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  • 18.3 beta


    andracass

    *checks dev blog calendar

    well i see there hasn't been an update in a while. i should make a post.

    hello, [reborn player name here]!

    has your game ever been slow?

    well, no more, i say!

    introducing, from whatever joke corporation i'm a part of this post,

    18.3

    "Wow, that 3 is really big!"™

    this update contains none of what you've been waiting for (like, say, new content)

    but it does contain stuff like zoom

    and also a way to natively play reborn on a mac.

    really. 

    no wine.

    just mac.

    native.

    image.png.d806147108ad9f254eed6519e34ecfdc.png

    pictured above: native

     

    those of you who keep a side eye on the progress bars will have noticed that nothing's really changed. and as far as new content is concerned, that is certainly true. ame's been focusing on starlight, and....well, you don't want me writing dialogue. that is not my thing. pls no thx. that doesn't mean i've been doing nothing all this time- it's just stuff that the progress bars don't really reflect.

    so some backstory.

    y'all might've seen a while back that there is a way to play reborn (and other essentials games) on android.  this is not something i ever had expected to happen. i have been saying for a very long time "no. this is not a thing. you can not do this."

    and then suddenly: "wow! this is a thing! you can do this!"

    and that shit was smooth, too. like, it almost seemed to play the game better than the pc version.

    after that, i was like "wow wtf how many other things have i been wrong about". 

    which brings us to mkxp. and this is going to be a little bit more abbreviated than i'd like because the forums ate my post. thanks forums!

    mkxp is an open-source player of RPG Maker games. it's also really difficult to get to work. i like to think i'm pretty good with computers, but trying to build it from source code required a level of technical knowledge that i did not have.

    but uranium has an mkxp port.

    so i just... borrowed the exe from there.

    and it almost worked! 

    after further struggles, i contacted the dev of the uranium port.

    now, after three weeks (oh my god it's been three weeks) of hair pulling, we have a mac port.

    it's been so long.

     

    so the theme of 18.3 is performance. 18.2 had the AI updates; 18.3 will make the game go faster. i feel like everyone knows how sorely this is needed. if your hardware is even somewhat old, the game runs like ass. you know it. i know it. ame knows it. jan knows it.* everyone hates it.

    the star feature of 18.3 is the inclusion of the all new Game-z.exe. this is reborn's mkxp build. if you saw my previous dev [shit]post, you've seen a short preview of an early version. 

    but it does so much more than that.

    battles? smooth. speed up actually works there now. it's incredible.

    maps? smooth. we got full framerate in spinel while it was raining. the maps aren't perfect but god they're so much better.

    animations?

    oh boy.

    so, the animations in game-z were smooth, but because of some other issues we were having, a few internal changes made them lag hard.

    so i took a peek in the code.

    it turns out that essentials handles animations by loading the entire file and then picking a specific animation from that file.

    the file is 10MB.

    it loaded that for every animation.

    whose idea was that.

    this no longer happens. for both game and game-z. animations are now preloaded when you open up the game. that 1-2 seconds of lag that happens for every animation in battle? it happens once when you start, and never again.

    it's incredible. best coding work i've ever done, and it was only five lines.

    there is one other change: the game now uses one font. it is emerald. the game.exe fonts look downright awful on game-z.exe. instead of trying to find four new ones, we just have one, and it's what everything uses now.

    there are a few things i need to finish up before an open beta: getting the linux port to also work, and seeing if there are any other ways to speed up / shift around load times. i am hoping to finish this up this week and will throw up another devblog post / forum thread when it happens.

    Game.exe is the RMXP executable and is what 18.2 runs with. Game-z is the MKXP executable.

    we're including both game.exe and game-z.exe in 18.3 (and likely e19) in the event that people run into weird errors with game-z. kinda like how people run into weird errors with game.exe anyway! this way, hopefully, at least one of them will work for everyone.

    18.3 will also probably be the last mid-release update, with some minor changes to the release at best. i do not want to maintain two separate versions ever again. let my heart be free.

