Category: dungeon

Completing a refactoring makes a feature easier. Unless I'm wrong, but I'm not.

Apparently not Done-geon. Those missing tests for that trivial code bug me. There's something to learn in here. LATER: A very nice outcome!

Unable to do nothing, I made a 'simple' change to the Dungeon program. It works ... and I don't like it. Later: Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't work out.

Countdown to ... what, exactly? Let's check the yellow sticky notes. Time for a break from Dungeon?

Let's clean up those free-hanging functions just for fun. It'll make things just a bit better.

I think that today I might get all the Decor specified for all the dungeon layers that are supported. That's an estimate, and I could be wrong. (Spoiler:not wrong, and some nifty refactoring.)

Let's work again, on controlling the dungeon layout. My objective this morning is to define at least one level's Decor. I'm extending the story based on feedback.

No promises, just a look at Tile and its friends.

This one's gonna be rambling. A design idea keeps coming back to me. I feel that the program would be much better, if ...

Up-front Design? In Agile? Sure, let's do some. I call it 'thinking'.

More on improving control over Dungeon creation. And a RAT. And a bear bite, kind of.

OK, with discussion of ease out of the way, let's get some ease up in this Decor.

I start out to think about that clever trick and my plans for Decor. Then I change direction based on what I've learned. This has important implications for estimation, COSMIC or otherwise.

Let's work on the Spike aimed at creating DungeonObjects. Uh oh: Something too clever has been done here!

Still working on better control over creation of Dungeon Objects. I think I'll do a Decor factory method this morning. I can't think how to test it. The Internet helps me.

Estimation and a tiny bit of code. ScopeMaster took up my challenge.

Let's start on the Dungeon Object allocation story. I think we'll start in the middle, or near the bottom. So far, no takers from the pro-estimation folx. UPDATE: Hammond has done CFP for the story! Details tomorrow.

I don't like estimates in this world. Perhaps you do. If so, and you're so inclined, pick up this challenge. I'll tell you everything I know to help you.

Some thoughts on something GeePaw said. And I think we'd better complete the fixing of the publish situation. What is `the best we know how`?

Friday the 13th. That bodes well, always my lucky day. Besides, it was yesterday where I interfered with the canine. (Oh No! He did it again!)

Time to pick something to do. This always surprises me. Late update: THIS IS NOT GOOD. WE HAVE A MAJOR SHIPPED DEFECT!

Today I'm going to try to learn something. I wonder if I'll learn what I set out to learn, or something else.

Loose ends. Finding little things to do. Generalizing from few cases and many years. Delenda Chicago est.

A bit of thinking and doing with the `publish` feature. Small changes, much thinking.

'Nothing at all', the game says. What's up with that? And various musings.

Colin Chapman of Lotus said that to add speed, you must 'add lightness'. Can we add some simplicity up in this dungeon?

Let's apply some of the ideas from D3 in the curreent Dungeon program. We'll see whether they're a step toward a better design.

I'm wondering whether I need the complex publishing approach that I'm using in the Queue. Only one way to find out: reasoning fails me. (As always, I wind up somewhere else.)

More work on the new event-driven scheme. I hope to get to an interesting problem today.

What have I learned in this Dungeon Crawl? What would I do differently? I've decided to find out.

Yesterday, testing something required my code to be a bit less smooth than I'd have liked. Today I have an idea that I think is going to be quite fine. It's not even too clever.

We need to talk. We need to code, as well. And we need to test. A nice result, a better commitment.

Let's check our stories along the way to better control over the trash, er, treasures in the Dungeon.

Let's do some messages.

What do we do when we find two classes that are rather similar? We make them more similar, of course! (That''s not what happens.)

More work on improving the ability to place Dungeon Objects. Today I want to look at Decor and Loot. What will really happen? I never know until I get into the code.

Another run at the current Big Story. Need to find something that will lead me away from confusion rather than into it. Might have to think. Might even have to draw a picture.

More on providing control over placing things in the Dungeon. I'm thinking about changing my mind, but I might change my mind about that. (Spoiler:Bear bites man.)

We're still prepping for the story about better control over what goes into the Dungeon. Some things remain that I'd like to clear up. And a small story!

The FNCS has spoken regarding the defect. I do some smoothing. Multi-signature method? Possibly. I ain't bovvered.

I have shipped a defect, and a serious one. What happened? How could I have avoided it?

