Sunday 24 September 2017

Teemu ARRP Diary 7/3

The null bug was in Get -routine of terrain tile. You would think it's hard to make a mistake in such a small routine, but it is. I was checking the index with 0 when it should have been -1 (out of level). That's why the first (top left) tile was null, but when the debug routine was not using Get_Terrain() it didn't catch it. I tracked it back from look routine which was showing the tile as 'null tile'.

The low level routines work I guess, masks are added to searching (Place class). I'm going through level themes one by one and there are issues with room generation etc. I think there are only two themes that need more work than just simple fixing. I try to keep things simple and work through themes first on terrain level, then second run adding objects and finally creatures.

A kind of "problem" that I run into all the time is that it's "possible" to make things in smarter way, but it just takes way more time than making things work using less sophisticated code. It's important to ask yourself what do you want to achieve in gameplay context and how to do it. If it's really complex stuff then it may be easier to create a complex system for it (in a long run). But if it's not then it's faster and easier to bash some random code and try to keep it bug free at least. Creating a sophisticated engine for anything is incredibly difficult and I think it takes a certain kind of mindset and skills to succeed in creating a coherent game engine that can process everything the game requires.

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