The Dink Network

Hey guys,

I'm now working on a new 2D RPG tentatively called "GreenTree: The Lost Prince" and similarly to Dink, this engine will be open to making mods. It's not a Dink sequel but they'll certainly be some Dink related jokes and cameos in the game.

I'm hoping I can get some dinkers interesting in beta testing and critiquing, especially of the game-creation tools part.

This time around the focus is more on the modding/stand alone game aspects - things are more flexible, especially with things like the GUI, controls, merging and sharing data, etc.

Here's a page with some info on the new engine: Novashell Game Creation System

There's nothing to download quite yet but I wanted to give a heads-up and see what you guys think.

Seth A. Robinson
www.rtsoft.com

It looks great, though overly complicated, cant wait to check 'er out!!

The editor seems complicated.

The engine will require much of the graphic card?

I hope so. It looks like it uses Clanlib (lol) which uses OpenGL, so it should be about 593.2x as fast as DirectX.

(whups, lost my reply by stupidly closing the window, dang firefox tabs!)

Hmm, the screenshots look complicated?

this screenshot might look complicated, but normally you don't see the pathfinding graph, it's built automatically behind the scenes from little footprint icons you place. I just have that on in the screenshot to show how it works.

You don't actually have to use the pathfinding or the Goal AI stuff, the side view mario-style example I have doesn't use them at all.

I'm trying to find the right balance between power/flexibility and ease of use - the engine does as much work for you as possible, for instance, the way doors are handled is very intuitive to use - if you cut and paste the inside of a house to another map, the door warping will still work right. (everything is based on names, not X/Y/screen #'s or whatever)

For how powerful a computer is needed, I really haven't done many tests so I hope you guys can help me out on that. All I know is it runs fine on the cheapest minimac and my 1.2 ghz laptop that has a pretty crap mobile radeon card.

It only uses the most basic Open GL calls, but I'd guess that is going to be the biggest compatibility problem right there.

I have not actually checked out to see how it works, but from the screenshots it looks like several variables can be dictated by movable nodes.

Those bookselves in the screenshots look much like the old ones, only much spiffier, I like it.

Finally, you announce the dang thing!

Hopefully I'll be able to devote some time to testing and critiquing - but the way college is going now I'm finding it difficult to allocate time to anything, and I'm not even doing actual work

I would be very interested in testing this thing. I tested things before, and have had experience with quite a few mod/game creation systems, so I should be of some help to you if I can test. As for critique, I can give enough of that too.

Oh yeah... This thing is looking sweet and original, and... A mix between platform and RPG? Neat!

Hmmm... looks sweet I'll probably have a go with it if (magicman.hasTime() && magicman.distractions().size() == 0)

Good luck on the game.

i think it might be great but it looks a bit complicated

It looks great, sad that you're done with Dink.lol.

I'm interested in beta-testing and critiquing. Looks pretty interesting.

This looks very promising. naturaly I'm curious to see how to add graphics. When I have some time I'll try it.
I kinda hope much of it happens within this community though. The people on this board are tops!

Oooh.It looks cool.

Looks awesome. I'd like to give it a try. You're really going to make it totally free?

this game looks terrible incredibly simple boring and i dont want anything to do with it i hope it never sees the light of day

Ok, great, I'm hoping to have something up within a week or so, I just want to fix some of the more obvious problems such as cut and paste text not working in dialog boxes.

I'll post again when it's ready and then you can see how complex or simple and boring it really is.

>>Cypry> You're really going to make it totally free?

Yes, if I charged I don't think it would be so interesting because there are a lot of free game makers out there already.. (well, but none like this!) wouldn't get many users or make much money I'd guess.

Writing game engines is really just a hobby of mine (starting with lord2, my first game which used a data driven/scripting design), no reason to try to nickel and dime people to death over every little thing.

-Seth

So uh...what happens to this community now? Do we say "Dink only," or do we kind of adopt the new one and forget about Dink, or do we accomodate both?

If this new game is really fun, why don't we have both on this site?
Like warcraft 3 had a site called warcraftiii I think, and when world of warcraft came, they just had both on warcraftiii. What do you think?

