I'm not sure about the scrolling thing. Even on my 133 Mhz Pentium you move at a consistent speed of about 4 squares per second, sometimes slower if there's a lot of water. (I use WAIT &H3DA, 8 to time the scrolling, is this a different speed on some computers?). I will definitely add an option to alter the frameskip, though. Right now it scrolls 2 pixels in each frame but I could easily change it to any other number. It was always my plan to have two or three different frames of animation for each character in each direction, but it wasn't a priority for this demo release. It will be definitely in the full game, though, as will MIDI looping. I deliberately put back MIDI looping because I will have to wait until all the songs are finished before I know their exact length in seconds to use for looping purposes.
But, I'm not going to fix the thing where you have to walk into people to talk to them. I actually prefer this method because you don't have to use another key.
Yes, the scripting for entities on the map is only called when you walk into it. The positions of the entities and the address in the scripting file is all saved in memory so when you walk into an entity it knows where to find it and finds it. The only problem is when you walk over a tile that doesn't actually do anything but is an entry point or a "blocker" entity it will still access the scripting file. But to speed it up, I put all the non-functional entities at the top of the scripting file.
And finally, the battle engine. Right now it's functional but I haven't really put much effort into making it look good yet. I still have to add sprites for all of the weapon and magic hits, and I think I'll make the enemies dart forward a bit when they attack you. I'm definitely going to take advantage of the fact that the enemies are controlled by the same scripting language of map entities. You can look for some really neat multi-stage attack patterns in the future, and maybe even stuff like attacks which are effected differently by what items you have with you, stuff like that.
Thanks for the input! Keep on ARCing!
