Player Settings

This dialog is used to define the map where gameplay starts, what the inventory looks and acts like, and a few other global gameplay-related settings.

First of all the player needs to know where to start the game. All this requires is an indication of which map the game starts on. The map itself knows the starting position for the player sprite. Then there are a few miscellaneous global settings used by the player:

• The scroll margins determine how many pixels there are between the edge of the map display and the edge of the player sprite before the map starts to scroll. The smaller these values are, the closer the edge of the sprite can get to the edge of the display area before causing the map to scroll. The map will stop scrolling if the player reaches the edge of the map. The player can then travel right up to the edge of the display if the map solidity allows it (even off the edge, so make sure the edges are solid).
• The "Quantity Margin" determines how certain aspects of the inventory are displayed. This margin is used to separate the icon (or word) representing an inventory item from the bar or text indicating the quantity owned.
• One new feature with version 1.3 is frame rate limiting. If you want to try to make your game run at the same speed on fast computers and slow computers, check the box to limit the frame rate and enter how many frames per second you want to allow. If you want to see the current frame rate, go turn on the frame rate display in the Options Dialog.
• Another new feature with version 1.3 is the ability to specify a default script. Here you can enter the filename of a VBS script written for GameDev, and then if you right-click on the GDP file and select play from the context menu, it will automatically load the script associated with that project. This may be somewhat more convenient than creating a proper shortcut for your project. Also, when you run GDPlay.exe without any parameters, it will prompt the user to create a shortcut. If the user creates a shortcut that references only the GDP file, the default script will be picked up automatically when the shortcut is executed, even if not specified.
• New with version 1.4 is the adjustable playback screen resolution. You are no longer forced to deal with 640x480 displays. If you are fond of the old chunky graphics, or have a need for speed, you can drop the resolution down to 320x240, or if you want extra detail, raise the resolution to 800x600 or 1024x768. The map editor will follow, and edit the maps in the same resolution except for 320x240 mode. The map editor will edit maps in 640x480 even if the resolution is set to 320x240, and the display will just be confined to the top left quadrant of the screen. This is to allow the map editor enough room to display its menus. Important! Be careful when adjusting this setting on an existing project. Reducing the resolution can reduce the number of tiles in the map. Actually, changing the resolution doesn't directly affect the map; it will just verify that all the existing maps can fit on the display, and you will get an error message about each map that doesn't fit. But if you then go to the maps dialog to alter the view parameters to fit in the display, you could easily clip out significant portions of your map, depending on how your scroll rates are set up. Keep in mind that changing this parameter does not automatically change existing map view settings. You may have to visit the maps dialog (and maybe the media clips dialog) to re-size or re-center graphics to the new resolution after (or before) making adjustments here.
• Another new feature with 1.4 is the loading screen. If you specify a loading screen for your project, the specified image will be displayed while the project loads. This really only makes sense for projects large enough that they take a while to load. The progress bar and the "Powered By GameDev" logo are not alterable and have a fixed position on the loading screen. Also, you *can* change the graphics behind the text that appears above the progress bar, but that status text will always appear in that fixed position and in the system's default GUI text color. The loading screen image should be in JPG, GIF or BMP format, and should be 400x250 pixels. I recommend using the template bitmap included with GameDev 1.4. The filename is LoadScrn.bmp, which is in the directory where GameDev.exe was installed. This gives you a good idea of what space you have to work with.

The remainder of the dialog is dedicated to defining the inventory. To create an inventory item, first enter all the parameters for the item, then click New to create the item and add it to the project using the given parameters. The list below describes the parameters:

• Name: The name by which this inventory item can be referred to within the project. This name must be unique within the space of all inventory item names in the project.
• Icon Tileset: If the inventory display for this item is represented by a tile, this indicates the tileset in which the tile is contained.
• Icon Index: This selects an individual tile from the tileset that will be used to represent the item in the inventory display. Use the arrows to cycle through the tiles in the tileset. The currently selected tile is displayed below the field.
• Max Quantity: Determines the maximum number of this item that the player can own.
• Initial Quantity: Determines how many of this item the player owns when the game begins.
• Quantity Display: Determines how this inventory item is displayed. See below (after this list) for a detailed description of each option.
• Icon count per repetition (M): If Quantity Display is set to "Index to M; repeat..." this value determines how many sequential tiles there are in the tileset representing various quantities of this item. For instance if you have one tile representing a single key and another tile right after that representing two keys, you would set the icon index to the tile for the single key. Then set this value to 2. Then when the player has 3 keys, two tiles will be drawn to represent the quantity owned of this item: one depicting two keys and one depicting one key.
• Bar Color: If a bar is used to represent quantity owned for this item, this is the color of the bar.
• Bar Background: The bar has a fixed maximum size. The background of the bar always occupies the entire maximum size while the bar itself represents what portion of the maximum is owned. This setting determines this background color.
• Bar Outline: If the background is insufficient to set off the bar from the background of the display, you can add an outline of any color around the edge of the bar background.
• Bar Length: Determines how long, in pixels, the maximum langth of the bar is. For vertical bars, this is the height and for horizontal bars this is the width. This size determines how big the bar background is.
• Bar Thickness: Determines how thick, in pixels, the bar background and bar are. For a vertical bar this is the width and for a horizontal bar this is the height.
• Coordinates to display inventory item: Where on the display the inventory item should be drawn. This may overlap the map since the inventory is drawn after the map is drawn. Just make sure that whatever X,Y coordinates you choose, there is sufficient room for the icon, the margin, and the display of the quantity. Remember the screen resolution is 640x480.

