Hello good sirs/madams of the Court-Records Forum.

Im in the process of creating a Phoenix Wright style animation engine, based on Flash Actionscript.
Sounds simple enough, until you hear what its meant for: Complete, and utter, customization.
Absolutely nothing is built into the engine, everything is external, including the user interface pieces.

The engine will allow for Cinematic Cutscenes, Investigation Scenes, and of course, Courtroom scenes. Basically allowing you to go anywhere and do anything, provided you provide the assets.
The scenes are scripted via a robust and intricately simple designed XML structure.
The assets are pieced together via external scripts, that allow you in 1 line of script, to program in a custom asset, whether it be a graphic, animation, sound, or music track. The asset identifier is then referenced in the XML.

Want proof? Thought youd never ask:



(ps. Please ignore the typo, i know it's "it's" and not "it")


As you can still see, the thing is still a heavy work in progress, and the prototype isn't even ready for internal viewing yet. So why am i presenting this to you so early? Encouragement really. And a place to post progress, get feedback, etc etc all that wonderful stuff that comes from posting project progress threads.


Obligatory FAQ

Q. When can i play with it?
A. Im thinking of releasing a public prototype when its ready. When its ready is hard to say, but i need this thing going for a particular project im working on alongside it as well

Q. Can i collect/present evidence and stuff?
A. This is unfortunately only an animation engine, Everything will be driven as if it were a glorified FanFic. Though, nothings stopping future versions past 1.0 to include all that fancy interactivity

Q. I have a custom character in mind, how can i get it in there?
A. in characters/ folder, add the first and last name of your character like so: "PhoenixWright" or "DickGumshoe", place your anim_bank animation data in there (look further down on how to do make these), as well as the character definition script (again, further down). These scripts are only about 3 lines long and just help identify a couple things that are character specific. From here the character is ready to be plugge dinto the engine, simply add the foldername to one of the character bases in graphics_manifold.ces script to your, like so:
instead of &lawyer_base=PhoenixWright& change it to &lawyer_base=HannaBarbara& or something, done, and especially, done.
The goal was to try and make so that the most work you had to do to get a custom character working, was in fact: animating and drawing them.

Q. I already have an entire FanFic, and its loooong. Do i HAVE to write out the XML?
A. Nope. Keeping up with the user friendliness, an authoring environment will be provided in the SDK called "CourtEdit", this editor is a node based editor, that allows you to quickly and easily add new events, manipulate events, delete events, etc, all in real time. The editor feeds off of the same script and asset data as the engine, so youll be able to see if your on the right track or not. Finally, when your done, hit File > Save, and save it anywhere within your project folder (typically in the scripts/), just make sure to have the config file point to that scene data, otherwise it wont work.

Q. Can i edit existing scenes?
A. Absolutely, File > Open reads the data and populates the scene lsit accordingly. Edit away.

Q. Will CourtEdit come with the prototype?
A. No, the prototype will require hand written XML in order to run, initially. The editor will exist, in a non working state by the time the protoype is ready for public viewing.

Q. How do cinematics work?
A. Animate the cinematic in Flash or your favorite SWF authoring system, save it. In the graphics_manifest, point to it in a new identifier
&cinema_act00=cinematics/act00/intro.swf&
in the XML, add a new scene as so:
<scene type="cinema" id="cinema_act00" music="music_allegro2001" />
Done and Done.

Q. How does Evidence work?
A. Two ways: Presenting and Gathering. Obviously but hear me out:
Presenting: has its own special tag. When you call the <pip /> tag, it'll show the object in box in the top right or left, depending on the attributes you provide.
Gathering: <addEvidence /> tag will perform the whole action of switching into the Court Records UI and moving the object to the desired location.

Q. Testimonies?
A. 2 sections that only exist in the Court scene type. the <testimony></testimony> tags and the <crossexam></crossexam> tags. Your going to have full control over how these operate, the user is only clicking Next to advance the plot, but these tags will get you into the desired 'modes' if you will.

