quoll

These are the feed posts that use the “quoll” tag:

2025-01-16 23:49: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-16 #4

Sure enough, I did already have sufficient testing, though I needed to extend a test a bit. I also had to make some small RNG changes to a few tests. After that I was about to add some Rules dealing with the reward for solving the optional puzzle, when I did a little investigation and realized that I actually had a Rule already to deal with that. So I instead extended a test a bit and cleared out a few more TODOs. Overall, this is great because the next thing I have before I go to town on writing is deciding what other topics I want the Annoying Skunktaur Puppet to talk about and scaffolding them. So it’s also a bit of a writing task.

2025-01-16 16:41: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-16 #3

OK, with that surprisingly trickier issue fixed, I knocked out a few more very small issues, though I broke with my normal ways and have not really tested them. That’s because I just started a full test run, which I hope will catch most of the things I want to test. Which makes a good time to rest my butt for a bit.

2025-01-16 15:28: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-16 #2

I was able to finish updating the skein and check in my changes to get that all nice. I then did some project management grabbing a few more “structural” changes I wanted to do that I had missed, and downgrading a few other TODOs to things I need to wait until I get to “writing” mode. I grabbed the first one of these to fix, an oversight that exists in production (I just filed a bug on it even though I’ve known about it for at least a year). Fixing it was actually harder than I expected…

2025-01-16 12:59: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-16

I actually did some Quoll work off thread, knocking off a few more adaptive text fixes. That seemed like it would get me close to the more writing-focused work, so I ran the tests after a long time of not running them and have been getting the skein updated. I still have a bit more, and when I looked through my TODOs last night I noticed a few more adaptive text things I want to pull up.

2025-01-12 18:27: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-12 #3

Came back from my break, nap, and eating some dinner to make one more adaptive text fix, but that’s going to do it for me tonight because I want to take a shower before I head over to hang out with a friend. Just for some content, let me describe what was fixed below the fold…

2025-01-12 13:15: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-12 #2

I’ve reached a point where I think I need to take a break and eat some food. I managed to knock out a few small issues, which I’ll describe below the fold just so there’s something to this post. But the fun of writing looms closer…

2025-01-12 11:02: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-12

Ya girl is back on this. There are a lot of adaptive text fixes, but I’m trying to hold off on those and get them next. Right now, the last one that is not like that among my TODOTODOTODOs is to investigate a response that was not firing when I expect it to. I also need to update the copyright year to be 2025…

2025-01-11 23:14: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-11 #3

OK, I ended up taking a break to make and eat dinner, but I extended that test and taffificated those responses. And guess what, I caught a few small issues through adding these tests, but nothing too exciting. Though I have also had some thoughts about a future graphical entry in this series and that was exciting! But that can be revealed if I ever get here.

2025-01-11 18:05: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-11 #2

And that wraps up the little bit I was doing where commands like “ASK GLITCH ABOUT TAFFANY'S CDS” can be used. I think the next thing I’ll tackle is what should be an easy extension of a test to account for the skunktaurs' salutations after completing the tutorial. If I get done with that, I have a few responses I need to taffificate, and that should get a lot of the lowest hanging fruit I see.

2025-01-11 17:14: Quoll Work Thread, 2025-01-11

With the new job coming up, I’ve forced myself to focus on cleaning up around the house to hopefully get it as together and clean as possible before I have to juggle going to work 5 days a week with cleaning. So I haven’t been working on any projects. But today is a good day to put in a bit of project work, so I’m going to get back on my changes to allow commands like “ASK GLITCH ABOUT TAFFANY'S CDS”. Not much more to say on that right now, so for the below-the-cut portion of this post, I want to copy over some musing about how to proceed with Quoll overall that I posted earlier today on the Fediverse.

2024-12-22 14:28: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-22 #2

I got that basically working, though a bit more robust though I ran into an issue when I was doing further testing that I want to think about for a bit...

2024-12-22 13:17: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-22

Between doing a job interview and then onboarding for a new job and getting distracted starting on a video essay project on Final Fantasy XIV, I haven’t been putting too much focus on Quoll. I did finish up testing all the branches I discussed last time, as well as added some checks to keep the Playerr from telling Ada to wander off during the beginning of the tutorial.

Regardless, I’m back on it today, and I’ll be trying to handle a type of input to the parser I expect but haven’t really dealt with yet.

