Tactile Cave 2: Developer’s Diary 3

I’ve been looking for solutions to the array problem recently. The game freezes if the player attempts to go off the map. I attempted to do the same thing to the north and west coordinates (coordinates with X and Y values of 0) and the glitch didn’t happen. It only happens with the south and east coordinates, which have higher, non-zero values on the coordinate plane. I’m thinking of adding walls to those coordinates to see if that fixes the problem. If not, I can get a friend to write me a program that checks whether or not the tile the player is about to go into is occupied.

Tactile Cave 2: Developer’s Diary 2. On Debug.

Debug is the most frustrating part of game design.

Debug is the most frustrating part of game design. Bugs are subtle and hide themselves well in even the most conspicuous of places. An error in logic can be as small as a single character and have game-crippling effects. This I am experiencing in my development of Tactile Cave 2. The Processing Development Environment is capable of frustrating to no end as it points out bugs and errors that are almost indetectable to the human mind.

Variables are a huge annoyance, and making sure that any variable or value you state is defined is an intricate and annoying process. Basic bugs and glitches can make the game fail to operate properly at all. This is not to mention world-loading bugs and death glitches that make the game inoperable. Creating a game that’s actually fun to play is even a greater challenge with these programming constraints.

That said, coding is still a thrilling and intellectually stimulating experience that requires little mathematical experience and a high level of patience. A propensity for logical thinking is critical and writing a functional program is not unlike formulating an argument for a debate.

Announcing… TACTILE CAVE 2: MASTER LEVELS!!

Yes, I’m making a sequel to Tactile Cave 2 and will be doing a few dev-diaries every now and then about it. It will be built off the code-base for the original Tactile Cave and will bring with it a new set of awesome surprises.

One thing that distinguishes software-devs from other artists is the fact that they do not try to cover up their mistakes and gleefully enjoy sharing them. I’m producing the game right now, and I ran into my fair share of issues.

- Debugging and cleaning the game far more difficult than I thought and required a rewriting of many different parameters scattered around the code.

- Death and Respawn are the game’s most significant problems, and as the level does not reload properly upon player death, the game instantly becomes glitchy and frustrating.

- Tactile Cave 2 will be considerably more difficult than the first game. Observing the behaviors of playtesters of the first Tactile Cave, I devised levels that will exploit those behaviors to create more challenging levels. You WILL get pissed.

- Tactile Cave 2 will take place in a much smaller 23 by 10 grid, making the game-boards much smaller than those of the first game. This optimizes screensize for display on OpenProcessing.org

I’m projecting that Tactile Cave 2 will be done at the end of the month, in the meantime, enjoy the first Tactile Cave and its Schizophrenia mod at my OpenProcessing portfolio.