Creating a Journal.

Hello guys.

I don't know if there is a better way (without using code) but I think this might help some of you guys or maybe give you some ideas, It can also work as a bonus "concept unlock" feature or something.

I have been working on a personal project and I wanted to implement a scrollable progress Journal, so whenever the character does something significant it gets "written" in a journal interface in an unlinear way.

So, for this I created a blank character and I made another inventory with a notebook background and applied it to that character. I also set the middle of the paper with a huge item place holder and the proper arrows for next and previous items.

Then I created several "items" with an image with the progress report text I want to show in the notebook/journal (only the text with transparency).

So whenever there is a landmark in your game you add the proper journal Item to the empty character and it won't affect your player character's inventory.

When you want to show this "Journal" you just first switch the character to the empty one and show/display his inventory, and with an action on leaving the journal hiding the inventory and switching back to the player character.

(EDIT)BUT for this you would need to have the empty character on every scene or it will try to switch scenes, so, you add an action of "set the empty character" at any position you want (the default 0,0 works fine) on -current scene- at the very beginning of the action list so this will make the character be on the current scene every time.

So your journal access button/key should be like:
1.-Set character "Empty-Character" to scene "current scene" at position (0,0).
2.-switch character to "Empty-Character".
3.-Show inventory.

And there you go... a progress journal .

Great and easy way to do it.
Thanks for sharing

That's pretty nice

I suppose you could have this action for setting the empty character to the current scene at the beginning in the action query you call when you are opening the journal.

Something like



Or maybe you could just switch the items between the characters for the time you are displaying the journal and switching them back on leaving, then you wouldn't have to be switching the characters.



I don't know if this code would work thoug

Nice idea mate.

Quick question: why can't you teleport the character to the current scene each time you change to a new scene? Just include it in the action block you use to change to a new scene. Or you could use a mainLoop event handler to check if x character is on the current scene - providing it's a playable scene & not a menu type scene.

Sebastian

Ke4:
If I switch items between characters then the inventory will be filled with odd data since the journal relies on the "writing" being item images, so that would become quite a mess quickly.

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Nice idea mate.

Quick question: why can't you teleport the character to the current scene each time you change to a new scene? Just include it in the action block you use to change to a new scene. Or you could use a mainLoop event handler to check if x character is on the current scene - providing it's a playable scene & not a menu type scene.

„

It was right there in my nose and I just didn't see it haha, using the set character action part as the first action in the journal access button will make sure to have the blank character on the current scene every time and is clean and works perfectly and you don't need to add the action on every scene.

Aye that's an even better idea. My brain obviously wasn't working properly at the time I wrote my reply!

I used interfaces but this is a great idea! Thanks for sharing