egomassive's Knytt Stories Plus mod

It's a bug. The problem is that once a shift moves you to a new screen the shift object is destroyed. I put commands in the main program loop to turn off hiding on screen changes, but apparently they don't work.   Until the summer ends, I developed a work around for you.

On the screen with the animation put a second shift object where the character can't reach. The first shift which hides the character moves her to the second shift. The second shift moves her to the new screen on touch. If the character appears briefly in the wrong spot, you can use the first to change the character's sprite to a blank image, and the second to change it back. Or, you could put a CO cover on the second shift's location.

Sorry about the bugs. Not having access to MMF is a pain, but on the bright side, all my other projects are prospering because of it.

Thanks a lot for the help, for the moment that workaround works perfectly well.

But I'm here to annoy you with yet another question. Some of the objects on bank 3 face Juni, for instance object 26. But if I try to replace the graphics of that object, it no longer faces Juni, just stands there. Is this a current limitation in your replacement system or am I doing something wrong? The instructions refer objects that face left and right but never mention it not working, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong... This is my code:
[Custom Object 80]
image=petman.png
bank=3
object=13And "petman.png" is a 24x24 png.[/s]

What the hell. I had "object=13" for some reason. Everything is working correctly now -.-

Found another problem, this time hopefully it's an actual problem.
When replacing Juni's animation, the last 2 frames from the falling animation seem to not be displayed. I even tried just using your Juni template as a CO for character replacement and you can see clearly that her hair behaves strangely because those last 2 frames aren't part of the animation.

I tested this myself using the image below, where the last frame of the falling animation is magenta. When falling in game, I saw the starting and ending frames. Maybe I mixed up some frames when I made the Juni template, but as far as I can tell the engine is running correctly.

Oh, I think I see the problem now. There aren't missing frames in the animation, quite the contrary.
The first 4 frames are supposed to play only once, and it loops from the 5th frame from that moment on. But using your replacement feature, it always loops the entire 12 frames. Sorry about the previously incorrect report, I think I assumed those 2 frames were missing for being separated from the rest, for some reason.

*Gasp* You're right! The first frames aren't supposed to repeat! I knew this, but I had completely forgotten about it until now. I will fix that when I can, so make your sprites accordingly in the meantime. I should have figured this out when I played Squareman's Adventure. The falling animation plays wrong, but the sprite sheet was made correctly.

Thanks for finding these bugs for me Raicuparta. I'll have to add you to the credits. *gives star*

I'm glad I can help perfect this already excellent mod, I really think it will make my level stand out.

Found some stuff that might be worth looking into:

Placing many objects by dragging the cursor makes it hang, or its just slower than the original editor. It is significantly slower, enough that trying to "draw" a line across the screen requires me to drag the cursor very slowly, or else there would be holes in that line. Not sure if I'm explaining it well enough though.

If there are many touch shifts that change the character sprite, the animation will spasm awkwardly a bit.
Say, if you make a shift "wall", so that when the player crosses it, the sprite changes. If you jump inside that "wall", you will notice problems in the animation (perhaps it keeps reseting to the initial falling animation?).

Placing many objects by dragging the cursor makes it hang, or its just slower than the original editor.

I've noticed this myself. I haven't looked into the reasons for it. This is something that didn't perform well in the original, and it's not surprising that it performs worse considering all that's been added.

If there are many touch shifts that change the character sprite, the animation will spasm awkwardly a bit.

If I'm remembering correctly, a custom character will always start in a standing position. I may even force the default character into a standing position. In most situations this shouldn't be a problem. Although I don't like it, allowing Shifts-on-touch to fire repeatedly is important to maintaining backwards compatibility. I do prevent repeated saves in such a scenario. I suppose this could be extended to character changes since they're a new feature. Ultimately, I never intended the character to be changed this way. Then again, Nifflas never intended for me to make Shipwrecked.

Great Mod, egomassive !

I'm going to use it to remake my level LG-28.

Having problems with collecting objects though(even though there are so many ways).Or had problems actually, but let me explain.

I'm trying to replicate the Knytt scenario, where I need many different(in appearance) objects to win.And they must be obtainable in any order.

The most appealing(for the eyes) way I found was to change all 4 keys into 4 different sprites for my liking.I also had to change their appropriate sprites in the Item Bar, so you can see which of the 4 objects the player is missing like in Knytt.I realize I could possibly use the Golden creatures, but their Item Bar sprite can't be changed and I need to make objects very specific  to my level anyway.