2024-12-15 18:18: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-15 #2

I was able to get out my first implementation of a fully adaptive response for this response and man, I’ve really kind of made my job so hard with doing adaptive writing here. I still need to test several branches, but I also need to eat some food and take a shower, so that’s probably going to eat up all the time I have tonight. In lieu of further updates, let me explain why this response in particular is such a challenge to write.

2024-12-15 16:48: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-15

With travelling back from visiting my parents, I’ve been giving myself some time to relax and play video games in the evening, though I did let writer me take over and start on one of the responses I have left to write for the new major release a few days ago. I’m now feeling more caught up on rest and that is making me want to get to work on it, so I guess I’ll start by making some expansions of what I wrote so that it’s more adaptive.

2024-12-10 00:15: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-09 #4

I’ve finished the implementation of Ada holding the Playerr to the challenge of only using known sigils. Had to fight off the desire to make some adaptive responses to if the Playerr broke the similar challenge in the Zeroth exercise, but this is definitely an area where I don’t really want to get too deep in having to test different branches.

2024-12-09 21:04: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-09 #3

And that issue is fixed! I can go back to what I was working on, but I do think explaining why it happened may be fun!

2024-12-09 19:44: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-09 #2

Progress has been slow by me getting distracted by the Korean historical drama my father is watching, but I began working on adding Ada keeping the Playerr to the challenge and due to a missing command when I wrote my test, I ran into a bug I never discovered until now where the message for trying inscribe in Reckoning Room is misleading! It should be an easy fix, but what an oversight! And yep, since I filed a bug, it does indeed happen in production.

2024-12-09 17:59: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-09

Yesterday ended up being a bit of a break as I let myself watch the rare game of football (the Panthers lost, but played well enough in a meaningless game) and just relax, but I don’t want to lose momentum on working on Quoll, especially so close a possible release. I had some struggle deciding what to tackle next among my TODOTODOTODOs but I think I’ll work on some code to have Ada limit the Playerr to only the currently known sigils, which I implemented earlier working on this release for the Zeroth Exercise and also need for the First Exercise. Let’s get started.

2024-12-08 00:28: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-07 #5

And that is done, too. Not really that hard, it was mostly copying it over from the similar code in the Zeroth exercise. With that, I think I’ve done enough work for today, and considering that it is theoretically possible I hit the time limits in the tests, now is a good time to run them as I switch over to goof off mode.

2024-12-07 23:43: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-07 #4

Had a pretty nice long nap and then knocked out that “SWITCH BUL ON GROUND” issue, even going as far as to handle “SWITCH BUL IN HAND”. Next up is another part of the exercise I need to add to the First Exercise, the chunk time limit.

2024-12-07 19:08: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-07 #3

That didn’t take long either! Though, I ended up changing a pretty significant Phrase, which bul is the representation of (P - a proposition) being reckoned with, and I should probably re-run the tests. But I’m going to play it dangerous and not do so because I think it’s not that dangerous, and I’ll run them eventually.

2024-12-07 18:03: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-07 #2

That didn’t take long, and since I thought about it a bit more, and I don’t actually use the command “PUSH” anywhere except in the test I just added for this, it’s probably fine to move on without running all the tests. I’ll talk about that and then also what I’m deciding to tackle next, involving a big bug with the Propositional Reckoning Viewer.

2024-12-07 16:55: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-07

I spent yesterday working on a few obligations like job hunting and watching a choir meeting I missed, as well as spending time with my family because I didn’t just come here to mooch off my mom’s cooking. I also didn’t come here to not work on Quoll, so let’s get on that by tackling another issue with computers in the game.

2024-12-05 04:08: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-04 #2

And after quite a bit of work, interrupted by a break to play some mahjong and take a shower, I’ve fully fixed the Skein. I’m definitely going to avoid any changes likely to cause something this big again, but it’s not always something I know. Mostly I just avoid running all the tests and focus on ones I need, but this was a pretty significant change to how the apps on the phone worked, hence why I felt it necessary to run all the tests.

2024-12-04 22:46: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-12-04

Despite not making updates here because I got distracted by not-holiday dinner with friends and then preparing for and travelling to visit my parents in North Carolina (where I am now), I have been very busy on Quoll, and I’m getting back on it now that I’m rested from my flight a bit.

2024-11-26 23:40: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-26 #4

Two more hours of work and all the flavor text is pulled over, responses that weren’t already written are written, and all the tests are looking fine. Definitely began to flag in interest there at the end, but this is an entire tutorial node knocked out in a day of work and I feel really good about that!

