next »

[EmilMeiton]

I've once again restarted this project with Unity.
I'll continue by posting new messages to this thread

Old message:

Hello y'all!



I've been working on this game for some time now.

It's a simple puzzle game and it even has been done before. But the cool thing is the way I create levels (atleast I think so). They are randomized and they are always solvable, I even get to choose how "difficult" a level should be or how many steps, optimally, to reach the goal.

This would be my first post on this awesome forum and I'm so looking forward to your critique and comments

You can try it out via this link (windows only):
https://www.box.com/s/gujw1p1gkmvqcsx98u4b
you move about with the WASD keys, try pushing the down arrow to get a new seed for the current level.

What do you think?

[EmilMeiton]

Also, here's a video of it in action.

[EmilMeiton]

Made a gif that sort of explains how the algorithm works.


as you can see it traces the path from the start position and adds objects randomly in it's path.

It's the small details (and the fact that I'm a noob programmer) that makes it hard for me.., small errors are popping up from time to time but I think I've eradicated most of them now

[superfoonly]

Cool!

[EmilMeiton]

Just wanted to update,

I released my game the other day!
Have a lot of stuff I wan't to refine and add but it feels really nice to have it "out there".

https://itunes.apple.com/app/id733497117

I'm especially pleased with the fact that I have an enourmous amount of levels (10000) with a 1.7mb footprint.

Next on my list right now is to refine controls and add more diverse graphics.

[lithander]

Very cool. Love the visual details (like the animated trail) and the "tock" sound. Any chance for android version?

[EmilMeiton]

Yeah definitely.., I have no idea how big of a hassle it is but it can't possible be much harder than ios deployment (I hope)

I just want to polish it some more before I put in on anything else at the moment.

[noumenus]

This looks like a fun puzzle game! I think it would be cool to add blocks that move in a set path that could add for more of a challenge.

[EmilMeiton]

Yeah.., Alot could be done to spice things up. The tricky part is when I have to change the algorithm for levelcreation.., I already have some trouble with it.., So if I add anything in this stage it would be stuff that doesn't affect the level in that way. For example: enemies, randomly moving about, I could add without changing the algorithm in any way.

Other things I'm thinking of implementing are:
Enemies (as stated above)
Traps that restart you
More graphics
Maybe some kind of overworld or map select.
Some simple story wouldn't be to bad either.
Scores for how good you were at solving a map.
lots more....

[EmilMeiton]

Thinking about how I can upgrade the graphics. Highresolution graphics with lots of neat animation would be nice.., I realy have to nail the concept of everything first though. This is a test of a character. I call him CubeDog 


What's your gut reactions? I'm aiming for cute and expressive here.

Maybe I don't use him for this game at all.., We'll see I guess 

At least he's kinda cute ^_^

[darthlupi]

I think the little cube dog is super awesome.  His cuteness makes me want to assure his survival. 

Perhaps adding items that would disappear with a certain number of attempts would be cool.
Like the bone has a number on it?  Every step you take would reduce the number until it vanished or popped or something?  Getting all bones gets you a PERFECT score?

I suppose the issue with that would be giving the player too much of a map through the levels.

I love what you have.  Very clever.

[EmilMeiton]

Actually that idea is great because it gives me another idea. What if instead of three stars (as other games do) we have bones, as you suggested. And instead of three bones, before the goal, we have the bones as goals.

Imagine the following:
First an easy map with a singel bone.
Then directly when you touched it a new map appears (with you in the same spot so it feels like a single challenge). If you fail now you win but with a subpar achievment.
Then, if you get to the second bone, you get a third and really tricky map with the final bone placed.

As I'm typning this I realise how good an idea this is. Especially that thing with a number on the bone. Thank you!

[noumenus]

Thinking about how I can upgrade the graphics. Highresolution graphics with lots of neat animation would be nice.., I realy have to nail the concept of everything first though. This is a test of a character. I call him CubeDog 


What's your gut reactions? I'm aiming for cute and expressive here.

Maybe I don't use him for this game at all.., We'll see I guess 

At least he's kinda cute ^_^

As much as I liked the abstract graphics, I really like this idea much more. I know animating all the characters would be a lot of work, but I think it would be worth it

[EmilMeiton]

So I took a long long break from this project. I've learned a whole lot of Unity since last post here (I knew none back then) and have so far recreated the whole randomized map generative thing almost to a 100%. Nothing interesting to show from that yet but recreating that part in unity made me want to update this project!

And thus I'm messing around with feel and graphics again.., Since I'm making it in Unity this time around graphics will be sooo much easier and fun!

Here's a first new try in photoshop for what I might be aiming for...

[EmilMeiton]

This is "Behind the scenes" for my random map generation ported to unity.



Even though nothing here will be shown to a player it's a lot easier to debug when everything is visible in the scene in unity. Also it turns out it's easier to script that way too (for me atleast).

I've basically made a prefab of a "Cell" with all components of it as children to that object. Like the orange arrows, for example, is individual objects that have a custom script that tells me if it's "touched" or not yet. In that way I can both see visually as with scripts what's going on. This will make it easier to add even more arrows (going hexagonal or 3D/cubes) since it's just a matter of duplicating arrows and then updating an array.

I realise I'm not explaining this very well but the important thing is that Unity rocks and "scripting" with gameobjects (instead of making scripts solely) is awesome!

[EmilMeiton]

Another example:


Also a small rundown of what rules the individual cellTypes do:
Arrows => You can only traverse these in the direction they are pointing. Will block you otherwise.
Red squares => These blocks your path.
Orange squares => They are sticky. You stop ontop of them.
Green square => Start position
Blue squares => Teleporters. You will instantly continue at the linked portals position.

Other than that.., the increasingly red numbers are how many "steps" it takes to get to that specific position (I use this number and some other rules to determine where the Goal should be). The orange arrows and the letter T show when the algorithm have "visited" that cell.

[EmilMeiton]

No graphics yet.., But I made some more progress on map-creation.

I'm now able to place a goal and iterate many levels quickly (useful when trying to find a "good" level)

Another thing that's new (that I always wanted to implement) is a dead end searcher.

It's basically looking at every possible position to be in and looks if goal can be found from that position, if not.., then it's a dead end

In some levels/maps there can be quite a lot of dead end cells so I'm probably going to discard those completely. If it's just a few dead end cells then I imagine adding something akin to deadly spikes to reset the player (and discourage player from going there in the first place).

I thought about doing a popup that tells you "You can't finish the map from here", whenever you are in such a cell, but that feels like lazy game designing.

The bright pink cells are dead ends:

Just one dead end. Just add spikes there.




Way too many dead ends, will definitely not let players play these maps.

Luckily most of the maps generated are possible to solve from any possible position

edit:
oh, and what all the things in the images "do" is the following:

[EmilMeiton]

Playable build (webgl)
http://www.emilmeiton.com/Experiments/Sweeper/index.html

Controls:
arrows/wasd for direction
r for reset

Very simple but it works!
Infinite amount of levels is always fun too.

Please tell me if you find any bugs!

[EmilMeiton]

http://www.emilmeiton.com/Experiments/Sweeper/6/index.html
some graphical improvements.., next on the list is probably a counter that tells you what the optimal amount of steps neccessary to finish a level is.

something like "oh, you finished this level at 20 steps but it's possible to finish it with 14 steps, wanna try again?"

[EmilMeiton]

Hi again, this project is kinda dead but had to try pyxel (http://pyxeledit.com/) and took a stab with this game in mind.

I used a nes color palette and so far I love the software.