Spending too much time stomping bugs. The last two aren’t even my own bugs. First I was having trouble launching this game in a web browser. It was giving me a security error, telling me my page was trying to communicate with this internet-enabled location: (the same page). The cause turns out to be simple trace() calls. I think Haxe/Flash is trying to write logs to the javascript console  when in a web browser. I don’t know how any of that crap works. The best fix was just to kill all traces in the project file:

<haxeflag name=”–no-traces”/>

The second issue was another Flash issue. The game looks right on the Mac target, but the Flash target isn’t rendering HaxePunk Tilemaps properly.  The problem only comes up when I change a space of the tilemap to a tile that has alpha in it. The resulting screen shows that the canvas is not being erased before rendering the tile, so the alphas just all pile on each other. Since this works properly and expected on the CPP targets I think it’s probably a software rendering issue in HaxePunk. The hack workaround in my GridView:

if(g.eraseBeforeUpdate)
tileMap.clearRect(x, y);
tileMap.setTile(x, y, g.get(x, y));

Offspring is playable now, and you can win although the path there is inscrutable and unapologetically vague. But it IS playable, and I can certainly post spoilers to the entry page. I’m going to spend a couple hours on sound, then I’ll revisit the rules XML. Thrillz! Anyhow here’s a snap shot of a game in progress:

This shows the game about halfway done. I hit the planet with meteors to leave mineral dust all over, which feeds algae and leads to the formation basic cells. Algae has produced several plants on land, and the seeds from those plants evolved into trees. This isn’t exactly super-scientific folks. You can see by the grove of trees a naked caveman evolved from an herbivore. He’s just one click away from human-dom. The reptiles below are also one step away from becoming carnivores, and then they’ll become humans if they could just get some meat! Later, the nearby trees will help the humans build dwellings, form cities, and eventually launch a spaceship. Into SPACE!

Seriously, you’ll find this game confusing.