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[Qunit]

ahhhhhhh look fantastic!!!!
post a gameplay video!!!! 

[jO]

Yes, that is good news!
Keep on rolling, I've been following your game for quite some while now and the excitement has not died down yet.

[JLJac]

Update 126
Made the basic setup for a level tier for custom mode. Basically there are two lists, one that displays all the custom levels and one that displays the ones picked for the playlist for this specific game type. When you click a level in the first list it's added to the second, when you click a level in the second list it dissapears.

[JLJac]

Update 127
Tried to create a little bit of order in the complete and utter mess that's Rain World menu and options code. I have so much stuff from the old preliminary menu hanging about, together with three or four different solutions for everything, some preliminary, some not finished, others inbetween. Now things are starting to be reasonably tidy, at least to the point where I can understand what I'm looking at. I have a somewhat logical way of storing the state of the main menu, i. e. what options were selected, what pages were up and so on.

To give you a taste of what's up, imagine the following: For most game types there are two options that should be controlled by the player. These are the Spears option, which indicates whether or not spears will appear on the levels, and the SpearsHit option, which decides whether or not a player should be able to hit another player with a spear.

Now, these options need to be set and stored individually for each game type. If I change them in one game type's options page I obviously don't want them to be changed for all the other game types as well, I want to be able to custom tailor my play options for each game type.

At the same time, there's another factor of complexity - that some gametypes should forcefully override these options. For example, in the competitive game type you should be able to decide whether spears hit players (it has a huge effect on the gameplay, making the difference between a game where you try to outsmart each other and catch flies and one which is about fast reflexes in quick, brutal duels). In the cooperative game type I might not want this option to be available, because fighting lizards together becomes way too easy when you don't have to worry about hitting each other.

So, I need to store a lot of options separately, and I need to be able to override options, both of which I need a logical, reasonable system for which doesn't tie my brain up in a knot every time I look at it.

As I've mentioned, programming UI:s isn't at all my favourite thing. It's a lot of hard work, and you don't really get anything spectacular out of it. The greatest possible achievement for an UI is "not annoying", which seems like a not too exciting purpose to strive for. I'll get there though, as it's a necessary step in making all the good aspects of the game visible.

[JLJac]

Update 128
These UI updates are so boring I almost feel ashamed to post them... Anyway, here we go: Today I made a scrolling list! It displays 15 items, and if you go to the bottommost item and click down it brings up one new item. If you reach the very bottom it brings you back to the top. The same goes for clicking upwards. For mouse users there are little arrows at the bottom of the list that makes the list scroll. Yaaaaaawn.

My next game won't have a menu system, it'll just have an external text file were you can input your preferences in a terribly complicated code language.

[JLJac]

Update 129
Today I messed a little with keyboard/mouse controls for the menu, and how it'll know which one is currently in control. When it comes to the point where I start trying to implement joysticks I might do something with that as well.

[Vovosunt]

Out of all the games on Tig this is probably the one I'm awaiting the most!
I mean, what can be better than brutally cute spearbearing ghostbears?

Keep up the good job!

[jamesprimate]

YAY! Glad to see the devblog back up and running 

[JLJac]

 

Update 130
Managed to get the new menu connected to the actual game, meaning that it's now possible to start a custom game again. It also creates a playlist out of the levels you have choosen, and srambles it if you checked the little "shuffle" button.

[JLJac]

Update 131
And I finally connected the World game mode to the new menu as well, and started outlining the framework for continuing a game from a saved file. Also when running around in the single player world a bit for the first time in ages, I found a bug where a spear would re-appear if you lodged it in a lizard and that lizard then fell off a cliff. It was easy enough to resolve, the problem was because the lizards are created earlier than the spears. First the lizard object is created, and asks "is a lizard with my ID reported wounded/missing/dead in world memory?", and when it finds itself it deletes itself from world memory, as it is now loaded on the actual level. Then the spear would be created, and ask "is there any lizard in world memory reported to have me stuck in it?", and the answer would be no, as the lizard had deleted itself. So, the spear would appear on the level. The problem was solved basically by changing the creation processes so that the spears are created first, stay tuned for the bugs that will arise from moving the chunks of code around.

[agersant]

Keep up the good work!

[eigenbom]

had a quick play, love the minimalism

[JLJac]

had a quick play, love the minimalism

Sir, with all due respect, your post worries me a little. I don't remember putting out a public demo, and I remember spending almost a year implementing a gazillion details, so if all of those have dissapeared and given way to "minimalism" I have a problem.

[Panurge]

had a quick play, love the minimalism

Sir, with all due respect, your post worries me a little. I don't remember putting out a public demo, and I remember spending almost a year implementing a gazillion details, so if all of those have dissapeared and given way to "minimalism" I have a problem.

Well, playing a non-existent public demo is going to be a pretty minimalist experience!

I love the look and feel of this and admire all the effort you're putting into it. I'm just itching to see how it turns out.

[JLJac]

Well, playing a non-existent public demo is going to be a pretty minimalist experience!

Lol 

[JLJac]

Update 132
As the new menu and the game are now connected I've started to mess around in the actual game a little bit again. Today I discovered that a problem I thought was solved was in fact not, which is always annoying. The problem is about the how the levels are supposed to have multiple entrances in custom mode, but only one when playing world mode. Because of this I set them up with an "activeEntrance" property in world mode, and shut down every other entrance, making them empty lizard holes. This works wonderfully when entering a level, and also when exiting it, if you exit through the leftmost entrance. If you exit through any of the others it returns an error which I feel perfectly confident I know what it is, but which has roots deep down in everything that has with inter-level connectivity to do. Which in turn makes me think that I should probably rewrite all that stuff...

But then again, I can always stack ugly hacks on top of each other There's nothing like changing a problem of today into a problem of tomorrow!

[JLJac]

Horrible hack: applied!

The solution completely relies on that swarm rooms only have only one entrance, which is - in my defence  - something I plan to stick to. Still, a beautiful solution would be dynamic and work in all scenarios, even those that are not included in the game. Still still, in my mind a beautiful game is a game that ever gets released...

[Rat Casket]

How much of my money must I give you to make this game happen.

[jamesprimate]

How much of my money must I give you to make this game happen.

now this is what we like to hear! 

[JLJac]

How much of my money must I give you to make this game happen.

Why don't you just keep it coming, sooner or later you'll know what's the right amount