Triple Triad X


Sephnroth

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UPDATE 17/07/06 - First public beta released:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showt...id=424545&#

Original Post:
Finally making a proper thread for Triple Triad X as the Old Thread was getting huge and the cool ideas forum really isnt the place for a wip :p Asked on irc for the best place to post this and here was the answer! Move it if its in the wrong place ;)

For those who havnt heard of my project yet, Triple Triad X is a remake of the game Triple Triad which was a playable mini-game in Final Fantasy 8. SolidSnake made the request in cool ideas forum and as I was looking for a project to cut my teeth on the gp2x with I took up the challenge.

My implementation is not just a remake of the card game. As most of the *point* of playing the original Triple Triad was roaming around to find new people to challenge and win different cards off I decided I was going to create a RPG-like front end for the game so you could walk around, meet new people, challenge them to games , earn new cards and generally have a sense of purpose.

It was originally going to be simple, but as I progressed I found I was having far too much fun to cut the engine short and now have a rather powerful RPG engine behind all this.

Features:
Pick a player sprite of your choosing when you start the game
Customise the GUI gradient ala final fantasy games
Full implementation of Triple Triad and all the original rules
The RPG engine sports a lua scripting interface to allow for truely dynamic NPC's and game events
Earn cash as well as cards when you beat someone at Triple Triad, spend it at a shop npc on new cards or flashy new game boards/backgrounds for a change of scenary
Talk to npc's, engage in quests, earn rewards and advance your game (and probably some sort of cheesy story :D)
Level 8, 9 and 10 cards cannot be bought in shops, hunt down NPC's who hold these cards and beat them to earn the cards
Engine was designed with user modability in mind - create your own card decks (people already are), game boards and game backgrounds. Add your own player sprites and even new backgrounds for the game menu. Recolour the GUI from in game and save your settings. Because it was DESIGNED for this, adding content to the game is as simple as putting the new sprites/artworks/decks in the relevent game folder and the game will autoload them when it runs and inserts it into your game.
A full editing suite will be provided for windows users (and later even linux) to allow you to go a step further and create your own maps, scripts and your own addon stories.

Not all of these features are finished yet, but surprisingly most of them are. The editing suite isnt ready for public use yet as its not idiot proof. You can already add all your own content however, game gui is cutomisable - only things left to do is add the cash system, implement a few more triple triad rules and write the scripts for the npc's (ie, add content)

Screen Shots:

These are the new screen shots as of today. Some older ones will follow for those who didnt track the Cool Ideas thread. The tilesets for the RPG engine were, unfortunatly, drawn by me as I went. They arnt terriable I dont think but pixel art is not my fortay and hopfully in the future someone will pretty up my tileset for me :) Anyway:

Loitering near the triple triad guild:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/village01.jpg

Standing on the mountain overlooking north village:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/village02.jpg
West of there will eventually lead the mountain area of the game world.

Approaching the center of North Village:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/village03.jpg

Stood in the center of North Village:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/village04.jpg
South of here will take you to.. south village >.> (same village/town, split up into north and south maps)

Crossing the bridge that will eventually take you to the water/lake area of the game world:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/village05.jpg

Loitering on another bridge:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/village06.jpg


All those were made today, most of the tiles are also new as of today as I begin preparing for a beta release. This is the map you will play in the beta :)

Older Screenshots:

The Main Menu:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/wip04.jpg

The image on the left is something i quickly drew up with a mouse. The menu system picks a random image from the MenuArt directory every time you change menu screens - eventually I hope to have several decent pictures in there and, like with the rest of the game, you can always drop your own in if you dont like mine :)

Customising the in-game GUI gradient:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/wip05.jpg

possiably in the future I will provide various styles of border as well, instead of just plain lines. who knows.

Starting a new game:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/wip06.jpg

Enter your name using the joystick (left/right to change position, up/down to cycle characters) and your player sprite. All sprites that are in the Image/Player folder are availiable to you here, add your own (just requires arranging the sprite into my format, very simple). The sprite you have selected plays its walking animation and changes direction once a second to allow you to view them as you cycle through.

Adjust your sound settings:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/wip07.jpg

self explanatory :)

An early screen from some time ago of the Triple Triad engine:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/ttx04.jpg

sometimes I forget you can even play Triple Triad in this thing...

