SCUMM 8 API: Basics
The SCUMM-8 system has a few core concepts that all work together to make what you see in a finished adventure game.
The first concept is of a Room. Each screen that the user sees is a Room in SCUMM-8. This can be a room in the traditional sense, such as a hallway or bedroom - or it can be an exterior scene. Rooms can even be used to simulate "title" screens and special effects. A Room is basically just a backdrop image that can contain other stuff.
Once you have a Room, it'd be pretty boring to leave it empty, so time to add some Objects into it. Objects define stuff that the player can (typically) interact with inside the room - such as a fireplace or a door.
Speaking of players, they (and other characters) are represented as Actors. Actors have similar properties to Objects, but they also have the ability to walk, talk and have inventory.
- For a sprite tile to be deemed "walkable", you must set the Flag 0 (see below).
- Otherwise the selected player will not be able to navigate a path to the tile when used in a room's map.
To save on Tokens in PICO-8, most of the properties for Rooms/Objects and Actors (and should) be specified within the data property (string block), where they will be "unpacked" at run-time.
If you require a property to have a dynamic/calculated value at startup, then simply declare it as a normal property (e.g. outside of the "packed" data).
