I guess I'm one of those people who never seems to have enough time to do everything that they want to do, though I'll freely admit that I don't always make as good use of my time as I should (or could). It also doesn't help that I'm constantly coming up with new things to work on and never actually finish many of my projects, so things end up kind of piling up. (I am referring to personal projects here, not school or work related things.)
With less than a week until FASS is over for another year, I expect to be having at least a bit of extra spare time to do stuff in, so in an attempt to focus my efforts on a small number of projects I thought I'd try blogging about them. Not that I really expect this to make me get stuff done, but at least it'll give me something to write about (and my small number of readers something to read about) other than the usually complaining about TAing and marking and stuff.
Anyway, on to the stuff! (In no particular order.)
QRT
My current programming project which I blogged about in my previous post. There's not really anything to say about it at this point beyond what I've already said about it so I'll just say that I plan to continue working on it.
Writing
I do like to write and I sometimes think that I'd like to try my hand at writing a novel - not that I really care if it were to get published or not, but I'd like to at least write one! I missed NaNoWriMo due to being embroiled in FASS edits, so I'm planning on picking a month (likely March) for my own personal NaNoWriMo. We'll see how that goes. Though I'm going to continue beyond just one month if necessary.
Comic
I'd also like to try my hand at making my own comic. This is something which will also be a useful experience for my research. I've got some ideas for a short 3-5 page test comic which I will probably get started on shortly after FASS finishes. I plan to document the process so there's bound to be more posts on this topic in particular on my blog. I also want to get back into the habit of drawing more so this will give me a nice focused outlet for that.
Those are the main projects I'm planning on focusing on, in addition to my PhD research, of course. Expect to see posts on these in the future, depending on progress.
Freak Out
-TFitC
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
A Look at QRT
After threatening several times, I'm finally going to sit down and blog more about my QRT project.
So what is QRT? In short, QRT stands for "Quasi RPG Toolkit" and is a project I've been working at off-and-on for the past couple of years (already? gee...) which will (hopefully) eventually become an integrated set of tools for creating RPGs in the style of what one might have seen on the SNES, back in the day, like Final Fantasy VI, for example.
This makes it similar in its goals to the RPG Maker series of editors, for those who are familiar with them. So why, one might ask, make my own version of RPG Maker? Other than simply "because I feel like it", basically, I have several ideas for improvements over the RPG Maker series that I think would be, well, improvements, especially in the areas of flexibility and customization. I think it's also a good programming and design exercise.
The QRT project also serves as a sort of updated version of my FR project. Not only is QRT much, much, much better designed, it's also much more flexible and, more important, reusable which my much older and inferior FR code-base would not have been.
Without going into too many details, let's do a brief overview of what I've done so far and what I'll be working on in the near future. (Note that the graphics in the screen shots were downloaded for use with RPG Maker 2000 from various RPG Maker fan sites and are serving, for the moment, simply as placeholders. The plan is to eventually replace these with original graphics.)
Above is the main editor window. I had a map editor for FR, but it was *only* for map editing. The QRT editor will be an integrated editor for maps, scripting and the like - as one would expect from any sort of modern development toolset.
One of the ways that I am making QRT more flexible that the RPG Maker counterpart is including a tileset layout editor to allow users to create custom tileset layouts, unlike RPG Makers' pre-defined layout (to the best of my knowledge). It is also possible to use a different layout for each map in a project, if desired. One of the things that I am currently working on is improving the "auto-tiling" feature (used to automatically draw terrain feature like deserts, swamps, rivers or whatnot) to allow the use of animated tiles in all auto-tiling groups. (RPG Maker 2000 only allows animated tiles in auto-tile groups for its special water/shore groups - I don't like the rectilinear shorelines that it limits you to.)
Another customization feature is the inclusion of custom created fonts. Fonts can be created from scratch or can be based on any installed Windows font (though the import function still needs some work).
Scripting in QRT is initially going to be via a point-and-click script interface (as I feel this is easier for novices to pick up), but I plan to eventually include an actually scripting language as well (probably Python, but we'll see when I get to that). Another feature that I'm planning for scripting is a scripting API which I'm calling "Quartic" - QUAsi Rpg Tools Interface Component. The plan is to allow users to develop scripting plug-ins for custom functionality.
Above shows a (very simple) text box showing the font display and colouring at work. This is the (humble) beginnings of the in-game UI. My plans for the UI is to make it highly customizable, including a UI layout editor as part of the QRT editor. I hope to make it fairly easy to create custom game UI (which will help give each QRT game a unique look and feel). While custom UI can be make in RPG Maker, it's very inconvenient, not to mention tedious.
So far, QRT is coming along slowly, but, I suppose, somewhat steadily. As far as important functionality goes, it's roughly equivalent to where I had FR all those years ago but, as mentioned, much better designed and ultimately more flexible, powerful and reusable. At the moment, my focus is on revisiting some of my existing features and improving and/or simplifying them before continuing on with the scripting and UI systems.
I may eventually post more as I continue to progress on the project.
Freak Out
-TFitC
So what is QRT? In short, QRT stands for "Quasi RPG Toolkit" and is a project I've been working at off-and-on for the past couple of years (already? gee...) which will (hopefully) eventually become an integrated set of tools for creating RPGs in the style of what one might have seen on the SNES, back in the day, like Final Fantasy VI, for example.
