Coding Linearity

While there is not that much new under the hood of this episode, part of the goal I had with this book was to discuss some coding issues in each chapter. The only real issues in this chapter is that of creating the "locked door" within the game. I suppose having two different rooms be treated as if they were only one room is somewhat interesting as well. When designing the rock room, I could have gone the coding route and had movie clips for Charles and the cut trees with a bunch of code deciding what movie clips to show and hide based on the state of the game. Instead, I new I wanted a transition to the raft that the player was building so decided it would be quicker to just have two nearly identical rooms. I suppose coding wise I ended up doing almost as much work, but simply having the room that the player goes to be partially based on the state of the game is a very simple thing to accomplish.

The using of flags to decide if something should be shown or not was, however, the method that was used for dealing with the nut.

• toHermit_btn.onRelease = toHermit;
• toForest_btn.onRelease = toForest;
• toRock_btn.onRelease = toRock;
• nut_btn._visible = ((!haveNut) && (!haveSquirrel) && (treesHaveBeenCut));
• nut_btn.onRelease = getNut;
• stop();