Case 4, 5 and 6

It's been a while since I last posted something here. The entries for case four and five are way too late, so I made it a multicase entry, or something.

Short description of cases four through six;

Case 4: Create your main scene using actionscript, and make the character move by using the arrowkeys. Additionally the character should be constrained from moving outside the confines of the scene.

Case 5: Trigger the character's different animations at differing times, make the character pick up objects and construct a simple gravitational system using collision detection.

Case 6: Create an enemy non playable character and make him follow the main character. Something should happen when the enemy hits the hero.

Have a break and check out the result before we proceed with the less exciting stuff (assuming the result was fun).

Hopefully entertaining result

Now the (hopefully) less exciting stuff;

As mentioned in the previous entry, I already got a crash-course in scripting during case 3 from my roommate, and our research assistant. I have previously coded a bit in HTML, CSS and PHP, so the concept was at the very least graspable to me.

Before we started on case 4 I had a script that made the character walk, jump and fall with gravity. So I could have just waited patiently until case 5, but I felt I had to do something. I came to the conclusion that my current script was too messy with alot of flaws. So I started with a blank slate and started planning my script from the very beginning using psudocode. After having learnt the basics I quickly reached the level my script was at previously, only alot less messy.

I also started experimenting with arrays, and after some struggle I finally understood enough to use it. Using arrays I probably shortened my script by one third, and it allowed me to change level in an easier manner.

During case 5 I added nasalsprays for my hero to pick up, these sprays acts as "lives". The more sprays you have, the more damage you can handle.

Case 6 was pretty straight forward, I already had a rough idea of how to solve it, and it worked the first time i pressed Ctrl+Enter. What took me a while was to add a deathscreen and let the player start over again. But after a long night of trying and failing I finally made it, although it's far from perfect, and merely a temporary solution. This also counts for how the enemy NPC works, the way it's coded now only works with one enemy at a time.

After the sixth case I'll probably rebuild my script yet again, and I'm looking forward to it!