u/Coobert-Of-Plsia

This is RPGSoup, a plug-in that effectively turns GB Studio into RPGMaker. a reusable framework you drop into your already existing project.

You build a database of your RPG ingredients using define events for your items, equipment, characters, spells, skills, enemies, troops, graphics, animations, etc., and RPGSoup handles the machinery underneath.

It started as just something to handle stats and exp for me but as I fell further and further into the Acid Trap Hole that is the RPG Genre, Soup became the rather complete framework that it is today.

It isn't done yet, but it's getting there. When it's done, RPGSoup will be released for free!

Along with a Full RPG that started as a demo scene, but through my doctrine of "I gotta show off every feature I've implemented at least once for the end user because thats how I learned", became huge!

I'm really excited to give this to the community when it's done and can't wait to see what people make with it!

built an rpgmaker-like engine for gb studio so only fitting i put the dragon from RMVX in as an enemy... just with a twist

Hood Morning from Coobsoft HQ

i havent posted in a bit, had a lot on my plate this last week - i added a couple of systems to battle that really make it feel whole imo. now you can chain encounters together with effects (and i have included no shortage of transitions)!

you can also display messages on specific turns, when you kill someone, when an enemy hits a certain HP threshold, if they're hit by a certain move, and a lot more! i MAY have a couple more small features planned but those will be color only.

the good news: all that's left on the engine front is polish like proofreading the labels and tooltips!

literally cannot contain my excitement, the day i can put this onto my itch for you guys is short at hand! more updates soon, and sooner rather than later!

just a preview of a superboss i'm working on for my custom valbrace campaign.

also, i built a simple campaign maker/level editor that exports to the UFO50 Modder. I wanted it done before cherry rush but my primary project (basically rpgmaker for gb studio) put it's foot down and let me know who really owns my time lol.

the campaign is in the works currently, and you could consider it somewhere between an Arrange Mode, or a Second Quest to Vanilla. alternate maps, dials the difficulty up but in a way that a regular person can still technically beat with patience and time, alternate, non-linear routes, at least one new fight, and i've already cooked up some seriously punishing traps to keep you paying attention, as i personally have been all too guilty of aimlessly wandering these halls without keeping a lookout.

i know valbrace isnt the most POPULAR game, but it's my hope to change that with the level editor, LX-II Valbrace Forge :D I'll hand out the git link for that after i release the custom campaign, as i'm sorta building onto that piece by piece as i make the campaign. it'll add a lot of replay value to an already greatly replayable game!

Hood Morning from Coobsoft!

Still a little stuttery here and there but i'm working on it bit by bit to get it as smooth as butter. this basically just trades off some of the tile budget for a cool background! it's tied to world features and troop overrides, as well as scripted events ofc. you can also define the reveal color (or choose a your own tile if you'd like!) underneath so you're not just stuck with blank white and it doesnt clash so much.

i'm experimenting with other formations, and results look good these videos were just what i had on my phone (winding down for bed after a long day over the soup pot!) and i'll get a better demo up tomorrow either here or on the GB Studio Discord in my dedicated WIP-Forum page!

Hood morning, Coob from Coobsoft HQ here with... I'll level with y'all i'm *almost* tired of saying this set of words, (it's pretty much hit its semantic satiation point for me hah!) but here i am, one more again, coming to you with my *new* favorite part of the RPGSoup engine (so far)!

