Hi there! I love the idea behind this engine but... is there no way to edit character sprites? It would make a HUGE difference. Thanks in advance.

This is just amazing! Thank you so much! How can I customize the hero, or swap him for some of the other sprites?

very nice! caan skill text  be edited? also what key to press to use sword. nice look and feel.

First things first—great little engine! Minimalist, simple, and to the point. Love the UI simplicity!

Now, some long winded notes and suggestions:

Skills

Allow for the enabling and disabling of individual skills. This way, you can create a "do-it-yourself" character build. Rename skills to have non class related names. For example, a skill like "Fire Mage" makes no sense if you're playing as a thief. Call it "Fire Walker" and it becomes universal. Some skill suggestions below (for illustrative purposes only):

• Undying: Automatically revive once after death.
• Silver Tongue: Unlock new dialogue options.
• Backstabber: 50% chance for double damage from the back.
• Alchemist: Potions heal full life.
• Fire Walker: You can walk on lava.
• Locksmith: Open locks without a key.
• Cautious: Pass through traps without taking damage.
• Booksmart: XP scrolls give you double experience.
• Weapon Expert: Your weapons have +1 on stats.

EDIT3: Already implemented

Dialogues

Have branching dialogue options. If nothing else, at least have a ✗ or ✓ as options to answer, to create a semblance of dialogue.

Tilesets

The tileset is suboptimal. It covers just one genre (fantasy), has way too many NPC assets (considering the small scope), and way too few environment assets (even for the small scope). 

The bigger problem is that right now, it stands somewhere between symbolic and literal representation. I would propose you move further into symbolic representation, with the optional import of other tilesets (modern, sci-fi, western, cyberpunk, etc.). To do this, you will need to implement name tags in dialogue and allow for duplicate (reused) NPCs and the renaming of NPCs in a scene. I know the asset import goes against the idea of having everything ready to export in a (short) string, but so does redrawing half or all of the NPCs to get what you need. If nothing else, at least think of including tilesets for the other genres I mentioned.

EDIT3: You need about 16 map tiles per one good looking environment. 

Variables

You probably need more. 16–20 sounds about right for a micro-game.

World

A bigger world map would be nice (perhaps have a switch between 3x3 and 5x5). The bigger option would allow for  overworld, one big(ish) and one small dungeon, which is perfect for a small game. Right now, the 3x3 map is more of a proof of concept than anything really useful.

Objects and enemies

• Enemy Stats: Allow for changing enemy stats (0–9 range)—click on the boxes and write a value. This way, you don't need to use a fixed enemy progression.
• Weapon Stats: Allow for changing weapon stats (0–9 range)—click on the boxes and write a value. This way, you can easily create armor suits if needed(low attack, high defense) or different weapon kinds.

EDIT3: While what I proposed about Enemies and Swords would be a great addition, the most important addition would actually be enemy rename- even though you can reskin an enemy, right now when you're killed by one it shows the name of the enemy from the editor.

• Rename Tabs: Rename the "Swords" tab to "Weapons."

EDIT3: Add Indication of weapon durability(and attack strength), the same way enemies have indication of their damage output. The player shouldn't have to count in his head, so either remove weapon durability and make them unbreakable or put in visual indication of their remaining durability.

• Add Traps: Add a Trap—basically a static enemy that has 1 life and adjustable damage(see above) or fixed low damage(1 or 2). It can easily be bypassed by careful players, advanced characters(who can take the hit) or characters with certain skills. Great for temporary closing off parts of the map among other things.
• Add Chests: Add a Chest that requires a key. When opened, it disappears leaving one (pre set from a list) item behind.

EDIT3: Right now you can do the same with walls and a door, but it wastes way too much level estate to use it often.

• End Game: The object should work similar to gates- activated by a variable. This way you can set a specific dialog as a condition to end game(great for narrative games).  

EDIT3: The object should stay as it, but create a named variable called END GAME that can trigger an end game condition so a dialogue can act as an end game trigger.

With the above changes to the objects and the addition of the trap and chest, you cover all the basic pillars of a good micro-RPG: 2–3 location-appropriate enemies, one boss, at least one cool weapon and item, one trap, one secondary location, an element of surprise, and some story.

Ideally, you should also have one resource to dump into upgrades, so think about implementing money and traders as a resource drop and mechanic; however, you can probably skip this if you make skills a binary choice at level up. This way experience becomes the resource you dump into upgrades.

