Insiders will know that I stopped failing about a week ago, but there hasn't been enough to show until now. I started back (mostly) from scratch a week ago, using ika. All that pyogre stuff is long gone... FOR NOW.
I started by making my own entity system because I wanted to tie it in more closely with the characters, and ika's doesn't give me enough control over the actual sprite drawing. The sprites are completely overhead at least for the time being, so I simply rotate their sprite to face whatever direction they're facing. That way, you only have to draw one direction for a particular frame. Also, the sprite is color coded and I color-replace when the character is made because I'm so lazy that all my characters and enemies will be color-swaps.
So far, you can walk around, the camera follows (it's zoomed in), your party follows and they face you, and I've got some rudimentary party formation stuff going (but it'll require a more robust pathfinding thingy than I've got, so it doesn't work very well right now). Here's a screenshot:
It won't win any awards for graphics, but I'm fine with that. It's a triumph for me because usually I'm too picky about having good art to get anything done. Getting over that is the first big step to global domination. I still won't rip anything, though; I'd sooner make a scribble. It's the principle of the thing.
(Not shown: the ability to rescale the screen to the chosen user resolution. I store an internal game resolution and made a little system for scaling it and centering it if the user resolution is not 4:3. Thus, I'm running ika at 1680x1050 on my widescreen, and instead of stretching everything, it centers everything at 4:3.)
I don't know if I'll update next week since I'm currently battling tonsilitis (or possibly strep throat) and general ickyness. But I'll try. Now that I've got some
