Modeling Jack's World

[ryos]

WOOOOT! Vern, you are my hero! That post was made of awesome, no joke.

Don't worry about converting units - I can take care of that. I posted that I wanted tps mostly to ensure that everyone that posted did include units. In the end I don't really care what they are, so long as I understand them.

(The ppf makes perfect sense for programming MM, but is all but useless for working in the editor. Fortunately, it's an easy conversion to tps. )

VernJensen wrote:
2) What is the conversion factor between the speed number you type into the dialog box and tps? Is this factor the same for all sprites that can have a speed?

The answer to this question is interesting. You see, in old-style Mac dialog boxes, you couldn't enter fractional values, like 2.5. And I wanted that for the monsters. So instead what I did was divide all entered values by a certain number one they were loaded. For instance, if I divided by 2, and you entered

5

in the dialog, you'd get a speed of 2.5 ppf. But for some monsters I wanted more of an ability to have lots of fractional values than I needed for others. So the medusa heads are divided by something like 10 or 20 (I could look this up if you really need to know), while I think certain other monters aren't divided by anything, and some are divided by fairly small numbers, like 2 or 3.

If you wouldn't mind posting the divisors for all of them, I would be so grateful! It would save me a lot of measuring. (Including the platforms - even though I'm done measuring them, I'm curious to see how accurate my measurements are.)

Interesting idea you have to be so mathematical about everything, but honestly, even as the designer of the game, I'd do everything by trial-and-error myself.

I look at it like I look at scripting. Oftentimes, when I'm doing some repetitive task, I think to myself,

Self, you could write a script to do this for you.

But then I realize that writing and debugging the script would take longer than just doing the task by hand, so I don't.

But, if it's a task that must be done again, the script saves time. Also, scripting can solve problems that you just can't manage by hand.

That's where I hope to take this - automate some frequent number conversion tasks (like,

What do I need to type in the box to make the fish reach this high in this amount of time?

) and also create puzzles and effects that would be impossible (or prohibitively time-consuming) to do by hand. Hopefully, when you see some of the uses I've imagined for this, you'll agree with me that it's worth it.

One more question before I go, about fish gravity. If I type a 3 into the fish gravity box, does that mean that it decreases the fish's initial velocity by 3 ppf each frame (and then increases it on the way down)?

Once again, THANK YOU for posting those Vern!