EDIT: Noticed the sign post and speech bubble behave identically- they set a variable and display information. Would make more sense if the speech bubble disappears after it's interacted with. Otherwise it just hangs there.

EDIT2: After playing some more with the engine I realized  I was wrong on some points, so i crossed some things out.

EDIT3: After doing some more thinking about game mechanics(yeah I do that a lot) I revised some of my previous suggestions to keep more in line with what I understand as the spirit of the project. Light revisions to text for clarity.

Hello! I've made 2 games so far with TRS and it's such a great engine, and I have thought of some things that would make it even better.

1. It would be cool if we could change the stats both for weapons and for monsters & bosses (damage, life, etc)

2. Maybe a bigger map? I get the point of the engine is to be minimalistic but it would be great if it was maybe 4x4 or 5x5

3. It would also be cool if we could create our own custom tiles on top of those who already exist. You could create a new tile and then for its properties, you could implement a "mimic" system. So if I want to do a tile that works like lava but it's blue lava (and you need bothe, blue and red for some reason) you just create the tile and you tell it to mimic lava. 

Hope it helps! :D

Bardzo fajnym pomysłem są palety inspirowane klasycznimi konsolami ( i nie tylko ). Szkoda tylko, że brakuje wśród nich ZX Spectrum. 

Zrobiłem krótki poradnik na YouTube jak zrobić magiczne drzwi otwierane po dialogu z NPC. Link: https://youtu.be/YrG0_IvPOqA?is=inUmnwqLmJ4OstTV

Hi guys, another suggestion. You may want to think about allowing more than one alternative dialogue on per character. This way characters will be able to react to your binary choices and the dialogue skill might actually become useful

BUG(S):

=Statistic menu=

- Shows I have only 1 branching dialogue active when I have at least 5 set up (Man without arm,zombie woman, orange suit, orange suit 2, and the at least 3 of the endings). I checked to see if it’s “one per map” but it didn’t change.

-Walls :are not showing in the menu as “changed by player” I have in game used the walls I’ve changed and it says I have made /used 0 of them.

-Items: Game says there’s none in use, however I have a key in place and it’s not showing as such. It and other things I would have considered an “item” (keys, potions, what it describes) show up in the OBJECTS tab of the statistics.

-Dialogue: counting only counts if the creator MOVES the npc after initial creation. (King for example makes it go up by 4 due to the name, but until I move it him the text I made won't update in the thing)

When changing tiles with an item/npc already there it takes you  draw/holding a pixel before the area you want to change (See video) →Video2 Unknown if this is a glitch or just how things will be from on. 

==Main Menu==

When pressing to play with the on screen arrow buttons they do not work with the mouse (see video) → Video1

(if the video stuff is messed up click my profile on the vimeo and there's the 2 vids there)

==SUGGESTIONS==

-Let us delete skills or XP popups? Or set a limit of how many we may use. IE: I would have made a stealth zombie game but I didn't want the player to get more XP and get skills that aren't in the game/usable. OR let an NPC let us learn a skill? 

-I Love the new LOGIC tab! I ended up using a few! However I noticed that I thought I could make a "you can't go back" type puzzle, and I can't seem to work that out with the logic. What I was thinking of was that the player goes to the next map area, and it auto locks them in the new map until they can activate a variable or f lip a switch, open a door etc. A tutorial I think would be wonderful for this new expansion!

-or swords "breaks after a few hits" as a flavor text for a player is fine, but for making a game I often forget how many hits a sword can take or do before breaking. Is there perchance a way to have it so that we know an estimated number? ie: 2-5 hits.

Rename Enemy Mobs!

The engine's NPC names are fine, you can customize their text box to say who they are e x: king, knight, child "Child: Says words here" But when it comes to enemies I found while making a non-fantasy game that they keep their name of the base entity you picked. I was testing an area and noticed that the Dark Knight I re-sprited shows up as "Killed by Black Knight" (see screenshot) and noticed I couldn't change the name :O

-Give npc item/let us set an npc to accept an item and it takes it/turns a switch on

-NPCs will have an orange ! next to them. Sometimes it activates sometimes it doesnt. I was wondering i we could set it manually in the character's   speech stuff? 

-Maybe with the new choices options we could have one be insta-death/game over instead of having the player wonder around to the exit? 

