Novashell
So i was playing around with Novashell and i was really into the idea of a dink game that scrolled instead of screen changing, has anyone attempted to make a "dmod" using novashell? or planning too? i Certainly don't have the skill yet for something like that, but id be more than interested in playing a novashell made dink game if someone were to attempt one!
Someone's going to have to be a super genius or something because I don't think anyone knows how that thing works and I don't think Seth has a single tutorial out there.
It's something to do with it being super hard/impossible.
It's something to do with it being super hard/impossible.
Maybe no one tried NovaShell because it's kind of.....useless?
The only difference between NovaShell and the Dink engine is that fact that novashell scrolls while the other just changes screens. The rest is almost the same. In the original Dink engine you can use customized sprites just like in NovaShell. Maybe what makes NovaShell better is that it can play mp3 files(from what I recall :? ) and looks more professional.
I remember I tried NovaShell and the first few minutes it was pretty interesting, but it quickly wore off because...I don't know. It's like a curse or something.
Maybe someone will try to do something but who knows....
The only difference between NovaShell and the Dink engine is that fact that novashell scrolls while the other just changes screens. The rest is almost the same. In the original Dink engine you can use customized sprites just like in NovaShell. Maybe what makes NovaShell better is that it can play mp3 files(from what I recall :? ) and looks more professional.
I remember I tried NovaShell and the first few minutes it was pretty interesting, but it quickly wore off because...I don't know. It's like a curse or something.
Maybe someone will try to do something but who knows....
My problem with Novashell is that there really wasn't enough example code for me to work with. I'm a pretty mediocre programmer, so I generally need to see how someone else is doing things before I'm able to do them. Had Seth made another RPG like Dink it, I think there would have been more stuff made with it, even though it certainly seems to have a much steeper learning curve than DinkC.
I made a small test D-Mod with it. Worked fairly well... But I didn't have enough motivation to go through with it to create a complete game.
It's right in your face Skurn.
HOLY SHIT DUDE.
HOLY SHIT DUDE.
The only difference between NovaShell and the Dink engine is that fact that novashell scrolls while the other just changes screens. The rest is almost the same. In the original Dink engine you can use customized sprites just like in NovaShell. Maybe what makes NovaShell better is that it can play mp3 files(from what I recall :? ) and looks more professional.
I remember I tried NovaShell and the first few minutes it was pretty interesting, but it quickly wore off because...I don't know. It's like a curse or something.
Maybe someone will try to do something but who knows....
I am not sure but i think there's more than just simply scrolling. It could be the fact that you have unlimited number of sprites to use AND screens to make. If Novashells supports Alpha channel. Then it can be a superior engine than Dink one.
I remember I tried NovaShell and the first few minutes it was pretty interesting, but it quickly wore off because...I don't know. It's like a curse or something.
Maybe someone will try to do something but who knows....
I am not sure but i think there's more than just simply scrolling. It could be the fact that you have unlimited number of sprites to use AND screens to make. If Novashells supports Alpha channel. Then it can be a superior engine than Dink one.
Tried it once. Felt like the benefits weren't great enough compared to Dink, to go through the whole learning process. There are some cool things about Novashell, but it's just unnecessarily complicated. Don't think it needs to be that different from Dink to work, but was just made into this huge mess for the heck of it.
I mean, geez, it's for creating fairly simple games. Not a machine for freaking time travel.
I mean, geez, it's for creating fairly simple games. Not a machine for freaking time travel.
This is why you get it for beer invaders and that game with a shootyman that destroys other shootymen while Glados taunts you.
Tried it once. Felt like the benefits weren't great enough compared to Dink, to go through the whole learning process. There are some cool things about Novashell, but it's just unnecessarily complicated. Don't think it needs to be that different from Dink to work, but was just made into this huge mess for the heck of it.
I mean, geez, it's for creating fairly simple games. Not a machine for freaking time travel.
and Dink Smallwood back then, when it had an editor, allowed you to do simple quests. Now look at Stone of Balance. A fricking Riddle puzzle which you can type in some stuff.
I mean, geez, it's for creating fairly simple games. Not a machine for freaking time travel.
and Dink Smallwood back then, when it had an editor, allowed you to do simple quests. Now look at Stone of Balance. A fricking Riddle puzzle which you can type in some stuff.
Another thing novashell has is physics... Which I can imagine would have a lot of uses.
and Dink Smallwood back then, when it had an editor, allowed you to do simple quests. Now look at Stone of Balance. A fricking Riddle puzzle which you can type in some stuff.
