Do you think it would be a better idea to complete the cavemaker of Aeon before its 'campaign'? Think about it this way: Livio finally finishes the HATPC game mechanics, so what should he work on next? A cavemaker that would re-ignite the cavemaking community sooner rather than later? Or a campaign that would require a lot of work on its story and artwork? A campaign that would be fun for everyone to complete, but once completed they have nothing to do until the cavemaker is released? It'll probably come down to small difference in time-spans, but it makes sense to release the cavemaker first as it'll enable people to do lots of experimentation while they wait for the campaign. On top of this, I feel that the campaign should use amazing scenery tiles (outside help will probably be needed for the artwork element) and gameplay unique to the campaign only.

wot u fink?

So the basic idea is to get livio/accel to finish the most basic objects and movements of the characters, then we play around with the game while he make updates and such?  

Kind of. So Livio finished the physics, gameplay, basic cave artwork etc and then releases the cavemaker and user level uploader first. And then work on the more intricate campaign levels and story.

There are, so many different kinds of crates being approved, especially the multiple arrows crate. The glitches involving crates would be horrendous, so i think its better to follow your idea.

Wasn't the multiple arrows idea rejected?

I think that the initial cavemaker-only Aeon will be like a beta version with few features. It should be the same as the current cavemaker, but should include the exciting addition of checkpoints. And believe me, it is exciting. Then later versions will include the campaign and new crates.

Well, some parts of it were rejected, i think. The 4 directions arrow crate,..... i couldn't remember.

Lol, yeah right were making campaign the levels without some kind of level editor.

Possibly. I didn't know whether Livio was going to construct the campaign using his Flash skills and the guidance of the community. And if it features campaign-specific scenery (it'd be cool if it did, then it'd feel like a proper game), it's unlikely a level editor will be able to be used to make them. The HATPC cavemaker could be used to sketch out the basic ideas for them though. Anyway, this isn't my intended plan; the community should access to making checkpointed levels first and then campaign later.

I'd like the official release of the game to include basic tiles/physics, the necessary tutorial levels, and a level editor. Then we can work on the campaign while people can still play Aeon, and we might make new tiles along the way, too.

Of all the new 'bits' we're putting in this cavemaker, checkpoints is the very first that should be added. I can't overemphasise how it'll change the way we play caves.  

Checkpoints are very difficult to make. I think they should be left until Accel gets a better understanding of Actionscript.

I think that the very first public cavemaker release should just include tiles that were in the original HATPC. If you have time though, more would be better. If we're lucky, this may just be out in a year!

actually I've got a pretty good idea on how to make the checkpoints work. I'm coding the game to keep track of everything that's going on: if an object is moving, what direction, where in the animation of objects it's in, and stuff like that. This will help me add a pause feature, but it will also help a ton when making checkpoints. As for the part of scanning everything in the map, it's similar to how I delete everything from the map, where I run a loop to go after every object. The hardest thing for a checkpoint system would be to figure out how to record all that information. I can't just duplicate it, as far as I know, so I may have to convert it to text and then parse the text again, which would take longer than usual because there will be some extra info in it.

WAIT!! I just got an idea. Instead of rambling about it here, I'm gonna go try it. It might help me cut back on load times too

bleh, nevermind. that idea wouldn't actually save loading time. It's just ends up storing more info

Actionscript? Isn't that going to be a swf file?

yeah, I'm using flash, not shockwave

Is there a .clone() method? Basically, it takes an object and makes a copy. If the object has objects inside (like an array), though, you'll need to overwrite the clone method to make those use .clone() too instead of just copying the pointer. Well, that's what you'd do in Java, maybe, anyway... It'd be easier, at least.

I already searched, and I found that there's no way to clone an exact object that already exists. Instead, you're supposed to make a class of that object and then create instances of it, but that would have to be made prior to you opening the game, so it doesn't work. I saw lots of forums with the same problem, so I guess I'll just have to do it the hard way.

Btw, if you haven't seen my chatbox posts, I found a way to make loading faster by compressing the code so that you can type in "x=20;" for example to get 20 terrains. That's less code for it to read through and it speeds things up.

I am still unsure:
Who is gonna make the campaign levels?

I am sure:
That is a later problem. Until we get the tools needed, it isn't worth discussing. We don't know which users will be active at the time of release.