itch.io

Here's how I learned how to make this: 

First I made a character sheet with no automated functionality just by laying out  editable text fields and sliders, and adding locked fields as labels.

The first thing I coded was the clear button for the portrait. A canvas can be drawn on by default, but there's no way to erase, so I looked at the documentation for canvases and found the "clear" function, then made a button that calls it for the portrait canvas. 

Then, I went through elements of the character sheet one by one, deciding if I wanted them to have any fancy functionality or if a raw text field would be sufficient. If I decided that fanciness was warranted, I looked through the Decker documentation until I figured out how to do what it needed. In a couple cases I had to ask for help on the decker forums.

I was helped by already knowing how to code, although I found Lil (the programming language Decker uses) to be very different from all the languages I knew in several frustrating ways. I first learned to code extremely slowly over several years of exposure throughout my early childhood, using scratch.mit.edu regularly as my primary source of entertainment and social life. I started out copying big pieces code from other people's projects whenever I had to do anything complex, as was encouraged through Scratch's built-in remix culture. Later on I started to grasp more abstract concepts of programming.

If you'd like to copy the code of anything in this deck for your own, you have my permission.

I will say this, I wrote it to be deliberately vague. I'm not interested in giving a "canonical" explanation, and I think if I did it would detract from the experience.

I feel like the game speaks for itself...?

Okay, thanks. The description of the "v" pattern type in the Lil docs made me think I could maybe insert any variable using just format strings. It's not too bad to just hardcode it and update it with a script whenever I change the max, though.

I'm trying to figure out format strings, specifically to get a slider to show its max value. Is %v what I want, and if so how do I use it? Or is this even possible without additional scripting?

That's awesome to hear! I made this because I wanted to learn Decker while also making something I would actually use. I'm really happy that other people like it too!

Yes, it does. In fact, I had even already tried to use deck.event, but forgot the quotation marks and assumed it didn't work. Thank you so much!

So, in the deck script, I have a function stat_to_mod:

on stat_to_mod x do
 floor (x-10)/2
end

Most widgets can use stat_to_mod[20] in their scripts and properly get the result 5, but for contraptions and widgets inside contraptions, it always returns 0 regardless of the argument. deck.stat_to_mod[20] also doesn't work (though It also doesn't work outside of contraptions so I didn't expect it to). The decker docs describe deck as a global constant, so I'm confused why this doesn't work.

I feel like I'm misunderstanding something important. Is there a way to achieve what I want to achieve?

I'll keep it in mind. Since I'm using it in two different contraptions, I'm thinking a module is better than anything that belongs to one contraption since both contraptions can access it equally?

(Edit: there's even a deck-level script which is probably a simpler solution than a module)

https://robotface.itch.io/glog-sheet

I had a lot of fun making this and learning Decker at the same time! I'm excited to make a game with it next.

Ah, thank you!

I've fixed my first problem by disabling column headers and replacing them with locked fields. Still struggling with the second.

Is there a way to disable sorting grids by clicking the label at the top? Or at least change the sort order? I have a grid I want to be editable, with many empty rows at the end so items can be added, and right now if I accidentally click the top all rows with content are sent to the bottom with no way to get them back to the top (as far as I can tell) except by manually editing the JSON/CSV.

Also, editing cells by double-clicking doesn't work on some grids, it just clears the cell and leaves it blank. I can't figure out why. As an example, on the "Grids" page of the tour, editing works fine on the table of fruit prices, but it deletes cells on the table of measures.

Help I chose to crank start the car and I'm stuck here forever because I can't move my mouse fast enough👍

It is not very clear what I have to do👍

Had a lot of fun messing around! I got 9 of the collectibles but at some point my progress got reset and I couldn't figure out why so I stopped playing. Once I also got "softlocked" but eventually figured out you can press R to go back to spawn, this may have been what reset my progress? But it didn't reset every time?

Anyways, here are some controls which aren't listed:

R: teleport back to spawn (may lose progress)

E: teleport back to checkpoint

B: spawn a couple projectiles of some sort which can nudge you and other players around? I wasn't able to use them in any useful way, but someone better at platforming than me could use them to reset their momentum in midair.

Having the player start out by moving around in the "out of bounds" area is so clever!

Theme suggestion: chain reaction

Bonus answer: comics! Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics series was a huge influence on me as a kid, and I think a lot of lessons for comics also work for games.

Neat game! It would be cool if different kinds of aliens generated different projectiles.