Messages

About 2, I mean if you attempt to do it TWICE in a row. As in, you go to the Polar Dimension, then, for the hell of it, you decide to go through the Polar Passageway AGAIN. That's when the terminal fails to work. Maybe make it so that the Polar Passageway locks permanently once you've completed the Polar Dimension? (And not until. You don't want it to lock prematurely.)

About 3, you can get the text to repeat without going through Volcanic Wave. Just go back and forth between the screens before going through that part.

say(1,gray) doesn't work. If you want a grey text box, this is how you have to do it.

Let's say you want this:

Yellow text: Hi, it's me, Vitellary. Here's the keycard.
Grey text: Got the Keycard!
Yellow text: I hope it's helpful. Go and find the treasure!

You need to have this:

script1:

say(1,3)
Hi, it's me, Vitellary. Here's the keycard.
iftrinkets(0,script2)

script2:
say
Got the Keycard!
say(1,3)
I hope it's helpful. Go and find the treasure!

(You can replace 3 with yellow or vitellary if you want.)

Grey text is simply a "default" setting, and so if you choose any colour other than 1-6 (for the six crew members), it'll ignore it and use the one used previously. Unless you call a new script which will set the default to grey again. I hope that helps!

Major glitch: Never have a script with text set to run when you collect a trinket or a crew member. It causes the game to freeze. Have the script near, but not on the trinket - give the trinket text box a chance to appear and be dismissed first.

I worked around the glitch by creeping up to the ninth trinket (it was at the top of a vertical tunnel). I made sure I was inside the script box before picking it up, so the script didn't activate. The above poster mentions being able to work around it by saving and reloading the game. In any case, this'll hopefully be fixed soon. So yeah, also Vitellary gave me the keycard again even after I'd got all 14 trinkets, and it's hard to get out of Vitellary's room - sometimes you bounce off the inversion plane below just as it disappears.

What, when you get stuck in the walls? Yeah, it does, but it's still annoying because you go so slowly when you're trying to move sideways to get yourself unstuck.

Looking good so far; I'm liking the fact there's not as many cutscene bar interruptions. Top left corner of Abandoned Facility Entrance is missing a block... oh, did you get the last paragraph or two of my previous post?

I meant to mention this before but I forgot. Something about abusing the warpline "glith"?

Finally I decided to try going through the Polar Passageway for a second time. You get stuck. Good job I saved outside the Abandoned Facility. Firstly, cutscene bars don't disappear and secondly you get stuck in the area with the terminal that warps you to the Polar Dimension. You can't get back because of the Mark III terminal etc.

Text in Not The End repeats. "Isn't this where I rescued Vermilion?" As does Smooth Sailing text, but I don't think that really matters.

That's the end of my test run for now. Thanks again, keep up the great work!

No, there are 13.

The second argument in the say command also accepts a number, but it does not accept all. As before, 1 = NPC Viridian (or player if no NPC present), 2 = Violet, 3 = Vitellary, 4 = Vermilion, 5 = Verdigris, 6 = Victoria, 0 / 7+ / everything else = repeats last colour used. There is no grey command, so load another script if you need grey after a different colour.

To ensure your box appears over the player, not NPC Viridian, use reply, not say. To summarise, you can use say(1,3) for one yellow line of text.

I've not got very far yet, but minor thing so far: Abandoned Facility entrance. You know how normally the cutscene bars appear and disappear when you enter the area with the four tokens? Well, if you go there after completing the first area, the cutscene bars don't go away.

In You Cannot SurVVVV or whatever it's called, the way back from the terminal is almost impossible without dying. Forcing the player to die is considered bad. I know it's possible, but it's pixel-perfect and barely possible - probably relying on the enemies being in a particular frame of animation too.

Apparently, I lost Vermilion's signal, but did I ever have it? Don't forget it's the first time you speak to him, in the room oAo (can't be arsed with accents).

I like what you've done with Vermilion walking into the warps, but some of the text STILL repeats... EVEN after he goes into the warp. Try going back after he leaves and you'll see what I mean. The Escape and Low Roof have repeating text. The bottom part of Warp has repeating text too.

Tip: Group flags. For example, use flags 1-19 for global flags that affect the whole game, use 20-29 for one section, 30-39 for another section etc. and if the section cannot be revisited then you can reuse those flags for something else later. Just an example but it'll help you remember approximately which flags are for what. In addition to that text file I suggested.

In the playing-as-Red section, in the room with the terminal and Vertigo the other side of the wall, Vertigo starts in mid-air and falls slightly each time you enter the room. Minor, but worth mentioning I suppose.

[4]

I tested a quickfix I thought of for the VVVVVVMan script. Basically, your script ends with the command undovvvvvvman. I added one extra command:

[dialogue]

say(-1)
text(1,0,0,4)
say(4)
vvvvvvman
delay(100)
undovvvvvvman
customiftrinkets(0,lastcrew2)

I also removed the lastcrew2 script box in that room. That way, lastcrew2 is automatically run after the vvvvvvman script, which means you don't get the dialogue rubbish. There were other things I thought were a bit off in this level, but I can't think of any more at the moment that I haven't already mentioned. I hope that helps!

Oh yeah... The NPC Viridian says "I'm you, but eternally sad." but he's smiling. If you don't want him to be smiling, replace all instances of happy and sad with happy(me) and sad(me), otherwise they'll affect NPC Viridian as well (see my post about happy and sad in the scripting commands topic).

