Reading about the causes on the wiki, the glitch probably happened because my internet connection was going in and out. Looks like I got it partially right, it was a problem with Scratch, but it was most likely caused by my internet connection. Like I said before, it went away after I refreshed the page, and there's nothing wrong with the project now.
That was interesting to read about, and I'm glad the version I found didn't break anything.

Say Hi to Fred !


Latest in a long line of over-engineering, Parabox Incursion has a new mascot: Fred !

Fred joins the team in celebration of a new feature:
Incursion can now display a list of the users who completed the game, well … in-game!

Fred also seems to have a lot to talk about, should you have any interest. See this project thread post for more information.

Go say hello! … I hear that Fred can spin a good tale.

Before you ask, @TheComputerCrasher,

… Yes, you are supposed to be able to chat with Fred on the thumbnail screen. It was too cute to remove.


The prodigal Level Mode indicators have returned when playing Tutorial, Extra, and Community Levels,
along with a host of other cleanup mentioned in the project thread.

Fred looks cool, but I'm wondering one thing: is the red circle a nose or a mouth?
Anyway, I have ideas for some new “Fredisms” that give some story to the game. The story of games is one of the best parts to me, so if I can add some lore, then I definitely will! I also invented a new word for the type of creature that Fred and the player are: Bloxoid!
Just tell me if you want to see my suggestions. All of them are about the lore of the paraboxes and the puzzles inside (and outside) them.
I honestly surprised myself with how much I wrote.

Edit: It's probably too much for just Fred to say. Maybe you could make a “Story” section to see Fred's stories? You should probably see all of the story first.
Also, I literally just made it up as I went, but I think it turned out really well.

TheComputerCrasher wrote:

Fred looks cool, but I'm wondering one thing: is the red circle a nose or a mouth?
Anyway, I have ideas for some new “Fredisms” that give some story to the game. The story of games is one of the best parts to me, so if I can add some lore, then I definitely will! I also invented a new word for the type of creature that Fred and the player are: Bloxoid!

It's his mouth – it opens and closes a bit between his poses. He's a bit scared of the levels in the game, but he gets through them.

Of course I'd be happy to see them! I do need to keep the individual things that he says fairly short and also not dilute the pool too much when it comes to ‘background’ quips versus game mechanics. I suppose that I could always keep two lists of things: one for mechanics and one for backstory, where he's more likely to say something from the mechanics list.

Okay, here goes (it's a LOT of stuff, and I've condensed it down slightly):

“If you want, I can tell you a story about me.”
(Maybe only have the first one appear if the player clicks on Fred a certain number of times, then have him Ask this)

“I used to live in a world made of blocks, called the Blocklands.“
”I lived with my fellow Bloxoids, carving tunnels through boxes and finding creative ways to push blocks through the carved-out boxes.“
“I was wandering around one day, looking for a new block-pushing puzzle, when I found a strange blue box with the infinity symbol on it.”
“I entered the box, and found a series of puzzles called the ‘Parabox Challenge’ inside of it.”
“They seemed to be normal block-pushing puzzles at first, but they quickly became recursive and weird.”
“There were other Bloxoids like me inside that box, and they called the strange box a Parabox.”
“Some Bloxoids were trying to complete the Parabox Challenge, but others were building levels of their own.”
“A few Bloxoids completed the Parabox Challenge, but then entered the Green Parabox to try more difficult puzzles.”
“We were able to enter the Green Parabox at any time, but most people were satisfied with just trying the first Parabox Challenge.”
“The few who had gone into the Green Parabox said that it was easier to complete the first Parabox Challenge before we tried the second one.”
“I got here after completing the first Parabox Challenge and entering the Green Parabox.”
“When I entered the Green Parabox, it led me here, to the Double Parabox Challenge.”
“It seems like only (Winner Count) Bloxoids have completed the Double Parabox Challenge so far. Hopefully we'll complete it soon too…”
“A guy named Patrick thinks that there might be some sort of Multi-Parabox beyond the Green Parabox. I can't imagine what that would look like.”

Of course, feel free to modify the quotes to make them fit or remove things you don't think are important.


Edit: I thought that the reference to Patrick's Parabox would make it more interesting, and sort of tie the worlds together.
I think it's definitely fun to watch Patrick's Parabox playthrough videos, but the full game costs around 20 US dollars. I decided that I would watch the gameplay instead of spending money.

Edit 2: I changed some of the quotes to reflect that Fred isn't trapped in the Paraboxes, he's just solving their puzzles.

Interesting. I'll give it a think and see what clicks … will need to decide if I want Fred to be trapped in the game between levels versus just having fun working at it and trying to help others through.

I like the idea about giving a nod to Patrick (I really need to go look at their game, some time ). Some backstory about how Fred got into the game could certainly fit, how something “led him here.”

I haven't found a bug in Incursion in a while, so I decided to go glitch-hunting. I found a very small bug with this setup: vvvjpjvvvvjjjqjjjvvjjjujjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjyjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvvvvvvvvvvvvvqvvvvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvvvvvvvvv
If you move up to start a recursion, the top outer tiles don't change (they still show blue). But if you move the parabox to the edge of the board and then push the crate off the edge, the top outer tiles will be void, even though the parabox is in the same place.

Another thing: if you move off the edge of the board without pushing either of those blocks, you can see the player in the outer tiles, on the board, and stuck in the recursion. I think I've found this before, and that you said it was a code limitation of some sort. I wanted to point it out, though, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

TheComputerCrasher wrote:

I haven't found a bug in Incursion in a while, so I decided to go glitch-hunting. I found a very small bug with this setup: vvvjpjvvvvjjjqjjjvvjjjujjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjyjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvvvvvvvvvvvvvqvvvvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvjjjjjjjvvvvvvvvvv
If you move up to start a recursion, the top outer tiles don't change (they still show blue). But if you move the parabox to the edge of the board and then push the crate off the edge, the top outer tiles will be void, even though the parabox is in the same place.