Planning Meeting. I'm not sure what to do today, but have some ideas.

Pushing the object further down. What does he mean by that?

Let's look at some of the 'story' cards I've saved up and see what we might work on.

Just a bit more tidying, as Kent Beck puts it. Soon, new features or something. But today is not that day.

My plan for the day is to find a place to try out my clever idea, so that we can look at it in place and decide whether to allow it. Will it stay in?

A bit of Internet dispute about cleverness. When is code too clever to live? I have an example in mind.

A couple of working diagrams. Here's why I think rough diagrams are quite often good enough.

Drug-free, our intrepid author looks upon his works. Does he despair? (Spoiler, No, Mikey likes it!)

Today: Recovering from a couple of days on Nyquil. Is my brain operating?? We'll see.

Gonna refactor you a little bit more ...

I think we'll look at some of the methods that analyze the dungeon as part of building. I'm hoping for a good idea to pop up. TL;DR: Ron is out of kilter, copes, then stops before doing damage..

Back to tiny steps, if I possibly can. And you know what? I bet I can.

My side quest to move dungeon building out of Dungeon class continues. What monster shall I slay today? Let's find out. (Stress level too high. A clue.)

Continuing separation of building from running. Today, narrowing the scope of Tile. An idea for a better way of doing it. A good idea? I'm not sure.

Last time I had part of an idea. Today I have a larger fraction of the idea. Let's see if we can get all the way.

What are you trying to prove, Ron?

Pecking away to reshape things more to our liking. Small steps in roughly the right direction, that's the ticket.

Are we missing some layers in the Dungeon? The classes, not the places.

Reducing the span of concern for Tiles. Seem like a good idea. Will it be too difficult? Let's find out. (Spoiler: Almost, but not too difficult.)

Some tiny improvements ... or are they?

There's probably a bit more to do on isolating dungeon building from dungeon running, but the low-hanging tasty fruit has mostly been harvested. As for larger design improvements, I am at a loss. That may be a good thing.

Plotter or Pantser? Which am I? Which are you?

Let's look at what we've done and see what might be next on our quest to separate building from running the Dungeon.

Let's do some more opportunistic refactoring toward DungeonBuilder. And I have a few thoughts to think about the direction I've taken.

More gentle refactoring in the general direction of DungeonBuilder. No Monty Python reference intended.

Still trying to drift in a good direction. So far we've just barely improved, if at all.

Trying again. Last time was a disaster. I'll sum up.

Oh Hell, let's just do something in roughly the right direction.

Time to set a tentative direction and move that way. I am daunted before even starting. No code today.

I found myself wondering what I'd do with this program if I started over. I shouldn't do that. But what I could do ...

Today I plan to just look for some small opportunities to improve the code. I will be particularly looking for ways to use my fp primitives, and to improve them to make them more useful.

I'm disappointed, at least so far, that my 'functional programming' capability seems not to be helpful in the Dung[eon] program. But maybe there's still hope.

One small improvement. Then I want to consider the bigger picture: if I were starting over, how would I do this program differently?

Late start today. Not sure what to do. Try the hex map again, I guess. Feeling meh. But it works!

Let's continue to prepare the Dungeon class to work on hexes as well as square tiles. I expect no real trouble. I look forward to learning why my expectations will not be met.

I have in mind a fun small win on the path to hexes: a multiple dispatch. If nothing else, you may be surprised at what I think is fun. (And I do get in the weeds a bit along the way.)

I said I wasn't going to write an article today. Was I wrong? I want to just look around. And some thoughts on self improvement.

I found the defect, and I think I can fix it. Let's find out. Then I rationalizeXXX explain something.

I'm thinking of adding a shark to the game that you can only escape by jumping over it. Today, however, a bit more on Maps.

Already wrote one article today. Not sure about this one. Probably I'll find an acorn somewhere.

Well, I guess there's nothing for it but to forge ahead getting a hex map to draw. I rather regret committing to this idea.

Can I make a hex map in the game yet, or do I need more than a couple of changes? I don't know. Let's try to find out. Spoiler: Not great, not horrible.

Today my cunning plan is to try to make the Map the primary container of Tiles, and the tiles collection secondary.

My commitment for the day is to be using the new Map objects for something in the actual game. I think I see at least a couple of ways to go. Spoiler: It's in!

Today I'm going to start plugging the new Map classes into the actual Dung program. I expect a little chaos. For large values of 'little'.

