Sounds great! I’ll work on the current tester feedback when I return to my computer on Saturday and send you something!
3 Likes
I sent in a new version!
I have a school trip I have to chaperone each fall, so I had to take a break from coding all week. Instead, I downloaded my github draft gblorb onto Frotz on my phone and played through this dimension and some others on the plane. I took a ton of notes, and now that I’m back I spent six or seven hours going through them all. The level is much improved now; I think adding clocks to all the time travel puzzles will help immensely.
A big problem that I found was that I had tons of ‘rifts’ or portals/wormholes with a color called ‘rift-style’. So I’d say stuff like ‘The description of the fifth-rift is "This is a [rift-style] rift…’. But in both descriptions and initial appearances this would end up showing the wrong rift-style, especially if there were other rifts in the room. So I had to switch it to ‘The description of the fifth-rift is "This is a [rift-style of the fifth-rift] rift…’.
I still find it funny that this was intended to be a one-room level with limited actions but has turned out to be one of the most complex levels in terms of rules, items, code length and even locations (since the tasks in the ‘one room’ open up rifts to other rooms). I think I underestimated just how difficult coding sequences of events can be. Three of the largest areas code-wise are repeatable puzzles involving a time loop.
After this I can go through a couple more tester reports I got during the trip and then settle down for the long winter of IFComp, while still chugging away at the final area (which is very sketchy).
6 Likes
I would play that game!
Testers found even more wild bugs in my current version. My Game Center’s around rifts of different types, which are portals or wormholes. They’re supposed to be bigger than the player and made of nothing (just a hole in spacetime). But the tester just put them all in their pocket and walked away 
I had forgotten to make some of them fixed in place. I fixed it in the newest version (44 I think) but it was pretty funny.
7 Likes
If you’re not trying TAKE ALL in every room, you’re falling down on your job as a tester (and missing out on comedy gold!)
7 Likes
Testers are the heartbeat of the world!
In further amusing news, I’ve been adapting the example Emma from Writing with Inform and made a party that accidentally invited literally every person in the game as well as the ones from the example, which then caused some runtime errors and also triggered some interactions. So I ended up with a party that included a dead man, Emma Woodhouse, two caimans that immediately get into a fight and get a third caiman running over to cheer them on, a vampire, king arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, and an immeasurable quantity of robots:
Summary
Divya makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
The brig guards makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
Antonio Yang makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The silverback makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The frog makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The stubby caiman wanders over.
The wolf with a blue collar makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The wolf with a green collar wanders over.
your
*** Run-time problem P55: The scene Time-paradox hasn't started, so you can't ask when it did.
future self makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
Lance wanders over.
Frankenstein makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
The Pharaoh wanders over.
Dracula makes excuses and drifts off to join a group next to the doorway.
The sound of whispering sand wanders over.
The wolfman makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
Charon wanders over.
The monkey robot makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The glamorous woman wanders over.
The bearded man makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The dead man wanders over.
Arthur makes excuses and drifts off to join a group next to the doorway.
Dafydd wanders over.
The boss makes excuses and drifts off to join a group next to the doorway.
The Dafydd wanders over.
The bikers makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
The distant gangs wanders over.
Dad makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
Gwen wanders over.
The nervous young man makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
The flashy woman wanders over.
The beast makes excuses and drifts off to join a group next to the doorway.
The little spiders wanders over.
Dan makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The bot wanders over.
The speedy bot makes excuses and drifts off to join a group next to the doorway.
The big bot wanders over.
The robber bot makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The dusty bot wanders over.
The lanky bot makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The lonesome bot wanders over.
The Athos bot makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The earth bot wanders over.
The air bot makes excuses and drifts off to join a group at the corner.
The fire bot wanders over.
Guinevere bot makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
Arawn Webster wanders over.
Mr Weston wanders over.
Mr Woodhouse makes excuses and drifts off to join a group by the window.
Mr Knightley wanders over.
Frank Churchill makes excuses and drifts off to join a group next to the doorway.
Emma Woodhouse wanders over.
You can hear the long caiman and the scarred caiman snarling and snapping at each other!
You see the stubby caiman running away to see what's happening, breaking the lure.
Edit: actually, this is only about 1/3 of all people, I think the example code only triggers for about 1/3 of all people each turn.
8 Likes
from doors to wormholes, THE CLASSIC IF debugging issue…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
4 Likes
Did the portals still work both ways when the PC dropped them in another room? Because that is major puzzle gold right there!
(I think I remember a topic about “takeable holes” as portable passages on the Forum some time ago, but I can’t seem to find it. Perhaps someone took it and misplaced it?)
5 Likes