ThursdayTurnOut

Thursday Turn Out - 01/15/2026

Pete Shumate

Pete Shumate

— 2 min read
Thursday Turn Out - 01/15/2026

This week has been a “I solved a problem and, in doing so, created fifteen more” week. Was I able to get an enemy to teleport with Zel? Yes, and all I had to do was:

  • add a test enemy to the level;
  • graph out where the enemy should go when Zel teleports; and
  • edit the four bounding box scripts to reflect those locations.

Lo and behold, the test enemy now teleports with Zel! But does it continue to behave as it should after the jump?

No, not really, and not consistently.

I’m taking a new approach to fixing this problem. With the enemy finite state machine (FSM), I’d fix a bug as soon as I spotted it. I iterated on the FSM code until it finally worked exactly as I needed it to. That was effective, but I don’t know if it’s efficient. What if, instead, I didn’t touch the code until I’d documented as many bugs as possible? And, so far, I’ve found a lot of bugs:

A bulleted list that reads: 1/13/2026 • Persistent enemy FSM bugs: ○ Enemy loses Zel when she turns a corner ○ Enemy immediately goes back to patrol after stun is over, even if Zel is nearby but out of ChaseRadius • Enemy teleport bugs: ○ Enemy behaves as intended (except for the aforementioned, persistent bugs) as long as Zel does not teleport ○ If Zel teleports before she engages the enemy, the enemy will move back to its original patrol spot ○ If Zel hooks the enemy and walks away (meaning the enemy reverts to patrol, see above) before teleporting, the enemy will also move back to its original patrol spot after teleporting ○ Enemy will, however, continue to chase Zel after the teleport if it is chasing her before the teleport ○ If enemy is in patrol before the teleport, it can still enter its chase state before it returns to its original patrol position ○ If the enemy attacks and knocks Zel into a teleport, the enemy will chase her after the teleport Enemy FSM bugs happen in the main scene as well, not only in the endlessly-scrolling level
OneNote: an invaluable tool for chronicling my issues.

I’m going to spend a few days running the scene and documenting every weird quirk, reloading it and making small changes in how I play the level, in an attempt to suss out every reproducible issue I can. I think discovering multiple bugs, then fixing those bugs, will be a more efficient use of my time. However, I must concede the possibility that trying to fix multiple bugs in succession is a task too insurmountable for my ability as a novice coder.

What progress will I make by Sunday? I suppose you’ll have to find out then, or sign up for the newsletter to have the news sent to you directly!

P.S. No, I haven’t forgotten about completing “Silver and Gossamer,” it’s just that bug-hunting is too fun. Is that weird? It feels weird, but also right.

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