Creating a new mod–here are a few questions

[Sindhi]

Thanks for the round node info, FF. For treasures I used pendants and things from my collection (I have a jewelry website, with which I have NOT spammed the forums) on purpose because I figured the treasures from Aquaria would be too easy for people to find, and I hid the treasures in sneaky ways (color-wise). Below, before the collection of not-so-sneaky treasure (the entrance to the treasure cave is on the left, swimming into the greenery):



and after (message to let the player know how many treasures s/he has left to find):



and a sneakier hidden treasure:



I just think it is more fun to have new treasures in a mod.....

[TheBear]

Make sure you have the actual LUA files for the collectible nodes in your MOD. You have to manually copy them all over as Aquaria doesn't look for node files in the vanilla directory. I did some custom stuff with the collectibletemplate.lua file in Sacrifice to move the items based on where the story is but I don't think you need that file. Let me know how it goes.

[FrancesF]

Thanks,  I'll do that.

[FrancesF]

Labyrinth Mod update:  Three of the four maps are finished (except for final tweaking) and pretty much ready to go.  The fourth is about half done.  I was pleased to finally solve the problem I was having with warping between maps, when I didn't want Naija to leave and enter at the same place.  (Not much point to a maze if you can just exit the way you came in!)  I finessed it by using small intermediate maps, and it's working well.

But I'm in need of some scripting help.  I'd like to:

1)  Make a node where the first time Naija is in it, if she has discovered fish form, there will be a line of text.  She doesn't have to be wearing fish form, just have it in her inventory.   

2)  Make the collectible treasures work properly.  They appear in Naija's inventory, but not in her home cave, where I have placed the nodes.  I have added the collectible entity scripts and the collectible treasure node scripts to my mod script file, but that hasn't helped.

3) Modify the round virus script so that it migrates slowly downhill through a fairly narrow tunnel, while still rotating and shooting its poison darts.

4) Modify the dark jelly script so that a group of them in the same room are attracted to each other and bunch up closely, so Naija can not get through them.

Also I've got a good idea and graphic for a boss, but need a script . . .   I'll trade artwork for scripts! 

Frances

new screenshots:









 

[Xiagan]

Looks smooth and atmospheric. I like!

[Inyssius]

1)  Make a node where the first time Naija is in it, if she has discovered fish form, there will be a line of text.  She doesn't have to be wearing fish form, just have it in her inventory.

I think the hasSong(Song value) function is the important bit there. The value you're looking for should be SONG_FISHFORM = 10.

Holy shit! Those look really, really good.

[FrancesF]

Thanks, Xiagan and Inyssius! 

[FrancesF]

I want to thank TheBear for helping with my scripts.  He's already fixed the starting and ending comments, and found a way to make the treasures appear in Naija's home immediately after she finds them without the map having to reload.  It's just excellent–and really helps with the framework of the mod.


 

[False.Genesis]

Are you guys doing the scripts that they are compatible with the current 1.1.3 release, or with the newest changes in the icculus repository? No idea if you have been following the mailing list, but the lua state changes by achurch have been added, and should an update based on the newest code be published, your mod will likely be incompatible, unless you or someone takes the time to adapt it.

If you are not up to date with what has changed, read this: http://hg.icculus.org/icculus/aquaria/rev/bfa9cdfcfb90

Not sure if this will work, but a way to have the v = getVars() stuff working on 1.1.3 might be to define that function manually in some include file, and remove it should an update come. But i am (yet) no lua expert, so i don't know how this would be done to actually preserve states across entities.

EDIT: Or maybe just do v = {}, and change it to v = getVars() later ...

[FrancesF]

So what does this mean for those of us actively making mods?  I gather there are at least three of us, Sindhi, Inyssius, and myself, who are quite involved at present.

[Alphasoldier]

Nothing if you don't plan on using the update.

I find it rather weird myself that mods would stop working when pushing through an update, I don't think anyone would want that. Only adding functions, optimizing them, not removing stuff should not break anything, unless you ARE doing stuff like that... or am I thinking too narrow minded about this?

[achurch]

I'm afraid you're thinking a bit too narrow-mindedly. (: The ideal is of course to maintain compatibility, but when that's just not feasible (as in this case), the same logic says you should break it hard, once -- so that you don't have to break it again in the future -- rather than introducing a new incompatibility in every release.

Incidentally, the reason I had to break compatibility was because the original script engine ran every script in its own, independent environment, so scripts could do anything they wanted, like using global variables. But that also prevents the very significant optimization of running all scripts as threads in a single environment, because then they'd all clobber each other's state by writing to global variables. So there's simply no way around rewriting all the scripts for the new engine -- trying to do it programmatically would mean writing a separate Lua parser just to find and rewrite all the global variables, and even then you'd waste memory on multiple copies of all the common constants from the old entityinclude.lua file.

That said, it occurs to me (very belatedly) that replacing:
    v = getVars()
with:
    if getVars then v = getVars() else v = {} end
might let updated scripts continue working with the old engine, to get the best of both worlds.

[achurch]

That said, it occurs to me (very belatedly) that replacing:
    v = getVars()
with:
    if getVars then v = getVars() else v = {} end
might let updated scripts continue working with the old engine, to get the best of both worlds.

Aaaand I've gone and actually done this -- in fact, I've done worse and removed getVars() entirely. The new (and hopefully final!) canonical boilerplate, which restores compatibility with the commercial engine, is:

if not v then v = {} end
if not AQUARIA_VERSION then dofile("scripts/entities/entityinclude.lua") end

As I stated on the mailing list, if any mod authors want me to fix up their scripts to work with both the commercial releases and the current icculus.org build, send me (achurch at achurch dot org) a zip of your script files and I'll do so ASAP.

[FrancesF]

Update on Labyrinth Mod:

Spent hours and hours the past two weeks on the "find energy" map, which I had optimistically thought was practically finished. I had quite a sense of elation on placing the final entity and swimming out.  I've been so immersed in it that I've lost the ability to judge if it's too easy, too hard, too frustrating, too???  Wished for the hundredth time that someone in my immediate group of family/friends was into computer games in general and Aquaria in particular!

Don't know if it's of interest to anyone, but the abyss octopus's laser beam destroys verse eggs.

Some recent screenshots:

[False.Genesis]

(Totally forgot to post)

The pictures you posted look awesome. From what i see i guess you are using lots of parallax layering, right? I totally <3 parallax. ^^

Did you make the wall textures and some of the plants yourself? I cant remember seeing these before.
And the 2nd picture, what is the red stuff in the background? Microscrope images of pollen, perhaps? It fits well

Hows your progress in general? From the amount of awesome scenery () you already posted it looks like you may as well be almost finished, at least with the parts you have shown