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[Hayden Scott-Baron]

http://www.bytejacker.com/episodes/046

Bytejacker Episode 046 features Tanaka's Friendly Adventure!  Very awesome!
It's up for vote this week against QQUAK and 'William & Sly'.

[superflat]

Excellent work, miss smile.  I keep coming back to this, and I can't get that party music out of my head!

[Biggerfish]

Amazing

It's so simple and yet it made me feel really happy and warm. One of the few games that have gotten such a strong response from me.

I haven't gotten all the friends (my collect em all urge isn't that strong) but I'm gonna be coming back to it to find more, I'm sure.

 

[tiglionabbit]

*Spoilers*

Perhaps it was memories of old text adventures like Zork and Colossal Cave, but something possessed me to map out this entire game.  That sure was an obsessive task, taking me four hours at least.  I discovered a few things while I was doing it.

1) This is not a simple cartesian plane.  You can go north, then south, and end up somewhere different from before.
2) You can meet the same friends in several different places.  If you meet a familiar friend, that doesn't mean you know where you are.  Though similar patterns of friends may show up, paths never truly converge.  We're working with a tree here.
3) Several exits may lead to the same area.  If you meet the same friend in more than one direction from a particular area, both directions are actually taking you to the same place.
4) You'll never meet the same friend in two different places exiting from the same node.
5) Some exits return you to the place you just left, and will do so infinitely.

So I drew a map.  It's kinda like a ternary tree.  Begin at START and follow the lines to various friends.  Each line is labeled with a set of arrows indicating which directions you can walk to engage this transition.  Exits that loop back are represented as transitions to X.  Exits that end the game are labeled with END.  Enjoy =]

http://nickretallack.com/tanaka-map.jpg
It's a big image, set to maximum jpg compression.  That's why there are some funny colors.  It's about 700kb.

Edit: Whoops, missed a label.  On the top left of the map, Andrew (the duck) goes to Keiko (the square wavy arms guy) when you go right or left.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Holy shit! That map is insane!! 

[Curseman]

Wow, good job.

[Gainsworthy]

I know everyone's already said it, but this is Super-Cute! Haven't found everyone - it's tricky! - but I love reading the descriptions of a new Friend. Always makes me smile. You really know how to put such a meager word limit to good use!

 

[Garthy]

... So I drew a map ...

You must have the patience of a saint!

That must have taken a fair bit of effort, especially to accurately pick out loops (since there's no visual cue) and places where the same friend is in different locations. With your map, I might pick this up again today and have a dig through for some missing friends...

Thanks for sharing.

[Garthy]

*post about awesome map*

Hi tiglionabbit,

Just went through your map and followed all the paths. It's unlocked all of the character descriptions for me- though I did have a fair few unlocked already.

A couple of slips in the map, where the nodes say the same direction leads to two different places:

RLULRRLD
DUDUDLR
DUUDURLRL

(I've probably got at least one of these wrong)

If you follow each of these you should get to a node with ambiguous exits.

Thanks again for posting the map!

[tiglionabbit]

RLULRRLD
DUDUDLR
DUUDURLRL

Thanks for pointing those out.  I'll test em.

*takes a few minutes*

Alright, it seems in all those cases the END was labeled correctly, and the other transition should have had all the remaining directions.  Okay, I've edited the image to fix these and re-uploaded it.

Btw, it wasn't hard to find the loopback transitions.  They just plop you on the other side of the screen without adding a friend, and you can follow them repeatedly without getting anywhere .  Much more work was mapping all the transitions to END in cases where it turned out to be inevitable.  I checked them all just in case there was another path, but it seems a general rule that all ENDs take either one direction, or all directions.  Nothing in between.  I must admit though, I was at first inclined to believe that if I met the same friend, I was at the same place in the maze -- but when I checked the transitions off these duplicate friends, they were slightly different.  It really makes me wonder how BentoSmile wrote these transitions in the first place.  Perhaps he just went nuts with a tree structure?  Or maybe it's doing some kind of hashing based on what friends you've already found.

[Zaphos]

Sweet map, tiglionabbit!  Really fun to see it all laid out ... and thanks to you now my collection is almost complete!

[Garthy]

Thanks for pointing those out.  I'll test em.

*takes a few minutes*

Alright, it seems in all those cases the END was labeled correctly, and the other transition should have had all the remaining directions.  Okay, I've edited the image to fix these and re-uploaded it.

Cool. I've grabbed the new version and it looks good. Just checked a couple though.

