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The demo is ready for download for the competition!!
http://www.trackzgame.com/downloads/ApplesAndOranges-v0.00.01.zip (http://www.trackzgame.com/downloads/ApplesAndOranges-v0.00.01.zip)

The game is a multi-modal matching game that allows matches to be made by color, letter (the first letter of the word), and type (e.g. "Bird", "Vegetable", "Halloween").

There are four game types with their own high scores:
1. Simple : match stuff, time drains faster the more you match
2. Balance : try to keep balance between matching colors, letters, and types
3. Sets : match the given sets (e.g. 1 color, 2 letters, 1 type) to progress to the next level
4. Combo Freeplay : set up combos and let them fly with no time-limit.  Score is based on the biggest combo for a single move!

Note: Gold is not the same as Yellow, but they look very similar (the butterscotch is very similar to the Gold Coin).

The game is desperately lacking tutorials, help, and options (for sound volume, graphics settings, etc), but is playable as a demo.  When I can bring myself back to it (I wore myself out a bit with this compo back to back with my entry for the PAX-10) there will be more features added including: Help, Options, better UI for High Scores and Menus, Music (just end it all now), more things to match and super secret special matches!  The code for all of it is there, but I need to produce more art and sound assets...

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Cheers,
Zack

Actual gameplay image (Gasp)!
(http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll6/zradick/apples-and-oranges-gameplay-1.jpg)

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--Original post--

• The most realistics physics engine ever created!
• Photorealistic graphics!
• Cunning and opportunistic enemy AI!
• Fast paced combat utilizing advanced damage modeling and weapon ballistics!

None of these things have anything to do with the kind of games I make.

Apples and Oranges is a... wait for it... matching game!
The difference between A and O and other matching games is that it matches based on multiple categories.  For example: apples, oranges and bananas are all fruits and would be a match!  A green apple, green snake, and a head of lettuce are all green, so that would be a match too!  Additionally an apple, an aardvark, and an astronaut would be a match because they all start with the letter "A".

The entire thing is being written purely in Java.  All art assets are being generated from scratch for this project.

The contents of the levels are Procedurally Generated.

Below is an early screenshot showing the basic style of the game board and pieces.

(http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll6/zradick/apples_and_oranges_screen-1.gif)

With any luck I will have time to implement some of the "secret" matches and special items that can be obtained and activated...   ;)

Ah; I like this idea: encourages a lot more lateral thinking :)

I imagine that to get a level where there is only one unique way of matching all the various pairs up would be rather difficult.

Thanks!  I have code that guarantees that there is at least one match available, but it could be of any type.  It will get tougher as I add more items to be matched.  I think I only have 20 or so made right now.  Enough to test, but not enough for the final product.

just java?  So your not using any c bindings to do the graphics or anything?  Just wondering as I also code in java but use slick (lwjgl extension) to do graphics.

Yep, just Java.  I'm using the Java2D package for all my rendering.  The UI is all my own custom code.  I get a native window with Swing (JFrame) and then turn off all it's native re-draw stuff and start a render loop on it.

I decided at some point that 2D was as far as I was going to try to go as a solo developer, so the Java2D package works for me and it is native to the JVM so I don't have to bundle any libs.  In fact I try to write everything to use strictly the JVM so that I can reduce size and increase compatibility.

Java2D got a nice boost with 1.6 and now supports OpenGL (it crashes on Win32 machines periodically -- usually right at startup if it's going to) and D3D with translucent image blending and other stuff.  It's definitely sufficient for the reasonably non-sophisticated games I make.   :)

This looks awesome. A very original and unusual use of PCG.

I wouldn't expect it to be unusual, as I assume almost all matching style games use PCG content, but I am hopeful that it will be different enough to distinguish itself.  We shall see.

Everyone has their own personal preferences.  I like puzzles, so that's often the kind of game I work on.  I've played a lot of matching style games, but mostly they are all simplistic color matching, which is fairly limited (while I would love to work on a Puzzle Quest 2 style game, there was no time for something of that nature in 4 weeks and it would not really be original).  So this is a slightly revised take on an old concept to see if multi-modal matching is actually entertaining or just a fanciful idea.  Again, TBD.

Cheers,
--Zack

This sounds great, but I'm not certain of the goal. Will each level have a defined sorting system (ie, colour, alphabet, fruit) that the player has to find out through trial and error?

I'm still working on the rules system, but I'm thinking it will be something along the lines of a gradually decreasing amount of time that is refilled by making matches (as you progress the amount of time allowed to make matches would be reduced).  You would get a small amount of time refilled for matching 3 items, a bit more for 4, and more still for 5 (plus combo multipliers and that sort of thing).  I'm also hoping to put in lots of "secret" matches that would do special things.  I'm not sure how far all this will get in time for the competition, but if I'm still having fun with it I'll keep going until I'm "done" with it.

Is there a "man" item and a "baby" item? Cos if so, you're all set.

