Location: A not so confusing maze :) (Patreon)

He everyone!

I just finishing up the coding of the maintenance maze. And oh boy... it was so much more work then I anticipated :)  I’ve been making twelve-hour days for 2 weeks now… but today it’s finally done. Phew!

Now, I kinda underestimated the workload because the first steps of making the maze were pretty easy. Like, making keen move around in the maze, it's basically  the same as in the main game- so that was technically no problem.  But when I tested the navigation, and finally walked through a few rooms...I immediatly got lost! And that, I did not anticipate.

Now, walking through straight tunnels went well of course. But making a turn was just highly confusing!  And that’s because in Space Rescue you don’t see Keen on screen when walking, and you don’t have a free-camera that shows you making the actual turn. So within the logic of Space Rescue,  I somehow had to clarify that you would make a turn- and how that affects your orientation.

I thought about if for a while -and then decided to show Keen on screen when he’s taking turns. And that seemed to work well!  Here you can see an exampe of my turning test (big gif image):

But that was just half the solution.  I realized, I had to adjust my map design as well. 

The problem was, that you could walk in circles.  Which makes a for a good maze...but it also adds to the confusion. (Plus, circling around also creates a lot of extra work, because then each room needs 2 viewing directions). So, I cut out the circles from my map design.

This is the map I ended up with (you can view this map at each gateway between two areas – indicated by the yellow cicles).

Here you see what changed. Version 1 VS Version 2.

Now on the last frame of the gif above, you see the huge number of rooms I had to make. There are more then 120 rooms in the maze.  And that was the final challenge; finding an efficient way in to define rooms in code - without having to describe every detail of every room over and over. And for me that came down to identifying all charasteristics of a room (A), and then refering back to some of those (B), to put together specific rooms. Here is a (very) small example of a bit of code. 

A#

if  in_tunnel_straight  == True:

       scene m_maze_straight

       $ direction_left = False
       $ direction_right = False
       $ direction_foreward = True
       $ direction_back = True

#B

if in_room_C17 == True:

       if go_foreward == True:
           # create next room here
           $ in_room_C18 = True
           $ in_tunnel_straight_left = True

       if go_back == True:
           # create previous room here
           $ in_room_C16 = True
           $ in_tunnel_straight = True

       $ in_room_C17 = False
       jump m_maze_reload

Well, and that concludes making the maze….finally! But, even though it took a lot of time -and a lot of trial and error - I also learned a lot from it.  And I’m sure that will help me throughout the rest of the game. So, it's all good...I guess :)

Next?

Well, all that remains now is adding Spooky-related-scenes to the game, and connect it with the events in the maze. Like this one :)

I will need a few more days to get that done, and then I will release the update again (Hopefully still end of February, but it could also be the start of March...).

Well, I hope you will enjoy it!

All the best!
Robin