Magic Signs v2.0 -- Finally

[ManaUser]

Okay, I've hit a little snag. Let me get your thoughts on this. One of the things I wanted to add is an escape character. Currently, & for example, separates objects/commands. So if you want to use it literally, you're pretty much out of luck. An escape character is something else you put before it, to let the computer know you simply mean "&" not the special meaning.

/ seemed like a good choice. So for example /& would be a literal "&" But what if you need a literal "/"? Well logically that should be //, but I just realized I already used that for comments.

So I've got three choices, none strike me as great, but I'd like to know what you think would be least bad.

1. Use something else to mean a literal "/"
2. Change comment to something else, thereby breaking existing levels that use comments.
3. Use some other escape character entirely.

On the face of it, #3 sounds like the best option, but I'm just not sure what else to use. Many characters are already used, and nothing else seems very "escapy" to me. The most conventional choice, backslash, is not good because it's missing form Spelunky's font.

[Bae]

GO MANAUSER
USE POUND!
/pokemon

are any of these used?
>
<
#

youknowthingslikethisiswhyistillthinkputtingcodeintobracketswouldbeagoodidea

albeitthisisprobablyadiffrentsubjectentirely

whatisspacebar

[Moloch]

Can't use #.
< or > if you are desperate.

I would use backslash. You're already using lower case letters that aren't visible for shorthand. I would suspect most people would use the message box to edit signs (being able to cut/copy/paste is a big help, it's easier to read, and you aren't limited in length). Either way it looks like a mess in the editor when you have sign text overlapping all over the place. I don't expect it to be readable by just looking at it in the editor.

[ManaUser]

Actually the shorthand letters only have to be lowercase if you're using lowercase letters elsewhere. I see your point about the letters all running together in a huge mess, but I still don't like the idea of invisible stuff very much. I was pondering using ' (apostrophe), which doesn't seem too bad, it wouldn't really interfere with the normal punctuation use, since it only needs to work as an escape character when there's actually something to escape.

[Kegluneq]

Programming languages traditionally use "\"

[Wonkyth]

Yeah, "\" is the norm.

[ManaUser]

Thanks for all the feedback. Backslash certainly is the standard, but ironically I think that may prevent me from using it. That's be because Game Maker itself uses it as a an escape character! I did some testing, and with \ I got weird seemingly inconsistent results, whereas with ' it works fine. So that's probably what I'll stick with.

[ptmc2112]

Well, in programming languages, and likely in GM as well, you can do \\ to force game maker to display a single \ (if it was in a string that you would display) and I've seen it used in regex (Regular Expressions), for regex to search for a single \, you'd have to enter \\\\ so that the regex would treat the 1st 2 \ as an escape character.

At least in C++ and Java that's how it works....

[PhilipT97]

??(R1)P.?X.!2 makes a wide push block
??(R1)P.$S YETI KING LEFT?X.!0.5 makes a thin yeti king statue
but ??(R1)O ROCK?X.!2 makes a plain rock?

PS. where would i find some more lvls... I <3 them

[Bae]

http://mossmouth.com/forums/index.php?board=5.0

http://www.spelunkylevels.tk/

http://spelunky.wikia.com/wiki/User-Made_Levels

no magic signs levels yet if you were wondering

[ManaUser]

??(R1)P.?X.!2 makes a wide push block
??(R1)P.$S YETI KING LEFT?X.!0.5 makes a thin yeti king statue
but ??(R1)O ROCK?X.!2 makes a plain rock?

PS. where would i find some more lvls... I <3 them

Unfortunately, items (things you can carry) can't be stretched or colored. This isn't an absolute limitation, but it's caused by code in oItem rather than anything to do with the sign, so changing it would be outside the scope of this mod.

[PhilipT97]

why can't I change the exit's variables... (i.e. IMAGE..BLEND/A.)

[Urza]

First of all, read this.

why can't I change the exit's variables... (i.e. IMAGE..BLEND/A.)

You can set the variables in them, but as with items, the exit and entrance objects have an explicit draw routine that doesn't support blending or scaling. It's unfortunate, but there's not much I can do about it.

Finally, just to keep you guys updated: I've been alittle busy with holiday stuff, but I'm still working on Magic Signs. This will probably be the final version for a while at least, save for bugs fixes if needed.

[Bazly]

I don't have much to contribute to the current conversation going on, I just wanted to say, that this is simply amazing. You guys have officially blown my mind, I didn't think Spelunky could get a million times more awesome, and it has. Love you all.

P.S.: I was playing the demo and couldn't help but notice... anyone who DOESN'T know that you can put arrows in walls and climb them, after I've made about five level sets based on this concept... shame on you all. 

[Wonkyth]

Yeah, I've known that for some time, but  have never actually had the occasion to use it.