Wishlist
Alright, I'm posting this topic to see what ideas roll in, although I make no promises. The Flash port of LASSIE is being built from the ground up so there is a window here to build in new features... It is infinantly easier to build a feature set all at once than to go back in to add new stuff later. So, sound your ideas for things you'd like to see in LassieAS: the flash version. Starting off the subject are some ideas from John (with my comments)

:idea: Different walk speeds for horizontal and vertical movement. This would basically be to enhance the illusion of depth on the backgrounds. :!: Good point, and I think this would be an easy add in. I have to check the engine code, but I think that those two motion factors are processed seperately already, just using the same value.

:idea: Related to 1, but not sure if it's possible. Speed scaling. Basically, the closer (larger) the character gets, the faster his walk speed would be. :!: Good idea, though this one would be trickier. Motion factors are calculated at the start of each path segment and used until the character reaches the next segment. This idea would require a fairly major overhaul of the motion system so that factors get calculated per-frame. Therefore, this one is a no.

:idea: not even sure what I'd call this one... depth scaling? Imagine this: there's a hill in the background of a scene. A road goes over the hill and down the part we can't see, then there's another hill behind it that rises up. If someone was to walk down that road, after reaching the peak of the foremost hill, they'd start walking down the back of it. They'd disappear behind the hill, getting smaller as they go down, and then we'd eventually see them going up the hill behind it. Again, kind of a cinematic thing, there are work arounds already, and I can't think of a way to even attempt an effect like this except to make a walk path with dots & lines and somehow assign z-shifting and scaling to the specific path. :!: I've considered this before and some additions that could be made to walkable areas to account for it... fairly major stuff. I'm not writing this off, but this will not take precidence. I don't want to 'stick it in' later, but I think that's got to be the way it happens.

:idea: control for room enter/exit events. Most common would be that when you enter a room, as it fades in you can see the character walking a bit, to kind of keep the flow from leaving one room to entering the next :!: yup. Needs to happen. I'm not sure about the 'exit room' fitting into the pre-existing events flow, but at least 'enter room' will be added.

:idea: FadeScreen TIMe (with a 1 for fade in and 0 for fade out). I'm sure I could find a use, though I don't have a specific one in mind. But having a command that would basically just simulate a room change, or the passage of time (like the screen fades to black, and while it's black the sprite of the clock changes ahead a few hours, fades back in, etc.) would be useful. :!: Hehehe... WAY ahead of you. Already built into the engine, and way more powerful than just your proposed on/off ability.

:idea: ability to copy/paste text. I noticed for some reason I can cut & paste TIMe's from the TIMe window of one sprite into another. But if I want to cut & paste dialogue text it won't work. It just won't past from one dialogue window to the next. :!: That will be added for TIM-es, assuming Director has built in support. I THINK it does... Either way a full, pop-up editor window is planned for TIM-es. Dialogue editor will probably not change though.

:idea: I don't know if I'd use them, but some people might: a score counter or a timer. Score just because I know some people still like to know what they may have missed in a game. And time just because then we could have scenes where characters have to live up to the claim they made about being able to hold their breath for 10 minutes. :!: I've had similar thoughts before, but this is a very novelty system. At the heart of it, it is very much an "additional" aspect of gameplay, and for the time being I'd like to focus on the central engine.

:idea: ability to copy sprites from room to room. Maybe even import/export (like a library kind of thing). For instance, the crows that I have in my first and second rooms. Within a room I can just duplicate the sprite. But if I want to use the same sprite & its interactions in other rooms, I have to set it up again in the new room. Maybe there's a way the data for a sprite can be saved in a text file, and then just re-imported. I don't know. Again, something that's a minor inconvenience. :!: Hmmm. Not a bad idea. I'll keep it in mind, although I wouldn't look for it in the next version release.

:idea: The ability to affect lighting in the room (ie, affects the background image as well as the characters) basically for effects like turning on/off lights. Not really needed since it can already be performed by having a transparent overlay that's phased on/off. :!: Ok, I think something like this is doable... extend the light matrix class to all room sprites (as a toggle option), then make an updateMatrix TIMe that could be changed on the fly. I would NOT include a room's background image in this effect as it is a different catagory of sprite, but you could work around that by just making a full-screen sprite at the lowest depth as the room background then toggling on ambience. Don't look for this immediately, but I will build the flash arcatecture around this premise so that it can be added later.

:idea: Maybe a TIMe for simple text-input prompts. I'm not sure if it's really something I'd use, maybe I would, but I imagine it might be a way to have things like a player can name their character (though that would involve variables and stuff) or enter passwords and stuff. I don't know, some people might find it useful. :!: This is definately another novelty feature that is unrelated to the central game engine. There are enough central systems I'd like to address that this sort of 'extra' isn't really realistic to consider. Good idea though.

Translation
Maybe it would be cool to be able to translate the game without going over every part and item... like a .doc file that we can quickly modificate. I`m developing in spanish but i will translate it to english... and it will give me some work.