Legacy GM Temporarily changing rooms?

Rikifive

Member
It's pretty confusing to explain, but for example let's take turn based RPG's. You move around on the map and then you're transferred to the battle screen, while still keeping all the positions and stuff from the previous map-screen, to continue after victory. Now how should I approach that? Should I toy with persistence and simply switch rooms, or should I bring the whole thing into the current room, pausing and covering the stuff from the map scene? Same goes with menus - I'm in game- I can open menu, then switch between different screens (inventory/equipment/options etc.) - should I make it all in one room, covering the map-scene?
 
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Silver_Mantis

Guest
So from the overworld map to the battle screen, YES
Menus, unless it's like an inventory that you open from the overworld while not in combat, NO.

You should dedicate one room to be your battle screen, because a lot is going to go on there, so that's perfectly fine to transition from the map to the battle screen.
But a menu within the battle screen, like attacking or chosing items/spells, should all be on the GUI layer or drawn on a higher surface.
 

Rikifive

Member
By menus, I meant the ones accessed in the overworld outside the combat. Going to menu, viewing inventory- viewing status pages, changing equipment etc. etc..
Visual Reference that I could think of:
OVERWORLD
MENU SYSTEM WITH ITS SUBMENUS

Should I use two (or more) separate rooms for that or should I just drawn the whole menu over the overworld screen- pausing objects there? Or is it up to personal preference?
If making two rooms for overworld and the whole menu system would be the preferred way, how can I implement that properly to still keep the things from the overworld screen where they are? Would temporarily turning the overworld room persistent do the trick or is there something I should know?

As for battle, heh.. of course battle interface has to be in the same room drawn in the corner or something - that's how turn based rpgs look like after all. That would look hilarious if I'd throw simple commands like attack, skills, item and run on the whole screen in a separate room. :D
So following the same visual reference, let's say, that the battle system would look like this: (interface-wise // the game actually will look totally different than that)
So no worries about menus in there- that will not be a problem.
But again- the battle screen is totally different than the overworld - I assume using separate rooms && temporarily setting the overworld one to persistent would be okay?


Or... is there another, better way to handle that kind of things?
 
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Silver_Mantis

Guest
Or... is there another, better way to handle that kind of things?
Well there are two factors, your skill and your preference.
I would suggest blending the two.
I don't know how advanced your skills are, but if you can use less rooms, you should take that approach.

The only reason is that it will be a lot cleaner, and a much better experience for the user.
I don't know how much space it would take up honestly, so I can't really tell you much about how optimized it would be.
(But as well all know, a little code that does a lot = optimization lol)

It seems like you have the right idea, if you run into trouble, you can post your code you're working on and I'm sure the community will be able to help out in some way! ;)
 

Rikifive

Member
I think I'll try setting the room to persistent when entering - that would do the thing for both, menus and battle screen- and then change the room back to not persistent right before changing location to free the memory from it upon leaving, so that only the overworld-room where the player currently is will be persistent.

I'll do some science and see what happens.
Thanks. :)
 
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