This makes it similar in its goals to the RPG Maker series of editors, for those who are familiar with them. So why, one might ask, make my own version of RPG Maker? Other than simply "because I feel like it", basically, I have several ideas for improvements over the RPG Maker series that I think would be, well, improvements, especially in the areas of flexibility and customization. I think it's also a good programming and design exercise.
The QRT project also serves as a sort of updated version of my FR project. Not only is QRT much, much, much better designed, it's also much more flexible and, more important, reusable which my much older and inferior FR code-base would not have been.
Without going into too many details, let's do a brief overview of what I've done so far and what I'll be working on in the near future. (Note that the graphics in the screen shots were downloaded for use with RPG Maker 2000 from various RPG Maker fan sites and are serving, for the moment, simply as placeholders. The plan is to eventually replace these with original graphics.)
Above is the main editor window. I had a map editor for FR, but it was *only* for map editing. The QRT editor will be an integrated editor for maps, scripting and the like - as one would expect from any sort of modern development toolset.
One of the ways that I am making QRT more flexible that the RPG Maker counterpart is including a tileset layout editor to allow users to create custom tileset layouts, unlike RPG Makers' pre-defined layout (to the best of my knowledge). It is also possible to use a different layout for each map in a project, if desired. One of the things that I am currently working on is improving the "auto-tiling" feature (used to automatically draw terrain feature like deserts, swamps, rivers or whatnot) to allow the use of animated tiles in all auto-tiling groups. (RPG Maker 2000 only allows animated tiles in auto-tile groups for its special water/shore groups - I don't like the rectilinear shorelines that it limits you to.)
Another customization feature is the inclusion of custom created fonts. Fonts can be created from scratch or can be based on any installed Windows font (though the import function still needs some work).
Scripting in QRT is initially going to be via a point-and-click script interface (as I feel this is easier for novices to pick up), but I plan to eventually include an actually scripting language as well (probably Python, but we'll see when I get to that). Another feature that I'm planning for scripting is a scripting API which I'm calling "Quartic" - QUAsi Rpg Tools Interface Component. The plan is to allow users to develop scripting plug-ins for custom functionality.
Above shows a (very simple) text box showing the font display and colouring at work. This is the (humble) beginnings of the in-game UI. My plans for the UI is to make it highly customizable, including a UI layout editor as part of the QRT editor. I hope to make it fairly easy to create custom game UI (which will help give each QRT game a unique look and feel). While custom UI can be make in RPG Maker, it's very inconvenient, not to mention tedious.So far, QRT is coming along slowly, but, I suppose, somewhat steadily. As far as important functionality goes, it's roughly equivalent to where I had FR all those years ago but, as mentioned, much better designed and ultimately more flexible, powerful and reusable. At the moment, my focus is on revisiting some of my existing features and improving and/or simplifying them before continuing on with the scripting and UI systems.
I may eventually post more as I continue to progress on the project.
Freak Out
-TFitC
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
My Year as CSW
As my readers probably all know, I spent April through December of 2010 serving as the Chief Script Writer (CSW) for FASS, a local, annual, amateur theatre production that I am involved with. I haven't blogged much about it because, well, for the most part there isn't really all that much interesting to say - I ran weekly meetings where script related stuff was discussed (brainstorming, scene & song writing, editing), took notes, and sent regular reminders to my writers to tell them to make sure to send me stuff by established deadlines. Oh, I did some writing too, but then, so did a bunch of other people. Overall, it was largely a bunch of administrative type stuff that isn't really all that interesting to write about nor, I suspect, to read about - at least not on a regular basis.
I was fairly heavily involved in writing the previous year's script as well (for the 2010 show) and being CSW didn't really feel all that different, except for the added administrative tasks and the fact that as CSW is wielded supreme veto power. The main difference was that I had more to do for the last couple of months during editing.
Overall, being CSW was an interesting experience. Were I to go back and do it again, I would probably approach a couple of things differently. I would probably swap the focus on a couple of the plot lines during the second act and I would probably also spend a bit more time thinking about specific characters that we wanted to use and potential character arcs back in the brainstorming phase.
Now that my work is done, I'm planning on how to use my new extra free time, though as I am still acting in FASS this year I will still be somewhat preoccupied through to the first week of February so I won't be able to go full tilt on my various personal projects until then.
Anyway, until next time.
Freak Out
-TFitC
I was fairly heavily involved in writing the previous year's script as well (for the 2010 show) and being CSW didn't really feel all that different, except for the added administrative tasks and the fact that as CSW is wielded supreme veto power. The main difference was that I had more to do for the last couple of months during editing.
Overall, being CSW was an interesting experience. Were I to go back and do it again, I would probably approach a couple of things differently. I would probably swap the focus on a couple of the plot lines during the second act and I would probably also spend a bit more time thinking about specific characters that we wanted to use and potential character arcs back in the brainstorming phase.
Now that my work is done, I'm planning on how to use my new extra free time, though as I am still acting in FASS this year I will still be somewhat preoccupied through to the first week of February so I won't be able to go full tilt on my various personal projects until then.
Anyway, until next time.
Freak Out
-TFitC
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