How to program an RPG game's scripted event/Cut scene system in a tile based RPG in objective C?

Question

For background I have been working on an RPG based off Ray Wenderlich's tutorials. (Example)http://www.raywenderlich.com/1163/how-to-make-a-tile-based-game-with-cocos2d.

Now I am trying to build a scripted event/Cut scene system so that for instance when a player enters a building, the different characters can have a discussion of the current events, before continuing the adventure. My only problem is I can't really visualize how one would implement this.

I would guess some sort of one time use trigger, maybe kept in a large switch statement on a singleton somewhere ? Which maybe draws all the temp characters ? Then the event then deactivates itself.

I am just looking for a blueprint of how one would do this. Although programming examples are welcome as well.

Answer 1

It depends a lot on how much time you want to commit to the system and how versatile you want the final system to be. A powerful cut-scene system can be flexible enough to be used in almost every interaction in a typical 2d RPG.

If you want to go all out I would suggest a heavily data drive approach. Keep as much data in files and use the filesystem to your advantage. If you say 'all the dialog scenes are in this folder' then when adding a new scene it just needs to be dropped in the folder rather than creating the scene then touching some master switch statement somewhere. Just keep in mind with a large system you want to make adding a new cutscene as simple as possible, not 400 different places to touch.

I would also stay away from switch statements for tracking progress in a cutscene. It adds a lot of code overhead per scene. Idly a cutscene would be a simple as an array of data and a position. Your cutscene manager, the singleton, can parse through the array, decode the data into commands and fire them off.

Sorry if thats a big vague but a lot of these decisions depend on how your engine is structured and what you want out of the system. Keep in mind that the more general the system is, the more uses you may find for it going forward but it will take longer to get up in running to begin with.

Answer 2

you can just check for the tile you are on while you are moving, and when you are on a specific tile you can start a cutscene, also you can add a tag via TiledEditor (this is the recommended editor for using with CCTMXTiledMap) to your map to specify where the cutscene should begin just like he pointed the character start point in that tutorial. the you check for the triger specified (either a specific tile or what the point taged in map) in every gamecycle. and then it's almost very easy you just freeze controls and play a prerecorded camera and object movements till the cutscene finishes. the restore the game to normal mode and turn off checking for the triger.