(not honestly sure if that’s a word…)
So there are things I think the player should be able to locate in the game and ultimately carry around or have on display in their ‘home base’ house.
The radio is a big motivator for this. But I also have sea shells, paper cranes, and a couple other odds and ends that I think would add to the world or create a level of immersion that would make the game more enjoyable.
Thing is, the code I’ve been putting in place on these objects is just a mishmash of about a dozen scripts, and as I was putting some final touches on the paper cranes last night I realized there has to be a more streamlined way to accomplish what I’m doing.
I think it spawned out of my programming in quiet zones, areas where I fade out the main game music for the express purpose of letting the player only hear the sounds of the environment. I had to create a mobile version of this for the radio, but there are other rest areas that have no bearing on the game beyond being locations the player may want to remain at and just watch the waves, and so on.
But it’s more than that. The player may decide to drop the golf club somewhere, and it’d bring the game to a grinding halt if they couldn’t find it again. So, code to put it back on the hook in the house is almost necessary.
So this weekend’s goal is to create one master controller for all the objects that the player could theoretically interact with, tracking whether they have been picked up at least once, their proximity to the player after being dropped, and where I want it to appear in their house after they’ve been left behind.
Seems simple enough, although practically every object also has some other function (unlocking golf balls or radio stations, for example), so I’d like the specialized code to be included in the script if applicable.
I’ve discovered, though, simple is rarely ‘simple’ in this lifestyle. I’ll be updating with the progress come Sunday. Have a great weekend everybody!