How the map is used

When you start a game, the game starts by loading the configuration file specified by the “CONFIG” parameter in the applet tag. This file holds information about what graphics to use and the layout of the game which will be explained in a later chapter. It also contains a MAP line that contains the name of the map to load. It loads this map into memory.

When you start a game, a copy of the map that was loaded gets made. This copy is what the game uses to run the game. Why is a copy needed? The data within the map actually gets changed while the game is running. By using a copy, we do not need to re-load the map when the player starts a new game.

Empty spaces, walls, the fountain, the power outlet and unlocked doors are consistent. Tiles that contain an item get converted to an empty tile when the player gets that item. Keys are a special case, as the number of keys can be more than one, picking up a key increases a counter. Locked doors will check to see if you have a key for that color of lock. If you do, your key count goes down and the door turns into an unlocked door.

While the fountain does not change to anything, when you bump into it, it checks to see if you have the coffee pot. If you do it fills the pot with water. The power outlet is similar, except it checks to see if you have all the necessary items. If you do, you win the game.

As you can see, the internal map data manipulation is fairly simple, though it is certainly possible to have much more sophisticated manipulations (which we will at least start to have in Coffee Quest 2). At the moment, however, we simply have data manipulation. I am fairly certain that the few people who are actually reading this want to know how the 3D like image is created. Not to worry, next chapter will be about the painter’s algorithm, which is the technique the first two coffee quest games used for the creation of