Barely on time again!

Dreaded Items

   So as many of you who have been following me for awhile understand that I am by no means a master programmer. That's perhaps one of the things I enjoy most about this project...I've learned so much about programming since the start of this game. Sometimes however, you learn that you simply did foolish things. This week was one of those weeks. 

   Since the University introduced tradeskills, I've naturally had to start implementing a new tradeskill window. That in itself was easy. It took me a bit of debugging but I got it working in a jiffy for the cooking tradeskill. It worked well until I got to one area...my item code. I almost vomited on my own screen in disgust, I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Here's how it used to work:

• When you select an item, it sends the string (with the item name to a function). That returns a number which is relative to the item's code. Yes, it's a bit silly but if that was all that happened it wouldn't be too bad.
• Next a subroutine would take that item code and for some reason regenerate the item name for use in further applications (??? why did I do this...it's like I added an extra step for fun).
• Next, when setting an item to a button, it would once again reference a list of item strings gotten by the function in the first button and then translate it into a number again (???) and tag it to the item buttons.
• Buying / Selling / Dropping items required the game to perform the first two bullets each time.

I don't even think I can make sense of what I did, it still confuses me and I don't even know if what I typed above even remotely explains it well enough. The good news is I have learned a lot, I simply made a class that stores all of the item info in a handy variable relative to the item selected. Simply select an item and all the data is stored for my use very easily. Is there an easier way to do it? Maybe, but I'll go there later when I become wiser. Anyways, rewriting the item system took me a very short amount of time, figuring out what the hell I did to make items work prior took a long time. The good news is that it's easy as cake now to add items. What prompted me to rewrite this system was when I was programming additional items in last night, it took me about an hour to figure out how to do so...that was the final straw.


So what does that all mean for the game?
   It just got easier for me to program. I'm just adding events now with ease :D. I've made some good progress on the university but I still have a bit to go. Unfortunately the item debacle slowed me down a bit but I still think I'm mostly on track. Since I have a free night, I plan to get a huge chunk if not all of the university done after this post. 
    Kreeves can attest to (hopefully) how easy it is to make an event, he added one of the game's first user submitted content which will add an additional event to players outside of your apartment. I wanted to tip my cap to him for finishing up the event. User Submitted Content (USC) will not speed up the development of the game any, but it can give you a chance to add your own unique events to Pornicle. If you are ever interested please e-mail me (my address is on this site). USC is independent of the planned game content but again is not only greatly appreciated but I hope that together it will help us flesh out the game even more.

Random Screenshots!

I thought I'd give you all some random screenshots!

Pornicle now has days of the week...sadly the month names need to change as they are all 30 days by design.

Quick shot of the cooking window.

"Attend a class" action.

Learning to cook can be fun ^_^