I’ve spent nearly all day working on YAIAM, and I’ve made leaps and bounds of progress. So I figure, I’m gonna make another post, just so I don’t forget to do it.

I had a bit of an issue with Bloodbombs, they wouldn’t always go off and would sometimes just chase you and hug you. You can’t kill them, and they can’t hurt you without exploding, so they would just sorta… hug you. Ferociously. Anyways, I got that all figured out. Thanks, ForEach loops!

Added a ton of sounds to the game! I think I’m going to need to replace some, because they aren’t entirely quality, but the ones that ARE quality are sounding pretty nice. My favorite so far is DEFINITELY the Bloodbomb explosion sound effect, as it should be because it took forever to get perfect.

Added powerups! Specifically health pickups and temporary invincibility. I was going to add the Double Damage powerup, but there really isn’t an enemy in the first maze that warrants it. They’re all pretty easy, there’s just a lot of them. So, the Double Damage powerup will show up in a later maze.

And finally, my biggest achievement: The map system is entirely functional! It took a lot of screwing around with arrays, and even MORE copy-pasting one line of code and slightly changing it 80 times. That definitely took more time than anything else. But it was all worth it, because it works now! Maybe it isn’t efficient, but it WORKS now, and at 4:30AM, that’s all I can truly ask for. I even added a legend!

If you want some slightly more developer-y stuff, read on: I had a lot of trouble getting the initial setup to work (which was, every time you change rooms, mark the room you just entered as visited by putting the number one on the array space dedicated to that room, then having the map read which rooms have ones and revealing those rooms), but after messing around with loads of odds and ends, I discovered that the whole time I had had the Array set on text mode instead of numbers mode, and so it wasn’t having it when I put the number one into a spot. Switched to numbers mode, and everything worked like a charm. I don’t have much experience with arrays, can you tell?

Currently left on the agenda:

1. Boss

2. Adding the ability for the game to know if you’ve picked up a certain bonus maze pickup or not

3. The reapers…

Also, if you don’t know already, you can find the people of Top Bunk Studios at my twitter, here, and Jerome’s twitter, here, and you can find our blog at http://www.topbunkstudios.blogspot.com !

Until next time!

-Ethan Garen, Top Bunk Studios