Let's keep on drilling. Real soon now, we'll have hexes in the game.

Another idea? A possibly better idea? We don't pay you to think, we pay you to do.

I promise, I'm nearly ready to plug in the new hex coordinates. There's just one more thing that I want to do ...

In Agile, there's no design. Everyone knows that. So why is there so much design in Agile, and how can they go so fast?

No, not really. Cartesian coordinates, perhaps. Yesterday I was optimistic at session end. How will I feel today? Let's find out.

Frequent readers know that I try to keep my code well-organized and well-designed. No one is perfect. Well, I'm not. Today we face mistakes.

Today I'll do the first experiment, or a few of them, putting hexagonal tiles into the Dung program. I expect this to get really messy, but with luck, we learn a lot.

Today I want to step back and write about screen transformations, translate and rotate. They are fairly natural to me, but some folks are not so familiar with these powerful tools.

In a fit of madness, I decided to try to convert the square-tiled Dung game to use hex tiles. Let's see how well my theory of programming holds up. Just inspection and planning today.

I have to face facts: I simply enjoy writing code and making it better.

Today we'll talk about why no one should do what I've been doing the past few days, and intend to do for a few more.

Bill Wake found an interesting site about hexes (not the magical kind) and now I'm not sure what I want to do.

Let's push this Hex spike a bit further, see what we can learn. Come on, it'll be fun. You can hold my beer. Well, chai.

An idea from the Zoom Ensemble last night has caught my attention. Let's explore it.

I mentioned that the dungeon program is boring me on Twitter and asked for ideas. Andreas asked about software design. Practice, folks, practice!

Are we ready to lock classes? Probably not yet.

I'm bored with this program. What shall we do about this?

That Temporal Coupling bothers me. What are some ways to resolve it?

I believe that I have fallen into my own trap, Could this be the end of our intrepid hero? Click on in and see.

Just button highlighting, I guess, unless we see something interesting. Ooo, joy! Some tests!

No idea what I'm going to do this morning. Or too many ideas. Let's find out.

One nice thing. One at a time. One nice thing at a time is enough.

Let's try our new FSM and query logic in the Horn Girl NPC. Watch Jefries add mass duplication and then reduce it!

Those words came up in our Zoom Ensemble last night, and they're part of my theme this morning.

Fantastic day! Completely augured in. Recovered. Brilliant.

OK, I like the Finite State Machine, but I don't like it enough. What can we do to make it better?

Let's get some tests directly on the Finite State Machine. Maybe give it a little shot of YAGNI.

Let's do an experiment with a Finite State Machine, to get a sense of whether we want one.

Extremely Artificial Intelligence: Let's see if we can give our NPC some rudimentary smarts.

A Quest! Let's have a Quest.

Let's try to finish moving InventoryItem to publish-subscribe, and maybe centralize Item creation. And look for Watch This near the end.

Are you wondering why i don't start a new program? There are reasons. Also: let's take the Bus.

Maybe I'll fiddle some more with InventoryItem, Loot, and Decor. Depends what time breakfast is.

Some consolidation and refactoring is what I have in mind. What will I really do? At this moment, I have little or no idea.

I just want to program a bit after all the screed-writing. No promises on what I'll do or whether it'll be any good at all.

I'm at a loss to find anything interesting to do. But I bet I can find some code that could be improved. Thinking about an idea from Bruce Onder leads in an interesting direction.

Well, with that musing out of the way, what shall we program today?

Today I have in mind an improvement to Announcer, because I think it'll be nice and will give us something to wonder about.

In which our intrepid author muses at length and decides to keep on keeping on. And to do some random stuff, no doubt.

Some odds and ends, a nice feature, and a bit of trouble. And the most distracting thing ever!

Let's pretend we care about that inefficiency in drawingOrder. Also a momentary loss of momentum.

I don't usually predict an outcome but today I think something good is going to happen. Let's find out.

Today, more refactoring to remove connections between dungeon objects and their tiles. And, as always, some thinking.

Two starting ideas: Quest, and removing duplication in the dungeon objects. These are not unrelated. And: as so often happens, we go in a surprising direction.

Maybe some wind for my sails. A need for better notes. An idea from Bryan's experiment with Unity. A thought about apps without programming. Everything is hopeless. Not necessarily in that order.

I am really tired of this game. I think I understand why. Is there anything I can do about it?