     

    *jan makes rejuv. if you haven't played it and are wondering what to do while you wait for e19, go try it out

    Edited by andracass

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    • Veterans
    1 hour ago, Yung tsiko said:

    Soo is it out yet? Because I can't find a download link

    "there are a few things i need to finish up before an open beta: getting the linux port to also work, and seeing if there are any other ways to speed up / shift around load times. i am hoping to finish this up this week and will throw up another devblog post / forum thread when it happens."

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    Thanks for all of your hard work, Cass. I spent about 3 days researching and testing ways to run Reborn on my Mac back in 2018. I'm so glad I won't have to go through all of that again for E19.

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    This sounds like amazing work. I look forward to seeing the end result.

    There's something I'm not sure I understand however, what exactly is the difference between Game and Game-Z?  

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    • Veterans
    Just now, Mindlack said:

    This sounds like amazing work. I look forward to seeing the end result.

    There's something I'm not sure I understand however, what exactly is the difference between Game and Game-Z?  

    shit i knew i forgot something. this will also be added to the post.

    Game.exe is the RMXP executable and is what 18.2 runs with. Game-z is the MKXP executable.

    we're including both game.exe and game-z.exe in 18.3 (and likely e19) in the event that people run into weird errors with game-z. kinda like how people run into weird errors with game.exe now!

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    Excuse me for a moment while I get this loud screaming out of my head. Seems to happen every time there's a new release. Now then excuse me for being the igonramous of game development as my skills are of a toaster hotwired to a bomb, but is the Game-z run off all of the games files so if someone edited the game in RMXP it'd show up in that version or does it have its own system it reads off of?

     

    I guess the other question I have is if this was just a spur of the moment or are there plans for releases during the long wait time for E19 to come? You know how I love to copy and paste stuff over again and again. Just wondering.

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    • Veterans
    29 minutes ago, Commander said:

    is the Game-z run off all of the games files so if someone edited the game in RMXP it'd show up in that version or does it have its own system it reads off of?

    same files! this occasionally causes some scripting issues due to differences between MKXP and RMXP, but those are usually handled by tossing in a conditional that checks what you're running.

    30 minutes ago, Commander said:

    I guess the other question I have is if this was just a spur of the moment or are there plans for releases during the long wait time for E19 to come?

    this was pretty spur of the moment since it was inspired by the android app, and i really don't want to make another release before e19.

    Quote

    18.3 will also probably be the last mid-release update, with some minor changes to the release at best. i do not want to maintain two separate versions ever again. let my heart be free.

     

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    Little things like this often go unappreciated... Not today!! Thank you! Looking forward to seeing all the hard work you have all put in to this mid-release update and then the Episode 19 finale. 

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    As a Mac user and fan of the game, thank you so so much for this! I used to run Reborn off Wine in Mojave, but ever since I updated to Catalina I've been trying to find ways to run all my 32-bit apps (including Reborn). I now have a Windows 10 virtual machine to run everything, but I was not looking forward to having to play Reborn through that. I am beyond STOKED to be able to play Reborn natively, and with reduced lag to boot! You guys rock.

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    Wait, it is possible now to play reborn on Android?! I gave up searching for the solution to run reborn a few years ago already.

     

    Good Lord, I'll better be still working from home when E-19 is released, cause I'm damn sure I will get fired due to excessive use of private phone, lol. Or my manager would play with me, who knows.

     

     

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    Quote

    y'all might've seen a while back that there is a way to play reborn (and other essentials games) on android.  this is not something i ever had expected to happen. i have been saying for a very long time "no. this is not a thing. you can not do this."

    and then suddenly: "wow! this is a thing! you can do this!"

    and that shit was smooth, too. like, it almost seemed to play the game better than the pc version.

    .

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    I am sp33chless

    How what why yay im so happy cant contai-

    DEEP BRETHZ

    okay so I just had a teeny tiny lil' question inside of meh. Where are the .rxdata files stored? (I mean the ones that control the savedata)

     

     

     

     

    thanks andracass=saviour

     

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    • Veterans
    Just now, Lorane2234 said:

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

    .