WARNING ABOUT MUSIC/AUDIO:

For safety I would recommend doing a premade set of royalty free music on youtube or a select approved channels. Streaming copyrighted music a person may put in their game can cause the person doing the stream to not get revenue if they're able to get it, or block off sound chunks which could lose vial thinking process info the person may be saying/mute the video/ vod. There is also the risk of someone putting a low song that turns into an "ear buster" song or one that screams/says  slurs which could harm the live streamer.

That's my 5 cents! Sorry for the wall of text!

Hey,
Just checked my list form 3 months ago and was amazed at how much things you've implemented. And yes, I know I wasn't the only one asking for some of these(most of these really), but still thanks for taking suggestions seriously.

Any chance you can implement the "end game by dialogue" and "better chests" sugestions?

To save you all the re-reading- "end game by dialogue" is a way to set a dialogue with an NPC as an end game event via a variable dropdown. Basically give you the dialogue text and then end the game. It would be huge for narrative games.

As for the "better chests" I suggested to have an option to unlock a chest via variable, the same as you can disable traps, open doors etc. It would be great because if you want to put a chest, unlockable when you finish a dialogue or beat a boss right now you need to waste at least 4 map tiles to put it in a room with a door(if you use a corner) otherwise it's up to 8, depending on the placement. That really wastes a lot of space which we don't have, since-small maps. I can live with small maps- there are some ways around that, but wasting space is not a good thing when you go for minimalism.

I'd also like to suggest you think of implementing an optional "wall of text" screen at the begining. Right now you go from title, directly into game. All the setting details, story and controls have to be explained on the itch page, which is not great. If you give designers a way to put in an optional screen of text between the title screen and the actual gameplay that would go a long way towards making things look more professional. Doesn't need to be star-wars like scrolling text either, just plain old text.

Edit: fixed some mistakes

Ciekawym pomysłem byłoby dodanie tekstu przed walką z niektórymi Bossami. Czyli np. Boss krzyczy przed walką: Nie pokonasz mnie. To wyświetla się chwilę na ekranie po czym gracz przystępuję do normalnej walki. Podobny system jest w grze Hades II, gdzie przed walką Bossowie rozmawiają z graczem.

Hey,

I have a revised proposal on renaming enemies.

A few people(myself included) have requested in the past for you to implement a way to rename enemies, but as far as I remember we see the enemy name outside the editor only in the end game text, when killed. 

So I propose an easy fix- change the end game text when killed to not show what killed you.

So insted of seing "killed by skeleton" when you have reskinned the skeleton to a gelatinous cube ingame, you just get a "You Died!" text.

Accidentally it also takes care(to some degree) of the desire to be able to assign individual enemy stats: We already have a decent variety of enemies stat wise, so if one wants a skeleton with higher stats than the default ones, one can reskin the stock assets. If nothing outside the editor says that's not a skeleton, it's all fine.

It's a lazy fix, but I believe it will fit nicely with the minimalist philosophy of the engine and besides sometimes less really is more.

Revised proposal on fixing the in-game information system( a.k.a the balloon).

Right now the speech bubble( the Balloon in the Extras menu) works exactly as the Wooden sign, which makes it completely redundant. In the same time there is no method to serve one time gameplay or environmental info without crowding the map. 

What I propose is changing the balloon to behave more like the chest- activated only once, is walkable after activation. It also needs to visually disappear after activation(so it doesn't crowd and create confusion). Might be enough to set transparency at 100%. That's more or less my old proposal. The new part is to add the option to make it appear by variable(similar to how the chest may be unlocked by one), only your starting state is disabled(walkable and transparent).

These changes would allow for hints or environmental information without taking up walking space, which is already at a premium.
So for example you can create enemy taunts(like Firefrog requested) or disperse all types of ingame information about points of interest(like I did for the rat lawyer in my first game). The "activated by variable" part would allow for puzzle hints(for example what changed after you activated a lever) and custom "you defeated all enemies..." messages(yeah I know we just removed those, but they were s good idea in general, just not the way they were implemented).