Seth, this looks awesome After playing through the GreenTree: The Lost Prince adventure, I'll likely try to find some time to start D-Modding again.. or is that GreenTree-ing now? I guess GT-Modding

I assume it's mainly top-down with side-scrolling intermezzos or something similar?

"So uh...what happens to this community now? Do we say "Dink only," or do we kind of adopt the new one and forget about Dink, or do we accomodate both?"

Somehow, this game seems different from Dink, so both program swould exist and be used. That's just my guess, though.

And I'll bet that once this comes out, some Dink-related mods will be made.

I'm hoping this community will make room for both, at least for a while. But that is the sort of thing that evolves over time. The good news is that this community won't die just because the game engine is too out of date.
"this game looks terrible incredibly simple boring"
But thats sort of the point of being in a modding community, is that it will be what we make it.
Thanks Seth.

Yepp, I agree with you Ric.

haha actually i just did that to be the opposite of everyone else

oooh oooh this game looks sweet i want to test it

bllllllllllllllllahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Why do you even play Dink, I wonder.

whats dink?

Glad to see this. Some great features on that list, we'll have to see how many make it in. I'd love to try out some of that, especially some of the anti-pitfalls of dink including: Lua scripting and what seems to be 2d hard polygon collision with moveable verts (not just hardboxes).

Great job Seth, keep up the good work IMO.

Oh my.
I am willing to participate in testing/criticising this engine.

If I had a base graphics set to work with I might try the engine.

I would be willing to beta-test, if you need someone with a low-performance machine. I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop, with around 2 GHz CPU and 256 MB RAM (I think).

Err, my pc is about the same strength. That's not low-performance.

2 GHZ isn't bad, but 256 MB RAM is pretty low-performance, if you ask me. But I'm far from a computer guru, so I might be better off shutting the piehole.

My laptop has 1.5 GHz and 512 MB RAM, and it's brand new. (Ok, it might not be the best a man can buy, but still...)

My PC is 2.6 GHz and has 1 GB RAM, and it's already aging. A classmate of mine bought a 3.8 Ghz with 2 GB RAM this week, and I was like "wtf I thought mine was pretty new".

The server from our computer lab has only 1GB RAM

So, Seth. Test release?

I'm very close with the test just have the following to do:

1. Finish the "dink" example, it uses only original dink bmp artwork, will let dink run around, go in houses, and kill ducks

2. Write a "getting started" tutorial with lots of screenshots that illustrate most of the features and genereally explain what is going on

3. Write an html script reference for each command (boring!!)

Guess 3 doesn't HAVE to be done right away. I can just include a link to a "coming soon" page for the docs.

Nah. Don't bother. It's much more fun to let the users just guess what all the scripts do.

Good to hear Though if you're gonna write number 3 for the first release, just make it similar to the document you wrote for the first Dink release.. as long as we get the idea of the command and perhaps the things we should really know (like the values it can return) but I guess it'll be replaced anyway by a document similar to the DinkC Reference, written by the community. So don't spend too much time on that part initially

Are your commands similar to the dink ones?

Jeeze, have your hard-drive die and then this happens. Thankfully, I do have a computer and loads of time on my hands, so I'd absolutely love to test this out.

Cypry: Well, the new script system is pretty different. It's based on lua which is a pretty big change. But there is a lot of online tutorials and reference for lua already which helps.

One of the things I liked about the Dink system was how each entity could have a script that was sort of sandboxed from the others, for instance, each entity could have a variable called health. This system is kept. So there are three name spaces: Function, Entity, and global. In dink there were only two, something like "script, global".

A big difference is now things are event based. You can no longer do:

DoSomething();
Delay(1000);
DoSomething();

But instead i'd be more like:

DoSomething();
Schedule(this, 1000, "DoSomething();");

Overall this system is more powerful and can handle changing situations better.

However, there is something called a GoalManager that let's you do things sort of like the old way:

GoalManager:AddSay("Hi.", fatherID);
GoalManager:AddSay("What's up?", fatherID);
GoalManager:AddDelay(1000); //we can add extra delay if we want

And it handles a lot of grunt work for you, the character will walk through doors to wherever the father is, approach him, face him, say Hi, wait an appropriate amount of time, then say What's up.