Talking to an NPC:
http://www.melted.com/ftpup/dave/ttx/ttx13.jpg

very old screenshot that one.




Okay, thats all the screenshots for now :) Currently I am working on preparing the beta. The engine is ready for a public beta already - but it needs content first. I'm creating the map as we speak (thus the new screenshots) and will script a few things for you guys to do in it. The talented NoName from IRC is working on the music for me (many thanks) and Khato has been creating sprites for me (many thanks).

If anyone wants to lend a hand to this project you may do so in many ways. If anyone wishes to create their own card deck then go right ahead, let me know and you can find instructions on how to go about it in the original thread or just pm me and ask. Simulary, player sprites can be made in the same way if you wish to design how you want to look in advance :)

If you are a dab hand at the old art and simply want to make a couple of pictures for the menu then please be my guest! Try to keep it Triple Triad related (people holding cards, etc) and 16bit colour, 159x195 pixel size maxium.

Perhaps you would like to make a game board? use THIS as a template :) Maybe a background? Backgrounds are just something displayed behind the triad board when you are playing because black is rather boring. Can be anything, just make it 320x240 @ 16bit. Remeber, too bright and it will distract from the game :)

If anyone thinks they can make my tileset pretty then I am VERY interested. Someone who honestly thinks they can improve on it currently. If anyone wants to volenteer for that I will send them the image to edit and anything else they may need.

If you would like to contribute in any other way I havnt mentioned, just let me know :)

In the future I shall have a website which will contain all this information as well as user submitted content to add to the game. and maybe a paypal button >.>;; you never know xD

Either way, thats all for now. I will release a beta as soon as I have content :) Hope you enjoy the project!
 
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Looks like it should be an absolutely brilliant piece of homebrew gamingness when done.

Have you thought of modding the engine to be a full-on RPG maker, by any chance? Given that Gigas seems to have disappeared completely by now (woe - such is life though).
 
Wow looks great, and hopefully a few talented people from the comunity can add some snazier graphics. Too bad I can't do any better, not that they are bad, just my xbox 360 and psp fans will make fun of me *crys*

Any chance of there being any more screens of the actual card gameplay?


Looks great and can't wait to get this on my gp2x.
 
yup. sephnroth has been working his butt off for what seems like months. :)

good job :)
 
thanks for the awesome replies :)

I will try and get some more screenies taken of the triple triad part for you. Right at this moment i'm actually working on that peice of the code some more and its not compilable atm so you'll have to wait until i'm done xD

EvilDragon has sent me his first WIP of the revamped tileset and its looking very nice! I especially liked his version of the houses, looking forward to seeing that more complete :)

Right now going to finish my modifications to the triple triad module and then I need to work some more on the map editor to allow me a bit more flexibility with triggers and scripts. First task will be to write a converter for the maps as i'm going to make a little change to the file format :p

"Have you thought of modding the engine to be a full-on RPG maker, by any chance?"

I havnt given much thought to creating a truely dynamic RPG maker as it were, but its certainly possiable. Without honking my own horn too much i do think that the engine has become really quite powerful considering the original task (triple triad) and so in the future I may want to add a battle engine to it and make a more traditional RPG out of it :)
One thing I have decided though is when I have finished TTX i'm going to release all its source so anyone can do what they want with it. There is already one person over IRC who has asked for the engine so I expect it will see some use beyond my triple triad game :)

Now to fight the cramps (stupid stomach bug im suffering from) and get back to work xD More updates as I progress.
 
a traditional BEP battle system would be pretty cool, you could level your character(s), to kill monsters, and those monsters drop their respective cards which you can use to duel NPCs with. (or maybe in future with another person via USB...)

it's also great to hear you'll be releasing the source, im sure many people will have a good use for it!
 
Wow... the first big RPG-esque game exclusive to the GP2X. I can't wait!

Thanks for all the hard work you're putting into this Sephnroth.
 
just a quick note of what i've been doing past 2 days.

Working on the editing tools - mainly the script editor which has turned out reallllllllly nice

http://81.86.111.121:8080/code/ttx/EditingSuite5.jpg

thanks to NoName i managed to finish that off a few minutes ago and, after a spot of lunch, will mess around with some more complex script ideas for the beta :)

More in-game screenshots soon enough I hope and to Evil Dragon - sorry I havnt gotten you the correct binary yet, been running around like a headless chicken for a few days! I'll get that to you soon.
 