Not long ago when I was messing with the lighting for RPGSoup I had an idea about maybe using the same family of techniques i was using with making that funky little dithered ring around the player, to literally break my enemies out of their boxes and make them not just rectangles it just seemed really boring, and i also hated that i'd stuck us all with just being able to only fight one dude if it was of colossal size.

i stand before you, several very cursed, and hilarious iterations later, to present the new layered battle system.

basically, RPGSoup reads the transparent parts of each enemy PNG during the build and turns them into a little 1-bit mask. then i can give everybody an X/Y position and a depth order inside the troop. the engine lays them together from back to front, so they are technically still rectangular BG graphics, but they don’t have to LOOK like rectangular BG graphics anymore.
basically the best parts of sprites, without the tax!

it restores the layers great like when i yank one enemy out of the pile for an attack, or kill something too! and you'd think it would really bog the build time down? all the crazy stuff its doing then, and it's still only 45 seconds cold <3

This, was Phase 5: Layered Battling Phase 5.5 is tying backgrounds in. Phase 6? Well i don't wanna spoil the surprise. But it's gonna be dope! I find it super funny that when i was working on secret of evermore GB to start with, sprite and tile limits were the bane of my existence; now look at me go, hah! Below is a peek at the API for Layered battling, subject to change.

Currently there are two choices, but there are going to be more. you can choose from being able to target the big guy from jump street, or having to kill the troop guarding them before you can attack the back-most enemy. i'll also include the original stress test for the compositor because it is just... a special kind of cursed that's almost endearing because it's so technically smooth whilst remaining an abomination :P even if you do shove everyone together like that now it wouldn't lag, that was the first successful test, so i thought i'd show it for posterity.

I'll be back sooner rather than later with more news, i hope yall like what i've done so far!

https://reddit.com/link/1vuahm9/video/w404ef10wokh1/player

https://preview.redd.it/bhwoisastokh1.png?width=1345&format=png&auto=webp&s=4ea628b18dbfb7e4dfe573a13d7afea1c17d0027

I have been on a real Ryuji Sasai kick lately with playing all this saga 3 and mystic quest, and i felt like arranging the other good battle music from this game. turned out fire imo it needs some cleanup but it's not bad for a night's work

Hood morning and greetings from Coobsoft HQ ! sorry that i've been slim on the updates, usually it's like me to update on this more frequently, been really quite busy both at home; and in the kitchen.

First, a video. and a disclaimer for that video - couple of small bugs in this recording. with the timing of the callout banner, and the tile streamer, but they've since been sorted. it's not to be taken as any indication of quality, and the interface is subject to change probably once or twice more before it's finalized.

For some time during this endeavor i've been trying to wrap my head around how to really tackle custom animations in battle without leaving you guys (or me) being tied down to just the 32x32 and 48x48 "single actor anchored to the center of the screen/the center of an enemy" system i had. it didn't have the depth that i feel like real games have, and it just looked kinda tacked on even if you tried to be creative and worked around it.

Back in the day for animation choreography, RPGMaker had Effekseer or something else on the later versions. GBS, and RPGSoup do not. but nothing to fear!

I set out to make a solution and this is what i came back with. it's not by any means final so bear that in mind. I promise I will take a good video of how it works in time, but it's changing like, every day - and a full tour would be wasted since it'd be outdated in a week. I give you my word when it's through, I'll deliver a full walkthrough on my YT, for anyone to use as a resource. god knows there just aren't enough good tutorials, amirite? 😂 I'll make sure to give you guys the whole cribs tour, complete with DVD Extras! ALL THIS SAID, here's a quick rundown.

in your scripts menu on the sidebar, you'll either already have, or make an animation and choreography library. There are two events.Define Clip, and Define Choreography.

Define Clip, is just defining an animation for the battle engine, using the sprites we have in the sprites folder. it's your bread and butter. here you define default behaviors for a single-segment of animation. simple stuff, just its visual effect, its size, amount of frames, and its sound if you want one. these will be used to build bigger attacks out of.

Now, the Define Choreography event: Flavortown. That's what this is. Those clips that we were defining a second ago? This is where you'll use them. This is where you'll define the actual battle animations behavior, and where you'll put those "blocks" together.

You can make some pretty long and cool effects with this. You can apply multiple effects per "beat" as i'm calling them (segment was considered, but i just like beat better, feel free to go in the code and change it if it bugs ya i don't mind =P ).