Btw, it wasn't hard to find the loopback transitions.  They just plop you on the other side of the screen without adding a friend, and you can follow them repeatedly without getting anywhere .  Much more work was mapping all the transitions to END in cases where it turned out to be inevitable.  I checked them all just in case there was another path, but it seems a general rule that all ENDs take either one direction, or all directions.  Nothing in between.  I must admit though, I was at first inclined to believe that if I met the same friend, I was at the same place in the maze -- but when I checked the transitions off these duplicate friends, they were slightly different.  It really makes me wonder how BentoSmile wrote these transitions in the first place.  Perhaps he just went nuts with a tree structure?  Or maybe it's doing some kind of hashing based on what friends you've already found.

What is interesting is that there is a friend at every node, and no path leads to the same friend twice (except to the same node). Once you know this you can be pretty sure of a loop, but without that knowledge, there's no way to be sure. Sure, you've looped 54324 times, but who says that that the 54325th attempt doesn't lead elsewhere?

I'd be fascinated to know how Bento Smile originally mapped this out too.

For interests sake, this is how the mapping scheme progressed in my mind from first game to last:

- Probably a straight symmetric 2D map.
- Random chance of getting a particular friend at a location.
- Definitely not a random chance, seems to be predictable and consistent.
- Almost certainly no randomness.
- Probably straight symmetric map, warp at top.
- Mined squares that cause exit, can probably collect all friends in one good game with a map.
- Not symmetric.
- Mostly 2D-ish, some rooms have odd exits?
- Possibly pattern-based exits from certain nodes? (think Zelda Lost Woods)
- Not a 2D map, it's rare that a UR/RU, UL/LU, DR/RD, DL/LD combo reaches the same place.
- Pure node hopper, directions are just exit choices.

[superflat]

Perhaps he just went nuts with a tree structure?  Or maybe it's doing some kind of hashing based on what friends you've already found.

I love how this is causing such interest!  Not that it matters, but bento_smile is a girl, btw. 

[bento_smile]

Yay, I'm glad that people enjoy it 

it was mentioned on http://twitter.com/miyamotoSAN recently -- he called you "my friend tanaka"

That twitter is weird!  (My name is not Tanaka, haha)

http://nickretallack.com/tanaka-map.jpg
It's a big image, set to maximum jpg compression.  That's why there are some funny colors.  It's about 700kb.

Oh wow, I can't believe you managed to map the game. That must have taken ages!  Nice work! (I love that you drew all the friends on too.)

I'd be fascinated to know how Bento Smile originally mapped this out too.

My map is boring. It looks like this: http://bentosmile.com/blog/tanaka_map.jpg (super low resolution unreadable photo.) I changed it a bit when I decided I only needed one ending room, which cut out about 70 of the rooms. I decided which friend went where as I made it, concentrating on just linking everything together/getting an idea of the scope with the map. 

[PANPOMMA]

Oh bento_smile, you are amazing, like pre-sliced bread or even clouds. 

[Garthy]

I'd be fascinated to know how Bento Smile originally mapped this out too.

My map is boring. It looks like this: http://bentosmile.com/blog/tanaka_map.jpg (super low resolution unreadable photo.) I changed it a bit when I decided I only needed one ending room, which cut out about 70 of the rooms. I decided which friend went where as I made it, concentrating on just linking everything together/getting an idea of the scope with the map. 

Cool, cheers for that.  So it actually started out as a 2D plan? I can't make out the labels on the map, but are they room numbers that you jump to near each of the exits? Was the original plan that you'd be able to wander indefinitely if you were careful about your choices, or was it always such that once you went down one path you could no longer return (except to the same node)?

[ThetaGames]

This (a sequel, perhaps?) would surely make an excellent exploration-style game, in which you simply must find all of those friends in a much larger world (the complex combinations to find different friends are a very neat idea, but I feel it is impractical in such a game due to lack of player motivation).  In general, the game's unusually pleasant atmosphere (which you already have perfectly) make it stand out above so many other games.

Even in such an exploration game, you could maintain the non-Cartesian nature of the game (in fact, it would be a refreshing innovation to the genre).  The inclusion of backgrounds and landmarks would make it both more motivating and less confusing.


An excellent, refreshing game, though!

~ Theta Games

[Kevin]

I know a bunch of people have already said something along these lines, but I don't think a game has ever made me so happy. I'm blown away by how much the tiny write ups made me love the characters (the ones I've found so far, anyway).

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

I found a nice video of this on youtube (I think it's on Gamerdrome too):




Don't forget that Tanaka needs your votes today on Bytejacker's 'Free Indie of the Week'!
http://www.bytejacker.com/

[Terrorbuns]

Just finished collecting all the friends using the help of tiglionabbit's map of helpfulness. I love this game, it's just soothing. And adorable. All the characters were cute, charming, and funny. Some of the characters made me want to make some cutesy platformer with them! I'm inspired. I'll have to go and make a cute platformer tomorrow haha

I really loved the graphics though, not sure why, but they were just, charming!

Mr. Tigs was awesome