Sephnroth posted on Apr 26 2006 at 04:48 PM said:
More in-game screenshots soon enough I hope and to Evil Dragon - sorry I havnt gotten you the correct binary yet, been running around like a headless chicken for a few days! I'll get that to you soon.

No worries, I didn't have time to do anything yet anyways ;)
 
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I have been -so- ill its unreal. First i'm taken down by a tooth problem, then I get knocked out for a week with gastric flu (like, seriously. completly -imobile-. even sipping water was making me sick :/ and because i was sick/wrenching so much on an empty stomach.. i bruised my stomach and lungs! hoorah!) and TWO DAYS after recovering from that I catch a cold and my nose is still running now. I demand a new body, this one is falty.

Anyway, I have managed to get /alot/ of work done on ttx over past couple of days. and some progress on my shadow warrior port too but thats a different story.

ttx now has a music engine and NoName has been composing some excellent mod files for me :) Lots of new commands added to the script engine, map changing fully implemented now complete with funky fade out/fade in as it changes maps and today i got a TON of work done on the triple triad part of the engine. Some things just asthetics like when you start a game of triple triad it does a screen wipe from the tileengine to the triple triad pre-game thing, I added a little "Triple Triad X" logo to the top of the tt screen, I moved the scores upto the top and at the bottom I now write the values on the card in a clear font just incase the values on the card arnt too clear.

I got all the rules bar one implemented today - we have combo, plus, same, elemental, etc. Just same wall missing and that shouldnt be too hard to implement :)

I also wrote a brand new AI for the triple triad game. Before it just randomly placed cards - now it reviews moves and picks what it thinks is a good idea (or at least the best out of a selection of bad ones if it comes to that) - the critera for what it thinks is a "good idea" changes depending on the difficulty, but not much. He has beaten me a few times which is either embarassing or promising :)

and also i've idly started work on a few of the extra game boards which you can unlock and buy as you progress through the game. These are also the sort of thing you can make and add to the game yourself, you just put them in the right directory and walla, job done.

Anyway, someone a while back asked for more screenshots of the actual triple triad part of the game, so heres a selection showing off all the new stuff I did today:

http://www.melted.com/spectural/storage/ttx/ttxnew01.jpg

as you can see, logo and score up top and in the bottom left the stats of the card currently under the hand cursor.

http://www.melted.com/spectural/storage/ttx/ttxnew02.jpg

when you select a card to place it, the stats stay where they were in the bottom left. Also, if you move the cursor around the board to an already existing card, its stats appear on the right so you can see those easilly too :)
http://www.melted.com/spectural/storage/ttx/ttxnew03.jpg

..i think this was just me playing whilst eating lunch today x_X

http://www.melted.com/spectural/storage/ttx/ttxnew04.jpg

here you can see the Elemental rule in progress. The middle card is a fire element and was placed on a fire elemental square, it has received +1 to all its attacking values (thats what the +1 means). The card above it has the same bonus because its an earth card on an earth square. However, in the bottom right a poison card has been placed on a holy square and because the elements dont match its received -1 to all its values.

http://www.melted.com/spectural/storage/ttx/ttxnew05.jpg

a FFX board I made - I think I may change this one a bit as its a bit dull and rushed. But it should ultimatly be one of the boards you can buy using the in game shops :)

http://www.melted.com/spectural/storage/ttx/ttxnew06.jpg

and heres a ragnarok online board, assassin, female. I hope to ultimatly have sets of boards in a running theme, so a few FFX characters, a few ragnarok characters, a few other things that people should reconise and enjoy etc. Again, you can always add your own if you dont like whats availiable :)

Also, the backgrounds (in this case its an interlaced background) can be changed if you dont like those (vimacs >>). I havnt made any alternitive backgrounds yet but its on the "content to add" list and, just like game boards, they re buyable from the in game shop and you can add your own :)

Anyway, hope everything is looking good enough for you guys, still working away but its getting very very close now :) I have concepts and names for in game locations and a few characters now too so things are begining to take a nice shape :)

i'll keep you posted.
 
Ah~ I love this game. Cant wait to see what its like. Your projects are both very neat!

does it have a storyline? :)
 
theres an outline of a story i've laid out :) Its pretty standard, just enough to keep people interested I hope :) You'll have to wait at least until demo to know what it is though xD
 
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