Island of Secrets

[JRedant]

That's actually what I had in mind, Musically. I'll give that try. And I am going to need to see if that code works. Otherwise, I'm going to have to figure out another way to do what I want to do.

[Cloudee1]

If you have an if said anyword generic statement in the roomscript similar to the last statement in MI's code, the look statements in the main script will never get checked. First the roomscript is checked, then any region scripts, and finally the main script. So once it hits the look anyword statement in the roomscript which I assume is printing the room description, then the handleEvent is considered handled and it should quit looking, so it doesn't find the mainscript's print statement... similarly if the generic term comes before more specific ones, the specific ones will never be processed. One solution is to put the generic anyword statement at the end of the main script and making use of text resources where each room has it's own text, use a Print(currentRoom 0) and place the each rooms description in the 0 position. that way every specific if said statement from the roomscript through the main script will get checked before it's caught by the anyword statement

[JRedant]

I've spent a couple weekends traveling and my social life caught up with me.

So, I'm back and thanks for everyone on the input! I'm setting to work on it now. I'd hate to have a promising project sitting around collecting dust.

[JRedant]

Latest dilemma is more like a design issue.

The game has a meter which measures health. It starts at 100 points and decreases (at best guess) 1/2 or 1/3 of a point each time the character moves. Once it reaches 0 (zero), the main character dies. This comes into play at one, possibly two, points in the game.

In the current room that I'm working on, the Broken Branches, there is a Sparkling Spring. According to the book, it doesn't seem to serve any other purpose than to replenish the main character's health. At least not from what I can find.

If I put in a health meter into play, there is another place in the game where I could use it, and that's in Snelm's Lair. In the text program, the player is able to eat the mushroom and it replenishes the main character's health. Currently, the main character searches the mushroom bits, finds a piece of parchment, and then the mushroom is discarded.

The other design issue at hand is: Do I make the health meter visible? Do I put in "health meter warnings" (such as "Boy, I can surely use a drink about now", "If I don't have something now, I'm going to faint", "Unless I get some food or water in the next 10 turns, I'm going to die"), or do I do away with the health meter and think of something other use for the Sparkling Spring?

[Cloudee1]

There's a few games that use a health/ stamina counter. besides hero's quest, the black cauldron makes use of one. It's not all that complicated to implement. If you go with it, it would sure be a bummer to toss the mushroom after finding the parchment. I would suggest changing that bit, and be careful not to make it to short, especially if there's only a couple of places to replenish your health. Or maybe add an apple tree or two to the game

[JRedant]

Oh that won't be a problem. Code is easy to change and I can come up with another icon for the mushrooms. I'm pretty certain that there will be other areas in the game where there will be an opportunity for the main character to replenish his health.

So I'm hearing that I should go ahead and do it.

In that case, I have somewhat an idea of how to implement it, but I'm not entirely sure where to implement it.

I have the following algorithm in mind:

gTotalHealth = 100 

/*somewhere in the code */

Before player enters a new room:
  = gTotalHealth (- gTotalHealth 0.5)
     Code where player enters a new room

[Cloudee1]

I'm not sure how it will like the decimal points, you could always just do 1000 and subtract 5

[MusicallyInspired]

Or 200 and subtract 1.

[JRedant]

Why not keep things easy, eh?

So now the question remains...where to put it?

[Cloudee1]

Well if it was a timer that continuosly counted down I would say the main script. But as you describe, I'm thinking that a region script might serve you well. One that has a changeState method that waits a few cycles upon entering a room then subtracts the health value. Any room you want to effect the health would then need to make use of the region script.

[JRedant]

It's been super long since I've done any work on the game. Today, after several months of carrying on a pretty active social life, I dove back in.

I've written two Regions for the game which seem to be working. One for the Health counter, and the other for the Canyon Beast. They both seem to work just fine. I don't understand why I was hesitant about it.

Well, now that I'm able to figure out the how's-it-done of making Regions, the rest of this should be a piece of cake! It brings back memories of doing methods, subroutines, functions and classes in college.

[JRedant]

After some mucking around with the code and working on two screens, v0.3 has been downloaded and hopefully made available. Like the computer geek that I am, I've archived the older versions.

Now to work on the next screen, and I plan to add some functionality to it. I promise you that I'll eventually be done with the forest screens in this game and finally get to business with the other regions.

This screen mentions "You are beneath a carnivorous tree". In the game, that's supposed to describe the scene. The tree, apparently, doesn't eat you. The book doesn't make any mention of the tree, neither. Now I want to exercise creative liberty of making this into a puzzle. Or maybe more like a maze. One wrong move and the tree eats you, game over.

Any suggestions or models?

[gumby]

This sounds similar to some of the rooms in the Space Quest games.  My guess would be that you want to use control lines to draw the boundaries of the 'maze' and if the ego touches the boundary it triggers the death sequence.

When I read "You are beneath a carnivorous tree", I though of SQ and of Seymore from Rocky Horror.

[JRedant]

That's what I was thinking. Instead of a carnivorous mushroom, a carnivorous tree. Which means I'm going to have to animate the sucker.

[JRedant]

I got to thinking about this, actually. I could do it one of several ways. Three come to mind.

1) An umbrella tree. Step into it's shadow, the tree envelopes the ego. Ego tries to fight its way out to no avail. Ego dies.

2) A tentacle tree. Step into it's shadow, Ego is snagged by it's tentacles and is pulled upwards. Moments later, skeletal remains falls to the ground.

3) (probably the one that's going to require the most animation) Nasty looking tree. Step into it's shadow, tentacles grabs the ego and shoves it into the tree's chompers.  Munch, munch, munch. Ego dies


I think I'm going to do 2). It seems to be the easiest to pull off. I could try 1) to see how far I could go. But I could flag this scene to be redone at a later time.