If you take time to learn DinkC and have all the necessary skills, Dink, quite frankly, has unlimited potential. You could theoretically create all sorts of games with it. Building the foundation would just take a ton of work. I had an idea for a cinematic platformer I wanted to make with Dink, but the problem is I don't have enough skills to make graphics for it.
The other issue, and the biggest with the entire thing is, D-Mods can't be played on their own. It sucks that you need the original game to play them. That limits every D-Mod to this community, and thus limits your motivation for making D-Mods, cause there are so few people in this community anymore. It even limits the content of your D-Mods. Since it's the Dink Community, most people want to play D-Mods that have to do with Dink. D-Mods really need to be stand-alone. I guess with Novashell they would be, and that's one of its greater benefits.
If you take time to learn DinkC and have all the necessary skills, Dink, quite frankly, has unlimited potential. You could theoretically create all sorts of games with it. Building the foundation would just take a ton of work. I had an idea for a cinematic platformer I wanted to make with Dink, but the problem is I don't have enough skills to make graphics for it.
The other issue, and the biggest with the entire thing is, D-Mods can't be played on their own. It sucks that you need the original game to play them. That limits every D-Mod to this community, and thus limits your motivation for making D-Mods, cause there are so few people in this community anymore. It even limits the content of your D-Mods. Since it's the Dink Community, most people want to play D-Mods that have to do with Dink. D-Mods really need to be stand-alone. I guess with Novashell they would be, and that's one of its greater benefits.
Dink doesn't give you unlimited choices.
But you can work around it to give yourself unlimited choices. Creating a Doom like FPS with Dink, for example, would be very well possible. It would take a ton of skill and time, yes, more than probably realistically possible for one or even several people. But in theory, and as far as Dink's limitations go, it's very much possible.
As far as a cinematic platformer goes, creating a basis for one with Dink would be a piece of cake, with only a few difficult steps. Running and jumping at the same time would probably be the hardest thing to do, but still rather easy to work around.
As far as a cinematic platformer goes, creating a basis for one with Dink would be a piece of cake, with only a few difficult steps. Running and jumping at the same time would probably be the hardest thing to do, but still rather easy to work around.
Yeah, you can make almost anything with DinkC within reason of course. It's not tip-top but as Skull said, you have to find workarounds. I thought it would be impossible to make a rythm-based game in Dink at first with the given tools, I was wrong. 
The only concrete limit is time!
The only concrete limit is time!
I don't think Dink Smallwood has any pitch-recognition or microphone capabilities. That rules out Sing Star clones. Unless there is some amazing workaround I haven't thought of.
Also, with more complicated games you will run into the engine's limitations, especially sprite limits. It's capable of a lot more than we've used it for, but definitely not everything, even with a whole team of highly skilled monkeys.
Also, with more complicated games you will run into the engine's limitations, especially sprite limits. It's capable of a lot more than we've used it for, but definitely not everything, even with a whole team of highly skilled monkeys.
Dink is weirdly versatile for what it is. I can't think of another moddable game that gives the same range of options. However, there does come a point where you find yourself asking Why? WHY am I trying to do this thing on the Dink Engine, when I could be using something that's actually designed for it?
However, there does come a point where you find yourself asking Why? WHY am I trying to do this thing on the Dink Engine, when I could be using something that's actually designed for it?
Because people are too lazy to learn a "proper" language when they already know DinkC (sorta). Novashell might lack userfriendly examples, but it uses Lua scripting (which is common in many games) and there are plenty of guides for lua out there.
Because people are too lazy to learn a "proper" language when they already know DinkC (sorta). Novashell might lack userfriendly examples, but it uses Lua scripting (which is common in many games) and there are plenty of guides for lua out there.
The only thing which Dink Engine is missing are OpenGL features,3D model support, PNG or TGA support (To make a good use of the Alpha Channel), more scripts such as cropping the sprite which any Dink Editor does.
D-Mods can't be played on their own. It sucks that you need the original game to play them.
Actually i do believe there is a work-around for that too skull.
I recall it being done before, but i fail to remember which dmod it was....
Actually i do believe there is a work-around for that too skull.
I recall it being done before, but i fail to remember which dmod it was....
Also, with more complicated games you will run into the engine's limitations, especially sprite limits.
Sprite limit isn't really a problem. You can load them in and out of the game at any point you wish. And of course, I didn't mean Dink literally has 100% unlimited cababilities. You're not gonna create the next Assassin's Creed with it. But out of all the game creators I've seen out there, it has the potential for the biggest variety of game genres. The only thing I've seen that comes close is GameMaker.
