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November 11th 2019, 12:21 PM
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SlipDink
Peasant He/Him United States bloop rumble
2nd generation. No easy way to be free. 
@Herbie:
Starting with the bug:

1. The one with the snake cave happened only once when I was brought back to life by Apollo, I was approaching it in different ways and nothing worked;

Hmmm. Thanks for the effort to describe this in greater detail. I'm afraid I still cannot reproduce it or otherwise figure what is causing the problem.

2. As for the desert entrance bug - related to the entrance 2 screens below the one where you find the lighter - today I noticed something important: if you approach the entrance from above and don't release the down arrow button in time for a short moment you will see Dink appearing just above the entrance, then he will disappear going down and either the game will get stuck on the current screen without transition to related one, or it will freeze on the exit screen. The game just gets dumb in such a situation and cannot handle it. Not sure if it is not a problem with the Dink engine itself.

Okay, I was able to reproduce this one and took some steps to address it. This problem should not happen again for this screen "entrance 2 screens below the one where you find the lighter". But in general, once you are in transition to another screen, it is a good idea to stop pressing arrow keys until you see what happens next.

As for the suggestions:

1. Food: since I already noticed you are able to make really advanced menus maybe you could create an options menu for this with the following to choose:

What to do with the food when you approach it?

a) pick it and store in the backpack if possible (excluding meat);
b) eat it;
c) leave it on the ground;
d) every time ask the player what to do.

Okay, I just made the ability to NOT pick up food when monsters are on screen a part of easy mode. Sigh... I'm trying to keep things simple here (for reasons I explain below when talking about variables).

2. The venom kit etc. - no no, you got that wrong, I was not irritated just because of that. I mean it is actually good, because indeed it is realistic. You really need some time to do it, so the time must pass. I wouldn't change that. What I meant is that you should avoid situations when - like in the one I described - there is a direct threat to Dink and instead of fighting/healing himself he is wondering what to do with a shrine? Now that is not realistic. Who cares about a shrine if you may just not even be able to reach it? Since a shrine is visible from only one side the "loud thinking" cannot be avoided, so the only thing to do would be removing that scorpion since it doesn't serve any significant purpose here.

Okay, I moved the scorpion that was in the rear of the shrine and deleted two others. Hmmmm, I admit that I thought you were complaining about "The venom kit etc.", so I went ahead and made a change that made a quicker version of it part of "easy mode" for those that are too challenged by it (even if that group does not include you since you admit you like it "because indeed it is realistic").

3. About wandering around the desert: yes, I found and put the kerchief on Dink's face and I am even using that advanced feature (well done!) to drop gold at sight and obviously after I rest under the rock at the very beginning I am moving only at night. As for making it realistic, since you are not losing health on a desert just like that: maybe Dink could find an empty bottle or something like that and would have to store water in it whenever possible and a "dehydration meter" would be added and when Dink would be getting dehydrated his health would start to deplete?

One of the things I have to be careful with in working on this dmod is to be sure to NOT create too many more variables. During game development I had to rewrite things several times to avoid running "out of the 248 available slots for variables". So, I think I'll pass on that elaborate (but fun sounding) idea to have Dink "find an empty bottle or something" and then implement a "dehydration meter" and a juggle a new factor in his health. Don't forget that there is quite a lot of code and a few variables in use now to manage Dink's poison status already. Maybe I could do something like this in a future dmod though. But, it was straight forward enough (and required no new variables) to implement a less dangerous desert to cross as a part of easy mode.

A personal opinion: your dmod's are indeed different in a challenging way, especially Before..., because in this game you are not guaranteed to succeed and you can actually screw up and not be able to finish the game at all, so planning ahead is required. Partially the same was about the Last quest, part 1 where before proceeding I spent some time drawing a complete map of the cave.

I'm so very pleased to know that you are enjoying my dmods and the somewhat unique challenges they offer! Thanks for mentioning that.

Phew! That was long!

Well, I've added a lot of code and made a few changes to things for my 2.0 version of this dmod. But, I won't upload it just yet.

You might want to know that it seems to me that you may have missed an important survival item that would help you get water at several locations while in the desert. Like some other items, it is found near a skeleton, in this case near the cliff's edge of the Eastern High Desert.

BTW, how far have you gotten in playing "Before..."?