Yes, I neglected that game's progress quite some after Dino didnt like the new look of the slipper floor (his argument make sense, mind you) and didnt want to mess with it before anthrocon and then pushed it off, and more recently rather put time into making the forum have a few long-missed features or pretend to be looking for a job irl.
Patch wrote:
I gave playing this a try today.
Well its still far from done of course, lacks lots of features and help screen, and I havent even decided on the end yet.
Patch wrote:
It's a little annoying that the thick, completely unclearable fibers look so similar look so similar to the normal ones that just have to be scrubbed to progress in the game. Maybe change the colour of one type of fiber, or add a little dotted or dashed border around the permanently-there ones? Also it might not be a bad idea to sortof build in a graduated reward-system where more weesaurs in a village can clear a harder level of thickets, or maybe a tool-shop or something that could make tools to help the people clear the thicker fibers.
Nope. Sorry, cannot has.
It is intentional that they look much alike, as its one continuous slipper floor. Its just more worn out in some area, and having to try where you can clear a path and where not is part of the game world. It is also a big part of the game concept that you have to plan how to create paths to ressources and building space, which is by design limited. It also makes, as you may have noticed, quite a difference how close to the seam you build, so its a strategic aspect to not have free space up there as much as you'd like.
I never found it that hard to distinguish though.[/quote]
Patch wrote:
When the slipper's wearer damages stuff during the night, I don't always notice all of the buildings until it's too late, and they're completely reduced to rubble. I think a repair-all-damaged-buildings -button appearing when a damaged building is selected might be really nice (maybe just put an icon with 2 hammer-symbols next to the one with one). Maybe also citizens should be able to get crushed at night, once a city has a proper nightlife for folks to be out late or whatever. I also think it would be interesting to maybe differentiate between homeless people, who have had their huts crushed up, vs. people who are just looking to move into the player's village.
An auto-repair feature was at some point planned, though you can see at the summary how many buildings were damaged, and just count for now. O:)
On the account of people also being able to become casualties, I'll have to bringthat up to Dino and ask him. It sure might add a tactical element to the game.
Patch wrote:
The happiness-meter confuses me a bit — even though, when I assign berries to be harvested for example, it raises happiness, the display will go from 5/5 happiness to 8/8 happiness. Meaning you've transcribed the denominator (the bottom number) in the fraction, or are not calculating it correctly.
Oh yes, that just means you get 5 happiness out of 5 that are generated. Another thing that will go in one of the many missing helps. When people will later (when I coded the rest of it) go unhappy just because, since that is the way of people, so you have to keep building stuff just to keep it at a constant level, the former figure will be lower than the latter.
Patch wrote:
Finally, it might just be me, but sometimes the trees seem to switch themselves off / unassign themselves from being mined for stuff after I pass turn. Having borders around or symbols on around the plants/objects that are set to be mined/harvested in a given turn would help the user know not to click on something they've already set to the way they wanted — something I found myself doing alot.[/right]
Harvesting unassigns when it wouldnt be possible. For example if it would make your current storage overflow. Better management tools are planned.
Patch wrote:
With regard to the negative people waiting glitch — which I've encountered a few times today though I didn't screen because they don't seem to be giving you enough info at-present — is it possible that the indexes for refugees from other towns / people who decide to leave are getting mixed in somehow?
If nothing else, it might be a good idea to hard-code something like this on turn-pass, but maybe still show an error-message with a log:
if (waitingForHome<0):
    waitingForHome=0;
//or maybe:
function decrementWaiting():
    if (waitingForHome<0):
        [do nothing / return / return 0]
    if (waitingForHome>0):
        waitingForHome=waitingForHome-1
I'm not sure if GameMaker is able to spit out text-files for logs or not, (or even just print a game's entire event-log out when the error-message comes up) but at the very least it should probably be possible to make an event record/logger that we could access and screenshot for you and post up here.No, the code actually seems to be all fine there, if there was any real bug like that it'd likely show up more often, and most of all I'd be able to reproduce it. Game Maker can log variable in a debug mode, and I can happily give you the code so you can try if you can find info on that.
I am more thinking it is a synch issue between one Step event and the next and the stuck-somehow-in-between Drawing Events, in which sadly some of the code has to run as only there you can actually draw anything that is not an object.
Even though I use semaphores so that is technically impossible now too unless Game Make does something weird, or both are threads and one can overtake the other while that is running or whatever...
The biggest restriction on me debugging it is though that
I dont seem to get the error on my system.
At least I didnt get it after I thought I fixed it. And unless someone can tell me how they get it, or at least have clues, I cannot know.
Yes, I should continue coding on that game, but its all pretty mood if I cant get the negative people thing fixed.
(preventing the number from going below zero not being a fix, as that leaves the error in there and just fixes the visible result)