The points are working! Or so it seems. The first day of a new system is always great. I should just make new systems every other day.
Anyhoooo... I created 3 new Avatar Bits today which you can find in the
Yerfshop, allowing you to make a bear or perhaps a half-bear/half-duck monster. Someday there will be duck body parts. It's also worth noting that the bear looks really good in the Hoody body.
So, back to the real point - I worked on Happyponygate today and accomplished something I had been thinking about over and over for a week or two. When I originally started the project and was trying to keep it as simple as possible (ah, dreams of a second Sleepless Hollow), I didn't think a freely scrolling map would be possible. But it only took this morning to do it! This morning and a couple weeks' worth of intensive thinking sessions while I was walking. So that's what I built. Now, I make the town in 100x100 maps, and those maps are seamlessly connected, along with an infinite forest surrounding the town. So there's just one map as far as the player is concerned! And it oughtta be big, I hope.
This has other nifty benefits, like when you destroy things or kill monsters, they respawn. But not based on time or anything, just that if you travel far enough from where you did it and return, they are back. All without me actually doing anything to define it, it's just a side effect of the map system. Also another odd side effect that is not particularly useful is that you can walk into the forest surrounding the city and continue on... forever. I could make the woods more dense to actually block your movement, but it's fairly amusing to think that someone might just keep on walking in the hopes of finding something (and yes... I could actually set a special zone up so that if you go 20 screens off to the east, you end up in a secret area! Don't think I would, though, that's cruel).
So I'm pretty excited about it, and it works very smoothly after I got the kinks out. Building the maps will be sort of annoying, though, since I'll have to make them align perfectly. I'm sure there will be a lot of flipping back and forth to get that stuff right. I may also have other maps for interiors, that don't do the seamless effect. But really, I don't think the game needs them. There'll be plenty of city to wander without ever going inside anything. Oh, but I just remembered there are the Happyponygates to consider. So it will need to support that for those.
There's a productive day for you. How will the point system fare tomorrow?
If you are a true Loonyfan, you may recognize this place from the overall map of the continent of Loonyland. It is, as it says, Friendship Fields, which is the westernmost country in Loonyland. It is where the next Loonyland takes place (Titan Tunnels/Age Of Heroes/etc). The game itself will contain some form of this map (presumably much cleaner...), probably. You won't get to wander this land, rather you will select quests from the map, and be magically sent to that spot to do the quest. I'm thinking about having Phileas fly you there.