Ding, the Elevator door opens....

[Lumin]

That intro works really well, the only problem I see is that there's nothing actually explaining the main goal of activating the machine. Maybe there could be a sign or note or something on the reception desk?

To Whom it May Concern,

If you're reading this, you have fallen through a rift in reality. It's unfortunate, but these things do happen. On the roof of this building there is a machine that will open a portal to return you to your home dimension. The parts needed to activate this machine have been hidden throughout the premises for security purposes, one on each floor, and need only be collected. Good luck, and please do not panic.

Thank you,
Management

...or something like that, I'm sure you can come up with a better example.

[Lazzah]

That intro works really well, the only problem I see is that there's nothing actually explaining the main goal of activating the machine. Maybe there could be a sign or note or something on the reception desk?

To Whom it May Concern,

If you're reading this, you have fallen through a rift in reality. It's unfortunate, but these things do happen. On the roof of this building there is a machine that will open a portal to return you to your home dimension. The parts needed to activate this machine have been hidden throughout the premises for security purposes, one on each floor, and need only be collected. Good luck, and please do not panic.

Thank you,
Management

...or something like that, I'm sure you can come up with a better example.

I think that is very good indeed, but if this was to be adopted then maybe there needs to be a list of the parts for the portal machine and each author who is submitting a floor must pick one part from the list to be found on their floor?

[ralphmerridew]

I'm the one who started the project and have the ground floor mostly done. The elevator system is in working order. Was waiting for people to submit their floor. I did originally want to keep it to a room limit so that people are more likely to finish their floor than attempt to create something big. But it seemed some people wanted there to be no limits.

Keeping strict limits is good. Large games are very vulnerable to combinatorial explosion. Decide exactly how you'll deal with the possibility of using one object on another floor.

Question: Does your code handle these cases correctly?

1) Drop an object in the elevator. Go to another floor. Look. Is the object still there?
2) Move the elevator to another floor. Does the automap change appropriately?

It's pretty straightforward to get either one correct; I'm not sure if you could get both correct at the same time.

[Lumin]

I think that is very good indeed, but if this was to be adopted then maybe there needs to be a list of the parts for the portal machine and each author who is submitting a floor must pick one part from the list to be found on their floor?

I'm assuming DazaKiwi will be handling the machine on the roof, all he'd have to do is take whatever 'key' object the author comes up with and make a 'put part on machine' task for it that adds +1 to a variable somewhere.

e: Actually, even specific tasks should be unnecessary if every author just makes sure to give their object a 'machine part' property. I can't test it out right this second but I imagine we'd just need one 'put %object% on machine' task in that case, with the restriction that the referenced object has to have that property.

[Lumin]

Oh yes, and an important addendum to the note: P.S. Due to the dangers of cross-dimensional contamination, objects other than the machine parts are not permitted to be taken from one floor to another.

Daza, I assume you've already figured out a way too enforce that?

Anyway, work on the first floor is coming along great. Too bad I have to pull a double shift tomorrow, but I'm expecting to have it finished by Thursay at the latest.

[DazaKiwi]

Here is what i have so far, the base or ground level has an intro, a note for the player to read about what they have to do (thanks Lumin for that idea, i tweaked what you wrote) and you can travel up four floors (will increase this when we have more games added) as well as the top floor 13 where you can find the machine. Go there to read its description.

I have put all my custom tasks and objects into uniquely named folders. I'm thinking this might be good practise for those wanting to submit a floor/game, name the folder to what the title of their game is ie. WW1 Objects. Because eventually all the games submitted will be merged into one game via import module. If one of the floors has a bug or broken the author will be able to see their own folders from the others and fix it.

The top floor is 13. And you can go to that floor to read the description of the machine there. I will have to make a list of part names and will use a 'missing part" property for them. Do you think it will be best to use a variable counter as each machine part is found and also move it into a select group. So i will have the counter tally and group list to check at the end the player has all the missing parts. I think that will be the way to do it?