2024-11-26 21:44: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-26 #3

I did my shopping! And I finished up my first run of the tests against the scaffolding I wrote earlier today, and with the exception of a very small bug where I didn’t tell Glitch to stop being wanderlustful and thus the skunktaur wandered back from going to the location for the next tutorial, and an forgotten limitation to only check for looking at the propositional reckoning viewer app once the tutorial was actually given, it worked fine!

2024-11-26 17:33: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-26 #2

After a couple of hours, I have the scaffolding for the next node ready to test, and have already written my first test to test it. However, I have been lagging behind on buying groceries for a while (partially due to the store losing power during the big windstorm last week), so I am going to do that and be back to test later today.

2024-11-26 15:33: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-26

Started my day with a rather refreshing walk to get coffee (as well as play Pokemon Go) and I’m back to get on some Quoll work before I try to hit the grocery store. Today I seem to be ready to implement one more node of the tutorial, this one concerning the Bul-tube that is found on the grues.

2024-11-25 23:15: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-25 #2

OK it took me about 2 hours, but the implementation of Ada noticing her taffification went pretty smooth except for having to move a definition up in the code so it can be pre-declared and I could save a few lines. I’ve added one test to test and that seems to work fine. Nothing really too interesting to say, I cut my teeth on implementing something like this with the optional CD puzzle, which was way more intricate.

2024-11-25 20:58: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-25

Though I didn’t make a thread yesterday, I did indeed finish going through those changes and even ran into a cute implementation detail about Taffany I want to write up and explain. But regardless, I checked in the code to randomize Taffany’s gender after one more test run to catch all the skein generation artifacts. Today I am planning on moving on to having Ada eventually notice her taffification and alert the Playerr to it. Nothing to say about that until later, but the cute implementation detail is under the cut.

2024-11-24 00:56: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-23 #2

I’ve made my change to randomize Taffany’s starting gender, ran the tests as I watched the soccer game, and as I expected it caused a lot of RNG churn!

2024-11-23 19:31: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-23

It’s been a rather wild week since I last worked on Quoll, partially due to my choir’s concert, but in particular due to the big wind storm that hit the Seattle area. But things are beginning to return to normal here, and I have already wrapped up the work I was talking about last time, and am ready to tackle a few remaining things about Taffany and taffification while I watch some playoff soccer…

2024-11-18 18:41: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-18 #3

I did therapy and then ate some dinner and by that time my tests had finished and I was able to verify that everything looked right now, as well as fixing one more place where the RNG pulls had happened. Believe it or not, though, I’m running the tests one last time…

2024-11-18 14:53: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-18 #2

The tests have finished running after about exactly two hours, and I have figured out why I wrote my Farewell Responses with that pattern, and it actually has to do with the Node-Termination Responses!

2024-11-18 12:29: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-18

I was busy playing soccer on Sunday, and I actually was intending to try to take my newly found less sad brains and do some cleaning up around the house, but I also want to resolve the issues I am facing. And the way to do that is to do another test run…

2024-11-16 22:10: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-16 #3

I’m back from getting and eating food and watching some videos as the tests ran. And I began approving things when I noticed a little issue with implicit topics listing…

2024-11-16 19:40: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-16 #2

The good news is that I blessed the skein! The bad news is that in doing so I made a change that requires rerunning all the tests…

2024-11-16 18:39: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-16

I had a concert earlier today, and I want to decompress by blessing the new skein from my test run back on the 14th, and hopefully check in this big bunch of code I’ve been working on for a while covering the next bit of the tutorial.

2024-11-14 20:05: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-14 #2

Went on a good run through the TODOTODOs I had, and then got a bit bogged down in testing taffification of these responses.

2024-11-14 16:58: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-11-14

Unfortunately, I didn’t end up finding a game jam team and then I got in an anxiety funk (turns out that I am way low on vitamin D which is probably to be expected being a Black person in the PNW). To kind of break myself out of it, and get back to something I did want to work on, I’m doing some Quoll work.

2024-10-15 19:54: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-15 #3

After quite a bit more of work, I now have flavor text in for my main pathway that I’m testing and have created tests for the other three topics that Ada can ask about to advance the tutorial even though I’m putting off on writing the actual flavor until later. (I have a lot to do and it feels more like a job for writer brain than coder brain.)

However, given that I touched a few responses for the tutorial node before this as well as responses that should have been hit by other tests already, I think it’s a good time to run the tests and at least keep them up to see if I broke anything too serious, which will do it for me tonight, most likely.

