Category: Reality Game Creator

Reality Game Creator - Tutorial 3 - Sprite Sheet

12/10/2014

In tutorial 3 we are focusing on getting our sprites ready, before we start combining them with our background tiles and game map to start making our first level.

Again we recommend you use a separate paint program to produce your sprites. When creating your sprites you need to remember the following:

1. use colour zero as your background colour - this colour is used for transparency.

2. use colour one as your border colour.

3. Each sprite must have its own border and there needs to be space between each of your sprites.

4. You must use the same palette as your background tiles.

Below is an example of my WIP game sprite sheet. I have 6 frames for walking right and 6 frames for walking right ( I think you can have a maximum of seven frames). I have 0 frames for jumping and three frames for climbing. The reason for this is that I have just followed the structure of the original skeleton disk.

The enemy sprites can have a maximum of 5 frames of animation.

Once you have created your sprite sheet in your paint program you then need to convert it to the unique format for reality. Similar to the background tiles tutorial you need to load the Graphic Converter program from the Reality Master Disk.

Once you have loaded up the Graphic Converter, you need to load in your IFF file. As long as your sprite sheet has followed the structure of using colour 1 to create a separate border for each sprite, and colour 0 for the background, then Reality will automatically cut your tiles. You will see the number of sprites converted in the top right corner, in the example below 194 sprites have been converted.

You now need to save the sprites in the format used by Reality. Select Save Sprites from the options. For the sprites to be used in your game, you need to save them on your skeleton disk. Remember to save the file under the main files folder and replace the Sprites.GRA file.

You should now have your own background tiles, background map and sprite files. For the next tutorial we will bring the map and sprites together and look at zones.

Before ending this tutorial, we will just mention the palette file. In order for your game to display your sprites and background tiles correctly, you must ensure that you have the correct palette saved to your skeleton disk.

To do this load your skeleton disk in reality (Reality seems to be a bit strange in that you have to place the skeleton disk into your disk drive after selecting edit skeleton disk from the Reality Master disk menu option rather than have it already inserted in your drive.

Once you have successfully loaded your skeleton disk all you need to do is select Grab Palette. Reality will then ask you to load an IFF file which contains the palette you wish to use. Load either your IFF file for your sprites or background tiles (they should both be using the same palette) and then Reality will save the file to your game disk.

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Reality Game Creator - Tutorial One - Using the Graphic Convertor to convert sprites / tiles to GRA format.

12/4/2014

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Welcome to our first tutorial for Reality Game Creator.

We are looking at this package with focus on the Adventure Game skeleton Disk which allows you to create a Dizzy Adventure game.

The graphics tool in reality is very basic and therefore we recommend you use a stand alone graphic package like Deluxe Paint and import your tiles and sprites sheet.

To do this you need to remember two things.

Firstly colour 0 is used for transparency
Secondly, colour 1 is used for importing the tiles and you therefore need to create a border for each tile/ sprite in this colour.

Once you have created your tile or sprite sheet in deluxe paint you need to load up the Reality Master disk. Then select Graphic convertor from the options.

Once in the graphic convertor - select load IFF. In the example below we are loading in dmtiles2.iff

Once you click on OK the file is loaded in. If you have given your tiles / sprites a border using colour one, then Reality will automatically grab them.

To see if the import has worked correctly, check the top right hand corner where you will see the text – Number of images in memory – if this number is greater than one then your tiles / sprites have been grabbed ok – in this case 165 background tiles have been identified.

What we now want to do is save this background tiles in the GRA format used by Reality and therefore we click on Save Tiles

To use the tiles in your game, you need to save the file to your skeleton disk.

You need to overwrite the TILES.GRA file which is located under the main files directory on the skeleton folder.

This is the end of our first tutorial. Tutorial two will look at using the tiles in the map editor.

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Reality Progress

12/3/2014

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It might not look much , but I've now worked out how to make the main character enter a room and I have also corrected an annoying sprite detection error, where the main character was not interacting with the platform tiles correctly (he kept walking along one tile extra when he should have fallen)

All to be revealed in tutorial 4 which will cover zones and flags.

Tutorial 3 will focus on sprites.

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Reality Game Creator - Tutorial 2 - Background Editor

12/2/2014

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The Reality Master disk contains a map editor. To access it you need to select Background creator from the main menu.

To use the Background creator you need some background tiles. We created these in tutorial one.

Select Load from the main screen in the Background creator.

When you select load you are presented with three options.

Load Map - This is the map file which remembers the order you placed the tiles
Load Values - This sets values for the background tiles which determines how the tiles interact with the player character e.g. are the tiles solid or non solid.
Load Tiles - These are the tiles which make up the map.

You need to load the files in the following order

Load tiles first
Then load map
Then load values

All these files are saved on your skeleton disk under the main files folder.

A quick note about the values screen. When you select values you will be confronted by your tiles (as long as you have loaded them in) and numbers next to each tile. I have identified the following for the tiles used in the Adventure Skeleton disk

Value 0 = no affect
Value 10 = used for ladder tiles
Value 50 = used for solid platforms - player can walk on them and land on them
Value 51 = these seem to reduce energy if player lands on them.

Quick note about the map size option. Select Size from the main screen and you will see you map and the option to increase the width and height of your map.

Each screen is 20 tiles wide. Therefore if you want a map seven screens wide the map width needs to b 20 X 7 = 140. If you want the map to be 10 screens wide you need to increase it to 200.

Each screen is 12 tiles tall. Therefore if you want a map 4 screens tall you need to set the height to 4 X 12 = 48.

In the example below (and the map used by the default game on the skeleton disk) the map is 140 wide (7 screens) and 48 tall (4 screens).

The program seems to be able to have very large maps but for your first game start small and add extra areas on once you are confident with package.

Quick note about the Zoom function. If you have a large map this option allows you to jump to a particular part of the map. As we have changed the tiles to the default game the map is going to look very jumbled.

Now for the fun part. The drawing of the map. The two arrows to the right - one pointing up and one pointing down, allow you to scroll through the tiles. The smaller arrows to the left allow to scroll around the map.

I really can't emphasize the need to start small. It gets very confusing if you start with a back map. Work on one room first (remember the 20 tiles wide and 12 tiles tall dimensions to map out the screen first).

Use your mouse to select the tile you want, the current selected tile is shown in the bottom right corner. Left mouse button places tile and right mouse button will undo last change.

Remember the map will automatically sort out the code for moving to the next room. Therefore if you include a tile with 0 value on the bottom, the character will fall downwards to the screen below. If you don't want this to happen include a tile with a solid value of 50. Similarly if you don't want the platyer to move right, include a series of tiles with value 50 to the right of the screen.

If you set your tile values incorrectly you can get strange effects, like the player's character disappearing or even walking in the opposite direction.

If you have used a map editor before, this is quite self explanatory and easy to use. I have never used a map editor before and created a series of rooms in minutes.

That ends tutorial two. The next tutorial will either look at sprites or setting zones. The aim is to create a simple action where the player enters the door of the house and gets transported to the living room and then when they exit the blue door they go back to screen one.

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Reality Game Creator - Tutorial 3 - Sprite Sheet

Reality Game Creator - Tutorial One - Using the Graphic Convertor to convert sprites / tiles to GRA format.

Reality Progress

Reality Game Creator - Tutorial 2 - Background Editor

AmigaPd

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