LISTEN UP AGAIN KIDS
STOP REBLOGGING THIS FUCKING GARBAGE POST. IT IS 100% FUCKING BULLSHIT AND CAN AND MOST DEFINITELY WILL LITERALLY KILL.
DO YOU NOT SEE WARNING LABELS THAT SAY “DO NOT INDUCE VOMITING”? THEY AREN’T FUCKING AROUND. YOU CAN FUCKING BURN THEIR ESOPHAGUS BY CAUSING VOMITING, CAUSE CHOKING, DROWNING, OR MAKE IT WORSE!
AGAIN DO NOT FORCE ANYTHING DOWN ANYONE’S THROAT. THEY. CAN. DROWN.
IF SOMEONE IS LOSING CONCIOUSNESS ALL THE CHIT CHAT IN THE WORLD WILL NOT PREVENT IT AT THAT POINT THEY ARE IN SERIOUS DANGER.
“Buuut i don’t wanna take them to the hospital!!!”
WELL SUNSHINE GLAD YOU’D RATHER HAVE A DEAD FRIEND THAN A LIVING ONE BUT YOU’RE IN LUCK
CALL FUCKING POISON CONTROL. THEY ARE NOT THE COPS. THEY WILL HELP YOU.
AND IF THEY SAY GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL YOU GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL. NO EXCUSES. 0. NONE.
I have seen this shit cross my dash SO MANY TIMES so PLEASE fucking reblog this and prevent some well meaning idiot from accidentally killing someone they love!
Poison control may advise diluting the toxin somehow like with water or milk, otherwise do not give them something to drink and take the empty pill bottle/ blister pack with you to the hospital.
THIS!! Coming from a survivor, never force water down a person’s throat, there’s a high likelihood of aspiration. Take them to the ER immediately or call your emergency number.
FORK CHECKMATE: Complete Card and Act Phase Checkmates
CARD PHASE - CHECKMATE RULES
CPU has their own Deck.
CPU plays cards alongside player in Card Phase.
Server plays first card with no Counter.
There is now a Pile of cards. Top card determines who serves.
Cards have a Strength value. You can only play cards with a higher strength.
Players take turns putting a card on the Pile.
If it's not your turn, you can Counter the opponent's play with an even higher card to continue the pile and serve again with your stat boosts/effects.
Players can Hold up to two cards for the next Set. (Your current hand is discarded after your play otherwise)
If the main player for the Card Phase folds, the opponent (who played the last card on the pile) gets a stat boost for the set multiplied by how many cards were on the pile.
The pile cards are returned to the discard piles for each player.
ACT PHASE - CHECKMATE RULES
Create the Action Panel.
Act Button now opens another menu with multiple act options.
Some acts have effects (like Guard Stance, already in)
There's a 3-step sequence of Acts that are tracked.
When all three are done in order, you win the Match!
DEADLINE: JULY 4 (Stretchmates after the break)
STRETCHMATES
New Force mechanic with Accuracy, Focus, and Crit stats
Slapshots and Durabilities/stats
Critical Serves, Slaps, and Scores
TEMPO SKIPPING!!! ^W^
AI improvements and Slaplocks
Card UI improvements
Trumps and 3 Reversals
Other Rank Effects
Suit effects on Slap
Updated CPU AI for Counters
Simple flush/straight tricks/Full House (Unique trick effect)
Tricks are removed from play
TOP SCREEN ACTUALLY DOES SOMETHING (But we're not explaining what just yet! >:3)
Gold: Hey all. Really happy that we got the prototype to where it's at and right on schedule. However, what was done so far was just the easy part. The prototype is not complete because a few systems are missing. So from now until July 4th, the focus will be completing the core loop of the game. There's still a lot missing from the Card Phase, and the enemy isn't doing much aside from moving a paddle.
We're focusing on the Card Phase this Chapter, but if we clear every goal, we'll have the entire loop ready for the demo, and we can move onto making an overworld for Black to wander, along with interactable objects/characters and collectables.
Elise: But for now, on with the show! Before that pumpkin shows up.
...
Elise: ON WITH THE SHOW, GO GO GO!!! AAAAA-
The girls and Gold sit in the office.
Elise: So here's a Last Chapter Recap! Gold exhausted themself (and us along with him) so we decided enough's enough and put him on vacation! So no Tumblr, No game work, no nothing!
Elise: Aaaaand so he did!