But the problem with that is I don't want them to unlock locks, but let the player warp to the screen with the WIN tile.
Sadly the only way I could wrap my mind around that was to use 3 flags and the ALL flag code, which still leaves 1 key to be left out.
Somehow it is possible to use all four.I remember you did some crazy stuff in Shipwrecked.Still can't get my head around that and I've already gone with a different option, although it would be wonderful if people could make Knytt style levels.

So...I went with the Artifacts route(writing this I actually think about going with Coins ).Sadly I can't have 4 different sprites this way, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for easier implemenation.

A very minor mistake I noticed - 42nd Coin object is missing a pixel.

Hope you continue developing this great mod.

To answer Medic-Ted's questions I put together a level that combines Artifacts and Flags to create a Knytt-like game mechanic. I made 4 kinds of ship parts, but it can easily be expanded to 6. Look in the World.ini for some notes.

Download Ship Parts 328 KB

...
A very minor mistake I noticed - 42nd Coin object is missing a pixel.
Hope you continue developing this great mod.

How weird, and thanks. I liked LG-28 when I played it long ago. I'll be looking forward to the remake.

I hope this hasn't been asked before, but does your key-mapping feature allow for compatibility with a gamepad?

Installed the mod a few days ago and I really like it; haven't tried any editing with it yet but I'll get to that soon; I'm seriously thinking of adapting 'Dragon Myth' to use it, as I can see artefacts, tints, titles and some other parts being useful. Have to try it out and decide how feasible that'd be first.

In fact, I've had an idea for a small level kicking around in my head for a while, and I might make that with the mod first to see how I get on.

The key-mapping feature only supports these keyboard keys:
Letters A-Z
Arrow Keys
and these symbols [ ] ; ' , . /

The software KS is built with doesn't have an easy way to map keys by default, and the nice extensions are for the expensive version only. The way I did it required me to hard code each key, so I only added the keys I felt were necessary to cover all western keyboard layouts. I think I can add joystick/gamepad controls if there's a demand, but don't gamepads usually come with their own key-mapping software? Incidentally, I had started work on a user interface for key-mapping, but I didn't have time to finish it before the summer hiatus.

It won't be long before work resumes. In anticipation I've made a new font image for Titles (see attachment.) Raicuparta's objections to antialiasing have weighed on my mind. I've come to agree they're bad for scaling. I've tested out the new font and it looks a lot better in game than I imagined it would.

That's gonna save me a some work, awesome. I have at least one project that will use that feature of your mod, and considering finding a clever way to use it in Time Fixes Everything, so that was already on my to do list.


Your bump reminded me of a bug I've been meaning to report for some time now, but it may not really be a mistake you made, just something you could prevent breaking the editor:
Some times I find duplicate entries on my world's ini. I'm not sure if these duplicate entries are created by some problem with the editor (I have no way of verifying that as it doesn't happen often) or if it was my own fault for mixing manual editing of the ini with your mod's utilities for that same purpose. But when these duplicate entries exist, the mod doesn't usually handle things well.

For instance, if I have this:
ShiftXMap(A)=5
ShiftXMap(A)=2Your editor reads the first value, but writes to the second one. That is, if I put 7 in the editor's text field for X, the first value will become 7, but the second one will remain 2, and that will be the value read by the editor when I come back to that tab.
Not all the settings behave exactly like this, but I think they all do something weird when there's duplicates.

I don't know that there's anything I can do about ^that^. I'm using ini read/write extensions which are black boxes. You can't see their internal actions and you can't change them. As far as I know, none of the ini extensions can find duplicate entries, but at the same time I'm fairly sure none of them can make duplicates. At any rate, having duplicate entries will screw up the game engine too.

In the script dialogue if you hold shift when you press enter or click a check box, it will paste that item to the last location of the cursor in the script pad. This function is for people like me who like to keep their ini entries sorted. There is no reason to keep it orderly other than it's easier for people to read. You can easily make duplicates with shift+enter if you aren't careful.

For your information, this is how the editor handles loading and saving the World.ini.
Save when script panel is not open = does not change World.ini
Save when script panel is open = Saves World.ini
Select "Save Script" from confirmation dialogue = Saves World.ini
Open script panel = Loads World.ini
Select "Reload" from menu = Does not load World.ini
Select "Reload Script" from menu = Loads World.ini
Most changes made to script pad and script dialogue are saved to Temp.ini found in Worlds directory. They use this file to update each other.