Moving the CL plane around

[Tomalla]

Expanding the plane right- or downwards is plain and easy. But there have been numerous moments where I had started designing a level just too much to the top or to the left. I've got a loose idea lumbering around in my head of making a program that would do just that - expand the level in all four cardinal directions. Don't take it for granted though, just treat it as a loose thought for now.

Now if I would ever come around doing that at some point in the future, however distant, I'd need a comprehensive list of things to change when moving everything around. Switches and their IDs, updating the pyramids/secret tiles are the most obvious things. Unfortunately I would have to have a full and exhaustive list of such things. Of everything. I just can't wrap my head around it, but perhaps the community itself could give me a hand at assembling such a list

Surely reading the entire GLE manual or the GLE indices on the forums will more than suffice. Perhaps once I decide to start working on it I'll try to read through it all, but it's gonna be a long, long read. If somebody is willing to do that for me (which would genuinely surprise me), he'd be more than welcome. However, I rather expect people to add to the list only once something interesting pops up in their minds.

At this point I have the following:

• TileTriggerSwitch - calculate new IDs + update the IDs in the Rect (Orange Switches)
• TileTrigger & TileSecretTrigger & CheckpointTrigger - update the IDs of the switches in the Rect
• Teleporter & SecretTeleporterTrigger - update the destinations
• GlobalAmbientSound - calculate new bounds of the ambient sound
• RainCloud & UFO - update the route in the Rect
• KitchenSlime - update the new opposite corner of the rectangle a slime would follow
• GruntStartingPoint(Object Guard) - update the tile coordinates the Grunt is circling
• World Settings - new Start position

Any ideas what I am missing? Cheers

[GooRoo]

EyeCandy/EyeCandyAni/BehindCandy/BehindCandyAni locations
SpotLight (if radius currently at maximum ... to new radius)

expanding size: generate (semi-)random Ground Tilez 1 through 8 (or 9 through 16) in the new area
perhaps analyzing tile statistics to determine which set to use

Changing graphics set? Validate Tile numbers for the new graphics set. Particularly for CoveredPowerupz and Giant Rockz. (This is just one of those things I have been thinking about since the PacMan series.)

[SwordGrunt]

Nope, you've got all of the objects that require map tile coordinates to function. I can't think of any others scrolling down the logic list.

[GooRoo]

I mentioned EyeCandy because of the usual association with Tile #199 or #200 ... which would be moving. Perhaps I failed to make the assumption that such Objects would automatically have been provided for along with the more obvious things mentioned.

[Tomalla]

Yes, sorry I forgot to clarify what assumptions I had made: since the plane is expanding left/upwards, all objects and tiles will shift right/downwards. One tile is 32 pixels wide, so if I added one row of tiles at the top of the map, all objects would be shifted down by 32 pixels. That would be quite straightforward and fully automatic and there's nothing to be added here. So not only EyeCandies would be shifted, but also TileTriggers, Teleporters, GooPuddles ... pretty much every single object on the map.

However some of the objects have tile OR pixel-based coordinates hardcoded into their logic properties. All of them would immediately become invalid since they would be still referring to old positions of the old plane. Now I would have to catch all the relevant objects and process them separately. And that's the list in the original post. The important thing to note here is that this list doesn't consist of objects only - see the World Settings and the pixel coordinates of the starting screen for instance.

Nov 12, 2015 13:05:39 GMT -8 GooRoo said:

SpotLight (if radius currently at maximum ... to new radius)

I don't quite understand this one. As far as I know SpotLights don't have the maximum radius. Or perhaps you meant the check whether the radius goes out of the plane boundaries?

Nov 12, 2015 13:05:39 GMT -8 GooRoo said:

expanding size: generate (semi-)random Ground Tilez 1 through 8 (or 9 through 16) in the new area
perhaps analyzing tile statistics to determine which set to use

Changing graphics set? Validate Tile numbers for the new graphics set. Particularly for CoveredPowerupz and Giant Rockz. (This is just one of those things I have been thinking about since the PacMan series.)

Tile randomizer is yet another great idea for an application! There would be even a configuration file for associating weights with particular tiles. Let's take Gruntz in Space for instance: it would be possible for craters to be generated in place of only 20% of 1-9 tiles. It all would be fully configurable and could be chained with the application for expanding planes.

Changing a graphics set is a little more complicated than this, as this would require adding/removing planes on the fly, changing image sets ... even then the designer would realign all the EyeCandies, since lots of them will be of a different size now and would simply not match the new setting. I don't think there is a simple recipe for such one-to-one conversion. But if someone provides me with a reasonable algorithm, I might think on making such an app afterwards. I wonder though how many people would use it anyways - such a tool would be far more sophisticated than the former (generic) ones.

[GooRoo]

In my "Keep Your Eye On The Ball V2" I have a SpotLight with a large radius, intended to reach the centers of the four cardinal directions. If that map were to be expanded, my preference would be that the radius of the SpotLight be appropriately changed. How many puzzlez would ever attempt to do something like that? Probably far too few to be of concern. But I thought I'd clarify why I added that suggestion.