RetroChallenge 2018: That Pesky Bat

The Bat Swoops In!

Noticed another quirk in game play that needed ironing out. If you entered a room with the bat in it and dropped the item you were carrying, the bat would fly to you, notice you weren't carrying anything, exit the screen and choose a random item from anywhere in the dungeon to move.  This made it too easy to avoid the bat stealing important stuff from you.

Now you can't just drop an item to avoid the bat stealing it from you. The bat will always steal an item from the room you're in, if it catches you and if one is available.  If not, then it will pick a random item from somewhere random in the dungeon and move that.

Also, I sped up the whole routine of the bat moving things. This means that when you're moving around and the bat is moving things off screen, the pause in your movement is much less noticeable (I hope).  Also I tweaked the levels so there is more delay between mouth opening and closing at the lowest level than at the highest.  There was too little difference between level 1 and level 3, at least when it came to killing dragons (i.e. striking when their mouths are closed).  Also, I increased the contrast between the three types of dragon, so purple (Barney) is more clearly less threatening than the blue dragon (Blue Streak).

Made it so items and dragons can appear in the Yellow Castle room. For some reason I had considered this room out of bounds for items and dragons being placed there. Can't recall my thinking, but it will help speed things a little not to exclude it.  This change also allowed me to tweak the routine that places the sword at the beginning of the game. Now, on levels 1 and 2, the sword will always show up in one of the rooms near your starting position at the Yellow Castle or by the castle itself.  But on level 3, there is a chance the sword will be hidden in one of the big rooms near the White Castle, which will make for a little more challenge in getting armed.

I'll put the new version up in the regular places soon. Until then it's on Github. ADVENTR37.TXT

https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Dungeon/Adventure