I was starting to procrastinate again due to the anticipated complexity of swapping out the old Action RPG object slot variables with the new more generalized object slot variables. Finally forced myself to sit down today, despite how that's been hurting my lower back mysteriously this last week, and ironed it out.

Funny enough, it went by a lot faster than I had feared it would. In the system now there's only 7 active objects possible instead of the previous 8. Before I consider this version finished however, I'm going to be adding in the Inactive Object list and hopefully get it working.

Objects are classified as Monsters and Items. Items left behind on a screen when the player leaves it will fall from the active objects into the inactive objects list. No AI is done for it while it is there and for most objects the longer it stays off the screen, the greater chance it will be deleted permanently. Some objects however have a degree of permanency. They won't be removed from the objects list unless you leave a realm (Regional Objects) or never at all! (Global Objects)

Monsters don't fall to this inactive list. They'll remain in the active list all the time (global monster), until you leave a realm or it dies (Regional monster) or if it stays off the screen too long or too many monsters are expected to be loaded from the new room. This means you won't be 100% free from a "local monster" (Wandering Monsters really) just because you manage to flee the room.

Anyway here's a rom of the new object slots in action. I've also tweaked the Heart Placing routine to try to make use of all empty object slots available to it. In this case a maximum of 6 since one of the slots will always hold the black key for now. (That'll change when the key can drop to the inactive list later!)

Later I'll be converting the Heart Placer to be a sample Room AI routine which will help litter the inactive list with hearts to test those things out.