The Junk Puzzle

Yup. Got it now. I've devised a 16 point maze - not really a maze, because there's many ways through it, and when you've solved it, you can go straight to the end next time you play. Each point in the grid, let's call it, has its own ID lights, and a different set of scenery around it, viewed from the junk. There are ten positions on the junk, bow, stern, facing various ways, and there is a different scene visible from each of these junk scenes, depending on the ID of the current point in the grid.

So... the scenery is delivered by sprites rather than background, and the 160 possible visible scenes are reduced to ten with different sprites at each location.

Each point in the grid indicates the adjacent IDs and the navigation system allows the player to move to whatever ID he favours.

It's quite a lot of code, but it saves masses of scene files. Instead of 160 scenes, we have just the 10 on the junk, the background sprites being imposed on an empty sea/sky.

Feverish Activity behind the Scenes

Over the last few weeks, I've concentrated on a variety of articles on the junk - table, chairs, a bucket etc.

The next stage is to build it into a new version of the example game, but that will involve some new work on the Sprites, to give the water a more realistic appearance.

I also have to re-write the BridgeData module to control the new scenes.

I am a little conflicted on the "Junk Puzzle" - i.e. how to get from the initial scene of being on the junk to getting to the island. It mustn't be too obvious - the player should have to think about it - but I don't want it to turn into a maze.