Not much, again, on the Rachdale Cheese front, but quite busy enough, this week, a fair part of which was taken up by the Halloween Challenge. A week is a long time in politics, they do say, but for creating a credible Game, it's a bit short, I found..! I had a concept in mind; I'm not really a 'Halloween' type (we don't, or didn't when I was a nipper, have such larks in England, and I'm not, myself, a 'gore' fan, either...), so it wasn't looking good from the outset. I had, however, a few bits and pieces I'd put together as a Board Game trial, so I thought I'd run with that as in idea. One Map, only the Dice to roll, 'standard' graphics (mostly...); what could go wrong..? Well, quite a lot, actually, as there were several unexpected difficulties encountered along the way. Still, another expression tells us 'No pain, no gain', and I gained quite a lot, not helped by the first of this season's heavy colds. A couple of sleepless nights, interspersed with raucous coughing fits and incessant soiling of kitchen roll handkerchiefs gave the modest result now posted in the appropriate thread for the Challenge. Result..!
What did I learn..? Well, I needed to turn off Mouse control, for instance, as it was interfering with the placing of my Sprites. To this end, I was constrained to cobble up my very first Plug-in, from a supposedly 'simple' beginners template from Faytless, and a snippet of code from Shaz, which I was able to combine and make working..! Primitive, but a first dabble in this Dark Art. I'll not be wanting to travel too far down that murky path; that way, madness lies..!
I also had to confront the mysteries of deployment of Character files, some of which were used by another Plug-in, others just not-standard Sprite sizes. I finally found out how to declare files to a Plug-in so that the System would not exclude them on deployment, and why there is a $ sign for some graphics. I could not get certain $ files to be recognised on the Web version, and so resorted to 'cheating' (a technical term...) by combining these larger Sprites onto a normal, albeit oversized, Character sheet, which worked just fine. All tiny details, but I'd not have found out these gems had I not taken the plunge and tried out the Challenge. Being of a rather stubborn disposition was probably something to do with it, too..!
It's quite typical of me that, once finished, tested and deployed, it came to me in a moment of inspiration how I could execute a major part of the code (testing the position of the pieces on the Board...) in a much simpler, more elegant way. Too late now; I'm not going to tear out its innards to re-do them now, Halloween or no Halloween..! (Did I mention that I'm not 'into' gore..?
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Now then, what's next..? Ah yes, I've some BGM commissioned, and some more tidying up of my Rachdale Project. Here we go again...
Have a nice day
Douglas