There are cutscene bar problems at the top of the Veni Vidi Vici tunnel if it's your second or later time triggering the script box. The simple fix would be to have Viridian say something brief. The proper fix would be to rearrange the scripts so that the flag is checked in an otherwise empty script (i.e. a script that doesn't contain say or reply commands).

Three things. One, you miscounted - only 8 trinkets are available, not 9. Two, you can get between the walls sometimes at the edges of the screen. It's especially easy to end up running along the underside of the floor of the screen. Other than that, it's quite good so far. Finally, when I did that and ended up in outer space, why did I get a random message about trinkets? You should delete script boxes that aren't needed. The scripts will still be there and can be called from other scripts. If you need to actually delete a script completely, press backspace from the script menu.

As long as it is able to tell when a new file is put in there, then yeah. Another problem is if a level is updated - how would the game know, and update the description?

I think checksums will have to be checked. This'll still be quicker than the current method, though.

Quickfix uploaded.

Basically I opened it in Wordpad, got rid of the excess rubbish caused by putting colons in, and fixed your script that opens the gate. The problem is that the destroy(gravitylines) command was in the wrong script - it was in the broken script caused by using colons, and thus was never executed. Hope that helps.

I'm going to try In Pursuing Design in 2.0, because that has a glitch which makes NPC Viridian smile. I'm assuming that it'll make the player smile in 2.0, because it's a feature added in 2.1 which probably wasn't implemented correctly - no argument assumes cyan rather than player, which is the mistake. I'll let you know my results.

EDIT: Yeah, in In Pursuing Design, when you're in the room with NPC Viridian, it's the player who becomes sad then happy, not the NPC as in 2.1. So it was a new bug introduced into 2.1 as a side effect of being able to pick who becomes happy and sad. Basically, remember that if you're using cyan NPCs, don't use happy and sad sans argument - put anything in the brackets that isn't a recognised command. Recognised commands are:

1, viridian, cyan, [no argument] (=NPC if it exists; if not, then the player)
2, violet, pink, purple
3, vitellary, yellow
4, vermilion, red
5, verdigris, green
6, victoria, blue
all, everyone, everybody (player and NPCs)
0, 7, 8 etc, me, player, random words, anything else = player guaranteed, not cyan NPCs.

So numbers work, and there are three ways to specify "all" that I've found so far. "every" doesn't work, so everyone and everybody must be hard-coded.

Note that if you have multiple NPCs of the same colour in the room, only one will be made happy or sad - even if you use "all". My experimentation hasn't uncovered a solution, unfortunately. It's definitely worth knowing that once happy, they stay happy even if you leave the room and come back. However, multiple NPCs of the same colour in DIFFERENT rooms will all be affected by their corresponding command.

Happy and sad commands affect all NPCs, even in different rooms. If you use no argument or cyan / viridian, if you've got a cyan NPC, both will change if you're in different rooms. The NPC will change alone if you're in the same room. So again, to ensure it's just the player that changes, use e.g. happy(me). If you've got two cyan NPCs in different rooms and you're in one of their rooms, and a script there contains sad, then both cyan NPCs will become sad and the player will be unaffected. If you're in a different room, all three of you will become sad.

I think that about covers it. Any questions? Sorry if I overcomplicated things...

EDIT again: Just to point out that it's safe to have a 2.0 exe in the main folder of a 2.1 install. I haven't noticed any problems; the extra 2.1-exclusive stuff in the save files is left alone by v2.0 it seems. Any player levels you complete with 2.0 won't be starred when you load v2.1, but the levels already starred will still be starred. I copied my original v2.0 into the folder and called it VVVVVV20.exe along with the main vvvvvv.exe which is 2.1.

EDIT 3: OK, happy and sad commands affect all crewmembers of a certain colour, just not all straight away if there's more than one on the screen. For example, say you've got three cyan and three red in a row; happy(all) will only affect the player, the first cyan and the first red crewmember (in terms of when you placed them; if you placed them middle, left, right then it's the middle that will be affected), but when you leave the screen and come back, they will all be happy. Same goes for picking a colour; the first will be affected on the screen you're on, but they'll all be affected once you leave the screen.

A couple of important points that need adding. The happy and sad commands need extra mention, because if there is an NPC Viridian in the room, the argumentless commands will affect him instead of the player. To make sure you change the player's mood, use any unrecognised argument, e.g. player, me, ruby, poo etc.

Also, "all" works too. It affects everyone on screen, player and NPCs alike. "viridian" and "cyan" both affect the NPC. Note that if there is no cyan NPC in the room, the commands will affect the player, but to guarantee the player is affected, use happy/sad(me) or something.

The main game even has a companion activate a checkpoint. I take it that won't happen in custom levels either? Do companions walk over spikes or through them?

No worries, take as long as you need. Yeah, that last one is simple; clear the flag in the same script that causes the flash. Then you're guaranteed to only get it once. Also, don't worry about using multiple flags to prevent speech repeating in that area - they're temporary flags because you're not going to be saving Vermilion in that corridor twice, I would assume; you can use those flags for other purposes later on, as long as you remember to reinitialise them if you need to.

EDIT: I've just been messing about in the editor. Remember how I said happy and sad commands affect NPC Viridian if he's in the room? You can force them to affect the player with the argument (player) or any unrecognised argument. I tried sad(ruby) and sad(poo) with all crew in the room, and I was affected. sad(cyan) and sad(viridian) affect the NPC, and sad(all) affects everyone. I know this is off-topic but I mentioned this above, so I thought I should confirm my test results.