SNAAAAAAAKE

[davidn]

It's so strange having such long evenings, now - I can come home, pick Whitney up on the way, doze about for an hour and a half then get up and realize that I would normally still be waiting for a bus underground somewhere. I'm beginning to see the advantages of dragging oneself into the office at a normal hour.

Anyway, I've been using that extra time well - do you see these bastards?



This is how they work.



Now I'm not opening that group of events ever again.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I think I can say that you have officially reached the point where the simplicity of the language that you're working with is working against you. ;)

Or is that part of the ZZT-like appeal :P

[davidn]

It's really amazingly good for simple things - it can get... quite ridiculous for larger things. Crystal Towers 2 is a very large thing. This did cause me major headaches, because it's so difficult to see what's happening inside loops - especially nested ones - when you're dealing with objects that have to be connected by ID. The large events for the "bodies" loop are mostly about selecting specific objects in an almost SQL-like way.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Also -- didn't you say you were DONE this game?

[davidn]

It is... mostly! All the levels and content are there, and if there are no more bugs, only a few graphics and some background music remain. This was actually the single biggest gap that I had to fill, because those centipede/snake enemies worked in a really rubbish-looking way before that involved creating and destroying body objects as they moved, so I wanted to make them look better while I was going through touching up their graphics.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I could comment on the complexity of the events and scripting and everything.

Instead I'll just point out that you're still taking screenshots with that pink cloak and insinuate that you're secretly Kjorteo.

[kjorteo]

 

[davidn]

See below!

[davidn]

Here's a more correct picture:

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

So when's the official CT2 Furry mod being released? :P

Also, good grief that looks complex. :P I mean, I know very little about programming, but wow, it looks like a hell of a lot of work!

D.F.

[davidn]

You've no idea how tempted I am to make a playable character out of that, now - but it's not just simple colour substitution like the other ones, so it would be much too time-consuming to add on a whim (mostly thanks to the naive way I laid out the game years ago). I feel it's a huge gap that I haven't done a furry-related game yet.

Most of the work in programming is in the thinking, rather than the writing of it :) Ironically the events look (and, indeed, are) rather more complicated than they would be in a straight code-based language... a lot of what they're doing is making sure that only specific objects get selected, whereas you could normally do something like:


for each Head
Move it wherever it's going
Add the new position to the list of coordinates that this Head recently existed at
Make old unused position drop off the end of the list
for each Body owned by Head
Move the Body to the position of the point X positions along in the point list, depending on how far this Body is meant to appear down the chain


Actually, I admit that's much worse than I thought even explained like that, but the point is that without a concept of objects being owned by others, you have to keep checking to see if IDs match every time, which bulks the whole thing up considerably.

[kjorteo]

Pff, as if I would be wearing boots.

Still, this is pretty much the greatest thing ever and now I want it in the game too.

[davidn]

Though you're still undeterred from running in bare feet, I think that some of the stuff in this game would make them a wise choice!

Although I did feel that I was missing some change while editing the sprite, but couldn't quite identify what...

[kjorteo]

Well, there's also the glasses.

Admittedly I'm not very far into CT2, but I have yet to see something I couldn't actually handle! (Spike pits, obviously, but boots really wouldn't help with those anyway. As for normal walking around, though....) As always, the only thing close to a hangup I've yet seen is my ironic fear of the soft and unassuming green grass, just because living in New Mexico too long has taught me that's where the goatheads live. Any hard, rocky terrain that at least isn't deceptive about it is still fine, though!

(And because I have nothing better to do than suggest more things you should put into your game you're obviously eager to just be done with, there should be a specific challenge for the bootless furry coyote character selection you're clearly also going to implement, where the fluffier patches of grass like you see directly between me and the turtle in that edited screenshot are suddenly hazardous. You know, like the WCA level with the BEEEEEEES.)

[davidn]

I had to look up the plant with the curious name of "goathead" - what kind of Mother Nature is vindictive enough to come up with something like ? It resembles some sort of cheap military anti-infantry weapon that's used in place of a landmine. I wonder what it tastes like.

Clearly, there's always so much more that I can do with this! That was my downfall when writing it - now I've got to fix myself to a list and stop adding to it. But I'm determined to do a furry-related adventure platformer next, if I ever do another game of anywhere near this scale.

I attempted glasses... there just weren't the pixels for them!

[kjorteo]

It is somewhat telling that "goathead" is but one of the colloquial names for the thing (and by far the most widely-used one around here,) with others including "puncturevine" and "caltrop." Basically what I'm saying is it should be an Etrian Odyssey enemy.

Gravel is fine, though. Gravel doesn't get you with anything like that, unless it happens to be a gravel trail that's right next to a stretch of grass or something.

And I eagerly look forward to the sudden furry takeover in CT3, then. :)

Oh, and would you mind if I went ahead and gave this lovely edit of yours the Teogifts treatment?

[davidn]

Please do, I'd love to see it up there :) Give me a minute to attempt some feet.

I think a better name for that plant would be "F***myfootaaagh".

[kjorteo]

Can do! I eagerly await, then.

I prefer to call them the reason why I'm avid enough about barefoot running that I laugh at hard surfaces and even things like gravel, and even a half-marathon on horrible chipseal-esque rough pavement (though that probably could have been handled more wisely in hindsight) but even I will absolutely never go anywhere near soft, inviting-looking grass.

(Their utter omnipresence anywhere there isn't a trail and even some places there are is also a bit of a problem for local bicycling enthusiasts, just as an aside.)

[davidn]

Well... all things foul and dangerous, the lord God made them all.

I can't really draw feet (but this doesn't make them unique among my artistic ability). Here it is!

http://www.clickteam.info/davidn/images/games/bernardkjorteo-feet.png

[kjorteo]

Fantastic. :) Thank you!

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

"My, what pink feet you have."
"All the better to prance gaily with!"

[kjorteo]

 

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I'm not deceived! This is what comes out when you jump through the mirror in level 4.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

The attention to detail is stunning (and I have no right to complain when I look at that code)! I'm really looking forward to seeing this when it's fully finished!