I don't know whether or not this is meaningful to you, but I thought I'd tell you anyway.

Even after a year, I sometimes get bogged down in trying to make something happen. Last night, I spent a good three hours trying to make it so that the Player can go up to a tree and chop down as many branches he wants in order to make arrows or sell the branches to an arrow-maker or a shop. So he can stand there and chop away to his heart's content. Sounds easy, right? Hah! Wrong! I experienced it not working, the game crashing, my computer crashing, you name it. But I've (finally) learned that if this happens, it's because I'm doing something wrong or trying to do something that the engine cannot do. But usually - always so far - it's because I'm doing something wrong.

I got it to work right, and when that finally happened, the game was stable.

Three hours. Sigh. Hang in there with your games!!!!

------------------
-- Debra
Danillitphil Productions
(url="http://"http://www.danillitphil.com/graphics/index.html")www.danillitphil.com(/url)

Persistance pays! Way to go! I echo your assessment that when something goes wrong it is usually the input rather than the engine which is the problem. And they (the problems) can be a devil to find. One such took me a week to solve at the rate of 3 to 4 hours each day. End result was that I had conflicting instructions to the engine from two different sources, a global and the item "use" list. It was one of those "I tried everything" scenes. Obviously, I hadn't.

My advise when one is confronted with such a problem is to identify all elements which can have an effect on the action and re-build from the start of the event. When a crash occurs, look for what could possibly be in conflict. It is a lot harder to find something that isn't there, but a missing link can be just as bothersome.

------------------
My Doctor said I was having too much wine, women, and song - so I gave up singing because 2 out of 3 is not so bad.
The (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/rduck/")Kingdom of Garendall(/url) sectional map is easily printed from gif format pages.
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/damsels.sit?path=pog/addons&file;=damselsV1.1.sit")Damsels in Distress(/url) - A plugin for PoG.

SIgh It's a fact of Programing. For me almost nothing I build works the first time.

------------------
Thanks,
GrahamVH
graham@warcraftcentral.com
Coldstone Developer (url="http://"http://www.warcraftcentral.net/legends/main.html")http://www.warcraftc...gends/main.html(/url)