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[oodavid]

I don't really get the link between the adventure mode and the molecules... maybe because I'm not familiar with the Monte Cristo story and I miss a reference.

Firstly, thanks for reading the OP, I wanted to keep it lengthy to encourage in-depth feedback :-) Truth be told there's no "chemistry" in the Count of Monte Cristo, but I've been using Chemistry language as it best describes the logic behind the puzzle element, I'll probably drop it when it comes to the final spit and polish but for now it serves me well! I'll have a ponder about this and see what I conclude.

I quite like the concept, but I think the mechanics would fit a minimal theme better. I wanted to write something about it to explain what I meant, but it may be easier with a drawing:

Oh wow that looks fabulous! Reminds me a lot of the game "dots"! I'll try to make a level theme along those lines, I'm sure there's plenty of scope for a minimalistic environment, there's a chapter where Edmond smokes opiates and has a very relaxing meditation. They could be the levels!

[oodavid]

Teeny tiny one on my lunch break, linked the score text with my animation engine; it now eases to the desired score.



EDIT: Sved - I've just seen that second color palette now, you must have posted it after I'd replied; looks incredible! Got a really warm autumn feel about it... If I get the chance this weekend I'll try experimenting with the palette to see if I can emulate that. I'm incredibly slow at even just editing circles...

[Sved]

The palette is not from me, I just based on one I found on Kuler: https://kuler.adobe.com/explore/most-popular/?time=month

[oodavid]

You may have noticed on my screenshots that the levels have sections to display a "goal" and "limit", I want to expand on what that means and how they will be represented in-game.

Basic Goals
   Score 10,000 pts
   Create 10 molecules of 20+ atoms
   Create a molecule containing all the golden atoms
   Destroy 10 red atoms

Basic Limits
   ... in 60 Seconds
   ... in 100 Moves
   ... in 10 Attempts

Combined, these create the level boundaries.
   "Score 10,000 points... in 100 moves"

I have assigned basic color values to the goals and limits so that on my world-map you can
get an idea of the level just looking at it, ie:

Goals - points, molecules, golden molecules, red atoms



Limits - seconds, moves, attempts


Levels - as they will appear on the world-map



You'll have to excuse my limited visual skills, I know what I want but am happy to use placeholder graphics until I get to playable demo etc. Use your thoughtsickles to imagine and result!

[oodavid]

Quick one before I go to work; I've got the MapView rendering as I want with a large background image and 100 level nodes. It's mostly optimisation work even though the graphics are eyeball searingly awful

[oodavid]

Bit gutted to miss out on Screenshot Saturday as I've bugger-all to show, but a textual update is do-able, this weekend I have:

• The map now renders multiple node-types: story, level and secret
• ...I've also restructured the stored the map data (I was getting a little lost with the secret paths)
• Planned and implemented save-data structure to match the new map-data structure
• Dropped the Title-Screen meaning it now jumps straight to the map - as a nice side-effect I'll add the game title to the top of the map. Here be monsters etc.

Once the I've done a little more spit and polish with the map data and logic I'll be able to spend some time on the story. After the start of the story is in place I'll be approaching my designer guys for some artwork! So excited about this :-)

[oodavid]

I've been skipping around my milestones rather a lot; realised that I needed to prioritise on the analytical and logging functionality as the data will help me design and balance my levels and figure out how quickly to ramp up the difficulty in the early stages. All I can conclude thusfar now is that I've been playing the game a lot when at work. 62 sessions in a week. Oh dear.

Standard Deviation

As well as logging to Google Analytics for the usual feedback, I've also setup a crude way to log the metrics that will make up the limits and goal of each level: scores, number of molecules, number of moves, time played, highest scoring combos etc. They just get dumped to Google Drive and I'll be looking at these to ascertain the boundaries of levels.

One of the requirements of each level will be to get a minimum score (a bronze if you will); I reckon if I can get a pool of testers together to hammer a few basic levels I could then know what is a difficult score, and what is a hard score. Hopefully I'll see a normal distribution for players as well as gradually increasing scores with playtime.



Would anyone be interested in testing the game on Android?

PS - I can build to android now, but need a Mac to do iOS...

[JobLeonard]

Got a previous model Nexus 7, I wouldn't mind testing!

Also, I think you'll find this interesting:





"Renowned psychologist Bruce Alexander calls for a stronger recognition of the social nature of our worsening global addiction problem."

[oodavid]

Just rolled this up to 40%!

Fixed some rendering bugs when deployed to Android
Finalised my save-data format and methods
Implemented "secret paths" on the Map (they require 100%'ing certain levels)

Got a previous model Nexus 7, I wouldn't mind testing!

Also, I think you'll find this interesting:





"Renowned psychologist Bruce Alexander calls for a stronger recognition of the social nature of our worsening global addiction problem."

Thanks JobLeonard; I'll add you to my list!

Watched through the video, short but sweet, my biggest takeaway is that the lines between addiction and dependency are blurred, especially in the case of videogames; one man's trash is another man's treasure...

[JobLeonard]

Glad you liked it, hope it leads you to other inspirations.

