Thruster flames, so a watcher can see what the pilot is doing

Every reading on this screen is a number drawn as a bar - how fast
sideways, how fast down, how much sky, how much tank - and all of it says
what is happening TO the lander. None of it says what the pilot is doing
about it, so somebody watching over a shoulder has to read gauges to work
out that a thruster is even lit.

A plume hangs off whichever side the engine is pushing from: under the
lander to lift, over it to retro, and on the far side from the way it is
being pushed sideways, since that is the side the gas leaves. One tile
does up and down, because a vertical flip turns one into the other, and a
second does the sides, because a flip cannot rotate a tile a quarter
turn. Twenty four pixels each, on purpose, so a count of them means
something.

HELD, NOT FIRED. The engine fires one frame in ten, because that is the
tick gravity is applied on, and a flame that honest would be one frame of
light six times a second - a fault lamp, not a rocket. What is drawn is
the button being down, which is the truthful answer to "is the pilot
burning": the tick is how the sum gets done, not what is happening.

An empty tank draws nothing, and nor does the retro thruster on the
ground, because in both cases the button really is doing nothing. The
second of those was a lie the first version told.

Red, and that is by elimination again: white is the ceiling warning, cyan
the landing pads, magenta the instruments, blue the station, yellow the
lander itself - and the lander is counted as exactly forty pixels of
yellow, so a yellow flame would have broken it.

Three checks, each seen to fail on its own break. Two things the fixtures
taught: a lander placed at the world's origin sits BEHIND the two row
window, which reads exactly like a flame that is not drawn; and red has
to be looked for in a box round the lander rather than a column, because
the speed bars go red and one of the four pads is red too.
This commit is contained in:
Anachronaut
2026-09-04 11:49:38 -04:00
parent 418631a221
commit c408fc6cf6
13 changed files with 404 additions and 12 deletions
+1 -1
View File
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50
+1 -1
View File
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Mode.sbx 48
Flip.sbx 173
Sprite.sbx 442
Depth.sbx 672
Lander.sbx 6814
Lander.sbx 7477
Pad.sbx 264
Crash.sbx 632
vars.script 50