Doors, or I'll know the reason why! Just in: Ron bites bear!

Let's advance the game, and try to advance our 'making' tech at the same time. This just in: Bear bites Ron.

Let's set some direction. I'm concerned that I'm off track on what is of value to work on. Possibly it's residual fear from decades ago.

I think we'll do a bit more on our 'Making App', the part of our code that helps us make the 'Shipping App', the product we ship. (We decide to bless this effort.)

One more challenge in the class/method finder, then maybe we'll think about what we actually need in our Making App.

I've had an idea about a change--perhaps an improvement--to the class/method reporter. As I write this, even I don't know what happens next.

More work on our nascent Making App. Dave1707 has some interesting tricks in his programs. And we have a fine small example of refactoring 'legacy' code.

Dave1707 from the Codea forum provided an interesting program. I would like to bring it under control.

Turns out we do a number of small but nice, and somewhat interesting, things. Not much stumbling, sorry. I know you love to see me mess up.

Let's press on a bit with our learning level. And, I have an idea that may be a bit difficult to implement. Let's hope so.

'With a little help from my friends', my tests are now fast. All of us are greater than any of us. This is important.

A bit more on the Learning Level, I think, but I'd really like to make some progress on untangling some mistakes, er, learning opportunities in the code.

Let's put some announcements in the rooms of the learning level. That should be easy, and it should give us a sense of how designers might want to work.

I think today I'll work on room announcements. I have a partial idea.

I have yet another idea about how to handle switching between developer and player modes. This might be what Bruce Onder was talking about.

Variations on an Idea from the Wild Blue Onder. No success.

I guess we'll work on the Learning Level, but honestly I'm getting a bit tired of this project. Must think about that.

A random idea for an interesting dungeon layout may give me some more insight into the tools needed for designed dungeons.

Still making a place for our new designed dungeon capability to stand. What I'm about to do may surprise you, and raise questions.

Let's take another swing at moving dungeon creation out of GameRunner. We'll focus on creating our learning level's layout.

Untangling the knots. Let's see if we can clean up the coupling between GameRunner, tile, and their friends.

Working toward the Learning Level. Is it time to start on our 'Making App'? We do start. Then we revert.

Planning the Learning Level. We need to do a bit better than our usual small feature ideas here. Get some shape up in this b- baby.

The business people--me, with my business hat on--want to be able to better define levels in the game. The tech people--my other hat--get to figure out how to do this.

We need puzzles. How do we address a big problem like 'puzzles'? Same way you eat an elephant.

After a brief digression to build polyominoes, we are back in the dungeon. I'm beginning to wonder why. And: Why XP is The Way.

I shipped a defect yesterday. And there was a test for it! What happened?

More about the crawl. But let's see if we can get the Mimic animated the way we'd like. Unfortunately, these two ideas are not unrelated.

Spikes. My Darling Crawl. And a simple change generates many reverts.

Will this thing never end? More on the Mimic. User(!) concerns. Pluggable behavior.

I'm dismissing my desire to convert to mesh for animation. Let's get that Mimic hiding.

Dave1707 wrote a nice demo showing how to get project information in Codea. Let's think about what it tells us. No code, just think

More with the Animator. Maybe we can get it plugged in today. That would be nice.

Improving the Animation idea. Moar cohesion, less coupling. At least that's the plan.

We're animating our Mimic. Naturally, that leads us to thoughts of coupling, cohesion, and Beck's Four Rules. Naturally.

A bit of a tricky issue today. We want our Mimic to have different animation sequences, depending on what's going on. No other Entity does this at present.

I 'created' new art for an open chest. Then let's see if we can make the Mimic behave differently depending on its mood.

Convert Chests to look like Mimics. Look for other interesting things to do. Short morning today. But some progress.

Let's let the Mimic be oversize. Oh, that works nicely!

There's this thing called a Mimic ...

Today, for fun, I decided to give Decor better query messages. And it was fun.

More work on untangling the objects. Perhaps we'll find some interesting refactoring. Maybe a feature?

We'll start with the garbage collection issue and move on from there. We should be able to remove all Floater's references to GameRunner--if nothing else goes wrong.

Let's drive the bus a bit further. And, I've seen a suggestion for a slightly different angle. We should consider that. Ohhh and a garbage problem!

Let's catch a bus and see what happens. Maybe it will take us to the WayDown.

