Creatures Caves

Good to see some people get into CAOS! Speaking from experience (I did that same tutorial about 3 years ago), it's actually a fairly easy coding language to get into, even if you've never coded before. You just need to be patient and good at reading.

You shouldn't worry about PRAY files yet. They're only necessary once you're ready to make downloadable agents files. Any in-game testing of scripts can be done from the CAOS tool or the in-game CAOS command line (CTRL + Shift + C). Attempt to make a few working scripts first, then worry about that. You also hardly need to write any PRAY yourself, as our peppery friend mentioned above.. unless you make really complicated stuff like a metaroom or something.

May I presume that this is your first agent? If so: Let's just try to get this agent safely into your world first. Follow the steps below. I might repeat some stuff from the guide, but then again I'm not sure what causes the error.

So what's really important in CAOS (and any other code) is that you read and understand every bit of code that is written. You can find every single code (for Docking Station) here.. But I wouldn't use that page for Charles yet.

Step 1 of any CAOS code is finding and opening your image file (c16). You specified that you couldn't find a cheese image, but it's right there on the page.

(Direct link) Download that and put it in your Images folder. Also put a copy somewhere else in a folder (documents or something).
You need to start the spritebuilder and open charles_cheese.c16 from wherever somewhere else is (not Images!). Then, you should see the collection of images that the image file contains. In this case: All kinds of animations for Charles. The sprite builder always begins counting at 0, and it ends at 26. So a total of 27 images. Remember that and hold on to the collection of images for now.

So a CAOS script (for an agent such as this) always consists of 3 parts. Part A is the install script, part B the event script(s) and part C the remove script. That's crucial to remember.
Part A ensures that your agent enters the world.
Part B usually consists of more parts and enables your agent to interact with the world.
Part C allows an agent to be safely removed from the world.

Step 2 of the CAOS code is determining your classifier. But you don't need to do that yourself in this guide, since the writer of the guide already did it for you.

new: simp 2 11 4645 "charles_cheese" 1 22 500

So we're telling the game to make a new simple (new: simp) agent. I think this means that the agent usually consists of a single part, but I could be wrong. It's not really important for now anyway.

The classifier consists of a family (2), genus (11) and species (4645). Each agent type has their own classifier. (Check the genus numbers for "food" for C3/DS on this page)... But the only thing unique about every single agent is the species number. For the family and genus, just look at that page. All "food" agents are 2 11 XXXXX and all "critter" agents are 2 15 XXXXX. It's important to note that the family, genus and species must remain exclusive for a single script. If you make another script with classifier 2 11 4645, the game engine will go bonkers. Those three numbers will be used all throughout your script, so hold on to them!

The game engine needs to know where to draw the appearance of your agent from. That's why the next part is "charles_cheese", it's the same name as your image file, but without the extension. If charles_cheese.c16 is not in your Images folder, the game will throw you an error (and it will not make the agent).

The next 3 numbers are different for each install script, and they all have a different task. The first two are related to your image collection in the spritebuilder. The last one determines whether the agent appears in front of or behind other agents. The guide seems to be pretty clear about those.

Part 3:

attr 195
bhvr 48
elas 10
accg 2
perm 100

These are all features of your agent. This is an explantion of ATTR. You can play around with the rest once your agent is in the world, to see what they do. Except for BHVR: BHVR is a command that commonly causes errors, when you're just starting out. It needs to be at a specific value, depending on the amount of event scripts (part B) that are in your code. I'd put an asterisk (*) directly in front of BHVR, until you understand how event scripts (part B) work. The text should turn green.

Creatures 3:

mvto 760 770

Docking Station:

mvto 450 9250

MVTO moves your agent to a direct position in your world, using coordinates. You can track down the coordinates of a place by pressing CTRL + shift + X in your game and hovering the pointer somewhere. This seems to be missing in the Charles guide? I'm not sure. Pick the coordinates of C3 and it will appear in the Norn Terrarium. The DS coordinates move the agent to the Norn Meso. Creatures 3 stand-alone uses the same world map (and thus coordinates) as Creatures 3 in a docked DS world.

Leave the rest of the code out for now.

inst
new: simp 2 11 4645 "charles_cheese" 1 22 500
attr 195
*bhvr 48
elas 10
accg 2
perm 100
mvto X Y

So in short:
- Install the image (c16) file and always check it out using the spritebuilder.
- Choose a classifier.
- Determine the attributes of your agent.
- Move the agent somewhere.

If you did this all right, you can try to install the script from the CAOS tool (F9), or by putting the script (.cos) file in your Bootstrap/001 World folder (C3) or Bootstrap/010 Docking Station folder (DS) and starting a new world. The latter causes a script to be automatically run when you make a new world.

Long post! If you made it here, well done. Sorry about any bluntness. That's how people from my country tend to be.

Once you manage to make the agent appear in your world, let me know, and we'll get to the event scripts (part B of a script) and maybe the remove script (C). You could wait for me to respond or try to understand it from the guide.