You could also say things to objects like a bed or cabinet, any entity.

But the beauty of this is if we are attacked, we can do:

GoalManager:RemoveAllGoals();
GoalManager:AddSay("Ouch!");

Or something, so we dont' finish whatever we were doing. We could also just push a new goal onto the stack so that will get done, THEN he'll go say the stuff he was going to before.

And there is still the concept of brains, only now they are named and stackable, many brains can work together to create the AI that is needed.

Here's a screenshot of the dink test. One nice thing is you can flip,scale,tint the house and it still works - the vector collision info is scaled/flipped/rotated with it.

Oh no

One of the things I still like about DinkC is how simple it is in regards to scripting dialogs and cutscenes. The wait, say_stop, and move_stop internal functions are great and easy to grok.

I think I understand why they're not available in Lua (I looked into adding Python scripting to Dink a couple months ago, but gave up because of the timing issues that required coroutines or having every script be its own thread), but they'll still be missed.

Granted, your GoalManager seems to provide roughly the same behavior, typing 'GoalManager.Add' dozens of times seems like it will get tiring after a while.

I like it, it really is a shame it won't be a sequel to Dink though, I don't think GreenTree would have the same effect but I could be wrong. I'm guessing Dink Smallwood isn't very markatable these days, or is there other reasons behind not following the original game up?

Looks interesting. Can't wait to try it.

Granted, your GoalManager seems to provide roughly the same behavior, typing 'GoalManager.Add' dozens of times seems like it will get tiring after a while.

I guess a "using namespace std;" equivalent would be useful there.
Or something to give up the following piece of code will all be a GoalManager, like:

GoalManager()
{
//Goal manager code
}

//Non-Goal manager code

Dan> "One of the things I still like about DinkC is how simple it is in regards to scripting dialogs and cutscenes. The wait, say_stop, and move_stop internal functions are great and easy to grok."

I agree, and I went through the same process of looking at coroutines and such, but the simplicity comes at a price in dink's case, if any other function is called in the script it forgets where it was "sitting" at. I think avoiding the whole issue of being able to sit at a specific position makes things cleaner, otherwise we need ways of canceling the threads from other functions and it gets real complicated real fast. I think.

kikki> "I'm guessing Dink Smallwood isn't very markatable these days, or is there other reasons behind not following the original game up?"

You guys didn't leave me any Dink stories, you've done 'em all!! I like the idea of associating with a place rather than a specific name, feel less tied down to a single plot.

About typing a lot: Well, actually the line is even longer than I used, it's:

this:GoalManager():AddSay(...);

The "this" could also be any other entity, you can access or control other entities goals.

Part of the reason for the extra addressing is Goal's themselves are objects that can be manipulated:

g = this:GoalManager() ushNewGoal("Killing");
g.AddSay("I'm going to kill now.");
g.AddSay("I'm done");

//so that's a little like DaVince's idea, a "g." isn't so bad.

Then another entity can examine us like this:

if (entEnemy:GetGoalManager():GetGoalCountByName("Killing") > 0)
//We know the enemy has at least one goal called Killing!! Oh no!
end

Of course, you could also write your own helper function like for all entities to use:

function Say(text, entityToSayIt)
entityToSayIt:GoalManager():AddSay(text);
end

//then the entity could say:

Say("Cool!", this);

For those who dare.

Ah nice Seth, downloading - I'll test the Windows version of it

I'll try it.

Ooh, thanks! I'll download and test the Windows version -- and the Linux version when I can.

I will happily test it.
But, one question, shall it only run from Win 2000 / Win XP and up.
I currently have got three machines I can test it on.
AMD K6-2(475 MHz) Win 98SE
Pentium III(1 GHz) Win 98SE
Pentium IV(2.4 GHz) Win XP Pro
So, if it's of any help I try it out on all of them.

LPJpBo, I think there is a chance it will run ok on your PIII (kind of depends on the video card probably) so please give it a shot and let me know. (Hit Ctrl-F in the program to show framerate to see how slow it is btw) The K6 probably wouldn't cut it though.

Thanks guys.

