once i work on the lobby too.

and i don't think that phoenix needs a sprite since his talking while offsceen, or thinking is kinda obvious... to make the background empty like you said...

but there might be a way to identify characters who are currently speaking... but nothing for now (there are instances where maybe it's showing like phoenix, and edgeworth is talking... you couldn't tell if it was phoenix thinking, the judge or edgeworth or the witness's stand talking)

MrCheeze · Post by **MrCheeze** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 12:51 am

So when he talks, you just hide whoever he's talking to? That works too.

meleemaster500 · Post by **meleemaster500** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 1:45 am

well for phoenix talking, it will probably just be best to make words appear without the character being animated... but if there is no character on the screen, it will be assumed that the character being "role played" (phoenix, apollo, whatever) is talking as well. most dialog hints to whoever is speaking before they are revealed anyway, and the majority off screen talking is by (at the time) "unknown" characters talking, the main character speaking, or a continuation of another character talking. so most off screen talking is infer-able from dialog, and scarcely used a lot, so it's not too much of a priority to address now.

but if i was to address it now, i would put a nametag right above the text box, similar to the in game textbox, but with custom nametag tile sprites