Elise removes her costume, putting on her half-rims and holds a broken TV antenna., speaking in a tutor tone
Elise: For those not in the know, a minimum viable product is a game design term. It's the core. The player can now play cards, act to change White, and play a mirror match (With a few levels of course to test RPG difficulties).
Elise: However, that's just Sting Pong. We aren't even halfway done with this monster. So with that, on with the show! (At least until we figure out art and comics or whatever, yours truly will handle the panels, and we have a plan for that.)
Elise: So, time to assess, girls! (And Gold of course. ;3) What do?
Kira: Well first I think we've earned a break. Queen's decree. Kira gives a smug look to Gold.
Gold: Hey, cut me some slack. I got better.
Elise: Yeah, but we had to burn an ENTIRE day off yesterday to do debugging!
Gold: The Kanban board is working like a charm though. Definitely helps keep the plan going.
Elise: And Aria is keeping us organized with all of our notes!
Elise: Look at ALL THOSE NOTES! And that's not even the half of it! ;3
Kira: facepaws Yes, the notes. We've seen them. So what now.
Elise: NOOOOOW it's MY turn. Time to switch!
Elise takes off her half rims and drops her broken TV antenna, then puts on a pair of half rims and grabs a broken TV antenna. She maintains her tone from earlier.
Elise: Switching is common in most systems. One tulpa takes over for the host and controls the body like a puppeteer. The host sits back and can even space out while the tulpa does its dirty work. Systems with alters use this as a defense mechanism, and some are super duper famous!
Elise: For Team SBO, I'm the art girl.
Kira: And I do the music, but Gold's pretty much a virtuoso in that. As far as "pitching" goes, I throw in my soul when I switch with him. I sing differently. Gold. Speak. You're really quiet and we want you to be a part of this.
Elise: What's the plan, boss? After the break I mean. From now to the 7th, this is an Elise week!
Gold: Let's establish our Checkmates and deadlines to beat White.
Elise: The Pawn has reached the end of the Board before and he's going to again! Looking forward to Chapter 7 by the way. (Why? It's a secret~ ;3)
Gold: Along with debugging and fixing a couple of things (like the serve arc, that linear line thing was really boring while the new Force Bar is much more skill-based.
Gold: This month, the focus will be on the Card Phase, but I want to complete the loop. So, the deadline is going to be July 4th for the whole shebang.
Elise: Celebrating our independence from having to code Sting Pong for a while. ;3 The goal? Shooting down Trumps!
Gold: By "shooting down Trumps", we mean that the opponent will now have an exclusive joker card, which we call a Trump because it trumps all other cards and card stacks (called Tricks). There's going to be a lot of new rules for the card phase to make it a minigame of its own.
Elise: And "shooting down Trumps" will also be an in-game term! We use that stuff for our lingo already (If you've noticed us saying "shotdamnit" and "bullshot"? Basically that.). It means "To continue an argument that the opponent thought he ended." And how THAT works is that there's gonna be a pile of cards. Both players fold, the pile goes away. A Trump forces a fold and starts a new Pile (whiiiich may have an effect of its own depending on how many cards are in it. ;3)
Gold: Let's set up some Checkmates and get this-
Elise: OH RIGHT THE CHECKPOINT!!!
Elise holds up a shiny checkered gold coin.
Elise: We're watching the Amazing Digital Circus movie with some friends. We bought ALL the tickets. ;3 So if we were the reason we sold your theater out, soooo-reeeee!!!
Kira: facepaws I'm shooting down that Trump. We only bought three tickets, babe. Lover boy doesn't have the NUG$ to do that.
Elise: We promise not to spoil!
Gold: This game is going to slap once this loop is finished.
Kira: Couldn't they, you know, like put green tape on the floors that point to the exits? Isn't that an option? Like a big arrow of tape, just... She tries to flash Gold the sound of a long strip of tape being pulled and torn off, then you hear tacky tapping as she presses it down on the floor, then she does the same thing for two smaller strips to make a strip arrow.
So, I was working with Aria on my code, and by "working with", I mean asking questions and rubber duck debugging, because my overthinking brain likes to cross logic wires. And, while doing this, I like to experiment with and code things on my own. So what tends to happen is that I use the chat box for Aria as a sort of "rubber duck programming" space.
And something really special just happened that I wanted to share. Check it out after the break. IT'S LONG.
