Prioritizing Projects: Behavior vs. Aesthetics
As I’ve moved onto working on some projects in Creatures 1, I started down a different path. I got sidetracked with the C1 food items, which have some serious issues. The updated C1 carrot seems to be a major hit among players! In my own experiments, Norns who eat these carrots are measurably better at eating. A quick note that there will be a minor fix released shortly, although the current version should still work perfectly! After fixing up the carrots, I started looking at the other food items… Like the lemons. These may not be as awful as the carrots, yet they possess some serious flaws of their own!
Floating pixels and discolored sprites on Norns do bother me, but are they all that important? I know that this is a big project that has been talked about for ages. However, would you rather have working food items first? The other benefit to these types of fixes is that they have a much shorter development cycle. CAOS does complicate them, but it’s not like I have to work on hundreds of images to get somewhere! I feel like a few fixes to the food, herbs, and weeds in Creatures 1 should make a world of difference in the way Norns and Grendels behave. Then the time should be right for fixing up the aesthetics!
I feel like functional changes should take priority. Better for something ugly to work than something beautiful to fail.
That sums it up perfectly! There are a couple of really odd mixups with some Norn sprites, but they can still function. The food items all look nice, yet have so many issues that can confuse Norns and Grendels. Sounds like a fair assessment for me to work on those first!
I wonder if fixing the lemon might also fix the Flying Lemon?
You should work on what gives you joy, but if I had to choose, I’d say the food items.
I’m actually kind of interested to see if the flying lemons are actually coded in! I’m definitely leaning towards the food items. Those are fun for me because I’m learning CAOS along the way, and I can’t wait to make things better for C1 Norns and Grendels! Some might have to deal with odd sprites for awhile longer, but at least eating will be a lot more intuitive.
I’ll certainly making some remarks about any coding that could cause the flying lemons! If it’s not in there, I wonder what might send them floating away? Just one of those lovely mysteries that adds to Creatures 1!
Floating lemons tend only to occur when a lemon is eaten by a norn travelling on the mover below; when the lemon regrows on the trellis, it carries on moving. I believe creatures can generally only see items within the current room, but this seems not to apply to creatures on movers; I seem to remember that while on a mover, they can access items anywhere. (Alternatively there may be overlap between the “garden” room and “lower corridor” room.) Thinking about it, if the lemon is not deleted and re-created after eating, but moved back to its original position (as the eaten carrots were) then that might allow attributes to carry over, including movement.
I’ve noticed that, too, regarding the ability to see everything when a Norn or Grendel is on a mover. The same is actually true with an original carrot seedling: I’ve had Norns on the desert island drop a baby carrot, and watch it travel all the way back to the garden. Good eyesight! The updated version fixed this issue.
I think you’re right about the lemons just being moved around, rather than deleted and recreated. An update to the lemons might remove the flying lemons… Yet I hope the new benefits will far outweigh that loss! Thanks for that excellent explanation!