Cataclysm, an RPG project

**Cataclysm** · 28-04-2003, 10:18 PM

Hi all!

We are two students Advanced Computer Science at the University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and are programming in Delphi for as long as we can remember

Since a few months we are developing a non-commercial 2D Action/RPG (working title: Cataclysm) with the Powerdraw libraries. It's heavily inspired on the Zelda "Link to the past" game for the SNES. At this stage we are about to release a demo version of our game engine. This release will contain a working sound, graphics and movement engine that allows the player to walk around different fields and communicate with other characters. More can be found at the webpage at http://cataclysm.servegame.com.

Feel free to give us your feedback, comments, suggestions, criticism on our forum, so we can improve our game.

Coen

**Alimonster** · 29-04-2003, 08:08 AM

It's looking cool! (I recognise the trees as being from Seiken Densetsu 3 btw

). Anyway, I saw a script in one of the screenshots and just wondered what language you're using for scripting.

**Cataclysm** · 29-04-2003, 08:49 AM

Yup! you're right! The trees are from Seiken densetsu 3

The grass as well. I think that game has one of the best graphics on the SNES in this genre. We're planning to do the graphics ourselves in a later stadium, but until then we're using graphics from other games to test our engine.

About the scripting language: we created that language ourselves. That way we can put everything in it we need for the game, nothing more, nothing less. It has syntax-features from different other languages combined, like C++, Delphi, Basic, etc. We wrote a fast interpreter to interpret the scripts back into the game.
For the DialogEditor we developed a scripting language that's transparent to the user. Because dialogs in our game can be more complex, we decided to create a intuitive tool to design those dialogs. That's why there's a 'compiler' that checks the syntax of the Dialog the user created and compiles the dialog to the script-form we use in our game.

Coen

**LiquidIce** · 29-04-2003, 02:42 PM

Yeah that does look really cool.

I was wondering if you know where I can find some information for creating my own scripting engine. I was thinking of using MS Script because it is very flexible. Do you guys have any places I could get more information about this?

**Cataclysm** · 02-05-2003, 07:23 AM

Thanx!

About the scripting engine... we built it ourselves without looking to other scripting languages/engines. The way our engine works:
- In the Gamebuilder we can input a script (just use the syntax and statements you think are best and most suitable for your game) and they will be saved with the gamemap.
- When a gamemap is loaded from disc, those (mostly very small) scripts are quickly parsed and converted to events.
- When the map is running in the game, the scripting engine checks the conditions of the statements and handles the events linked to those statements. This checking of the engine can be done real quickly, since the original script is converted to a form (a list) that has the commands, jump positions and events stored inside.

A site that might have more information on scripting and scripting engines is http://www.flipcode.com/. Good luck!

Coen

**LiquidIce** · 03-05-2003, 08:41 PM

I have seen a couple of open source or premade script parsers for Delphi like MSSCript and some others. I could make my own but I don't know if it would be as fast as those that have been under development for a long time. What would you suggest?

**cairnswm** · 05-05-2003, 07:01 AM

Have a look at Delphi Web Script. I've added a tutorial on using it for AI but it could be used for all sorts of scripting stuff.

http://www.dwscript.com/

**Alimonster** · 05-05-2003, 09:01 AM

There's also Innerfuse Pascal Script.

I'm interested in this stuff because there seems to be a fair amount of ways to implement scripting, and I've not got around to finding out the pros and cons for each. (Also including Lua and Python, I suppose, to those mentioned before.)

Zanthos, if you read this -- you mentioned a while back that you'd be doing a tutorial on scripting if/when you get spare time. If you do get around to it, will you be covering the relative pros and cons of each choice?

**Cataclysm** · 07-05-2003, 08:48 PM

It's difficult to make a suggestion for a choice between a premade script parser and making one yourself. The decision depends on what you want to do with it. If you just need a simple parser to support a small part of your game, you can create one yourself. An advantage of this, is that you can reduce the amount of overhead the parser adds to your code.
On the other hand, if you need to parse complex code structures, it could save you time to use a third party parser.

I'm looking forward to those pros and cons of different ways to implement scripting

Coen

**Cataclysm** · 09-05-2003, 09:28 AM

Hi All,

Since this morning we're having problems with our web-redirect. http://cataclysm.servegame.com seems to be unreachable. We're working on the problem, but don't know how long it will take. Until that time, you can reach the site via http://www.student.kun.nl/c.goedegeb...ysm/index.html.
If anybody knows a good, free web-redirect service, please contact me.

Coen