Once more, into the breach ... is it good luck when Friday the 13th falls on a Tuesday? I may need some good luck.

First, some planning. Then we consider why it's hard to test this thing. What will we decide? I don't know yet. P.S. Turns out to be one of THOSE days.

Deleting tests, not writing tests. A moral issue? Hardly. Also an interesting discovery about InventoryItems.

Some cleaning, I expect. And a user(!) has discovered a defect!

I guess we're going to have to plan a bit today. Maybe a bit more fun with the new more intelligent Decor?

It's interesting how one idea leads to another. I'm sure I have too many ideas now, but some of them seem interesting. The dungeon objects come to life!

After getting my blood flowing with a bit of a rant, let's see if we can get a venomous creature up in this ... place.

I hesitate to say that we'll work on poison and antidotes, the way things have gone, but one of these days it could happen. Is today that day? Click to find out.

Musing on Technical Debt. A very interesting series of tiny commits leading to an important change: my invariant.

We have a defect to fix, and, I suspect, a lesson to re-learn. Then, maybe we'll look at poison and antidotes. And liddle lamzy divey.

I think today I'd like to get started on Poison and Antidotes, and on eliminating death from the dungeon. Is that what I'll do today? Maybe. One never knows, do one?

With a handle on pre-planned dungeon layouts, we need to decide what to do next. Have we squeezed all the juice out of this program yet? No real code today, just one little experiment.

Marketing makes an impossible demand. Can we make it possible? If not, does that mean incremental/iterative doesn't work? Is 'Agile' wrong???

Let's make icons in the Inventory do things. Pick something easy, it's Monday up in here.

A good idea from Bruce. Let's move toward it. I have no real idea how to start.

Ron, why do you write this stuff? And let's get that Pathfinder guy working better.

There's a defect! Also, I'd like to do something about creating a monster who leads you to the WayDown. And there's inventory. But first, the defect.

Let's do some work on inventory items and touch to use. That should be amusing in its fashion.

I'm starting to wonder if we have all the juice out of this program, but there sure is a lot that we could still do. Let's consider some options.

Second shot down. Slices looking good. What shall we do today?

Now that we can slice images, let's see what it takes to plug them in. I'm sure we'll need to adjust how things work.

Images, free stuff, ideas, random thoughts. It's Sunday, cut me a break!

Some planning, then something. Come find out with me. I have no plan for the morning.

I really want to make some progress on the creatures that hang around the WayDown. But first, I am going to write a Coda on CodeaUnit and my simple toolset.

I want to get a creature to lead us to the WayDown. And I feel the need to improve the campground. Also St. Gertude. And, as often happens, we don't go where I expect. Neat outcome, thoughl

Top o' the morning' to ya, and I think we'll be starting on a set-piece today. Unless I change my mind. Also, some ranting about Definition of Ready.

More pathfinding, that's the plan. Testing is likely to be harder than doing.

I think today I'll try some pathfinding. And, yes, I have a story asking for it.

It's Pi Day, Sunday, and I think we'll take a look at our new Strategy object with fresh eyes, if we have any.

What we need here is a Strategy. Well, not so much need. Want.

Thoughts on throwing things away. And let's move these monsters.

A bit more on Monster movement. I'm not certain the implementation is correct. After that, I'll think of something.

Thoughts on 'Tiny Habits', maybe a change to Monster behavior, maybe poison.

A time for healing. Gonna do it this time.

It's International Women's Day here at the dungeon, so let's see whether we can give the Princess the ability to heal.

I noticed something significant last night. Something I don't recall ever really thinking about before. Of course, in 8 decades you forget a lot ...

Today we'll follow up a good idea from an idea source that is new to me. I expect that we'll have an interesting and desirable outcome. Interesting, at least.

Will this thing never end?? Let's take a small cut at inventory.

Implementation inheritance? Why not? A challenge to my betters.

Some small cleanup items. Then ... I don't know, I'll have to wait and see what I do.

Today, I'm going to create a new class to deal with Monsters. And I'll tell you why it's OK to do that. And it'll be in tiny increments!

Hide the WayDown. Make the spikes spikier. A new test, and a smarter DeferredTable improves some code.

We have to set a trap in a hallway. Let's make that more efficient to do. Also, we don't do it in the more efficient way after all. Also invariants. Also: Ron defines 'should'.

I have traps in mind, and smarter monsters. Is that what the day brings? One never knows, do one?

