iPhone RPG Picture Update 7-16-09

Added some more stuff to the latest build of the RPG prototype for build A09 -- most notably the beginnings of a battle system. The picture at the bottom of this post shows the main battle screen as it's currently laid out. All the menus will be semi-transparent, so no matter how cluttered the screen gets you'll still be able to see the 3D stuff.

I have it set up as a quasi real-time battle system for the moment (think pre-FFX stuff) where action bars will slowly fill up, and once full you can select an action for your character to take. I might change it to a slower turn-based system later if I think that real-time doesn't work well for the iPhone, but for now I'll keep it like this.

I currently have the engine randomly select a camera every four to eight seconds, so the view can shift to any one of six different cameras while no actions are taking place. Once the characters and enemies start attacking then specific camera sequences will be used. If this last paragraph made no sense then just watch my update video in a day or two and it should make more sense then.

I also put in a large outdoor dungeon area for the player to explore -- I've structured it so that the player needs to pick up three items in the game world in order to open a gate at the end, and once that gate is open a cut-scene and a boss battle will be triggered.

I also changed how the cameras work in the outdoor dungeon area, so they are now over-the-shoulder and work much more fluidly than the ones I have shown in previous demos. Also on the to-do list is implement a mini-map.