The use of Calc Cow ID on every logic

[swietymiki]

Since we have a couple of newer and older designers who have grown a habit of pressing the Calc Cow ID button on nearly every object in the editor, I would like to ask the most important question - what are the benefits of it.

It's quite frequently suggested on the forum threads to do it, but there's almost no information given on how you can make use it. You know, "GooRoo will have it easier while troubleshooting your level" is not really an explanation. Say you want to convince me to use this method, what would you tell me?

[GooRoo]

Mar 14, 2020 3:52:27 GMT -8 swietymiki said:

Since we have a couple of newer and older designers who have grown a habit of pressing the Calc Cow ID button on nearly every object in the editor, I would like to ask the most important question - what are the benefits of it.

It's quite frequently suggested on the forum threads to do it, but there's almost no information given on how you can make use it. You know, "GooRoo will have it easier while troubleshooting your level" is not really an explanation. Say you want to convince me to use this method, what would you tell me?

Where do you want to teleport to from here? Is there a Switch somewhere nearby? Simple. In a Bjarni type map, not so easy. If even an EyeCandy object had CalcCowID pressed, its coordinates are available to determine where to go. In my HTML style walk-throughs, with the locations of those objects that are logged on the Statz Page, it is the use of CalcCowID that gives me the tile location of the object.

I know, in the frequent case of creating a puzzle, the creation takes multiple times the amount of time it takes to solve it. So why take the extra time to press that gadget for everything you place? Make a fancy Silver Pyramid maze and flub the time values a time or two and try to find the mistake. Dozens, or even hundreds of TileTriggerz without tile coordinates or careful placement of the logic boxes on tiles makes the correction process much harder.

The frequent reasoning is "I never make missteaks".

In 38 years as a computer programmer/analyst, I quickly learned that 80% of the time spent on a program was in MAINTAINING the program as conditions changed. So intelligent design was the saving grace when externally generated need for change occurred. So I spend my time "up front", in hopes it will make finding my mistakes easier.

[swietymiki]

I appreciate your reply but it doesn't fully answer my question.

If I understand correctly, when you try to fix a mistake you go through the list of objects using the "Prev" and "Next" buttons in the properties box, then check what each individual logic does? Because if you used the "Tab" key, the editor would automatically move your screen to the selected logic, so you wouldn't need to know its coordinates. Same if you clicked on a logic, obviously you'd know where it is. I already knew that you use object coordinates to find errors in you level, but how exactly do you take advantage of it?

It's true that having the coordinates of all objects ready to put them into the walkthrough comes in handy, but we now have Tomalla's Gruntz Scrooge program which can display item coordinates regardless of the level, right?

[GooRoo]

Correct! But 38 years of habits do not go away very quickly. I still have them 20 yearss later.