You can add both raster and palette effects, timing them pretty much however you'd like, and can have effects carry through every beat, or time it to end with the beat. As long as they overlap in a way that makes sense, you can overlap the effects as well! In the API if you change motion path to free, you may place the animation at any coordinates you like, and then apply the one of the included motion paths to it while it's bound to a defined rectangular region (it's x, y, width, height) of your choosing.

i am doing my best not to just include 1 or 2 movement options for attacks, then tell you guys "welp the rest is up to you, use the custom option" - as this is for everyone, not just experts and not just newbies. As you can see, i've been up to my eyeballs in RPGSoup. I'll post more as the situation develops. Soup's finna be FIRE.

for a quick status indicator, the engine is probably a hard 90%, the demo is more like 60%.
i'd like to release them at the same time so folks have a whole project to pick apart and learn from.

AH, and as for a name for the actual game that demos the RPGSoup engine - "Fever Dream Saga" is about as on the nose as you can get, right? i love it.

Stay tuned!

Coob, President of Coobsoft

P.S. - I still have a few things up my sleeve, too!

https://preview.redd.it/77m0mttz3vjh1.png?width=1367&format=png&auto=webp&s=d47ed5627c10b0ec916fe73e7218e62307c8ef3d

https://preview.redd.it/eq5p111y3vjh1.png?width=1371&format=png&auto=webp&s=f8a64ec8efbc9eb15fd86902df19df83c6265e6a

https://preview.redd.it/e37qr71y3vjh1.png?width=1373&format=png&auto=webp&s=9151e0bcbff54704a0d1ac90f86927c9bb8545ce

still rough like my usual first posts about a feature, but after a long night into the morning i've made a bit of headway into the lighting system for caves and stuff. according to Uni it tests clean on dmg! you'll be able to call this event in any scene's init script, control its radius, and whether or not it has a dithered ring.

check one more thing off my SoE:GB list, i think i'll do it like this in gothica and antiqua!

Hey everybody, just gonna sit this here and let it speak for itself, some sfx need to be added, and for the life of me I cant explain why Lumina hit one enemy heals 4 guys then hits the other lol its supposed to be one then the other, but this is much much closer to what I would call "ready".

Cant wait to see these guys replaced with whatever cool or goofy stuff you guys make lol

been workin' on a proper "what kind of place is the player standing in?" layer for the world map (and other scenes). it started because i wanted regions for battles on the world map. a taller order than it sounds, but i think i got it licked.

at first i tried defining rectangles, and that's still an option if you've only got a small area you want to mark as a feature. but for scalability, stacking 61 random rectangles is about the quickest way to end up with a five minute build... if it builds at all. 😅

RPGSoup can now treat areas within a scene as semantic world features by reading a second indexed color image. you create the image, drop it into the world_features folder with the corresponding scene name, and the build process assigns feature ids to each tile-sized area.

at runtime, the engine can use those features to change the player visually or mechanically. right now it can adjust movement speed, partially obscure the player for a "walking through forest" or "stuck in the sand" effect, or hide them entirely so it looks like they're walking behind the background. it can also swap encounter tables or apply optional bg effects like subtle scx/scy scrolling or palette changes.

the immediate use case is, of course, encounters. but the exciting part is that this is a general-purpose system. other plugins and systems can simply call get world feature and react to wherever the player is standing. *sigh* i can already see myself making fishing lmfao

droppin a quick update,

Put together a "PHS"-ish party swapping mechanism for RPG Soup, you can also reorder your dudes here (now you'll be able to reorder your active party also just by pressing select at the root menu)! A small but very important mechanic for a rich rpg you notice when its missing haha

All weapon families now have sheets for them, i'm excited to share, as well! I'm finishing classes and wrapping it all up for release after that I think!

