What is the limits of the engine??

[dezzz]

Hi. French Canadian here. (i don't have a good English writting)
A friend want to build a videogame as university final project.
She study animation, so she will draw all characters and background.
We search beat them up engine on the internet.
We wanted to have something with flash cause she use it to draw and animate the characters, but no engine were available.

OpenBor seem to be awesome, but i want to know if it perfectly suit our needs.

Can we choose a large resolution?
Is there a limits of colors displayed at the same time?
Is there a easy way to put SWF in the game?
What kind of music can be played? (MIDI? Mp3?)
Does the character can be scales? (coming from the background and get taller as they walk)
If it's dark and there is a light, does the character can change their shade when they walk under the light?
Can we put MPEG or FLV movie between the stages?
Our hero will learn spell after killing the boss. Can we program him to change appearance by pushing a button? and make him do a new move if the spell is selected?
How the Background is make? can we put giant jpeg who do all the level?
Can we build holes and obstacles to jump over? (a Z data)
is The enemy palette switch is easy to do?
Can i work on a Imac or the openboreditor is limited to PC?
Is there a premium version if i pay for the engine?
Can you understand my English?

maybe some questions are already answers, but i cant find search button in your forum!

THANKYOU!

[dezzz]

Oh yeah.
Is there a way to put it on a normal wii (not a hacked one)
is there a easy way to use a gamepad on a computer?
i read a little bit and i didn't saw anything about using differents spell.

is there simpler alternatives with Flash?

[NickyP]

Can we choose a large resolution?
Is there a limits of colors displayed at the same time?
Is there a easy way to put SWF in the game?
What kind of music can be played? (MIDI? Mp3?)
Does the character can be scales? (coming from the background and get taller as they walk)
If it's dark and there is a light, does the character can change their shade when they walk under the light?
Can we put MPEG or FLV movie between the stages?
Our hero will learn spell after killing the boss. Can we program him to change appearance by pushing a button? and make him do a new move if the spell is selected?
How the Background is make? can we put giant jpeg who do all the level?
Can we build holes and obstacles to jump over? (a Z data)
is The enemy palette switch is easy to do?
Can i work on a Imac or the openboreditor is limited to PC?
Is there a premium version if i pay for the engine?
Can you understand my English?

1. Not if you use truecolor mode (setting colourmode to 16bit in video.txt)
2. No swfs. Only animated gifs
3. Wav that gets converted to .bor using bor2wav.exe. You can also use .ogg's, but I don't know about that.
4. Probably, though I never did it before.
5. See 4
6. See 2
7. Yes and yes. All easy to set up with intermediate knowledge.
8. Backgrounds have to be gif or png, and the palette of the image has to match pal.act that's in your data folder.
9. Yes, you can build holes. Walls too.
10. Yes, remap command. Basic stuff
11. Pretty sure there's OpenBOR for macs
12. There's no premium version. OpenBOR is free for all, my friend!
13. Yes.

 

[Damon Caskey]

Nick did a good job answering this, I'll try and add a bit more detail.

Can we choose a large resolution?

Up to 960*540.

Is there a limits of colors displayed at the same time?

Technically yes, pragmatically no. The engine supports 32 bit color, so the limit is 16,777,216. Since the human eye can only distinguish 7,000,000, I think you'll be OK.

One thing to note is that an individual moving entity (what you probably think of as a sprite; we use the term differently) is limited to 256 colors. If that is insufficient, then you do what the professionals do; stack multiple objects until you have enough.

Is there a easy way to put SWF in the game?

SWF is not supported.

What kind of music can be played? (MIDI? Mp3?)

For music OpenBOR supports its own format (essentially a .wav file with some headers attached), and .ogg vorbis. If you aren't familiar with .ogg, it's mp3, except free and better. Sort of like .png is to the .gif format. Stereo sound is supported. Music is streamed so you don't have to worry about memory use, though you'll still want to be efficient if you want your module download to be small.

Individual sound effects are monorail .wavs, but with scripting you have full control of the left and right channel, meaning that stereophonic sound effects are fully supported as well. Sound effects are cached into memory.

Does the character can be scales? (coming from the background and get taller as they walk)

OpenBOR has a whole range of sprite manipulation capabilities. Alpha blending, rotation, scaling, warping, etc. Adjusting these automatically (i.e. in conjunction with on screen movement) is not supported out of the box, but can be (and has been by yours truly) easily implemented using OpenBOR's script support.

If it's dark and there is a light, does the character can change their shade when they walk under the light?

See above. Not supported out of the box, but the tools are there if you know how to script.

Can we put MPEG or FLV movie between the stages?

No. There is a built in support for .gif movies, and if you are creative the engine itself can be used to create scenes.

Our hero will learn spell after killing the boss. Can we program him to change appearance by pushing a button? and make him do a new move if the spell is selected?

Absolutely; there are several ways you can do this. For that matter there is nothing gameplay wise that isn't supported. If you can think of it, the engine can do it.

How the Background is make? can we put giant jpeg who do all the level?

No, but Nick is incorrect in saying you are limited to 256 colors. You can layer background panels to produce effectively infinite color.

Can we build holes and obstacles to jump over? (a Z data)

Yes.

is The enemy palette switch is easy to do?

Of course. This is one of the most basic functions in OpenBOR.

Can i work on a Imac or the openboreditor is limited to PC?

There is no up to date OpenBOR just for Macs, but you should be able to run it anyway with a bit of effort. Also, OpenBOR is not and does not require an editor, nor does it include one. OpenBOR is the game engine. There are module editors out there, but they are third party projects made by community members here. Platform support for those applications is up to the individual authors.

Is there a premium version if i pay for the engine?

No. OpenBOR is free and fully functional. You must still adhere to a license to use it, but it's nothing too difficult to follow.

Can you understand my English?

Not too shabby. Welcome to Lavalit! 

DC

[Roel]

Since the human eye can only distinguish 7,000,000, I think you'll be OK.

Actually, the limits of human vision cannot be expressed in this way. What the human eye can and cannot distinguish depends on many factors, including but not limited to overall brightness, the size of different-colored areas, the complexity of the observed image, and of course individual differences.

[Damon Caskey]

True, but that's the general average Humans and other Trichromats are considered capable of viewing (some estimates go as low as 1,000,000 and others into tens of millions). Either way, the point is the same; as far as straight up color depth goes, 32-bit is effectively infinite.

DC

[utunnels]

And due to the fact filters are 16bit only, and many who play a low res mode will choose a 2x filter, so using 32bit is a bit pointless.

Though you think 65535 colors are plenty, but if you design something like a fog or smooth light effect in 32bit mode, you may find ugly color blocks/rings if you have filters on.

[dezzz]

Oh thanks! you gave me some goods answers!

I want to know now how the game can be publish.
I read somewhere it can be played on WII.
Is it only Flashed wii?
Can it be played in browser?

It's a univercity project, and it's mainly the animation that is rated.
Is the GIF for the cinematics are limited to 256 colors?

Do you know an engine with Flash too? (i need a shitty engine that play preety movie too.)

Thank you for your answers!