H-Mode7

[MGC]

Light effects shouldn't have a big impact on performance, since they're not dynamic, but computed when entering the map. Did you notice more lag when they're activated ?

[Lupinos]

Not really, was just a thought of me, but I´m not good at those things and..... I recognized that it looks much better with light effects on so I will activate them for future. ^^

Btw: I realized that wall events might cause crashes when they are in a certain angle to the camera. When they are behind cam and should appear on map when I move my character the RGSS-Player often crashes. Hard to explain. I´ll show in a video soon. ;)

Video Crash Report (Wall Events)

Demo of the worldmap

This download is a demo of the worldmap I designed for the video "My first H-Mode7 3D maps for RPG Maker XP". The map is still in development. This download is a request. ;)

Worldmap v0.8

[Krazy_Meerkat]

Hello MGC, I am a long time fan of your work :)
HM7 is amazing! I know there are some limitations with the hm7 engine, but I'd like to request a few features that would definitely benefit hm7 users with creating content.
Firstly, is it possible to draw a "wall" sprite on a slope? (You could specify an angle in a comment eg. #VerticalGradient 20 for a slope of 20 degrees). This feature would allow users to have a hollow doorway with a roof covering it (a recess in the side of building covered by a slanted roof sprite), it might not seem very important, but it is a vital tool in optical illusion.
Secondly, can you please bring back an old feature from one of your previous mode7 engines that allowed "flat" or "floor" tiles to be drawn with an altitude? This would add so much more detail to my game, it would help me create window sills, and a 3d archway could also then be achieved using two columns with raised "wall" tiles between them and a "flat" tile to cover the hollow in the middle.
Lastly, I had a suggestion, I have seen people asking numerous times about a way to have pixels drawn from the top of the 32x32 pixel taper down into a smaller point, and I know that this is not possible using your current hm7 engine (because of the way your heightmaps work), but what if you have objects drawn a slightly different way? My suggestion is to give the texture files their own heightmap files, then you could give horizontal depth to objects (the hm7 engine could still treat them as 32x32x32 solid cubes for stacking purposes).

Thanks for reading MGC, and I hope I was clear and easy to understand :) You have developed an amazing engine & I can't thank you enough for it :D

[Raphael Rpg Games]

MGC Hello again, could add eight-direction movements in the system?

[Krazy_Meerkat]

Raphael, HM7 already has support for 8-dir movement. You need to supply your own 8-dir movement script. Try CogWheel's 8-way script, it works wonderfully

Edit: I decided to play around with HM7 and discovered some bugs..
I have been experiencing the problem that Lupinos recently mentioned where RMXP crashes unexpectedly when a vertical sprite is rotated at a certain angle (for me, this angle was when the "camera" tried to view the sprite at almost 180 degrees, I think it was trying to show the back of the sprite.. Maybe you need to adjust your rotation formula for sprites when swapping from 360 degrees back to 0 or 1)

One bug that I discovered in Version: 1.4.3 is that the texture files flicker for map objects if the colourmap (1st frame of the texture file) has an edge only 1 pixel thick, to fix this, I made the edges 32x2 instead of 32x1.

I have not experienced any problems with displaying roofs on multiple angles, if you have the base block displaying through to the roof block there is a trick to fix this, simply make the base block's tile the same as your roof tile (all done in the tileset) the roof tile is then displayed correctly (because it cannot filter through to a different image, it is the same image).

I'm enjoying working with this new engine very much, thanks so much MGCaladtogel!

[scaldwellhu]

MGC, I love this script and the Neo Mode7 which I am using for my current project in VX. I know you mentioned that you could make a similar VX exporter for H-Mode7 as well, but you didn't think their would be many interested in it. I for one would LOVE to have access to it as i want to redo my current project with H-mode 7 and still be able to work in VX. Is there any way you'd consider making an H-Mode7 exporter for VX?

[Argami]

Hello,
Some time ago I downloaded one of the first demos of H-Mode 7 and I would like to know if in the new versions is possible to make more than 3 levels.
Thank you very much.

[Lupinos]

Hello,
Some time ago I downloaded one of the first demos of H-Mode 7 and I would like to know if in the new versions is possible to make more than 3 levels.
Thank you very much.

Yeah you could use multiple layers by using childmaps. Means you create childmaps with their mothermap´s name in [] like:
Village[HM7]
childmap1[Village]
childmap2[Village] and so on.

The childmaps must have the same properties like the mothermap.

Then you put a scriptcall in the mothermap (village): $game_map.data
and the layers of the 3 maps will be combined so that you´ll have 9 layers where childmap 2 are the highest layers.

Hope that´ll help you.

PS: To prevent weird passability issues you have to make the highest layer non passable if you want the player not passing this region. Means for example if you want a house not to be passable and the roof is not in the highest layer (in my example layer 9) take an invisible tile non passable and paint it the shape of the house. Now the player isn´t able to "climb" the roof or paint the roof in the highest layer and make it´s tiles non passable. ^^

[MGC]

I fixed two sources of crash in the DLL (that includes the one mentionned by Krazy_Meerkat - the sprite at 180°).
I don't know for the moment if there are any others like that.
The size of the DLL file is significantly smaller than before, with no particular reason. Seems to work though.

I'll try to make an exporter for VX (but not VXAce for the moment, since it's based on ruby v.1.9, and my DLLs won't work without significant modifications).

[Krazy_Meerkat]

I tested out 1.4.4 and it works great, no crashes now. :D
In your next update, can you make a way to spawn hm7 tileset objects with events? (Provided the event's graphic was a tileset element)
This would make creating a 3d event sequence relatively simple and significantly cut down on the amount of maps needed to show a change in the hm7 objects.

Well, that is all I have to say. I hope you will take it into consideration, and bring back floating "floor" tiles ftw :)