Q. Will there be ANY interactivity at all?
A. Yes, just not much. The user will be able to browse the Court Records and Profiles pages, and hit the Next button.

Q. So what your saying is: Its easy?
A. Trying my best. Robustness doesn't come without a price, but in the end, you should be able to do anything that can be seen in the games.

[hr]

I hope thats enough information to prove that im actually going somewhere with this, and not just gobbling internet space.

Any questions, comments, concerns, please, let me know. Ill be happy to answer/address them :)

-k

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How far can you customize it? (Does it follows the classic pw menus only or you can develop your own?)

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You can replace all the art assets, but they work generally the same. Via the script, you can place them where ever you wish on the screen, including the designated buttons, allowing max customization for if you want to make a UI pack or something.

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So you can only change places/graphics?

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Well yeah, do remember, mines not intended for use as a full fledged game maker, mines merely an animation engine. Im not really trying to compete with PWLib or CaseMaker here either in case your wondering, you guys have specific goals and target audience in mind. Mines for the FanFic'rs who just want to string together their Fan Fic into a visual product, and distribute or record and post on YouTube (or other services), to my current understanding, you guys want to target the ones who want to make their own cases entirely from the ground up in the game fashion. Am i right? :)

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I just wanted to know the capabilities. Another "competitor" could be good to push the limits of both established casemakers. Your idea looks pretty good.

And yeah, you're right about the casemaker/pwlib target.

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"competitor" huh? Well then i hope i can be a competent 'rival' then, hehe. I do hope to have my engine establish as apart of the "Main 3"

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Tech, I thought you were rivals with MechaBowser. :P

This looks cool for making a PW sprite movie, although anyone can use almost any casemaker and do the same thing. :/

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Each engine has an unique advantage.

MechaBowser CaseMaker 3 has the easiness to use. (editor+).
PWLib has the advanced creation possibility (advanced editing+).
CourtEngine has the advanced animation support (animation+).

So each can be used according to the needs of the user.
Animation in PWLib is relatively complicated for more complex animations, when CourtEngine is a breeze due to Flash.

If I was really going to rival MechaBowser, I would certainly drop an editor. It would be for a go or break.

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Last edited by KSA_Tech on Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I guess I you have a point.

But everything can still be done on pretty much any casemaker, just saying that it is possible.

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Precisely true yes! However, its all about selection based on Your needs and skill level. You know the saying, "The more the merrier" hehe.

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Having more options with unique advantages is good, since you aren't forced to use something where the thing want to do is impossible/too hard to make.

I'll eventually release an editor for PWLib to allow making games easily, but it is now not a priority.

Also it is good to have your engine working and someone using it. Being the top isn't really necessary now (for me), but that doesn't mean I'm giving up on making a good engine.

Unless MechaBowser gives me a reason to open a competition over the casemakers, I'm neutral.

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Ok, quick Update (i know, i only JUST posted this topic)

What you saw in the first post, was the prototype to the new XML structure, the previous one was much simpler, and way less capable of doing what i needed it to do, check this out:


(please excuse the horrible dialogue, example text you see hehe)

Alot of it shares the same engine ideas, but this doesn't give me the capabilities im looking for in my engine, the idea was to try and make everything as automatic as possible, and while it succeeded, even working with this structure on my end was trying on my nerves.

So ive spent the better part of my day rewriting my scene manager from the ground up to incorporate the new, way more powerful structure. However, its not only alot more powerful, but as a bonus on my end, this update forced me to rethink how i handled my data, and i must say, its alot easier to expand upon now. Within seconds i can create a new tag or attribute to be functional. Mwahaha

However, due to the change in handling my data, is forcing me to rewrite my data interpreter from the ground up too. Its been hilarious.

Anyways, taking a quick 2 min break and thought id post this :p

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Rewriting from the ground is good sometimes. It cleans the soul.

