OK, lets talk Z depth. Tell me how you are interested in using it then I'll share my ideas as far as what I know how to do and what I think will work best moving forward with our production. Our main consideration will be Scratch's list size limit which in essence breaks down to a maximum size of 2 lists of 200k entries each. Our current plan is to use 2 big lists to hold map data but not max them out at 200k entries as we will use the rest of the list space to hold lore data, etc. Utilizing Z depth will take up a chunk of our available list space but I have ideas for how to optimize that. Regardless this is the point we want to pick a development plan and stick with it as the engine will be coded around it from here onwards.

I'm not really sure. I mean, I would really love to use z-levels, but as you say it would be space-intensive.

The main uses for z-levels are so we can have multi-level structures (castles, etc.), so the caves and mines can be more interesting, so the mountains can actually have land on top of them instead of just being walls of ore, and so we can incorporate underground and flying worlds. For instance, in medieval legend you have St. Martin's Land, an underground land where everyone has green skin; Hell, which was sometimes imagined as literally being underground, and which we could have as the endgame like Dwarf Fortress' Hidden Fun Stuff; and in the sky there is the legend of Magonia, a highly advanced civilization in the clouds which uses airships to steal food from the surface dwellers. Also, in folklore which is not confirmed to be medieval but likely existed in some form back then, we have various supernatural creatures living underground and underwater, and the vile of Slavic folklore live in castles in the sky.

If we make the game to be downloaded and played offline utilizing our system of creating world data at startup, Scratch's list size save limit wouldn't matter anymore. I'm pretty sure we could use that to vastly increase the map data limit (although I have not tested it) but we probably would get a lot less views/players. Otherwise the best I know to do is to leave as much space as possible using the mapping system and then carve it up to be used sparingly here and there. And to create systems that recycle memory such as temporary mines (only so many active at a time with played out mines eventually replaced). Or to hard code different mine layouts (or any non-randomized data) into picture data to be read into temporary memory at run time.

So first, offline or online? If online then we are currently using 160k out of 400k possible for map data. That means we could add a z layer for the entire game map to be used however we want (one map could have a mine or dungeon while another has an upper z level, just never both) or chop up the extra space, maybe dedicating a bit to a mine system, a bit to a cloud city, a bit to whatever, etc

I didn't know that the offline version had extra memory, but that sounds good!

If we are going to add z coordinates, is that something that would have to be added right now? Otherwise, I think we should keep it online at the moment for ease of access, and then switch to offline when we add the z-axis.

If we go with offline gameplay the project will always be online just like any other Scratch project because it doesn't become unsaveable online until the game is ruin for the first time and the world data is generated, that is when the project becomes too big to save online. So to play it someone could either run it in their browser without the ability to save progress or download the game permanently to their computer and play it there with progress saving. I'll do some quick tests to make sure this even works the way I think it does.

Oops! I didn't see this message until today because I didn't get a notification.

Sure, if it works the way you think it does, then by all means lets do that.

Sorry for my absence, having more health issues but I am hoping to be back soon. Really sorry though! I have a million things to do and I'm not getting anything done, it is frustrating. I had a game blow up a bit and people have been begging for updates and I've been offline the whole time ><

Sorry to hear you aren't well.

hi

move (you amount) steps

is a good thing to use if its 2d

Hi. Thank you for the suggestion.