A Bit Of Coding
Map glue work is complete, which means I am now going through all the maps and adding NPCs and examinables. In fact, I wrote a bit more about this further down the post! It’s not exciting but it’s fun!
There’s a lot, lot, LOT of NPCs in the Old Capitol Grounds are, it’s very inhabited and has a lot to see and do. It might take me a big chunk of June just to get all of this work done. I haven’t even started on the interiors yet!
Urimas is working on some NPCs as well as some sprites for an experiment I’d like to do at some point. I’ll show those off when they are done.
On Maps and NPCs
So here we have a section of the Old Capitol Grounds, this is what a map starts to look like as NPCs and examinables are populated. The red boxes are things you can examine, the blue boxes are path nodes, and the NPCs are the NPCs.
NPCs have a sprite sheet that is sized differently from the tile sheet, it’s 16×32 instead of 16×16, and they are placed on the object layer. NPCs also have to have special properties set.
Most of the properties are fairly self-explanatory. The Dialogue property is the file that gets called when you talk to an NPC. The type is “Position”, the engine uses this to figure out where an NPC is going to be spawned in the map’s constructor and all the other properties are optional.
I’ve found a system that mostly works for me, there is always a tradeoff between simplicity of the code and flexibility to make more advanced scenes and NPCs. The sheep and chicken NPCs are spawned and set to wander around, no biggie there. The farmer NPCs are spawned, but also create a parallel script. Whenever you walk across a trigger or examine something, a script is called, but this script stops gameplay. Parallel scripts run but don’t stop gameplay, allowing NPCs to walk around as though they are controlled by a cutscene. These constructors just specify which farmer uses which script.
I try to automate these things as much as possible. The script specifies which NPC, a walk speed, and then the nodes the NPC uses. For convenience I name the nodes A0, A1, A2 etc. so that FarmerA uses the A nodes, I do this for enemies as well. The rest is automated by a function, so when you see these in game, the farmers will be walking at random between the nodes. Done!
The key here is making things as easy as possible since I’m going to have to do this a lot. A *lot*, as mentioned above, there’s a lot of NPCs in this area. Having NPCs pathing around really makes even a mundane area come alive and be interesting to explore.
Writing examinables is very easy, just get really stupid with it.
That’s all for now! Maybe in a month I’ll be working on enemies (or maybe not) and I’ll do another one.
It’s Time For ANSWERS
(Edit from Marionette: Don’t take this as gospel just yet. Salty and I will be having discussions on this travesty of “mermaids get legs.”)
Cavalcade of Fan Art!
By https://bsky.app/profile/insanexfrogy.bsky.social/post/3lnlfpjabpc22. Finally we get some more big dragons!
By https://bsky.app/profile/prismadreams.bsky.social/post/3lpkfnsdoyi2b. Why is she sad? Zap it!
By https://bsky.app/profile/morux2.bsky.social. This doesn’t count as shipping they are canonically dating!
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Also by https://bsky.app/profile/usjkgugu.bsky.social/post/3lpnkkn63tc2s
by https://bsky.app/profile/kirilewd.bsky.social. There’s a NSFW version of this but Dot isn’t wearing a bikini in that one and let me tell you that pup is CAKED so I can’t show it here.
by https://bsky.app/profile/kary-sg.bsky.social Am I going to have to make an underwater String Tyrant now?
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By Coco
by https://bsky.app/profile/droachillustra.bsky.social (actually caused some FEELS damn it)
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by https://bsky.app/profile/mongnyanya.bsky.social AM I GONNA HAVE TO MAKE A BEE TF IN CHAPTER 1 because I did
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by Coco
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by https://bsky.app/profile/shieol.bsky.social/post/3lpwxm5lzhk2w (click through for hypnotic alts!)
Oh my god this post is more art than post please send help.
The Links No Please No
Where to find us:
Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!
If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.
And there’s always Our Discord. You can shout at Salty *in person*.
You can ask us anonymous question on Whisp.sh. If you’ve ever wanted to get smarmy answers to questions, or just know more lore, that’s the place!
We also have a Wiki! We’d appreciate it greatly if people keep it maintained for us. :3
Bottled Starlight Games:
Runes of Pandemonium, the big adventure TF RPG, always free on Steam and Itch.io.
Witch Hunter Izana, a battle-TF RPG. Available on Steam or Itch.io.
Witches of Ravenbrook, a battle-TF dungeon-crawler. The prototype is out now and free on Itch.io.
String Tyrant, a survival horror game, is on Steam and Itch.io.
Other Bottled Starlight Stuff
Salty writes a book series, with audiobooks and illustrations, called Tales of Strings.
Instruments is out now on Itch.io.
Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
Spiderweb Theory is now on Itch.io!
Urban Explorers is now on Itch.io!
Mario is currently working on bringing the Pandemonium story series to Itch.
We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).
Pandemonium Development 