I've been busy writing more stuff into YYYYYY! New version is in
the first post* Sounds - Massive thank you to Terry for these! They make a big difference to the game
* Sound effects are written in for death, souvenirs, bouncing wires, checkpoints and terminals.
* All the sound code has been rewritten and I've upgraded to the latest version of fmod.
* All the code to play music is written in, but there's no music yet.
* The settings.ini file allows for volume changes and enabling/disabling of music and sound effects.
* Made some small tweaks to the level editor and added an 'undo' function. From now on the level editor and YYYYYY will be one download.
* Wrote a
guide to creating campaigns.
* Previously each campaign could have a target time in seconds and the game length was measured in seconds. However, this could be problematic, because computers might run the game at slightly slower or faster speeds. So instead I'm now measuring the game length in turns. A turn is every time you have the chance to move, which is roughly every 85 milliseconds. This only affects the game if you want to speedrun the levels and you'd still do that in the exact same way as before, but now there's no disadvantage for people with older computers.
* Changes dissolved tiles to +, because / was getting confusing with the rotation tiles.
* Bounce wires and rotation tiles are now orange, so that everything white in the game is lethal.
I've also started my rambling about the level design in REDDER, so that should be ready later this week. Although I'm going offroading tomorrow night, even though I haven't driven in over six years and that was doing driving tests, which I failed seven times. I hope all my passengers have renewed their life insurance!
Oh wow, I just saw this-- looks fantastic! I haven't played it yet but I just watched the videos. Definitely has the VVVVVV feel, etc., but it really seems like its own thing too. Nicely done! 
~Josiah
Thanks Josiah, glad you like it! I'm currently enjoying your music
Wow, that new rotation is gloriously ugly. Good job.
Thanks! ...I think
I agree with you about the precision/distance thing with text, tho the same could apply to an tile based game. I just think folks are more apt to forgive a text based game than a tile based game when it comes to action.
Funny thing is your example, to me, is a bad one. I look at the tile based game on the left and feel like I'm taking the data in better than the text based one on the right. Now, granted you can fit more on the screen with text unless you really crank up the resolution, I tend to think that icons are more readable than abstract text characters.
Ah sorry, I should have explained that part. With roguelikes the text mode is super-confusing to begin with, but after a while it's faster to process than the tiles-mode. It helps that many roguelikes share the same symbols for items.
I'm happy to play games with text or graphics, but I've never had any interest in making graphics. So I tend to write games that are either text-based, use very simple graphics or I use someone else's tileset.
So give me some insight to your moving platforms and how I could do them myself? That's on thing that I've been bugging on with ASCIIpOrtal.
Wouldn't it be brilliant if platforms could go into portals and out of another portal?
Here's how I do the platforms in YYYYYY:
When the room is loaded:
1. In the room files the platforms are stored as lines of Ys or ys in the starting location for that platform. Ys go right or down. ys go left or up.
2. The game reads the room files and stops when it finds a Y or y. This is designated as the starting tile for that platform. The game then checks to the left and down, to see if this platform is horizontal or vertical. The game then finds all the other tiles for that platform and gives that entire platform a unique number. It then continues checking for platforms from the next tile (ignoring any tiles that are already used to make platforms).
When the room is being played:
1. The game loops through each platform and checks if it's horizontal/vertical and which direction it's going in. If the player is in the position that the platform will move to, the game checks to see if they can be moved to the next free space. If yes, they are moved. If no, they are crushed.
2. If the tile to move into is not free (for example, there's a wall in the way or another platform), the direction of the platform changes from left to right, up to down, etc. If the direction changes we go back to step 1 and look for the next platform.
3. The game loops through each tile of the platform and moves it left/right/down/up as appropriate. With each movement the game checks to see if the player is on that tile. If yes, the player is moved one space as well. Potentially this could move the player into a spike, so they would be killed.
That's the simple version! There's a bunch of other stuff going, like the word enemies use all the same code as the platforms, except touching them results in immediate death. Platforms can go off one side of the screen and reappear on the other side, which is a bit tricky, because half the platform is on the left side of the screen and half is on the right. Word enemies have letters coloured in red if they are responsible for a player death. By far the most complicated feature is rotating rooms with platforms. That was super-difficult!!
All the code for handling platforms and word enemies is located in the modWords.bas file. Hopefully my explanation makes sense, but you're very welcome to ask any questions.