Proposal on fonts and text boxes

Hey guys, 

I think you really should do something about the fonts and the text boxes. A friend recently sent me a screenshot of one of my dialogues(not attached), thinking it was a bug. It wasn't but it looked like one, because the text box in mobile view shows way too little text. At the same time the text box in the desktop view shows way too much. I've attached screenshots of the same dialogue in both views, and the comparison speaks for itself. Not only the text windows are way too big, but one shows literally two words while covering the characters, while the other serves a literal wall of text(which is a bad design choice, but that's on me too).

Anyways, I would propose the following changes:

1. Decreasing the font size in mobile view to about the size of your system font(the one you use to write the "LVL1" text in the attached photo). Increasing the font size in full screen to the same font size as the system font(see above).

2. Decreasing the size of the text box to show a maximum of 4 lines of text, thus making sure it does not cover half the screen. The overflow text goes to the next text box. No idea how your code works, but I think the simplest way to implement this will probably be just to put a limit to the number of characters shown in a text box to 64 or so. Note I don't mean limiting the whole dialogue to 64 characters length, albeit some character limitations(like 256 or so characters) on the amount of text you can write in one dialogue might be a good thing to discourage bad design choices(see above) and will be in line with your minimalist design principle.

3.Assigning a keyboard symbol for flow control- assigning a symbol that's not normally used in speech, like "\" to signify "page end", basically moving the following text to the next text box. It would allow for text control when needed for design purposes.

Even implementing only the first point will go very far towards mitigating the problem, but if you're looking for interface uniformity, you should probably think about implementing some version of all 3.

Hey,
I made a quick review of the engine as it is right now and have some(more) thoughts and suggestions:

1. Experience system and skills changes. 

It may be just me, but it feels like you gain levels way too fast and you get skills way too often. That's not a huge problem, but is a problem nevertheless. 

What is a real problem is the fact we don't have enough good(useful) skills- assuming you get to level 8 you would have taken 4 out of the 6 skills and considering two of those are very situational and may be entirely unusable in a game, depending on the design, it means you've actually taken all the useful skills at that point. It's not a question of if, but a when.

To address the overly aggressive level gain, I suggest to have a checkbox to disable experience(and leveling) altogether, like we have for the skills, under the Development menu. This way people can design around item progression instead of level progression, if they want.  Keep in mind you don't actually need experience system for narrative games, so having an option to disable experience(and leveling) makes sense from that POV.

As for the skills system, I'd give skills only on levels 3, 7 and 10(instead of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10) and add at least 4 more perks to chose from, thus creating a real perk pool.

Here are some skill sugestions:

Cautious: Pass through traps without taking damage. (boots in skill form)

Booksmart: XP scrolls give you 4x experience.

Blackmith: Your equipped weapons have +1 durability.

Stealthy: Each time you enter a room you're invisible to enemies for 5 seconds.

Blessed: You get +1 max HP immediately(+1 heart)

Note that adding enough extra skills should fix the skills allocation problem even if you keep the current skill reward interval(every other level) intact as long as you have an option to leave some skills unallocated(out of the pool).

2. Create Title screen and Game intro as optional elements under the Information tab.
I mentioned that some time ago, under the "wall of text" suggestion. This is an amended proposition, including some new elements(title screen) and more details on how I see it working(under Information tab etc.)
+Title screen(optional field)- upload image to show game cover before you start the game. Clicking the action button on the title screen starts the Game intro(if any) or goes straight to game if no intro present.
+Game intro(optional field)- a full screen text box, that works like normal text box(font size, line control font control etc). When text has finished showing, clicking the action button starts the game.

I believe those two will create a feeling of playing a real retro game.

3. Rebalancing items.

Right now the armor is basically a god mode cheat. I propose you make it behave more like a weapon(give it a durability of 5 hits). Create another peace of lesser armor with lower defence and durability of 3. Since we don't have control over individual item stats,doing so makes a lot of sense for item diversity.

4. Adding more tiles

So far every time I tried to make a tile set I came one or two tiles short of my idea. What I propose is either adding at least one more tile per type(walkable/solid) or putting a switch on animated tiles, so they can be used as static ones. Yes, I know I can just make the two animation frames the same, but it feels wrong to do it this way.

I would also propose adding one tile with a higher z index, alowing the character to pass under it or to have a chest or item under it. It's great or hidden passages or hidden loot- you just leave a few spots transperant to show the path or item under it and voila.

5. Character import and export
Ok, this idea is really undercooked, but it should be possible to export character stats and inventory and import them in another adventure. Just something to think on.

Wish you all the best,|
V.