Re: [Enigma-devel] New levels / Various

[Nat Pryce]

From: "Daniel Heck" <address@hidden>
> > * I'm missing a hotkey or button in the menu to jump to next
> > _unsolved_ level.
>
> Another good idea...
>
> > * When the level-code of a level is broken during design, you don't
> > see any error message (and I did not find any file containing
> > messages). The level simply doesn't start, so I had to comment out
> > line by line to find the error. boring... :)

I think that after you complete a level, Enigma should start the next
*unsolved* level.  I play levels out of sequence, choosing puzzle levels or
arcade levels depending on how well my brain is working at the time.

> If you run "enigma --log", error messages will be written to enigma.log.
> The best solution would be an in-game console for messages and
> interactive Lua commands, but that will have to wait for a little while
> longer.  But in this particular case, a small error dialog sounds like a
> reasonable idea.

On Windows, the error message is written to the file stderr.txt in the same
directory as the Enigma executable.  When developing levels on Windows, I
run Enigma in windowed mode (not fullscreen) and have shortcuts to the
stdout.txt and stderr.txt files on the desktop so that I can easily bring up
the error messages in a text editor if something goes wrong.

Another tip: explicitly check for error conditions such as nil references at
certain points and use the error function to abort the level file with an
explanatory error message.  This really helps when tracking down a bug.  Nil
references can often filter down through several function calls before
causing an obscure error in a for loop or table subscript or something.

Regards,
            Nat.