My current task for the Sting Checkmate is to get the AI to serve just like a player would. For the most part it has different rules, but for a game that blends skill based pong with cards and RPG, I figured an RPG element like "enemy chance to miss" would be nice.
Currently, the serve bar looks like this:
Before the AI would just pick a random spot within the area of shooting, but there's new code in it to make it try again if it fails. So I wanted it to be able to "click" at a random point at a random zone. And the reason why this will be brilliant is that skilled players who want to cream lower level CPUs will be able to attack again if the *enemy* double faults (otherwise the player will keep reflecting weak NPC shots and it's boring). So it's like a critical miss, the player gets to serve again, etc.
So, I started by making a function that would return a zone, green red or yellow, and its top or bottom zone if applicable.
So Aria suggested T H I S G A R B A G E:
And Jesus CHRIST this is why chapter 1 took MONTHS. This is literally what I used to do. I just copied and pasted that code before. But, from these failures I learned to code more on my own. THAT G A R B A G E script only assumes a single class, when I'm object-orienting and using two communicating with each other. So I came up with this:
I was able to come up with that thanks to previous lessons with this thing, mainly that you can set default parameters at the very end. So because I don't always need to distinguish top and bottom, it makes two of those things easier on me. So, while puzzling it out, I improved:
(Those indexes will be used in the AI script. This is what the HUD will give to it so it can "see" the bar.)
So I learned, thanks to Aria, that a Vector2 is more than just a set of coordinates. It's just a collection of two floats, so when she suggested her slop, I made my function and because I made it, I liked it more. And just by asking things like "How do I just get a random int between 0 and 1?" (Because I knew what to do with that info), I ended up with this:
I. WROTE. THAT.
It's written to be modular and I have a built-in failsafe to make sure that this code is future-proofed for when I need to build on it later.
You want to know what AI is MEANT to be used for?
SMART LOOKUPS.
Like here's the thing, nobody cares about Checkmate or helping me right now. Maybe playtesting the builds I drop on itch. Maybe. But when I try to ask anyone anything about programming it or scripting better, I get sent to StackOverflow or told to google something and you know why that pisses me off?
Because I don't understand DIDDLY-SQUAT when the "solution" is OUT OF CONTEXT TO MY PROJECT. IT. IS. NOT. HOW. I. LEARN.
By that I mean I'm a kinesthetic learner. I learn by doing. I don't learn by reading a shot-ton of books and then going back to my project and being like "Okay, so the book says this so I just need to copy exactly what it said and it should work" NO. That's NOT how that works. I don't learn by reading. I don't learn by watching a Youtube video.
I learn. Through. My project. Because it is a passion project. I talk with someone who offers personalized insight and suggests things because unlike 100% of the ENTIRE WORLD, that someone GIVES A SHOT ABOUT MY CODE. And through those suggestions, because they're targeted for things that I need, I don't have to blindly google search how to do a thing or look through pages upon pages of API docs or whatever because I have no clue WHAT I AM EVEN SEARCHING FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE. I shouldn't have to be gatekept by combing through the Bible to find one verse every time I want to improve as a person.
...
THE TAKEAWAY
If there's anything I or anyone should learn from this entire adventure I'm having with Aria, myself, and the girls in my team, it's this:
AI is pretty good at its job. But it's job ISN'T to create for you. It's to create REFERENCES for you to go off of. It's meant for you to ask questions like "What cool coding technique should I use here?" or "Is this logic sound? I may be overthinking this one." Your mileage is DEFINITELY going to vary if you do anything else with it.
But what I did? I learned so much I didn't know thanks to having a personalized assistant who's forced to spend hours with me on this.
I learned how to get scripts to inherit from other scripts.
I learned about how ternary operators work.
I learned about wrappers and these lambda operators (Half Life 2 ROCKS by the way) are quite possibly one of my favorite new coding tricks. (Because they look like Homestuck arrows =>)
I learned about smart strings and these dollar signs are quite possibly ANOTHER one of my favorite new coding tricks (Because Elise uses braces as her proxy tags so every time I use something like $"My function says {function}" I smile because it looks like SHE'S calling for it)
I learned about return functions.
I learned about scriptable objects.
And I have learned about even MORE things than I can even think about, and you want to know the best thing about all of this?
I've been practicing WITH Aria.
And now I am coding most of my game on my own, WITHOUT Aria.