It doesn't work. It sais something about the videocard. I have a GeForce FX 5200, 128MB

My computer..
Windows 98SE
Pentium III(1 GHz)
RAM 512 MB (typically 20%-25% free with background programs = 102.4-128 MB)
ATI Radeon 9600 (128 MB VRAM)
Creative Soundblaster Live 1024

This is the results...
Dink Style Test:
FPS(Frame rate) = 74 to 77
It works fine moving dink around, asking (kind of fun with the ducks tag along).
The music is suffering some fluctuations.

There is some problems when using choices in the map editor....
When toggling full screen, it causes a smaller screen/window without any map, basically blue, until minimizing it to a button on the activity bar, when clicking on its button the map returns but not in full screen mode.
I tryed this again and found that it could show a smaller screen with the map visual, but when un-toggling the screen by pressing (alt + enter) it fills the screen first white and then the map and it kind of shifts between them like blinking, actually the same problem occured when I started again and double checked the problem when I wrote this but then it was the starting windows box with the names of present choices that blinked.
- Not easy to Choose world then.

Another problem occur when adding a new layer in the layer control and wishing to remove that new one I could not find a tool, so I tried by selecting the new layer and pressing the (delete) key but then the screen turned blue.
When exiting and trying to continue the same game-mod a message appear saying -error, Can't locate an entity named player, Note that it's case sensitive.
It works just fine starting a new game but continuing the one when the problem occured, no way, it is crap.

I do not understand map info, looks like a bunch of big buttons that turns into big stripes when moving the mouse pointer over it.

Empty Skeleton:
-is nothing there.
-at least I did'nt find anything.

Mouse Control RPG test:
-just fine.

Top View RPG Style Test:
-just fine.
-interesting, actually.

Tree World Side Scroller Test:
-just fine.

Conclusion:
The graphic engine needs more work.
And the sound engine some.

Wow... the tests were pretty cool. On the surface, looks much better than most low end 2d engines I've seen. I don't have time right now to do more than play the worlds

Some of the controls were a little wonky, but I don't have time now to see if those can be tweeked by scripting or not. I know in the point and click, I managed to get the goblin to contantly walk back and forth between portals in a big circle using one click.

I did however not find any problem on my other machine.

My computer..
Windows XP Pro
Pentium IV(2.4 GHz)
RAM 512 MB
Video Board: NVIDIA Leadtek WinFast A7600 GT (256 MB VRAM)
Creative soundblaster Audigy 4

Editing scripts do not work, *.lua is not associated to any program.
I hope you are going to make an integrated script editor environment.
I found how I should erase a layer, pressing the (delete) key did not cause anything here.
It is not at all so difficult to learn, it is just a matter of time.
Even though, I really miss an undo with plenty memory when moving the tiles around in a mess and regrets it.

Just associate it with an editor, why should Seth bother with writing an integrated script editor, he should spend his time on the engine imo. Like Seth says in the tutorials, scripting should be done in a good program, with all kinds of features like syntax highlighting etc and there's no need for an integrated script editor as associating it with an external program works just fine.

Anyway, I think I'm getting the hang of this editor but I sometimes use escape to go back from editing mode to playing mode (must be a DinkEdit habit ). The tutorials were helpful so far I'm new to Lua though but it looks quite similar to other languages I know.

Scripting should be done with ms notepad?

Also, I didn't find the inventory.

Thanks LPJoBo, on your Radeon 9600 maybe I have some broken code with window toggling.. if you run the app from the command line with the "-window" parm does windowed mode pop up correctly?

"Map Mode" is sort of tricky and not very useful right now, I was going to touch upon it in a tutorial. It basically creates and caches a mini-map and updates only changed pieces. If you change the "thumb size" of a map to say, 64, the resolution of the mini-map is much better, instead of blobs, you can see actual landscape features.

About the editor, no plans for an integrated one, like Simeon says, I'm very picky about my editors (notepad works in a pinch but there are much better out there.. UltradEdit. Not sure about free ones, maybe somebody has some suggestions) and too lazy to make a good one that would work crossplatform.

Milobones: There is no inventory screen yet, although the treeworld example does script a way to "pick up a weapon", that weird thing at the start.

Maybe I should change the default Escape script to just cancel the editor if it's on...

i cant even run it i get an Error!

