That's a very old video of some of the earliest test content in the game but it gives and idea. It was basiclaly made as soon as things started moving. I've got a more recent video on the Asciilands facebook page and hopefully video content will start making its way onto the blog soon.
Glad you like the visuals, the appeal is very esoteric but I'm sure there's enough fans of ascii stuff out there to make it work.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to the way it's currently done.
The diagrams can give a slightly wrong impression and it looks like I've communicated the actual behaviour poorly because it works very much like you've described; there are not several objects occupying separate tiles that move in a synchronised way (so the troubles described by zenojevski are not applicable here). The constituents have no self-awareness and store nothing but their own appearance. They come in and out of existence as the object moves and are mere "markers"; they can't be interacted with but instead refer interaction to the object itself.
In that sense, it very much does consist of an 'avatar' ai object with several plotable entities except that the avatar object itself acts as one of the entities while the rest are kinda 'hollow'.
The objects are stored in their locations so this method of spreading them across tiles makes the most sense and you're probably right to be critical of this approach however it reflects reality and part of my objective is to make a program that my friends can contribute to as they learn code themselves and the easiest concepts to grasp are those that reflect reality rather than more abstract ones.
Also it hasn't presented any problems so far so I'd rather work with it than around it.
I hope I've understood and addressed what you're saying. Thanks for checking it out.
This is correct; public release is a long way off and features are blogged about more or less as they are developed so the foundation level of the features described by the blog is indicative of the development progress.
First off, I'm aware of HN but I've never browsed or used HN before. This is my first post and I've had a quick look over the guidelines but I apologise in advance if I violate any established decorum.
The blog linked here by a friend of mine is indeed the full extend of Asciilands' current online presence. The game still has a long way to go as you might be able to tell by the fact that I'm blogging about fairly foundation features like the combat system etc. The first post on the blog talks about why I'm making it; basically to give back to the freeware community and to "make the game you want to play but can't because it doesn't exist".
The blog itself is something I do to keep a log of the development for historical interest once its finished and also to build something of a port-folio piece; code samples are great but a dev blog goes so much deeper. I also just enjoy doing it.
The blog, so far, has really only been read by a few of my friends, some people I studied with a few co-workers so I'm glad to see it has some appeal to people outside of those circles.
I'm happy to answer any questions and accept any feedback you might have on the blog or the project.
Thanks for your interest!
Glad you like the visuals, the appeal is very esoteric but I'm sure there's enough fans of ascii stuff out there to make it work.