hey sorry i been quiet as i've been scaling up the heat on our soup! i've added a few things - until today, rpg soup supported 32x32, 32x64, 64x32, 64x64, and 160x80 (limited to 80 tiles). but i am pleased to report after many hours of work, i have now added another size - 48x48, as well! trying to give ya'll options here. the bigger W's in my book are the shop redesigns which i hinted at wanting to rework previously, and my favorite part, we officially have 8 enemy fights and multi-target spells! (coded currently but not animated because i only have two hands and i got excited when i got these bits of gameplay lined up to show you guys haha)

cant wait to finish this up! i'm gonna do something with world maps too... but i won't reveal that JUST yet.

oh and PS now the limit on colossal is 144 tiles cause i took a broom to vram before the battle starts and streams everything into it now <3

Split up the raster and palette effects for spells and attacks when they call for them! Man it does a LOT for the kinetics of battle, its not easy to make Battle Logs and Combat Resolution look cool haha!

Im making a bunch of effects, and when you define your spells in the big init script, you just choose what spell uses which effect, if any at all! Ill post pictures of what the event editor interface looks like in comments c:

I think ill be ready for Beta 2 before long, if youre interested, shoot me a DM and ill make a list from here when I send demo projects out for people to break and play with! This has been just, the most fun making.

And since this is as good a place as any, super special thanks to any and everyone that's helped me so far!

I'm glad i tried it too, eventually i'll experiment with using the 4-cell fighter bgs so the boss can have multiple components, and later i'll make like a minimalist UI, a compact combat log with my tiny icons and my condensed font we'll REALLY be cookin with gas then, i'm gonna leave it here for now and focus on cleaning the rest of this up so i can get this in some hands <3

Hey guys, here's a look at the basic battle framework im building for you guys. This supports 4 small 32x32 enemies, 2 64x32 tall, 2 32x64 wide, or one huge guy, as well as support for 2 small and 1 tall or wide enemy for the battles.

You use define database events to define enemies, troops, their ai, abilities, stats, and rewards in an initial script the same way you do with items, characters, effects, elements, equipment, magic, etc. Random encounters work as well! I made sure those random battles are supported across other scene types than top down too c:

As for all the events ive done my best with the tool tips, and nomenclature, to make em as caveman friendly as possible so you dont have to know how to code to use the plugin, you just supply the assets like usual! (Ive tried to illustrate that idea by using the enemies from the inspiration, FFL3, my little weirdo party, and my gb demakes of the Secret of Evermore alchemy spells!)

The rpg battle side of the plugin is made to work be used together with the menu side to make a cute and very customizable rpg, but you can just use the menu side if you want to make an action rpg or a different kind of battling!

Ive tried to cover everything I could think of that could feasibly be customized, the Coobsoft RPG Soup plugin as ive jokingly named it has become a freakin unit and when I polish out the few teeny graphical issues itll pretty much be done

muchexcite.mp4

definitely past the mockup phase! it's taken me a week to get this far, this thing's been driving me batty. and boy, has it been teaching me the hard way the WHOLE TIME lol.

Item/spell/equipment definitions live in ROM/database style lookup tables, while WRAM only tracks live stuff like item counts, learned spells, equipped IDs, party stats, EXP, money, save slots, and cursor state. i never really realized how tiny WRAM for real is on the game boy

i chose to use the old 1.0 sample level to make it in simply because i didn't want to mess with color if i couldnt even get my concept to work to begin with lol. it's still got some visual bugs in this recording but i wanted to share this as a milestone.

thanks and greetz to the homies in the gbs discord

Coming along nicely, it's honestly faster that i expected it to be!

hey guys, here's a demo of my simple rpg stat handler in action.
it's offers about everything i can think of that one would need in an rpg - from Normal stats, to one for Crit% or ItemFind%, Evade% or whatever you might need that sort of stat for. You can customize sound from the event editor, and if you don't want to or cant draw a menu, just give it a blank background, and tell it the coordinates to draw your stats.

https://cooby-pls.itch.io/coobs-exp-engine

it works for both 4.2.0 and 4.3.0 too! hope it helps out!