Having tried LT many years ago, I've rediscovered it recently -- but also
found 20,000 levels awaiting me. It's impractical to try all of them, and in
any case I enjoy experimenting with making levels more than solving them...
but there is a chance that what I'm about to ask has already been covered
before, in which case please bear with me (or tell me the LVL/level where
it's been done before).
I've been trying to make an antitank spin. Obviously this can't really
happen, but it could appear to happen if 4 ATs with differing directions are
successively & smoothly put in the same place, and the obvious way to do
this is with a tunnel -- as one AT gets shot out of the tunnel end, another
(waiting at the other end, or another end) jumps in, and so on ad infinitum.
Trouble is, tunnel squares have two states, let's call them Up & Down. If I
step into a tunnel, I'm in the Up state and get transferred to the Down
state of the other end. [This has to happen, because if there were only one
state, I'd jump back straightaway, etc.] A consequence of this is that one
cannot have a whole bunch of Tunnel 0 'entrances' with ATs queuing up to
jump into the Tunnel 0 exit where I want to see a spinning AT, as each time
one of them moves ahead in the queue, any AT in the Up part of a Tunnel 0
somewhere else in the queue will jump into the Down part of the now-empty
tunnel they have just vacated, *and not jump any further* (unless it is shot
out then shot in again: which is very difficult to do automatically
considering that all 4 directions will be appearing there, so 1 of them is
likely to be shot & destroyed).
A different approach I tried was to have e.g. a Tunnel 0 'exit' (the one
we're watching for a spin) surrounded by Tunnel 1/2/3/4 entrances, and
elsewhere on the field Tunnel 1/2/3/4 exits each next to a Tunnel 0
entrance. Each AT (1/2/3/4) in turn would start off being shot into the
Tunnel 1/2/3/4 entrance near the spinning spot, and emerge at its respective
1/2/3/4 exit hole, to lie in wait. In due course (and sequence), it would
then be shot into the neighbouring Tunnel 0 entrance, appear in the spinning
spot, be shot out of the spinning spot into its own entrance, reappear at
its exit, and lie in wait again.
The big problem with this is the multiple Tunnel 0 holes. When I tried to
lay it out symmetrically, any AT 1/2/3/4 'lying in wait' would be shot into
its respective Tunnel 0 entrance, but emerge at a random Tunnel 0 exit (not
really random: the open one closest to top-left). So to avoid this, I had to
make it unsymmetrical with the 'spinning spot' the top-left one, and the
other 4 locations at different positions in the field. This in turn meant
that it was not easy to get the Tank to visit each position in turn to
trigger the AT jumps, and some positions ended up so far away that all
fluidity of the spin was lost.
Can anyone see a solution to this?
TIA
Ben Jones
www.ozaru.freeserve.co.uk
found 20,000 levels awaiting me. It's impractical to try all of them, and in
any case I enjoy experimenting with making levels more than solving them...
but there is a chance that what I'm about to ask has already been covered
before, in which case please bear with me (or tell me the LVL/level where
it's been done before).
I've been trying to make an antitank spin. Obviously this can't really
happen, but it could appear to happen if 4 ATs with differing directions are
successively & smoothly put in the same place, and the obvious way to do
this is with a tunnel -- as one AT gets shot out of the tunnel end, another
(waiting at the other end, or another end) jumps in, and so on ad infinitum.
Trouble is, tunnel squares have two states, let's call them Up & Down. If I
step into a tunnel, I'm in the Up state and get transferred to the Down
state of the other end. [This has to happen, because if there were only one
state, I'd jump back straightaway, etc.] A consequence of this is that one
cannot have a whole bunch of Tunnel 0 'entrances' with ATs queuing up to
jump into the Tunnel 0 exit where I want to see a spinning AT, as each time
one of them moves ahead in the queue, any AT in the Up part of a Tunnel 0
somewhere else in the queue will jump into the Down part of the now-empty
tunnel they have just vacated, *and not jump any further* (unless it is shot
out then shot in again: which is very difficult to do automatically
considering that all 4 directions will be appearing there, so 1 of them is
likely to be shot & destroyed).
A different approach I tried was to have e.g. a Tunnel 0 'exit' (the one
we're watching for a spin) surrounded by Tunnel 1/2/3/4 entrances, and
elsewhere on the field Tunnel 1/2/3/4 exits each next to a Tunnel 0
entrance. Each AT (1/2/3/4) in turn would start off being shot into the
Tunnel 1/2/3/4 entrance near the spinning spot, and emerge at its respective
1/2/3/4 exit hole, to lie in wait. In due course (and sequence), it would
then be shot into the neighbouring Tunnel 0 entrance, appear in the spinning
spot, be shot out of the spinning spot into its own entrance, reappear at
its exit, and lie in wait again.
The big problem with this is the multiple Tunnel 0 holes. When I tried to
lay it out symmetrically, any AT 1/2/3/4 'lying in wait' would be shot into
its respective Tunnel 0 entrance, but emerge at a random Tunnel 0 exit (not
really random: the open one closest to top-left). So to avoid this, I had to
make it unsymmetrical with the 'spinning spot' the top-left one, and the
other 4 locations at different positions in the field. This in turn meant
that it was not easy to get the Tank to visit each position in turn to
trigger the AT jumps, and some positions ended up so far away that all
fluidity of the spin was lost.
Can anyone see a solution to this?
TIA
Ben Jones
www.ozaru.freeserve.co.uk