Another thing: if you move off the edge of the board without pushing either of those blocks, you can see the player in the outer tiles, on the board, and stuck in the recursion. I think I've found this before, and that you said it was a code limitation of some sort. I wanted to point it out, though, just to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

I'm not sure what you mean by “even though the parabox is in the same place” after you have, in fact, moved the Parabox to the edge? (I think it is the below)

I'm guessing that you are referring to the first time when you pushed the Parabox upward against the block, so that you tried to push it to the edge of the board. In this case, you're still seeing the tiles as they were seen by the Parabox before it was pushed into this illegal/problematic position.

When displaying shrink/grow animations on the outer tiles (including Recursions), we always use the “original” positions of blocks when determining which tiles were visible. This was a design choice when trying to handle a lot of complicated scenarios. When a move occurs, a Parabox may or may not move before a block changes boards (e.g. as here it may have been involved in pushing the block) and it may or may not move after that block changes boards (e.g., it may have been subsequently pushed BY that block or after a chain of blocks being pushed). In fact, we have two Paraboxes that may or may not have moved and it is more likely that the tiles visible are dictated by the one on the other board (which is more likely to have been pushed).

While I can glibly say “well, you weren't really allowed to push the Parabox there…”, this is one of those situations where the game has to make a judgement call about what to do in general, given that there will always be exceptions that make any choice wrong. Here, we choose to show the existing board state before the block grows off of the board.

If it wasn't for the Blue Parabox sitting on the edge of the board, it wouldn't matter where the Green Parabox was. However, if the block growing onto the Green Board were to push that Blue Parabox and change its position, that would change the outer tiles seen by it after it was pushed. If we showed the current state of the tiles with the Blue Parabox having been pushed (in that scenario), we would be getting it wrong. It is safer under more circumstances to go with showing the tiles according to the existing board positions prior to the move.



When the Parabox is on the second row, the outer tiles during the recursion animation are blue (correctly representing the tile at position 5, where the block came from).

When you move the Parabox to the edge and then push the block off, the outer tiles are and remain Void before and during the recursion animation (also correct, since both Paraboxes are on the same upper edge and face the void).

If I am missing something else from your description, sorry, but hopefully I covered it with my treatise above regarding what tiles are shown during a move. The outer tiles will always be void when both Paraboxes sit on the same edge of their respective boards. In this scenario, neither one of them can see anything in that direction. If only the one Parabox is sitting on the edge, then it will see whatever the other Parabox sees.

_____


If the Player moves off of the board edge with the Parabox on the edge, you see the player in the recursion animation and dizzy on the board in their last location before moving off, as is designed. If the box is in front of the Parabox, you see a similar animation, but the outer tiles are blue since the Green Parabox faces a blue tile (and the Blue Parabox looks out from the edge of Green).

The Dizzy player is explicitly added to the scene using their last position on the board. I do this while they are otherwise “stuck in the recursion” as an added indication to the player of what happened. It's not showing you a pushback or pushforward animation, they just all cause the player to show a similar dizzy animation on top of the other visual feedback (in this case, an obvious recursion animation).

TheComputerCrasher wrote:

Another thing: if you move off the edge of the board without pushing either of those blocks, you can see the player in the outer tiles, on the board, and stuck in the recursion.

The Player that you see “on the board” where the box used to be is just part of the GROW animation during the recursion, where the player is continually growing out of the Green Parabox and pushing the block forward.

The block pushing/growing animation played during the windup of the recursion is halted abruptly when an Infinite Recursion is called and the “Recursion” message starts animating on the screen. The red square left from the player being animated growing out of the Green Parabox is purposefully left that way as a halted animation. None of the blocks will have nicely gone back to where they were (i.e. be re-stamped), in an orderly fashion, until you undo the move causing the infinite recursion (which is conceptually still going on until the player does so).

If it looks like the player is in a lot of places at once, well .. they kind of are. We take the liberty of showing them dizzy back at their starting point as an indicator that your move caused the problem.

Just to keep piling on the hard levels as they are in such demand,


Check out Extra Level #11 ‘Manipulation’
and the latest Community Levels, too!


It looks simple enough … the crate only needs to move one space


Edit: It's really not that bad, though one solution is a lot shorter than another.

How about a somewhat easier one?

Check out Extra Level #12 ‘Implosion’



This level is of Moderate to Low difficulty.
I am happy to design more Easy levels, if the community is interested! – Let me know!

How about an even easier one?


Extra Level #13 ‘Shoveling Snow’

Like for many of us today in the northeast of North America, it just involves a lot of pushing (less lifting).
Likewise: the more you push, the more it seems to come back again!

Extra Level #14 ‘Cascade’ is now available

This one is fairly easy, but you'll need to sort out how to finish the bottom row while ending up at the end. That part gets tricky.
Hint: Set up a cycle and try to avoid gaps.

Added Community Level #15 ‘Infinite Staircase’

Courtesy of @ImNotKirby – Thanks for your contribution!



Please also join me in congratulating @Lscof3909 for completing the game!
They are the second player to do so!


_________

FYI - Cloud Data is currently not accepting updates, affecting many projects including Incursion. It is not known when this will be resolved. You may continue to solve Incursion puzzles, update your Progress Codes, and share your own level designs. Until this issue is addressed, however, the game cannot update solve statistics or completion information.