The "Quantity Display" field deserves a more detailed description. Many of the other parameters interact with and depend on the value in this field. Listed below are the different values for Quantity Display.

• None: Do not display this item in the inventory, just track ownership of the item invisibly.
• Horizontal bar above: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item with a horizontal bar above the icon according to the specified "Bar" parameters. The bar is aligned with the left side of the icon and fills from left to right.
• Horizontal bar below: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item with a horizontal bar below the icon according to the specified "Bar" parameters. The bar is aligned with the left side of the icon and fills from left to right
• Horizontal bar at right: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item with a horizontal bar to the right of the icon according to the specified "Bar" parameters. The bar is centered at the right side of the icon and fills from left to right.
• Vertical bar above: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item with a vertical bar above the icon according to the specified "Bar" parameters. The bar is centered above the icon and fills from bottom to top.
• Vertical bar at right: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item with a vertical bar to the right of the icon according to the specified "Bar" parameters. The bar is aligned with the bottom of the icon and fills from bottom to top.
• Vertical bar at left: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item with a vertical bar to the left of the icon according to the specified "Bar" parameters. The bar is aligned with the bottom of the icon and fills from bottom to top.
• Text above: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item as numeric text above the icon. Text is aligned with the left side of the icon.
• Text below: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item as numeric text below the icon. The text is aligned with the left side of the icon.
• Text at left: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item as numeric text to the left of the icon. The text is centered to the left of the icon.
• Text at right: Display the item's icon at the specified coordinates, and display the quantity owned of this item as numeric text to the right of the icon. The text is centered to the right of the icon.
• Repeat icon to right: The icon is drawn at the specified coordinates if the player owns at least one. Quantity Owned determines how many more icons are drawn to the right of it. The total number of icons drawn represent the number owned by the player. Obviously this only works for items with small maximum quantities. For each item that the player *could* own, but does not own, tile number 0 (from the same tileset) is drawn in that position instead. (MaxQuantity tiles are always drawn onto the screen, Quantity Owned determines how many are the specified icon vs. tile #0)
• Repeat icon above: Same as "Repeat icon to right" except additional items/slots are drawn above the first one.
• Repeat icon below: Same as "Repeat icon to right" except additional items/slots are drawn below the first one.
• Increase icon index: A tile is always drawn at the specified coordinates. If the player does not own any of the item, the specified tile is drawn. If the player owns one of the item, the following tile is drawn etc. The count of the item owned by the player is added to the tile index drawn.
• Index to M; repeat at right: This is somewhat similar to "Repeat icon to right", but each "slot" can represent more than 1 item. If M (specified in the field under "Quantity Display") is 2 for instance, the following will be true: owning 1 of this item is represented by the specified icon being drawn once; owning 2 is represented by the subsequent icon being drawn once; owning 3 is represented by the subsequent tile being drawn once and then the specified icon being drawn to the right; owning 4 is represented by the subsequent tile being drawn once at the specified coordinates and once to the right. The remainder of the space that could be occupied (indicated by MaxCount divided by M) is filled in with tile number 0 when not used.
• Index to M; repeat above: Same as "Index to M; repeat at right" except additional tiles/slots are positioned above the first.
• Index to M; repeat below: Same as "Index to M; repeat at right" except additional tiles/slots are positioned below the first.

If an inventory item does not specify a tileset, the item name text will be used to represent it in the inventory display (Quantity Display in this case should be bar or text).

In version 1.4 and later, you can define on which maps an inventory item is visible. By default an item will be visible on all maps, but you can turn off display of particular inventory items on specific maps in the Edit Maps Dialog.

The arrow buttons at the bottom of the dialog can be used to navigate through existing inventory items. New creates a new item based on the displayed parameters and adds it to the project. Delete deletes the currently displayed item (indicated by the index in the title of the frame: "Inventory Item 1 of 2" for instance). The Update button updates the current item to the displayed parameters. The arrow buttons do an implicit update before moving to the new item, as does the OK button.

Since all these parameters are project-wide they are saved in the GDP (project) file and have no connection to a map, except that the starting map name must exist in the project.