Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Development
  3. Contact

Introduction

So, what is this whole project about? Well, its goal is to produce an engine implementation that functions in a similar manner to the one present in Capcom's Phoenix Wright video game series. You may thing to yourself, "But, wait! Aren't there already a few of those out there?" The answer is: yes. However, many of those are not complete, and some only offer a tiny bit of the game experience. This is where this snazzy project comes into play.

Elaborating a bit more, this project involves writing an editor along with its accompanying scripting language specific for the engine to use in playing user made cases and trials. The editor itself will feature an easy to use interface; something that is simple to grasp, but intuitive enough to be powerful. Sound good? Excellent, happy to hear it.

Get ready for some technical mumbo jumbo. Moving on, the engine itself will be written in C++, and will use the SDL library for graphics and audio. Given that SDL is indeed a very portable library, expect support for both Linux and Windows operating systems. Don't you just love when software is cross platform? In any case, cases produced by the aforementioned editor will be saved to single files (not counting additional graphics, etc), and then can be fed to the engine and played. That's the gist of it, anyway.

Phew, that was a giant wall of text. In conclusion, you can download this whole package and its--


Oh, that's right! If you didn't notice the use of future tense in the above paragraphs, then let me take the time to tell you that this project is still under development. Yes, sadly, it's still not finished. That means you can take off your robe and wizard hat for now. But fear not, for you can check my progress in the next section!

Development

You may be asking yourself how far along this project is. This section describes what is done and what still needs to be done. I'm only displaying the progress of the engine, since the editor receives updates as the engine calls for them. I've split the progress up into two stages: Investigation and Trial. Currently, the latter is in full swing.

You can view the latest code here.

Investigation

Stuff Completed:
  • Native PW fonts
  • Script control
  • Events
  • Evidence
  • Profiles
  • Dialogue
  • Moving to locations
  • Examining a scene
  • Presenting evidence/profiles
  • Sprites
  • Dynamic sprite animations
  • Music and sound effects
  • MP3/OGG/WAV audio support
  • UI animations/effects

Stuff To Finish/Fix
  • Very minor tweaks to iron out any remaining glitches

Trial

Stuff Completed
  • Court overview scene
  • Courtroom locations
  • Sprite trial animations
  • Jury animations/effects
  • Court camera
  • Answering with evidence/profiles
  • Answering questions
  • Testimonies
  • Pressing witnesses

In the Works
  • Cross examinations
  • Presenting contradictory evidence
  • Objection! effects

Stuff to Finish/Fix
  • Guilty/Not Guilty effects
  • Game Over effects
  • File saving/loading


Contact

If you feel the irrepressible need to contact me, feel free to do so at kanadakid@gmail.com. Put 'PW Case Editor' in the title, or otherwise your worthwhile email may find itself incorrectly placed in my lovely Spam bin.

You also may catch me on AIM, screen name: KanadaKid99X.


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