I think the idea about making an addictive game about the psychology of addiction being exploited in games is an interesting concept, so good luck with working it out further!

[oodavid]

Having a great day with this, I've refactored my layout logic to cater for any device size with automatic sprite selection based on density / resolution. Now using a grid system not too dissimilar to a CSS framework, but in two dimensions rather than just width (ie: 960.gs)

I have a pre-alpha build ready, but have realised that my DNS / nameservers are acting up, meaning I have nowhere to dump the APK. All in due course I suppose.

I think the idea about making an addictive game about the psychology of addiction being exploited in games is an interesting concept, so good luck with working it out further!

Yeah, I'm hoping the irony of it isn't lost on the players! Still undecided as to whether I go 100% serious, or tongue-in-cheek, leaning toward serious as I'm kind of a serious guy.

[oodavid]

Decided to implement GFX for the map nodes, I doodled up the various parts ready for a designer to overwrite, means that I can get on with optimising the rendering of it, happily I'm rendering about 200 levels on the map at 60 FPS! More than happy with that :-)

[oodavid]

Another minor win for today, again nothing worthy of Screenshot Saturday but hey ho!

Completed designing the initial training levels (there'll be more later as I introduce new mechanics), technically this just means being able to render pre-defined grids rather than randomly generated ones. With a bit of luck I'll be able to release a pre-alpha SDK for Android tomorrow; that all depends on how much I have to drink tonight as I'm off out to paaaartaaaaay!

[oodavid]

Might have been partying too hard!

Started writing my intro levels and realised that it's rather difficult to explain the core puzzle concept succinctly and without reverting to Chemistry terms. Kind of expected it, but thought I'd give it a go and see how well I fared.

Before - as you connect atoms they remain the same color until they're "happy" and turn white. No indicator that you're making a difference.	After - now they cycle through a set of four colors, when they're blue you know that only one bond is needed, green is two, yellow is one and red is four.

This weekends tangent has been in colorisation; I realised that byt making the above change that all I need to really say is "make a white blob" and can introduce new, larger atoms on subsequent levels...

[JobLeonard]

If you want to add a colourblind mode (and as a protanomalous person: yes please!)

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/cubetry.html

[oodavid]

If you want to add a colourblind mode (and as a protanomalous person: yes please!)

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/cubetry.html

Well isn't that interesting! So the crux of it is that you should base your palette on Saturation and Value and that the Hue (color) is very much a second-rate citizen... Very cool; I think I'll implement that this weekend.

I was hoping to have an APK a few days ago for you to test but I ran into a bit of a brick-wall regarding the intro levels. If I still can't figure it out this weekend then I'll give you whatever I have :-)

[oodavid]

@JobLeonard - you've sent me down a wonderful rabbit-hole here! 8% of the Male population is nothing to be sniffed at.

Discovered a lot about color-blindness and vision in general. Tetrachromacy in humans is fascinating as are Mantis Shrimp (holy moly! but so off topic it's silly).

I've had trouble figuring out how to validate my palettes, but discovered a few tools and articles that have helped

http://jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/color/ - very detailed description
http://colorfilter.wickline.org/ - point this to a website and it will filter it to show it through the eyes of a color blind users, lots of options, super quick to use.
http://colorschemedesigner.com/ - has a very useful "color blind view" that shows you how your pallette would look to people with different types of color-blindness, couldn't find a way to input my hex-codes to update it which is annoying.

Ultimately I've settled for a pallette found on Adobe Kuler, it's pretty close to the colors I'm using already and appears to work with the different color-blindness filters I've tested (wether the tests are foolproof is another matter)

https://kuler.adobe.com/Barrierfree-color-theme-2288521/

original pallette
achromatopsia
atypical achromatopsia
deutanomaly
deutanopia
protanomaly
protanopia
tritanomaly
tritanopia

I think I'll skip the orange (second) as it appears quite close to the deeper orange (first) in some of them
The green (fourth) might benefit from lightening slightly

In Action!

Regular Palette	Color Blind Palette
Black Symbolic Identifiers	White Symbolic Identifiers

The next step is to make a decision, do I go color-blind by default or knock up a settings page...?

[JobLeonard]

Thanks for putting in the effort - I'm glad you're having fun learning about this topic :D

I think I actually like the dots most - the colourblind palette is indeed easier to distinguish but also much less vivid in colours (yeah, I know) which has a negative impact on the overal aesthetics. With dots you can keep the colour aesthetics but still give a hint - and regular users would also benefit.

The only issue I have with it is that the contrast is too big (both light intensity and colour contrast). Maybe you can tint them in the same color as the dot they are in but make them lighter/darker? That would make it clash less and still distinct.

[oodavid]

I'm inclined to agree with you on the dots thing; as a nice side-effect it's made it easier for me to explain the puzzle element of the game. Which I did last night while out bowling :-)

I updated the GFX as you suggested and it does look a lot better:



I only have 2 things to do before I'm happy to compile an APK and I have the entire day to myself! Wish me luck!

[JobLeonard]

Nice, the count-down effect of the dots is actually really neat - makes the gameplay almost self-explanatory!