Wednesday, November 19, 2008

OOPSIEDOODLE!

Listening to: Open Future, by CarboHydroM

Must've left the wrong box at the factory!

Well, actually, it seems that the IDE I use doesn't agree with my computer, for some inexplicable reason. Any programs made with it will have a seemingly random chance of freezing everything and then turning my screen black after a while. However, processes are not stopped. I can use SKYPE while this is going on, and can continue to do so indefinitely, even after the screen turns black and the computer unresponsive. But I have to shut down the computer using the button, if I want to, you know... do something.
Unfortunately, this occurred while I had just gotten something to work, and hadn't saved. So I lost the part that made it work. Luckily I remembered how to do it and so I rewrote it and now it works again! But boy that was annoying and a little time-consuming. The results may interest you, though:

See the little white square outline next to the light-orange 7s near the bottom-right? Well, this is a tile-matching game where you can rotate any square portion of the board by 90 degrees, and match tiles that way. That little square is the cursor which you use to do the rotating.
The top-left numbers are debug info which the end user would probably not see. You can record any combination of moves, and then do them again automatically, as much as you like. This game started as a make-this-shape-from-these-tiles game (and it will have that feature again, later). That "macro recording" feature was more useful in that version.
Also, I learned earlier in development that no matter how complex a macro you record, if you play it back enough times you will ALWAYS reach the way the board looked when you started. Crazy. Also maybe I will make a video later in case you don't have a clue what I'm saying.

Here's what the old version looked like:
Yes, the pieces look fancier. But eye-candy makes it harder to debug (in this case) and that's why the upper screenshot doesn't look as fancy. But maybe this picture gives you a better idea of how the rotating system works. Also this version didn't count the number of adjacent pieces (because it was a different game, primarily) and that's part of why there are no numbers on the tiles.

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