Unclump’m

if (document.images){stillCLUMP=new Image;playingCLUMP=new Image;stillCLUMP.src = “http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xbWj__ULybE/TyZYca8Qs0I/AAAAAAAADcM/tuXsStG6IzE/s320/clumpalot-0.png”; playingCLUMP.src= “http://i.imgur.com/o8ZEK.gif”;}Well, I’ve been using AppleAssault as a regression test when developing the new collision engine … really just to make sure I’m not broking everything up, as there’s nothing in AppleAssault that could benefit from the new engine, anyway. No pushable/carriable ennemies, no platforms. Nothing.

But of course, being in that source tree again (^_^), I wanted to give some ideas a try. The first one was to integrate berrybats in the game, as a way to force the player to focus on defeating applemen, and not just hop around. It now acts like a sort of indirect timer, appearing when you’ve been unfocused for too long… and appearing again and again until the lesson has been learnt 🙂
I’ll need to work on the timing, though, so that the game doesn’t become completely unfair 😛

The second thing is linked to Kirby Kid‘s comments: Applemen tend to stick to each others, overcrowding on platforms, which isn’t very realistic. I don’t want to go for goombas-like behaviour: Applemen are design to be able to cross each other. Still, there shouldn’t be 10 of them on 2 pixels. So I need to have a sort of applemen/applemen collision detection, but that should be handled with care, otherwise I could easily overload the collision engine with hundreds of (unnecessary) checks and dry the DS batteries in no time.

The approach I picked is to take advantage of a small transient state where the Applemen halts in front of a cliff, checking whether it will jump — which you’d barely notice when playing the game. Only during these 2 frames, it actively checks for other Applemen in its immediate neighbourhood, and get “knocked out” of the platform if there was. Expect a revised .nds file to download in early February, as now, I still need to remove a *lot* of debugging printf … and have a shower…
Oh, and some coffee would be nice as well… And a commit 🙂

Cheers 🙂