It makes me remember the previous version of AIGE. It was a pain to add new functionality (2000 lines of code, and 5h later, you had something new. Now just 10 minutes, and with about 50.).

The structure looks easy to understand, without major trouble. The dialogue isn't horrible, it makes sense. Unlike the "sanity court talk" I did to test the courtroom attorney<->witness<->prosecutor sliding. That was insane.

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oh nono, what i posted is actually the old version of the code in my latest post, the new one can be seen in the screenshot above. The structure isn't concrete yet either for that one, a few revisions here and there, mostly in attributes most likely.

And aye, yes, rewriting does a program wonders under the hood, learning from the previous mistakes and avoiding those, and forcing ones self to go the extra mile in code cleanliness and capabilities. You usually end up with more features than before just because you have a clear mind again hehe. Such as my new <sequence></sequence> tags, which basically executes everything within the tags at once, broken up by <wait time="" /> tags, to get precise timing on things, and when the sequence is done, goes right back to line-for-line progression :) Sounds like an obvious feature now, but I'm sure you know as well as anyone that things just don't become obvious until it literally smacks you in the face

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Both are easy to understand.


Just one thing: outside of the sequence tag, you need to click next to advance? (that's the idea I got)

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Yup! Unless... you know of a reason that would cause a problem with this idea... if thats the case, please let me know ASAP

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No, the sequence tag itself is a fix for any possible trouble.

It is that I use a different logic on AIGE (the base engine of PWLib). The script runs and doesn't render/process window events until one of the following comands are found:
wait(n); - It forces the loop to stop, since it enters a wait state. Once wait expires, the script run resumes.
render(); - renders one frame.
processsystemevents(); - processes one run of window events and one frame render.
any message call. - messages stop the loop when they are used to render text.
waitresponse(); - pauses the script run.
waitsignal("s",[v]); - waits for a signal, thus pauses the script run.

It's like my engine runs on a big sequence tag.

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You forgot KanadaKid's.

Also, a question for DJDarkViper. Does this load XML files from the hard drive? ... In Flash? I was never able to figure out how do that in it. I have Flash 5.

Oh, yeah. He is so away recently I forgot about it. Too much work on PWLib. Sorry.

KanadaKid's one is also an editor+.

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Sure does! If you edit the config file in the root directory, you can even point to which xml file you want, so you can prototype and beta test scenes freely without mucking with the real version.

I may be wrong but i dont think Flash 5 had the capabilities to read XML, the actionscript just wasn't there for that sort of thing. i believe it got introduced in Flash MX (6). But then i dont know, i onyl got serious about XML since Flash 8.



Actually i kinda figured thats how your engine would run, though, in all seriousness, mines not because of the way flash processes stuff, more of a preferred process: i just effectively step through an array of data, haha. If it detects certain tags that can be executed and move on without user input, it will (such as the music tag), until it hits a Speech tag or various other things, like if a wait="true" attribute is found in an <animation> tag, forcing a listener to wait until a certain function is called within the internal timeline.

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:o This is pretty awesome.

I always thought it'd be cool to make an engine solely in Flash; I never thought of combining Flash with XML. It'll be awesome to see how this progresses. I look forward to seeing any updates you make on it! :)

Heres a small update: Voice Overs are now supported. Replaces the blipping noise in favor for spoken voice over. Still debating over this one on how to process. More than likely you wont need to add to the sounds manifest, and just point to the raw MP3 file
<speech char="edgeworth" vo="characters/MilesEdgeworth/vox/vo01.mp3">Your a worthy adversa- hey! i have a voice!</speech>


or you can add it to the sounds manifest script, and just use its identifier...
&edgeSpeak01=vox/vo01.mp3&

then
<speech char="edgeworth" vo="edgeSpeak01">Your a worthy adversa- hey! i have a voice!</speech>
as the "char" identifier already points to his folder automatically via his character definition file... hmmm

Ill leave this one up to you guys, what do you think?

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Both methods are fine. For those who want to add the voice directly and for those who want to make something more clean.

