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On Room Enter

Over the weekend I was doing some work on the game for my son and ran into a situation where I needed to have an object start hidden from the player.  In the current pipeline with Inkscape I use python and the command line arguments to export out all of the pieces that I need.  This has been awesome for iteration and adding new things to rooms.  

The rub is that the object needs to be visible in the SVG file when it exports otherwise it exports and empty png image.

There are some ways I could get around it in the pipeline but I wanted a much more useful solution.  I opted for putting in two new functions to my logic "on_enter" and "on_exit".  Then added the execution code right before and after the main logic processing code.

On_Enter is run when a new room is entered.  I already track the current room and the last room so the logic triggers were already there now I just loop over all the logic attached to that node and I'm done.  I do the same on the other end where I run logic when a room is being exited.  The thing I like about this is that it allows me to then do all of my object setup right in the logic where it used so I don't need to jump between applications.  Art and layout are coupled into one single working environment, game logic and settings now exist in the same spot.  So everything feels very organic so far.

The idea of 'on_enter' and 'on_exit' is nothing new at all and pretty standard practice but this was by far the easiest time I have ever had in implementing it in a project.  In total it took me about 5 minutes to setup on the engine side and about 10 minutes to make the new logic nodes for the logic editor.  I attribute this to the data heavy approach I took on designing the engine.  All in all I am finding this approach is really working for me mentally.  I seem to have a much easier time reasoning about the entire project with this design approach.

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