Monster levels should be easy. Then I wander off into code improvement.

Let's get items properly distributed. After that, some leveling, perhaps. I don't know. I'll have to wait and see what I do.

I feel the need to make Dung a bit more like a game, with levels and such. Let's start pushing in that direction.

A second cut at TDDing the music players. Simple isn't easy.

I decide to redo the music playing logic with TDD. Results are mixed.

Music? And then, idk, something else. Maybe refactoring? Poison?

Verbs. Then, who knows?

Today, girls just want to have fun, and so do I.

Combat and the Crawl have been kicking my tail. This does not please me, even a little bit. I'm sure the difficulty is at least partly due to a poor description of the problem, leading to poor solutions. Today I win.

Let's clean some code. Let's also try to make combat more interesting. Let's also try to stay out of trouble. Is that so much to ask? (As usual, the plan changes before long. Also, trouble.)

Happy Valentine's Day. In other news, I have an idea.

A new day dawns. New chai. Consolation from the Zoom Ensemble. Technical debt. And another run at combat.

Wow, he's really dragging this one out, isn't he? Let's do some more Combat, round this out a bit. Later: Things go very wrong. This is a debacle.

Let's work a bit further on combat. I'll start with something easy, but there are some possibly tricky roads ahead. (Plus, Ron comes out against death.)

Let's see how far we can push this 'little language' we're making for combat. I should try something tricky next, to be sure the idea can bear weight.

More on Combat. I have now been advised by my betters on how, possibly, to test this thing. I may have an angle.

Let's start on our new combat logic. But first, those failing tests ...

Now for some magic. How can we get screen effects synchronized with the information crawl? You won't believe this cunning plan!

Everyone thinks they know how I should do combat. There are issues that daunt me. I'm sure there's a pony in here somewhere.

Last night I found a rather embarrassing defect. Fortunately, there are probably lessons to be learned.

More on turn-based. Let's try converting Encounter to a combat round, or writing a new combat round. Or something else.

Input from Bruce. And our turn-based implementation isn't quite good enough yet. I'm not sure what to do about that.

In my roles as Product Owner and Chief Game Designer, I have thrown me in my role as Programmer a curve: We want me to make the system turn-based.

Let's do some more user input. And some planning, not necessarily in any particular order.

You know that thing where they ask you for something no one ever thought they'd ask for? They just asked for it.

Let's talk about some design aspects, starting with the new DeferredTable. Then we'll follow our nose. But there's kind of a paradox.

Let's try a more conventional approach to our deferred collection. First, some words on why it's a good idea.

Let's reach deep into the bag of tricks, and see whether we like what we find there.

Let's use the new Loot object for Health and Keys. That should test the concept and drive out some nice clean generality. (N.B. Plan changes one page in.) Worse yet: hours of confusion!

Loot today. And a possibly interesting problem.

Just some little things. There may be nothing interesting to see here. One never knows, though, do one?

A tricky graphics issue. And about those walls. Is there a problem?

Let's try the wall data. This calls for a slightly different scheme, I think.

An interesting problem. Is there a clean solution, or do I need a bigger hammer?

Random floor tiles, why not?

New Tiles? Torches? Redecorating the Dungeon.

Why do I almost always do something other than I planned to do yesterday? It's a mystery.

Some display work. Then let's start on treasures. I have a cunning plan ...

Damage display, and what about showing attacks? I have a few weak ideas ... WARNING: Big movie files.

Mostly some thinking and planning about behavior. Maybe some code. Now: with movies!

Just a little bit more, for an afternoon's relaxation.

Let's finish up and clean the coroutine message floater, and purge the unused tabs. Then make all the tests run. Then, stick our head up and look around.

More on Encounter coroutine version. Rationalizing not doing much more TDD. Will he be sorry?

I'll save you some reading and trash the first version of this article. I will sum up. Then I'm going to try a coroutine. Hold my chai.

More work on Encounter. I still want the fighters to separate after a round.

Today, more work on combat encounters. I have in mind separating the fighters.

Fortunately, I have programming to distract me. But there's too much going on in there, too. Also: a rather large mistake.

Let's display Encounter results before we enhance it further. This may become tricky, but let's hope not.

More thinking and doing on combat encounters. Can we avoid turn-based?

I'm sorry--I have to do some planning. Then maybe some code.

Tweak attributes. Make some tentative decisions on combat.