WGL_ARB_pbuffer OpenGL extension not supported by this card]

this can probably be fixed by installing the latest drivers of your video card.

what should i do? on a hunch, maybe i should try installing the latest drivers of my video card. yeah, ill get right on that...

Works absolutely fine on this machine, have 3 others to test it on but won't get the BEAST of a machine back until Thursday. I'll upload the results of the first one & its specifications when I get back from work. One question: Will it be possible to change resolutions or is it fixed (At 800 I think it is?). I like the scrolling windows, think it's a very good idea, and as I said it's a shame a second Dink won't be done on it because this engine is exactly the update that a sequel needs. The only thing is sound is a bit crackly in the Dink game, and I have the latest audio drivers, it's just maybe not optimized yet which is fine.

if you run the app from the command line with the "-window" parm does windowed mode pop up correctly?

Ah yeah, I tried that too but I first thought it didn't work because I only ran with -window.. but you also need -resolution xxx yyy to make it work (perhaps an idea to have a default windowsize when only running with the -window parameter?).

Not sure about free ones, maybe somebody has some suggestions

ConTEXT can be a good alternative.. you can open multiple files, search in them and you can download a file to support Lua syntax highlighting (which can be modified as well if you want the highlighting to be slightly different).

Maybe I should change the default Escape script to just cancel the editor if it's on...

I think it's a good idea; when in the editor, you'd go to playing mode instead of the load worlds menu. And in playing mode, you'd go to the load worls menu (or some Dink'ish escape menu in between, in case someone presses it accidentally).

(Seth)-if you run the app from the command line with the "-window" parm does windowed mode pop up correctly?

-window
First it opened a smaller window.
When in the dink mod trying toggling it back, the same strange behaviour happened.

-window -resolution xxx yyy
At first a smaller window about the size of xxx yyy opened, when in the dink mod trying toggling it back, caused the program to end, and generated the message...
The graphics mode is not supported

Doesn't work for me either... As soon as I run it, I get a white screen and I'm immediately greeted with a "game.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close" message

What OS do you run, Win 98, Win XP or any other ?
Because I had no problem running it under Win XP, pentium 4(2.4 GHz), 512 MB RAM, Audigy 4, Nvidia WinFast A7600 GT (256 MB).

I think it is a good idea to specify operating system, processor type with frequenzy, and the type and memory values for both video and sound board.
This could clarify the problems even better, at least in my point of view.

cant even run it i get an Error!

WGL_ARB_pbuffer OpenGL extension not supported by this card]

this can probably be fixed by installing the latest drivers of your video card.


Yeah, that's the error I recive too. What should we do?

Okay, the engine is solid already and works great! But, there was one flaw, which had to do with the music: it stuttered.

The music and sounds played correctly, but sometimes there was a small delay, or a sound would skip back half a second. This was especially noticeable on the background music, and it did NOT go away.

Oh yeah, I just remembered another bug: when you try to move a sprite while in editing mode, and if you have the engine open (so the game runs while you're in the engine), the sprite copies itself until you stop moving the sprite around. I got hundreds of ducks on-screen this way.

I have an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 2.Ghz, 512 MB RAM, a GeForce FX 5200 and an itegrated standard AC97 audio sound card.

I know it's windows xp, how do I find out the other crap?

Try right-clicking on My Computer/This Computer and then Properties. This shows the CPU etc and the Hardware tab can be used to get information about the hardware.

Edit: I'm running P4 2.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8X and Creative SB soundcard (can't really find which one).

Edit II: I've found the following which feels like a bug:

1. Cut a part of an image to create a new seperate object.
2. Now cut a part from that new image but cut outside the object as well.
3. The engine now creates a new object but it adds the part of the image that was there in the original image. So a part of the original image suddenly "appears" out of nowhere. Basically, you'd expect the behaviour when doing this kind of cutting near the real edge of an image (the engine then reduces the cutted area so it only uses the pixels that are part of the image).

Using the Dink Example as an example:

1. Cut the wooden floor from the tiles and paste this somewhere.
2. Cut from that new object but also cut the area to the left of it (so you're cutting a rectangle with its left edge to the left of the wooden floor).
3. Paste. Now the grass appears.

