I just finished watching a video where this person is designing a top-down RPG in Scratch, and he devised a few features that seem like they would really benefit ZC a lot.
Real quick, here's the video in question:
https://www.youtube....h?v=py__IVcfhEU
First off, he came up with an auto-layering system for his tiles. Basically, he sets a default layer for each tile, and has an "Auto" setting for layer control, so he can just draw something like a tree and can immediately walk underneath the proper parts. Basically, a much more elaborate system than ZC's "Overhead" combo, and with ZC using a maximum of six layers per screen, something like this would be insanely efficient.
Second, he tried the collision system that RPG Maker uses, with edge-based collision. Then he moved to an 8x8 system like current ZC does. Finally, he settled with this brilliant "Collision Pin" system that could really benefit ZC and would seemingly be easy to implement and convert to. Each tile has 9 "pins" arranged in a 3x3 grid. The pins are what's considered solid, not the tile or edges themselves. The result is, for even an 8x8 sprite colliding with the 16x16 combo, if the top three pins are marked solid, it's the equivalent of the top edge being solid behavior-wise. If you wanted to mimic the current ZC behavior and have a combo that had the entire left half solid, instead of marking the two left corners of the combo, you would mark the two left columns of pins, and get the exact same result.
Since it would be easy to perfectly mimic the existing collision system, existing quests should be able to seamlessly update to the collision pin design when loaded in a hypothetical new version of ZQuest and ZC that incorporates it. It would also allow more elaborate screen design as well, and would seemingly work perfectly as far as player and enemy collisions go.
Are either of these two ideas something that could be implemented? The collision one would be a major overhaul, but most likely easy to auto-convert existing quests to the new system without breaking anything, and would allow some really cool ideas that aren't possible with the current system.
Edited by kurt91, 16 July 2022 - 06:10 AM.