The funny thing is, try creating a game like Dink Smallwood with CryEngine, Unity or GameGuru. I guarantee you'll have a harder time doing that than creating a good RPG, arcade game, platformer or FPS with Dink. As long as you don't care about super-duper amazing graphics, I'm of the opinion that Dink is the best thing there is for creating multiple types of games. Unless you were to create your own game completely from scratch.
Sprite limit isn't really a problem. You can load them in and out of the game at any point you wish. And of course, I didn't mean Dink literally has 100% unlimited cababilities. You're not gonna create the next Assassin's Creed with it. But out of all the game creators I've seen out there, it has the potential for the biggest variety of game genres. The only thing I've seen that comes close is GameMaker.
The funny thing is, try creating a game like Dink Smallwood with CryEngine, Unity or GameGuru. I guarantee you'll have a harder time doing that than creating a good RPG, arcade game, platformer or FPS with Dink. As long as you don't care about super-duper amazing graphics, I'm of the opinion that Dink is the best thing there is for creating multiple types of games. Unless you were to create your own game completely from scratch.
The funny thing is, try creating a game like Dink Smallwood with CryEngine, Unity or GameGuru. I guarantee you'll have a harder time doing that than creating a good RPG, arcade game, platformer or FPS with Dink.
Well, why wouldn't you? CryEngine wasn't designed for only one or a few things in mind.
Well, why wouldn't you? CryEngine wasn't designed for only one or a few things in mind.
>My problem with Novashell is that there really wasn't enough example code for me to work with.
This is one of the main problems with it coupled with the overall lack of documentation. Novashell uses an entity system rather than the horrible mess that Dink uses, however this requires one to properly understand them first along with stuff like class instances and other things that Dink doesn't have. Furthermore, one may trawl through the documentation and realise that half the stuff there has nothing written for it meaning that it's basically undocumented meaning you'd have to go through the C++ source to find out what it does. Otherwise it does have some very nice features.
Its versatility allows you to do stuff like telling entities to walk somewhere without specifying co-ordinates, as well as having music files fade in and out. It also uses individual XML files with proper animation options rather than a global "dink.ini" meaning you don't break everything by writing a line wrong.
The problem that would arise is how one would implement something like a Dink script's main() when you don't have individual screens. Do you make it proximity-based or do you have it run as soon as its drawn while off-screen? Those sorts of design challenges are also quite annoying, however the extensive camera control abilities would allow one to make a Zelda-like screen-based game if he wanted to.
Overall, NS is really just a Lua wrapper for the rather dubious ClanLib which happens to also include a map editor. I imagine it's how Seth would have written the Dink engine back in the 90s had he known how to do things properly. RTSoft has more or less halted development on it since 2009, closed down most of its forums and moved onto ProtonSDK and then Growtopia. It isn't really worth using as it never developed a particularly active development community which is unfortunate.
This is one of the main problems with it coupled with the overall lack of documentation. Novashell uses an entity system rather than the horrible mess that Dink uses, however this requires one to properly understand them first along with stuff like class instances and other things that Dink doesn't have. Furthermore, one may trawl through the documentation and realise that half the stuff there has nothing written for it meaning that it's basically undocumented meaning you'd have to go through the C++ source to find out what it does. Otherwise it does have some very nice features.
Its versatility allows you to do stuff like telling entities to walk somewhere without specifying co-ordinates, as well as having music files fade in and out. It also uses individual XML files with proper animation options rather than a global "dink.ini" meaning you don't break everything by writing a line wrong.
The problem that would arise is how one would implement something like a Dink script's main() when you don't have individual screens. Do you make it proximity-based or do you have it run as soon as its drawn while off-screen? Those sorts of design challenges are also quite annoying, however the extensive camera control abilities would allow one to make a Zelda-like screen-based game if he wanted to.
Overall, NS is really just a Lua wrapper for the rather dubious ClanLib which happens to also include a map editor. I imagine it's how Seth would have written the Dink engine back in the 90s had he known how to do things properly. RTSoft has more or less halted development on it since 2009, closed down most of its forums and moved onto ProtonSDK and then Growtopia. It isn't really worth using as it never developed a particularly active development community which is unfortunate.
But you sound like someone clever enough to figure it out toast!
Or is motivation the problem?
Or is motivation the problem?
>But you sound like someone clever enough to figure it out toast!
I made some crappy guides here about 5 years ago that were intended to show WinDinkEdit users how to make Dink-style maps in Novashell which are gone now (maybe Marpro might remember). However, as I moved along and tried to do standard RPG/Dink stuff like choice menus, an inventory, pushing, health, fade down/up and other things that come stock with Dink I realised I would have to write most of it myself if I were to embark on such a thing and I really didn't want to.
