Castle Paradox

Bagne · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 6:15 am Post subject: arrow keys and space bar

Is it normal that the player be unable to talk to NPCs (with space bar) when another key is held down? Say ... the arrow keys?

If not, could this be a side effect of my having on-keypress scripts?
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TMC · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:34 am Post subject:

That's normal. It's intentional, but I have no idea why. Thinking about it, this behaviour has probably annoyed me at some point.
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Bob the Hamster · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:49 am Post subject:

I had never noticed that before now.

If I recall correctly, I designed NPC activation to not work while walking because I wanted to avoid problems with the hero becoming misaligned with the tile. However, perhaps I incorrectly implemented it as blocking activation when trying to walk instead of blocking activation when actually walking.

Bagne · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 9:56 am Post subject:

Darn.

Yeah, it annoys me too.
I've watched my friends playtest my game and it actually significantly amplified the game's learning curve.
The player would try to solve one of my puzzles by throwing a switch, but the switch won't flip because they're holding down the arrow keys.
So ... they conclude that they're doing it wrong, or that they need to do something else first before throwing the switch. So, they do this whole song and dance only to find out later that they were right on the first try.

I might go so far as to wrap NPC use with a keypress script.
Oo, yeah... I really like that idea now...
This would give me the added benefit of allowing me to suspend NPC use.
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Bob the Hamster · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 10:05 am Post subject:

Now that I actually try this, I am surprised at how easy it is to reproduce.

Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to fix, but I am wondering if there are any backcompat pitfalls I might not be thinking of?

Bagne · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 3:28 pm Post subject:

Unless there's some sort of bizarre side effect of making the change, I (naively) can't imagine a backcompat issue. That is, I can't imagine that anyone has ever used this effect in their game.

Oh!
I just also noticed this:
Pressing the up/down keys override the sideways keys.

It might be worth considering giving priority to the key that has most recently been pressed. That way it's easier to zig-zag.
Is that even do-able?
Might this also create backcompat issues?

Maybe this isn't an issue until non-tile based movement is attempted.
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TMC · Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:38 am Post subject:

Bagne · Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:50 am Post subject:

No, I think he's saying that it would be better to disable NPC activation *while moving* but enable NPC activation *while trying to move but not moving*.

Look at me! I'm James! I know exactly what James is thinking ... because he's me!
Also, James is thinking about giving all of his worldly possessions to himself (me).
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TMC · Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 8:54 am Post subject: