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1 Constructions

Each level is comprised of rooms3. Each room is comprised of three floors. Each floor is comprised of 10 places. Each place holds a construction (or con for short).4 The following figure illustrates this arrangement.

mininim-figures/level-layout

Therefore, any given construction is uniquely identified within a level by the coordinates of its place5, which are defined as the triplet room, floor and place: (r,f,p).

Constructions are comprised of three elements: foreground, background and extension. A construction foreground is the physical part the kid interacts with. Physical properties determined by it are collision, hang and fall conditions, to name a few. On the other hand, a construction background is the part that yet visible, doesn’t affect the kid in any way — its sole purpose is ornamental; torches and windows are examples of this. A construction extension is a modifier which tells how the con looks or behaves. For example, items and door opening states are both expressed by them. Any given construction can have only one extension. The valid extensions are:

Item

This is a code indicating which item should be put on the construction. Used by FLOOR.

Can’t fall

This is a boolean indicating whether the construction should ignore fall conditions. Used by LOOSE_FLOOR.

Event

This is an integer indicating which door event the construction triggers. Used by OPENER_FLOOR and CLOSER_FLOOR.

Step

This is an integer indicating in which state, of a progressive set of configurations, a construction is in. Used by SPIKES_FLOOR, DOOR, LEVEL_DOOR and CHOPPER.

Design

This is a code indicating which alternative graphical design should be used to render the construction. Used by CARPET and TCARPET.

Integer extensions (event and step) may be negative indicating that their respective constructions are broken. Except for this, the negative integer extension i is equivalent to the non-negative -i - 1 one. While the event extension may be negative for any construction that uses it (OPENER_FLOOR and CLOSER_FLOOR), the step extension may only be so for LEVEL_DOOR.


Footnotes

(3)

The terminology used for rooms in the original game is screens.

(4)

The terminology used for constructions in the original game is tiles.

(5)

The term place is used throughout the text to describe both the last coordinate of the triplet and the world space the triplet refers to. Also, often the term place is omitted and the text refers just to the construction itself, implying a reference to its place, as in “the left construction”, meaning “the construction one place to the left”. Hopefully, these shouldn’t be a source of ambiguity.


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