I think it should be voice instead of vo.

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Good point good point, provide both, adds more options to the developer :)

k, ill change the vo attribute to voice :)

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You could do too something like: have vo and voice that do the same stuff. vo would be a minimalistic version of voice (for those who want to type fast, but get a less readable code).

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Didn't get alot done last nigt, well at least, not as much as id have hoped, but:

- All Scene types constructed
- Dynamic content calling
- ties are in for unlimited misc characters (witnesses/etc). Right now there is a limit to 10, that im tyring to efficiently eliminate

Then i got pulled away to a LAN center, which effectively killed the rest of my night, haha. I at least capped off my night by getting through 4-2 on T&T

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Will you be able to have cuts to the side to talk to your sidekick (i.e. how phoenix would turn to talk to Maya in court)?

You should also have a party mode, where when the case is over, a disco ball drops down and everybody starts raving. (Just a thought...)

By the way, I'm excited to see this project continuously progress (I've bookmarked it and keep my eye on it almost every day :P), and was wondering if you'll want/need testers in the future. In other words, I'd be more than happy to help test things out when you're ready to test CourtEngine.

of course ill need beta testers :D and i appreciate the kind words and the watch :)



I hope the last shot answers your question though :D (ps, i know its the wrong pose for Maya to be in haha, i didn't get the chance to bring in her Court specific sprites yet. Those go in sometime tonight hehe)


As for the party mode, haha thatd be a great extra feature to have, probably wont be in the prototype though so if you wanted to do somethign like that, you may have to setup a cinema scene and animate it by hand. But there will still be the confetti and the gallery cheering and stuff that all executed in one tag (i hope) "<party />"

imagine, setting it up liek this:




:D

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Last edited by DJDarkViper on Tue Apr 22, 2008 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Aha! Very cool. :)

I'm sure you're fine in this department, but for what it's worth, I have some Actionscript/programming experience myself. (That may or may not mean anything when it comes to testing, but I guess it couldn't hurt to mention anyway. xP)

actually, while beta testing, having a knowledge of the language it was made in can be super helpful as not only could you list bugs, but ideas of how to fix as well (if applicable), :) Super helpful :D

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Awesome! Personally, I really like Flash, but that's maybe just because I "grew up" learning Flash/Actionscript and I've made some really fun/cool/weird things with my friends in it in high school.

One thing I'm most interested in (especially when we get to the testing stage) is how the CourtEdit part of CourtEngine will work. What's progress on that like? I've recently been half-wanting to make a Flash-based program similar to your CourtEdit program (or similar enough to at least how I think it will work). Maybe I'll prototype something and see if it compares at all (which is probably won't, but hey, I like fun/random side-projects! ).

So.... Judging by the screen shots, and the scripts, this case maker engine is based on flash animation?

@ItsaMystery

Basically CourtEdit will allow you to create the XML via an authoring environment. Itll simple and very streamlined, but will give you every option available to you as if you were coding by hand.
As far as progress, i have a base populated list, and the ability to add and delete nodes in that list based off of a selection in a drop down menu, complete with icons and identifiers that will replace the toolbar with the necessary controls per node.
At this time i do not have reorganization controls (as in no ability to shove node sup or down), this will come however. This is jsut whats in there right now.
Theres a giant button called "Render Scene" which takes the information in the list, and generates the XML structure instantly. The 'rendering' doesn't exist yet, but its a mere matter of stepping through the list lol.

Anyways itll be deadly simple to use, and will allow you to create entire scenes in minutes.


@N-Mario

Yes. But... not quite. Characters have animation banks that are created in SWF structures, past that, everything else is PNG/JPG and constructed via external scripts. :) Super customizable, and easy easy EASY to implement brand new characters!

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Okay, cool! That seems to makes sense. I'm not too familiar with specific XML <-> Flash programming, but it sounds similar to what I was thinking. Have you ever heard of/used GameMaker? You can essentially drag/drop different events and actions into a timeline, moving nodes up/down as needed. Once you run the game, each object's respective timeline of events is executed.