Just read Lumin's new post. Well to enforce that i can just move the found object to a hidden room and the variable tally and machine parts group list still would keep track of everything concerning the machine.

Suggestions and feedback welcome.

Download the taf file from here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?in7p5vt6ny7b0dn

[saabie]

Choosing the floor twice in a row isn't woking because the event that executes the tasks that move the player between floors has not completed and entered the wait state when you try to run it again.
I'm not sure why you are using events at all? You should just be able to execute the tasks in the event from inside the main task.

[DazaKiwi]

Choosing the floor twice in a row isn't woking because the event that executes the tasks that move the player between floors has not completed and entered the wait state when you try to run it again.
I'm not sure why you are using events at all? You should just be able to execute the tasks in the event from inside the main task.

All fixed now saabie. I used the event method because it as also for the random floor option. So now i switched the main floor transitions to have their own general tasks and using the event for the random floor option. If you have a better suggestion for random floor let me know, as it suffers from the same problem as i mentioned before.

I have updated the link again http://www.mediafire.com/?in7p5vt6ny7b0dn.

[DazaKiwi]

I'm the one who started the project and have the ground floor mostly done. The elevator system is in working order. Was waiting for people to submit their floor. I did originally want to keep it to a room limit so that people are more likely to finish their floor than attempt to create something big. But it seemed some people wanted there to be no limits.

Keeping strict limits is good. Large games are very vulnerable to combinatorial explosion. Decide exactly how you'll deal with the possibility of using one object on another floor.

Question: Does your code handle these cases correctly?

1) Drop an object in the elevator. Go to another floor. Look. Is the object still there?
2) Move the elevator to another floor. Does the automap change appropriately?

It's pretty straightforward to get either one correct; I'm not sure if you could get both correct at the same time.

1. Yes if you drop something in the elevator and move to a different floor in it, the object will remain in the elevator. (You can test it out by picking up the writing pad on the reception desk which has written on it the main objective made known to the player.)

2. Yes the auto map changes since the different elevator levels are locations themselves.

[saabie]

For the random button, why don't you just move the player character to the location group "Elevator stops and locations".
This will automatically move you to a random location in that group.
You can remove the current floor from the group first (and if you don't want the player to visit a completed floor again then you can leave it out the group permanently).
If you want them to be able to go back to a floor (ie. because they don't have the part from that floor yet) then just store the players current location in a property before you move them, then add it back into the group afterwards.

[DazaKiwi]

For the random button, why don't you just move the player character to the location group "Elevator stops and locations".
This will automatically move you to a random location in that group.
You can remove the current floor from the group first (and if you don't want the player to visit a completed floor again then you can leave it out the group permanently).
If you want them to be able to go back to a floor (ie. because they don't have the part from that floor yet) then just store the players current location in a property before you move them, then add it back into the group afterwards.

Thanks for the idea, makes this random floor option easier to run.

It works as well but getting the current floor variable updated i am still having to use the event to run through the tasks to check where the player is so the variable can be updated on the status bar. But for some reason those tasks are failing when it checks which location the player is at for some reason, so it cannot update.

So i have removed the floor variable from the status bar altogether since i really don't need it. Instead i will just use %Player%.Location.Name in the output for the random task. Works nicely now.

As for the status bar perhaps when a player enters a world the name of that world should be displayed on the status bar? so when they resume their game at a later time they know which one are in or floor.

See updated version, download link http://www.mediafire.com/?in7p5vt6ny7b0dn

[saabie]

getting the current floor variable updated i am still having to use the event to run through the tasks to check where the player is so the variable can be updated on the status bar.

You could use location properties to do this.
Just create two properties of locations, an integer one to hold the floor number and a text property for the name of the floor/world.
Only select these for the elevator locations, setting them to the floor number and the name of that floor.

In the actions, immediately after you move the player to the new floor, you can set the variable CurrentFloor to %player%.Location.FloorKey (where "FloorKey" is the key of the integer property) and set the current floor name to %player%.Location.FloorNameKey (where FloorNameKey is the key of the text property).