Let's try again today to improve the character sheets. I have a new idea. That rarely goes well.

Character sheet for the player today, then a daunting bug, er, defect.

Probably my last article of 2020. Some thoughts on these articles, and the design of OO programs. Perhaps a character sheet for the Player.

I think we need to work on treasures today.

More work on Character Sheets, and a feature idea from Twitter follower WR. Nothing interesting happens.

Levels, treasures, or character sheets, that is the question. The answer is only a bit interesting. One good bit tho.

Monsters. We need more monsters. Bigger, badder monsters.

While I wait to see whether Santa came, I want to enhance Monster movement a bit. This will require the TileArbiter table and code to change.

Not a political idea, but perhaps it should be. But I digress. Let's do on-screen controls.

Let's do some more with the TileArbiter, including plugging it in to actual game play.

If at first you don't succeed, try something different. Sorry, no pics or movies today. Just code.

Probably not THE answer but maybe some small ones.

Brute force FTW, a sound in the silence, and ... I don't know what else yet.

Lighting? Better lighting? In a DUNGEON??? Are you serious?

Let's create a mini-map.

Double dispatch! Chet will be so proud. Or jealous. And Keys!

It's time to put some game-playing features into this thing. That could lead anywhere, but I'm hoping today at least will be easy.

More refactoring: I want more habitable code to work in. Maybe one tiny feature.

Too many notes. Just refactoring today, with reasons why.

More pushing things to Tile. I'm required by law to publish this but I'm not required to like it.

Today I'm interested in learning something about how far to push the 'tile' design. Join me.

Maybe give the monsters a bit of volition. Maybe place them randomly. Maybe some screen controls. Who knows, I just write this stuff.

I believe that the dungeon should have some monsters in it. Let's take a cut at that. Also, I provide an overview of how it works.

I think we should refocus the design a bit, for improved graphics. This promises to confuse me.

Let's limit the Princess's view of the dungeon. I know one way to do that. Let's think of at least one more.

Two nice little things. A short report. Thanks to GeePaw for one of them. A weird explanation for the other.

I'm fairly satisfied with room and hallway generation. It's time to work on what the screen looks like in play.

Let's get some rooms up in this ditch.

It helps if your tests actually check something. Sounds like a good idea, let's try it.

Current plan is to move forward from the little tiled-space experiment, evolving it into a playable game. If I'm right, we should see faster progress. It could happen.

A New Hope, from a New Direction. Yes, that's right, I'm thinking about starting over. Could this be a good idea?

Technical debt, or messy code? Why not both?

Another run at moving into the new hallway rooms and back out again. Fortunately, as I mention at the end, my purpose isn't to show you how smart I am.

Session was a total loss. Do not read: Still working on letting the Princess get out of room one. After creating doorway-hallways as rooms, we're getting close.

So many things to be thankful for here on Thanksgiving. One small one, I hope, is the Rectangle. Then, a wild Andrew appears!

I guess I should work on putting a player in the room and moving her about.

More tiling, trying to make all the floors align.

A new, possibly better idea about room tiling. That may be enough for the day. We'll see.

More like a game, step by step. There's arithmetic involved. I hate that.

There's a bit of tidying up I'd like to do, but I think we have to start making this act more like a game.

The Zoom Ensemble met last night. Our 'work' gave me some ideas. Plus we have an issue to resolve.

My plan, the day notwithstanding, is to get door markers drawn and, with luck, improve the design. But I'm not sure that's what I'd advise.

I wouldn't call them ideas, exactly, but I have some things I want to try.

Is there a difference between creating a better design and discovering one? I think so.

Some thoughts on consistency, clarity, abstraction, and efficiency. A LOVELY REFACTORING!

Feature or improved code? Maybe a feature spike? Who knows, not I.

My recursive pathfinder doesn't work as I thought it did. This cannot endure.

Today I think I need to deal with tiling, or decide that we can do without it.

I've become aware of some issues, as should be expected in a new venture. The question is what to do about them.

Most of what I did yesterday was dreck, detritus, dung. Not very good at all. I plan to revert today and figure out a new plan.

I can't face reality, so I'll keep working on this little imaginary world. At this moment, no idea quite what I'll work on.

Today, I think, separation of the primeval blob of rooms.

Some pals are Zoom-mobbing on a dungeon program that one of us was working on. I'm gonna try one in Codea.