That'll be pretty neat to see once completed!

actually i remember trying GameMaker to make a simple sidescroller using premade sprite sheets. The whole thing was a frigging trainwreck and GameMaker6 became my next enemy, all i could hear myself saying was "If this were flash, id have already been making full levels in the time it took me to get the sprites to move correctly"
Personally, i think Click & Play game makers are poo. but thats just my own opinion. Flash may or may not border on it depending on how you look at it and use it. I personally prefer Actionscript using functions and callbacks, as opposed to placing actionscript at specific points on a convoluted timeline. Take for instance, CourtEngine and CourtEdit, both have absolutely nothing on their timelines but 1 blank frame with an "@" on it to signify actionscript. CourtEdit has flash components in its library so i can in fact use them (dropdown menus etc, its required) but CourtEngine has zilch all. Therefore the way i use flash, goes way far away from Click & Play adventures! I havent used all of those C&P tools, but ive used enough to know that for that functionality, it kills flexibility and power...

*ahem* anyways.


Im happy to report that the animation engine is solid, complete with utilizing the character defintion scripts to give easy to remember IDs :)

Lets just say, getting a character to switch from talking animation to the talking animations non-talking animation, is all, completely automatic, with minimal setup. let me try to explain (this will all be rewritten in official Documentation)



(image cutoff to hide my hideous test controls hehe)

1. Grab your GIF/PNG Sequences, lets say Phoenix Wrights for th esake of argument

2. Lets also argue the fact, he has 4 total animations, a neutral blinking, a sweating blinking, a neutral talking, and a sweating talking. With that out of the way

3. make a new Flash 6/7/8/9 file (anything thats AS2.0 compliant).

4. For ease of use, import the already sequenced Animated GIFs, Flash will import the sequence into the library and convert the sequences into Movie Clips, in the Library, right click on these and Change Type > Graphic
The reason we want these as a Graphic, is that were going to place them on the main timeline. When its a Movie Clip, its like its another flash movie playing on the timeline and will continue to play itself, looping, out of control. While this can be a desired outcome sometimes and totally not out of the question, for the purpose of this, just make them a graphic

5. Place the Neutral animation on the main timeline and change its property from "Loop" to "Play once". It doesn't really matter in the end if you use either or, but its easier to gauge just how long you need to stretch the main timeline for.

[by now, all this should have taken all of 2 minutes, including the download time for the GIFs, it jsut sounds like alot because you can do this almost in any way you want]

6. Once you have stretched the maintimeline enough to get the full blinking animation in the neutral, create 2 more blank layers. Label the one with the animation "Anim", label the layer above it "Labels" and label the top one "Actions". These are unnecessary but keeps everything nice and readable.

7. Place the label of frame 1 in the Labels layer as "neutral" or "starting" or "blinking" or anything. This animation can be labeled as anything you want

8. on the last frame on the main timeline of the current neutral blinking animation, on the actions layer create a new keyframe and place this action on it:

This will call my loop() function in the engine, which will automatically figure out where to playback from to create the loop as desired.
or, you can simply do thsi yourself and put in
. Both works.

9. Create blank keyframes on all 3 layers after the current animation

9. This is the ULTRA important part, and the only setup you need to remember to do on your part!
Repeat the steps above to place your neutral talking animation after the neutral animation (though this can be placed anywhere). The onyl thing you must remember, is to call the label exactly the same thing, except with "_talk" appended to the end of the label. So youll have
neutral
neutral_talk
the _talk is what the engine will look for when the character is talking, and will zap back to the original blinking animation when the character is done talking.

10. Save and Export the animation as anim_bank.swf, as either Flash 6/7/8 or 9, but it MUST be AS2.0. Otherwise your character will not respond to any actions within the engine (as in, hell jut play all of his animations on the spot and loop)



*whew* Ok, it LOOKS like alot, i realize, and most of its based on user preference and options. haha. But let me put it this way:

Amount of time to get Luke Atmey in my engine from having no assets to full fledged working character: 2.5 minutes. I kid you not, i was timed, and taking my time as well.

