I would, of course, recommend translators to translate the roomnames
while playing the full game (optionally in invincibility) so they can
immediately get all the context and maybe the most inspiration. And if
you want to go back into a specific level, then there's always the time
trials and intermission replays which will give you full coverage of
all the room names.
However, the time trials weren't really made for room name translation.
They have some annoying features like the instant restart when you
press ENTER at the wrong time, they remove context clues like
teleporters and companions, but the worst problem is that the last room
in a level is often completely untranslatable inside the time trials
because you immediately get sent to the results screen...
So, I added a new menu in the translator options, "explore game", which
gives you access to all the time trials and the two intermissions, from
the same menu. All these time trials (which they're still based off of,
under the hood) are stripped of the annoying features that come with
time trials. These are the changes I made to time trial behavior in
translator exploring mode:
- No 3-2-1-Go! countdown
- No on-screen time/death/shiny/par
- ENTER doesn't restart, and the map menu works. The entire map is also
revealed.
- Prize for the Reckless is in its normal form
- The teleporters in Entanglement Generator, Wheeler's Wormhole and
Level Complete are restored as context for room names (actually, we
should probably restore them in time trials anyway? Their "press to
teleport" prompt is already blocked out in time trials and they do
nothing other than being a checkpoint. I guess the reason they were
removed was to stop people from opening the teleporter menu when that
was not specifically blocked out in time trials yet.)
- The companions are there at the end of levels, and behave like in no
death mode (become happy and follow you to the teleporter). Also for
context.
- At the end of each level, you're not suddenly sent to the menu, but
you can use the teleporter at your leisure just like in the
intermission replays. In the Final Level, you do get sent to the menu
automatically, but after a longer delay.
I made another mark on VVVVVV: don't be startled, I added gamestates.
I wanted all teleporters at the end of levels to behave like the ones
at the end of the intermission replays, and all handling for
teleporting with specific companions is already done in gamestates, so
rather than adding conditional blocks across 5 or so different
gamestates, it made more sense to make a single gamestate for
"teleporting in translator exploring mode" (3090). I also added an
alternative to having to use gamestate 3500 or 82 for the end of the
final level: 3091-3092.
One other thing I want to add to the "explore game" menu: a per-level
count of how many room names are left to translate. That shouldn't be
too difficult, and I'm planning that for the next commit.
