Reply to Re: ramble for people who are considering it
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>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.