2024-10-15 14:58: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-15 #2

A bit of a longer work session to start out with, but I wanted to get to a point where I had most of the flavor text in for the initial test of the scaffolding and could thus check in code since I had a lot in the air. But I’m going to have to make slight jaunt to handle some basic signalling around taffification.

WARNING: Might have a few light world spoilers for this part that I talk about.

2024-10-15 13:25: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-15

Another day to work on Quoll, I’m pretty hopeful I can get close to wrapping up this node today. Going to start with pulling in the flavor text for everything in my current test that runs over fully scaffolded out code, and then I can check that in and add a few extra tests. The big stretch goal would be getting to a point that I can do a big test re-run to find other places I’ve made slight changes to. So let’s get on that.

2024-10-14 23:26: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-14 #4

And after long two-hour post-dinner work session I finally have one pathway through this tutorial implemented as scaffolding! A great place to end the night!

2024-10-14 19:26: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-14 #3

OK, I am at the end of my third work session after another break, and I think I finally have the basic scaffolding up, but I am going to have to do a bit of testing.

2024-10-14 15:10: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-14 #2

I’m coming up on the end of my first work period. While I think some of this was getting back up to speed I did get the basic rules that keep the Playerr conversationally shepherded during the tutorial.

2024-10-14 14:18: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-14

Between feeling bad and focusing on an interview for a possible job, I have been off from Quoll. (I also did some work on a script to import my Cohost posts to this website, but that’s not ready yet.) And with me flying to my reunion later this week, I missed my once deadline of my college reunion but that’s fine to be honest.

But fuck all of that, it’s time to get back on it.

2024-10-01 23:03: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-01 #4

OK, as much as I really want to continue working, it’s getting close to bedtime so I think I should call it here. After eating, I did another work session, pulling in the locale paragraphs for our skunktaur tutors and fixing a small ordering issue with how this gets printed out (basically, I’d rather Ada describe the people in the room before she describes the door back to the hallway).

2024-10-01 20:23: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-01 #2

OK, after a couple of work sessions, I need to eat some food. I was struggling on how to work through handling the conversation nodes when I decided that I should just organize my work using test-driven development. Though the first type of test that seemed to make the most sense to test was preventing the Playerr from commanding Ada to wander off to other parts of the level. In particular, I don’t want to deal with the headache of Ada possibly figuring out what Taffany’s problem is by wandering into the North Carolina Kitchen and finding Taffany’s CDs. It just would make the responses I’d need to write even more convoluted to account for that.

2024-10-01 18:07: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-10-01

While there is definitely still more to do with Smarter Parser, I think I really want to move back to pulling in more nodes of Glitch’s First Tutorial (which is actually the second one I’ve made because, see, because it’s a programming game, we start at zero). While I do think there’ve been enough delays in what I’ve gotten done that I am not going to make my loose deadline of mid-October, I think I can make good progress.

2024-09-26 14:58: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-09-26

I don’t intend this to be an actual thread like the last one because I’m more wrapping up for the day by re-running all the tests. I did the work before I made this post, as I sometimes do when it’s pretty small. But I do still like talking about it, so here we go.

Today was wrapping up the last few fixes and improvements I wanted to do with the Smarter Parser integration.

2024-09-23 21:12: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-09-23 #4

This is a continuation from another post. Here is the first part of this thread. Here is the previous post of this thread.

Having a bit of trouble trying to hit the default direction example...

2024-09-23 18:39: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-09-23 #3

This is a continuation from another post. Here is the first part of this thread. Here is the previous post of this thread.

I’m back after my nap and eating some food, and the next thing I’m going to try to work on has to do with some extra text substitution and variables Smarter Parser adds to grab relevant examples from around Ada to provide example commands.

2024-09-23 12:37: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-09-23 #2

This is a continuation from another post. Here is the first part of this thread.

OK, I’m finally done with writing all the responses and updating my tests to generally hit all of them. I’m glad to be done with them because partially as a stylistic choice, they are very repetitive. I hope the tone and repetitiveness contrasts well with Ada’s personable nature, making the Playerr feel more comfortable with her.

2024-09-23 10:58: Quoll Work Thread, 2024-09-23 #1

Welcome to the first non-introductory post on the website!

Over on Cohost, I got in the habit of doing actual blow-by-blow, real-time dev posts as I worked on my projects and while I don’t think it ever really had a big audience, I found it extremely helpful for my own needs, especially when a few months have passed and I don’t remember what I was thinking. I eventually want to pull over all of those posts here, but I can get to that later.