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    I am sp33chless

    How what why yay im so happy cant contai-

    DEEP BRETHZ

    okay so I just had a teeny tiny lil' question inside of meh. Where are the .rxdata files stored? (I mean the ones that control the savedata)

     

     

     

     

    thanks andracass=saviour

     

    if this is regarding the android version, idk

    since it's a third party program they just kinda do their own thing and we sorta hope it works 😕

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    5 hours ago, andracass said:

    if this is regarding the android version, idk

    since it's a third party program they just kinda do their own thing and we sorta hope it works 😕

    Okay I am stoopid.

    I forgot to ask the app on which you played Reborn. Please tell me!!

     

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    I just finished recording Reborn Randomizer (finished at Hardy) and the progress is still 51%. But I’ll certainly download 18.3 so that I may play another adventure when I feel like it (not that I had any problems regarding performance before).

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    • Veterans
    8 minutes ago, Vince&Sylveon said:

    I just finished recording Reborn Randomizer (finished at Hardy) and the progress is still 51%. But I’ll certainly download 18.3 so that I may play another adventure when I feel like it (not that I had any problems regarding performance before).

    ok !

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    Great job. ^_^

    I care not for playing Reborn on Android or Mac, but I can still be happy for those who want to. 

    Also, the fact that the game will be faster now is an Arceus-send for people like me, whose laptops are slow and dumb as s***. XD

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    First, THANK YOU! Second, could you show this engine to Jan over at Rejuvenation? It suffers the exact same lag problem in battle as Reborn did. Actually playing through Reborn on a shiny run right now with the battle scene on for the first time since it doesn't take a minute for my shiny pokemon to sparkle.

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    • Veterans
    3 hours ago, Kasha said:

    First, THANK YOU! Second, could you show this engine to Jan over at Rejuvenation? It suffers the exact same lag problem in battle as Reborn did. Actually playing through Reborn on a shiny run right now with the battle scene on for the first time since it doesn't take a minute for my shiny pokemon to sparkle.

    i have and usually do with these things

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    • Veterans
    7 hours ago, Kenneth said:

    Windows

     

    Error: could not create GL context

    there's a json in the troubleshooting thread, which is where this belongs anyway

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    Quote

    so i took a peek in the code.

    it turns out that essentials handles animations by loading the entire file and then picking a specific animation from that file.

    the file is 10MB.

    it loaded that for every animation.

    whose idea was that.

    this no longer happens. for both game and game-z. animations are now preloaded when you open up the game. that 1-2 seconds of lag that happens for every animation in battle? it happens once when you start, and never again.

    it's incredible. best coding work i've ever done, and it was only five lines.

    Hey andracass,

    if it's alright to ask, which lines in the code did you change to achieve this? 🙂

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    • Veterans
    2 hours ago, Scorpion said:

    if it's alright to ask, which lines in the code did you change to achieve this?

    i'm sorry but corporate copyright patent law dictates under Article 937.23-a Section B sub-clause 34 that under no circu- just kidding let me grab them

    (you can locate all of these in your very own personal Scripts.rxdata by searching for $pkmn_animations)

    first, we have:

    image.png

    this is where the magic happens. instead of loading animations every. single. time. you load them here. once.

    the conditional isn't technically necessary, but it'll keep it from reloading them every time you soft reset.

     

    the other four cases are actually the same case: whenever you see 

    animations=load_data("Data/PkmnAnimations.rxdata")

    you want to change it to

    animations=$pkmn_animations

    we have four instances of this:

    image.png

    and you basically just want that one like to look like this:

    image.png

    and that's it!

    you can see it for yourself- battles just flow like zoom. it's incredible.

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    Hey thanks a lot for the help! 🙂

    But could it be that it doesn't work when opening the game inside RPG-Maker because it loads the animations on the intro?

    At least for me it only works in the game application, in the RPG-Maker version it just crashes. But that's good enough.

    Thanks again and have a nice day!

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    • Veterans
    2 minutes ago, Med Down said:

    I don't know how I played previous versions of Reborn.

    imma be real

    i don't know how this game manages to run in the first place.

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  • i know i'm, like, criminally bad at updating the sidebar

    but it's just the scripts!

    i never know what's worth mentioning.

    anyway we might redo the battle system.

    (6/15)

     

     

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