The capability is there to do 99% of what Dink can along with a whole bunch of amazing other stuff, however as I stated previously a lot of built-in functions/classes aren't documented which includes the inbuilt choice menu system as well as the MindWall thing he tacked in there for Ludumdare etc. NS has a very handy mod system much like Dink which would have made "dmod" development quite simple had most of Dink's stuff been included in the example game. I even used the mod system to very easily make a platform game for a friend's birthday which was fun, and packaging it up to work on his PC standalone was very straightforward.
Interestingly enough I trawled through the C++ code (I don't know a lick of C++) and found out that Seth was planning a Dink map importer meaning one could theoretically import their Dmod map into Novashell, however it was merely a stub and wasn't implemented.
Seth has closed down all but one of the Novashell forums now (there used to be 5 of them) which suggests that he has lost faith in it all and moved on completely. The last update he made was XML export so that people could use it purely as a map editor which they could export from rather than run games in it. Overall I would recommend trying another engine like Love2D instead or even Phoenix's build of Freedink which uses Lua.
Here's Rabidwolf9's foray into Novashell and the problems he encountered in making a gold heart bounce if you're interested in seeing what's involved in making a Dink game in Novashell. Seth was actually incredibly helpful here which was nice. I don't think he'd be as forthcoming these days with help, and the lack of a real community and any development means that if you got into trouble and discovered a bug or needed something explained you'd be screwed.
I made some crappy guides here about 5 years ago that were intended to show WinDinkEdit users how to make Dink-style maps in Novashell which are gone now (maybe Marpro might remember). However, as I moved along and tried to do standard RPG/Dink stuff like choice menus, an inventory, pushing, health, fade down/up and other things that come stock with Dink I realised I would have to write most of it myself if I were to embark on such a thing and I really didn't want to.
The capability is there to do 99% of what Dink can along with a whole bunch of amazing other stuff, however as I stated previously a lot of built-in functions/classes aren't documented which includes the inbuilt choice menu system as well as the MindWall thing he tacked in there for Ludumdare etc. NS has a very handy mod system much like Dink which would have made "dmod" development quite simple had most of Dink's stuff been included in the example game. I even used the mod system to very easily make a platform game for a friend's birthday which was fun, and packaging it up to work on his PC standalone was very straightforward.
Interestingly enough I trawled through the C++ code (I don't know a lick of C++) and found out that Seth was planning a Dink map importer meaning one could theoretically import their Dmod map into Novashell, however it was merely a stub and wasn't implemented.
Seth has closed down all but one of the Novashell forums now (there used to be 5 of them) which suggests that he has lost faith in it all and moved on completely. The last update he made was XML export so that people could use it purely as a map editor which they could export from rather than run games in it. Overall I would recommend trying another engine like Love2D instead or even Phoenix's build of Freedink which uses Lua.
Here's Rabidwolf9's foray into Novashell and the problems he encountered in making a gold heart bounce if you're interested in seeing what's involved in making a Dink game in Novashell. Seth was actually incredibly helpful here which was nice. I don't think he'd be as forthcoming these days with help, and the lack of a real community and any development means that if you got into trouble and discovered a bug or needed something explained you'd be screwed.
I made some crappy guides here about 5 years ago that were intended to show WinDinkEdit users how to make Dink-style maps in Novashell which are gone now (maybe Marpro might remember).
I might have the introduction-guide you made stored on my old computer...I'll take a look! Here's the thread at least (link seems dead, though).
I might have the introduction-guide you made stored on my old computer...I'll take a look! Here's the thread at least (link seems dead, though).
There's actually a scripting reference for Novashell. I think this is cool cuz it has 2D physics, powered by "Box2D engine" Nowadays, physics are a critical fun factor in 2D games, or even most kinds of games
"Scripting Reference"
Here is one, and only ONE game in the whole universe made with Novashell...
"The game"
It's one of those "paddle and ball" games, nothing special. I downloaded it so I can verify that it really is a game made with Novashell
"Scripting Reference"
Here is one, and only ONE game in the whole universe made with Novashell...
"The game"
It's one of those "paddle and ball" games, nothing special. I downloaded it so I can verify that it really is a game made with Novashell
Holy necro batman, how do yall even find these old posts? I swear I have 0 memory of makin this post or even what the hell Novashell even is. I'm gettin old 
the real shock is that it wasn't a skornpost this time around.
