Mushrooms

[MagiMaster]

I'm working on implementing the mushrooms, but I need a bit of help coming up with ideas. There are eight types of mushrooms, so I need 8 sets of effects. To make things more difficult (so that a healing mushroom won't make the game too easy), I've decided that each effect is actually a set of three effects. For example, one mushroom might either heal you, hurt you or do nothing. These sets of effects are matched up to mushrooms randomly at the start of each game.

I've got everything implemented but the effects. I've already tried a few things, so I know how to these effects:
- Heal
- Hurt
- Stun
- Darkness
- Nothing (just shows a message)

There are a couple of other effects that might be worth working on, but will be more difficult:
- Valuable mushroom (added to treasure)
- Slow
- Can't jump
- Releases spider

Any suggestions on other effects to try, or ways of grouping effects into sets? (Sets can have some overlap, so I don't necessarily need 24 different effects.)

Edit:
Release v1.2: http://ifile.it/8mfa62t

[gummybears123]

Switch controls
MAkes him smaller

[MagiMaster]

Haha. Tiny spelunker would be funny, but for the moment at least, I don't want to have to add any new graphics. Although I might could use the built in scaling functions, but I think there would be many complications.

Switching the controls is a possibility.

[gummybears123]

Couldn't you use the potion mod somehow to make it easier?

[marsgreekgod]

Haha. Tiny spelunker would be funny, but for the moment at least, I don't want to have to add any new graphics. Although I might could use the built in scaling functions, but I think there would be many complications.

Switching the controls is a possibility.

Scaling works really well in game maker 8, it even scales hit masks, so don't worry about that. just scale the whip and turn off picking stuff up and it well work fine.

[MagiMaster]

@gummybears123, I don't want to just plagiarize the potion mod. Plus, I'm doing this, partially, to just play with the source code.

@marsgreekgod, I'll try it, and turing off items would make things a lot easier (and is a good idea anyway), but I bet there will still be issues with the ledge physics and such things. Nothing insurmountable I imagine.

[marsgreekgod]

Also not a big fan of the spider idea, (doesn't make sense)

how about slow running, or gets heavy?

[Sudonimus]

I think slow-running is a great idea!
And shift should be to normal speed, and normal speed
should be slow as a crawl.

[marsgreekgod]

what about crawling? just do nothing?

[Sudonimus]

Crawling... I don't know; I'm not making this mod.
Or make crawling impossible.

Make a growth mushroom.

Make a rotten mushroom.

[marsgreekgod]

If you need any help with coding then let me know I would be glad to help

[Arucard]

One of the confusion things that mixes the sprites randomly would be fun! Try and go pick up a Damsel, only to find it's actually a man-eating plant! 

[marsgreekgod]

that would be hard, and need to make a lot of sprites... but be worth it

[gummybears123]

Make a mushroom make you see blocks and treasure that's not there!

[MagiMaster]

Mixing up the sprites would be interesting, but very time consuming. No need to make new graphics, but a whole lot of code to mix things up.

I might could enlist the level generator to help with hallucinations though, by placing fake blocks/etc that only become visible when global.tripping gets set.

Slow running would take some slightly tricky code (I've already dug around in there) but should certainly be doable.

Any ideas on how to group effects into interesting sets? I don't think I want any mushroom to be purely beneficial, since once you found it, you'd skip all the rest, but having some generally better than others would probably work.