What I've done this week##
Week #4 was a bumper week! Loads of progress was made, especially with the Mad Monks. If you ignore the pre-menu logos, scoreboards and fluff like that, then the game hasn't got too long to go. Once the monk AI is in you should be able to play the game singularly or head-to-head, which is a massive step forward to being complete. Fluff + networking = complete game.
*Small selection of Monk animations in my new favourite test puzzle*Editor
- added a dotted box on the grid the mouse cursor is in to help show what tile you are going to be painting in
- not sure if this will be staying or not yet
- fixed the poor drag support when moving a selected region around
- you get returned to the editor now after exiting a puzzle that is being tried
- the one life limit when trying puzzles from the editor when testing a two-player puzzle increased to two as some puzzles rely on either Jake or Wes dying to finish
Game
- fixed a bug that only showed buried gold and not bombs, keys and dropped tools
- fixed bug that stopped buried tools that had been previously uncovered from peeking out blastable tiles;
- the original varied on how it did this and re-blasting the block would stop it. Now all tools that are buried but were previously visible will peek out from under the blasted block
- rejigged support for dropping and collecting tools ready for networking support
- tweaked the collision when hitting a wall whilst running in goop
- finished support to exit a game on the top row when no other exit doors are present
- jackhammer blasting effect added;
- this is same blasting cut-a-way effect slowed down to match the jackhammer animation
- fixed a bug that stopped pick-axe rubble from not fading away
- fixed bug that caused players to instantly teleport when entering from below
- added support to remove pick-axe rubble that is inside a phase block when phase block turns solid
- players granted an extra life on finishing a puzzle
- fixed a bug that allowed all players to run horizontally into liquid
- rejigged the landing when falling; a fraction of the code and replaces the last of the original collision code left
- monk movements finalized
- this was already partially in there; monks just needed some tweaks as they generally have less frames of animations than heroes have
- two-player head-to-head gameplay added;
- added two-player game border
- collected tools, bombs, points and lives all update the UI (including single-player)
- cheating; ditching the file menu left the cheating options orphaned
- clicking on the lives on the HUD will grant the player an extra life
- clicking on the current puzzle number will show the puzzle viewer - this is not the same as before; if the user wants to go back and forward a puzzle, why not just let the user go anywhere they want? They are already cheating...
The path-finding for the monks is being done by my Brother. He is doing pretty much 99% of the monk AI so he will write a nice long post on this soon. In the meantime, here is a screen-shot showing nodes (red squares) and connecting tiles (yellow lines). As you can see, there are quite a few errors but you get the general idea.
Path-finding under way
General
- fixed bug when decompressing a graphic resource that was created using the maximum compression setting in the original tool used to create the game resources
- altered the options dialog to allow it to be called from anywhere in the game
- not yet implemented
- the original has no support to do this - you had to save, return the main menu, alter options, the load your saved game
Bug in decompressing graphics utilizing maximum compression settings
What I'll probably do next week
- more AI done (work my Brother is doing)
- send out a demo to a few select Uber-fans for testing
- try an solve monks re-entering a puzzle on death that have no monk entry door
- tinker and improve monks pausing and waiting for other monks
- monk collision with monks