It would be nice to have the various possible relationship-types categorised (say, "Spelling-based relationships" vs. "meaning-based relationships" vs "graphical relationships") so you could see how well you did in each at the end of a stage.  Also: a scoring system that encouraged you to use as many different categories of relationships as possible might be quite cool.

Or what about a stage where the number of matches of each relationships-category was limited? (say, you were able to matc 5 pairs based on starting letter, two pairs based on rhyme, and 6 pairs based on colour, &c.).

waffle waffle waffle

I like that idea...  The bit about making you have to get a certain number of a given type of match within a level is particularly interesting to me.  Hmmmm....

I had already made plans on setting multipliers for multiple category matches (e.g. 2x the points if you matched all green vegetables or something of that nature).  I'm trying to decide how that scoring system is going to work at this point, but I'm definitely aiming for rewarding multiple matching categories.

Thanks for the feedback!

Cheers,
--Zack

The more I hear the more I want this. Best matching game evar.

Thanks, I'm hoping it won't be total suckage myself.  Mother's day ate half of my weekend dev time and I usually only manage a few hours in the evening before my brain is suitably burnt-out and incapable of doing further programming, but I'm making progress...

I started making my own game font and then stopped and kicked myself for getting too hung up on the little things...  First, scoring and gameplay...  Then pretty fonts.

Current in-game screenshot...

(http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll6/zradick/apples-and-oranges-gameplay-1.jpg)

More items!
More matching!
More madness!

Cheers,
--Zack

Yo! Dude: how is your project getting on?

It's totally extremely on!  Which is to say done.  For now.
--Zack

So, how do I play this game? All I see is an odd .jar file that says I should click it, but Filzip opens it and I don't see an executable.

The .jar file is an executable Java Archive file.  You "should" be able to just double click it assuming you have Java installed (the game requires Java 1.5+).  If you do the double clicky bit and it doesn't launch something you can also execute it from the command line as:
java -jar ApplesAndOranges_CLICK_ME.jar

Once the game is more finished I will include installers and launchers, but I thought it was a little premature for those (and I personally prefer not to have to install stuff from the Internet even if I generally trust the source).

Let me know if that doesn't help!
--Zack

Interesting, yet infuriating. ;)

The graphics and sounds seem to match the game well.

I found letters to be impossible the first few times around, and there were a few matches that I kept trying to do.  For example, I'd almost invariably try matching tomatoes with fruits, and wrapped candies with other C things, but eventually I got used to it.

I like that you provide tooltips on mouse-over to show what each icon represents, but at the moment the initial learning curve seems kind of steep.  Still, once I learned what each of the icons was, I had quite a bit of fun. :)

Hey cool, thanks!  It is definitely tough to get started.  That's partly why I have the four modes (with one being just a sandbox essentially).

I forgot to mention that I decided to categorize tomatoes as vegetables.  I waffled pretty heavily there, but decided that might be slightly less confusing to most people (even if it is technically wrong).  I think I'll switch it back, though....

Thanks again!
--Zack

I thought the definition of 'vegetable' wasn't necessarily exclusive of the definition of 'fruit'? I'd call tomatoes both. ;-)

Tomatoes are legally vegetables anyway :D

This one is a lot of fun... kind of a mind bender, even.  I keep making matches without even meaning to.

Actually that's a great idea.  I allow items to have multiple of the same property (for example a bee matches Black and Yellow and the candycorn matches Halloween and Sweets).  I think I'll do that and then everybody will be right!  Is it a fruit?  It sure is!  How about a vegetable?  Why not!

Of course I shouldn't make changes to it now (at least not in this thread) for fairness.  I do intend to keep working on it a bit after the competition though.

Thanks for the feedback!
--Zack

I was pleased by the gameplay of Apples and Oranges for a while...

But at some point, I just wanted to get into flow in it, but failed. I think I wanted to match stuff using intuition more than logical thought. Tried to group together completely different animals.

Maybe doing that would be nice: you group stuff by whatever criteria makes sense...

Anyway, thanks zradick!

Thanks for giving it a shot.
Matching by color is intuitive and if you switch your mindset to matching by type, that can be relatively intuitive as well, but doing it by letters is just hard.  I was hoping it would feel more organic after a bit, but I agree that it just continues to be difficult (even when you made the damn thing).  It helps me to say the names of the things out-loud, but it definitely sounds silly: "Pig"...  "Pig"...  "Pineapple"!
Cheers,
--Zack

Great game! Addictive, easy to pick up, lots of modes and getting those starting letter tile is tricky! (in a good way) Great job zradick! :beer:

Wow, this game is pretty clever and quite simple but really addictive... I kept trying to find all kinds of different combinations. The common letters combos are hard for me to think about. Nice job!

Thanks for the encouragement.  I enjoyed putting together the framework and doing the pixel art.  It still leaves quite a bit to be desired, but I appreciate the feedback.
Thanks,
--Zack