Okay.. Here is what I got... Trying to figure out the hardware thing now.

Thanks for the bug reports and info. Agree about the sprite sub-tile cutting thing.

-window without resolution settings is supposed to default to 1024X768, I guess that's broken on some computers, need to fix it. If you set a custom resolution size like 500 500, it would probably work in a window but would fail to go fullscreen because I'm not double checking that it's a supported fullscreen mode yet. Will fix.

Music stuttering: Will try to duplicate on my computers. Is the FPS going at full speed when this happens? The sound mixing is operating on a separate thread, it may need a different priority/buffer size.

The "WGL_ARB_pbuffer" errors are strange, the GeForce FX 5200 definitely supports this (render to texture), if updating drivers doesn't help it's possible I'm querying for it wrong or something when I do the pre-start check. I should at least allow a way to "try" even if that error occurs, probably would work fine anyway.

driver date 12/19/2003 is this too outdated?

WGL_ARB_pbuffer was approved by the ARB in 2000, so theoretically no. But try updating them anyway.

Couldn't find a better driver for my video card.

Ok, this seems good anyway, you know when we can try out the corrections.
I just can't wait, it's too exciting.

how do i update my driver then do i have to find the video cards website or something

If you know the brand of your video card go to their site and you may find the driver.
If you can't find it at the manufacturers site, try http://www.driverguide.com
You need to register but you can download 3 or 5 drivers for free, after that you need to pay.
I have a 1 year prenumeration, and use it as a last chance of getting drivers, but I fix peoples machines now and then so for me it is necessary.
-but remember always try the manufacturers first, they can also have been bought by any other company, so try deep searching the internet if you do not find them at first, after all you do not need to pay for the drivers when you download from the original or the taking over manufacturer.

This topic is important and this thread is spreading.
How about if a moderator moved it to a new index called NovaShell and use that Bomb icon again?

Hey Cypry, the latest nvidia unified driver came out about 2 weeks ago, i'd reccommend this if you haven't tried it.

About the music stuttering: the FPS were ~75. So you'd better increase buffer size.

EDIT: oh yeah, it seems to stutter more if I alt-tab to other programs, even. Maybe because of the priority.

Cool The demos were pretty interesting / fun.

I tried using the editor a little bit, and I must say, I couldn't quite understand how to do much. Have you thought about creating a couple video tutorials, using some sort of screen-recording program with the video at a couple frames a second? A few have created for Dink, and they seem pretty helpful.

I noticed one bug: If you do Edit Collision Data on a flipped sprite, the hard box is not flipped.

Thanks, Seth. It works with the new driver now.

Redink1: checked the license agreement?

"I understand that this version has features missing and poor, if any, documentation."

Oh yeah... And also something about flying to Japan and kicking Seth. I guess I'll go do that now.

Ehm, but you have seen the Getting Started tutorials, right? These describe how to make a basic new world and how to do some cutting and hardness editing.

No, I didn't, but I did figure out the hardness editing on my own.

I think you put up a new version, didn't you? Well, the music still stutters...

Dude, my guess is that these machines build automatically (when they're turned on of course ) using the source code they have at the time. Besides, the bug may or may not be easy to find because it likely depends on specific hardware and settings (for example, I don't encounter this bug). Ah yeah, and then there's the possibility that Seth hasn't worked on it yet.. just give it some time - bugs don't disappear overnight

Of course, of course. But the problem appearing on some standard integrated hardware would be a problem that could better be fixed, because as far as I know a lot of computers out there have AC97 audio.

Since I saw a new beta release I figured I'd try it out to see if there's any difference.

Why did this thread have to die out??

Maybe due to lack of Seth's attention. (hmmm..)

People post here the progress you made on it(if any)-

You know... Seth has his own forum on NovaShell at RTSoft, that would be a better place to discuss it.

By 'people' I referred to the dinkers.

Ok I understand since this is too complex that the fun factor is finished, so I'll try not to discuss it here.

Myself I'll atleast try this once when I'll be making my 1st dmod.

_
-
"Common sense? You expect me to think like the common person when I think they're irrational? That's just silly." - DraconicDink