Yes, there will be video tutorials :)


EDIT: I will further expand upon this later too, as theres SO much you can do with this, it borderlines ridiculousness!

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:O RIDICULOUS!

Wow, that's pretty awesome I assume this will be for custom/extra characters? In other words, will you have all these steps set up and implemented as presets for the main characters (Phoenix, Edgeworth, etc.), and only need to do that if you're wanting to add your own character?

In response to GameMaker/Flash--I definitely agree that GameMaker is poo. I'd feel much faster with Actionscript, also. I just figured the idea of a 'timeline'/click and drag thing would be cool, and you could obviously customize each event you placed. To clarify, I wasn't meaning a true timeline like in Flash; I think having code essentially all in one place is the better way to go (although if you looked at my code/projects back in highschool, it was all over the place! I'm getting better now, I swear! ). I was thinking that the events would be stored in something like a giant array, and the program/engine would go through each step and perform/animate the various actions.

Another question (which may actually be really anal, but oh well): it'd be awesome to have the text be the exact same kind of font/style as in the games. Is there any easy way to do that? Also, will different text speeds be implemented?

Rock on.

The SDK will come with as many prebuilt characters as i can stand making, haha. As in: pretty much all. Using the resources here at Court-Records alleviates most of the work of finding good sprite sheets and animated GIFs to work off of.
Though, maybe some help putting together all the witnesses and misc characters would be awesome ^^
not only will the characters come prebuilt, but ill be providing a charSDK example custom character to show just how one would put their own character in the game. Comes with a Flash 8 FLA, scripts, and even custom special vo like "OBJECTION!"

Dont worry, i used to be all ove rthe place too XD We all have to start somewhere ^^
As for the way the data is handled: Thats exactly how it operates. It take sthe XML data and stores it in a GIANT data array. Its actually what i beleive is called a '3D Array' or '3D Matrix' or something, i dunno, either way, its an array composed of arrays.


I know where to get the font sheet, and id LOVE to use the official text, but im not exactly sure how id be able to pull that off in flash....Im pretty sure if i can create a custom fonts and embed it itll work, but it needs to be in a ttf format and i havent the foggyest of how to do that...

in other words: Its possible, but not a priority at this point.

text speed may or may not be alterable, but there is different types (thought, normal, proof, for instance).
its not a bad idea though, and i wont lie, i forgot about the altering text speeds.... yeah ill just make it another attribute in the <speech> tag :p
<speech char="phoenix" type="thought" anim="sweating" speed="500">My name is Phoenix....not 'buddy boy'</speech>

gets pretty in depth there but should allow for almost any mood...

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I think I sense a subtle hint in there, somewhere I have Flash 8, so if/when you get bored making the preset characters, I can help with the rest if you want.

Side note- btw, these emotes rock


Ahh...hmm. That makes sense, although I never considered the possibility of needing a 3d array/matrix. That's complicated stuff!

I was going to say something else, but now I forget. Oh well, in place of my forgetfulness, I will:

I have a present.

Out of sheer and utter boredom (and because I'm awesome ), I manually recreated the Phoenix Wright font using this really (annoyingly) simplistic font maker program (I based it off the sprite sheet in the CourtRecords media page). :P

I exported it to get a .fon file that works, and a .fnt file that seems to be corrupt(?); the former loads and works fine, though! I tested it out in some other program and it works well overall. A few spacing issues due to the limitations of the program I was using (and the W's are kind of squished/messed up, too), but otherwise the font looks pretty good and should serve it's purpose.

I'm currently trying to find a program that can convert .fon files to the .ttf format. If anyone knows how or knows of a program to do this, that would be awesome. Once I get it converted, I might also submit the font file to the CourtRecords site for other people to use, if that's cool with you.