OK, today's progress...

I'm having serous concerns re everything still working when i add levels. eg if the bug dies will it return to level 1???

• made clearer recordings of the 'pesky bug' and 'PU'
• Made recording of cough and added it to the collision event of the bug with the bug spray, the farmerrun and farmerspray objects (based on playtesting feedback - players will now know if they got hit or not)
• Can't remember if I noted it last time, but I haven't crossed it off my to do list - the bird timeline is set to return to 0 at step 10000. I think that will work...
• Set stink bomb bonus oranges to be recreated every 450 steps if not eaten and 900 if eaten - that gives up to 6 extra stink bombs that can be picked up in that first level. That should give a player heaps of time to pick them up and practice playing with them, without worrying about wasting them

Mature oranges

• I'm going to do this in order to make it an interesting game/have interesting decisions
• For the space bar event on the oranges, I also added 'change sprite' so the red oranges turn blue as soon as someone starts eating them, so players know which ones to leave to mature and which ones they've started eating
• Found a larger ball shape in purple for 'mature orange'. Set a alarm on oranges - after 2000 steps they change into this object, then 300 steps later if they aren't eaten, they die. The problem is, when I applied this change, all of the mature oranges died at once and then the tree died! Do I change it so that the trees only die if you are responsible for draining all of the oranges? I think so. I'll create an invisible object that expires after 1000 steps, and after that if there are no oranges on the tree, its not the mature oranges disappearing that are responsible. This could lead to a serious shortage in food supply for the player. I'm not sure how it will work out in actual play yet, but it could certainly make my game interesting! Only now worried it will be too complicated re instructions
• Created obj_holderorange, that is invisible and destroys itself after 1000 steps. I added it when the mature oranges disappear (to make sure it's only the player's draining action that causes a tree to die). I also made the tree recognise mature oranges and not kill itself when they are on it (the tree died when they changed as it was just checkng for oranges)
• That was all working fine - except now you can drain teh last few oranges on a tree adn the holder oranges keep the tree alive, even when it shoudl die. I'm going to change holder ornge to 700 steps - that's the time it takes for an orange to grow back (1000) minus the 300 steps a mature orange is alive so even if the moment before the oranges matured, in theory you shoudl have one growing back?
• Actually - i just played it and it seems OK. Plus if you only leave one orange on a tree, and eat it when its mature, it kills the tree. i like that predicament - makes managing the oranges more interesting. The only thing I don't like now is the way all of the mature oranges appear at once. I think I'll try to stagger the oranges at the start, so they all aren't on the tree to begin with, which should stagger the mature oranges more. I'll also have to think abot a way to visually change the oranges to indicate they are maturing so the player knows how close they are to getting them
  
• Just built the sprites for the orange states, god it takes ages! But the 'ripening' of the orange looks great! Still a problem re clearing of the trees with orange holders keeping them alive...

OK - taking dinner break now, but just played it and its actually more interesting now! I'm staring to like the game! Yay!