Feature idea: Resource Viewer

[frankcifaldi]

Phantasy Star has some really nice animated background and character art, but there is no way to view most of these without other elements overlaid on top. I am proposing a simple Resource Viewer, accessible from the title screen, that allows players to choose background and foreground objects to view at their leisure, in any combination they choose.

This is how I'm envisioning it:

• Player accesses standalone feature from the title screen. Some naming ideas: Resource Viewer, Graphic Test (like Sound Test but for graphics!), Slideshow

• Upon starting feature, player sees a black screen (or perhaps we stay on the title screen, if it is stored as a background?), with a menu that has four options:

BACKGROUND
FOREGROUND
HIDE MENU
EXIT

• Both BACKGROUND and FOREGROUND have sub-menus. To save space, maybe these can just be memory locations, like a sound test, if the data is arranged that way? I.E.:

BACKGROUND
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07 (etc.)

Each option loads that background or foreground object onto the screen. Only valid addresses are shown. The menu remains on screen, unless the player chooses HIDE MENU (or perhaps optionally button 1 is a shortcut to hiding).

When the menu is hidden, pressing any button brings it back.

Player exits back to the title screen by choosing EXIT.

The above design is what seems easiest based on my knowledge of how the game works, some enhancement ideas:

• Instead of a list of memory addresses, allow the player to cycle through addresses by pressing left and right.

• Include the soundtrack player in the resource viewer, so player can define any song they want to play over the scene they've created (perhaps merge the two features?).

• When displaying an enemy object that has an animation, cycle that animation, with pauses in-between. Or: button 2 triggers the animation, and no longer brings the menu back up (instead only button 1 does).

• If there's room, manually name each resource, i.e. Town, Shop, Eppi Forest, LaShiec's Lair.

[maxim-zhao]

The way menus work is a bit incompatible with changing the background, as they always cache the background to restore when the menu is closed. I can envision something like:

1. Draw a background, let's say the first one in the list or maybe even a black screen
2. Menu: Background, Enemy, View, Exit
3. Menu closes. If in background or enemy mode, L/R cycle the item in question through some loop. A button goes back to the menu.
4. If in View mode, one button triggers the enemy animation, the other opens the menu

Another option is instead of the L/R business we fit them all into a menu and select by name - but that's tough if the number of items is over 22, which it is. Paged menus are a lot harder.

Either way, as discussed - not something I plan on doing for 2.0, but it is a great idea.