Simple Puzzle Game

[walaber]

There is a programming contest going on by the makers of Dark Basic, with the theme "puzzle game". I've been working on the game for about 2 days now, and have all of the basics working. I will seriously improve the graphics before the game is done, but I think you can get an idea of the gameplay from the video.

basically you just need to get 3 balls of the same color to touch, and they dissappear. the real game will be tetris-style, where you are fighting to keep the playfield from overflowing (right now it just keeps it filled for testing).

also it's really easy right now, so I think I'll up the requirement to at least 4 balls touching. I of course will add a score system that gives big bonuses for combos

SCREENSHOTS
SHOT 01
SHOT 02

GAMEPLAY VIDEO
DIVX AVI - approx 1.2MB

the game is a testament to the Newton material system. everything is done with materials, from allowing balls to pass through the glass, to knocking other out, to checking it balls are touching, etc! most of the "brains" of the game are in a single material callback

it's been fun coding this, because using proper physics makes the gameplay very intuitive, and also posed some challenges for determining when to destroy balls that are touching, as there's no easy array-based way to do it, like a standard 2D puzzler would use.

any comments welcome!

[Julio Jerez]

Ah it was about time tetrix had a remake with more modern tools. Very nice

Some people find the material system and over kill or too hard, but it is not, I hate the solution of some engines where they add a method to the rigid body to receive collision and then the have one collision handler that they decode with bit field mask, for years programmers had come to accept that horrendous and totally wrong idea.
It is taking some time for people to understand fully the Newton method and when they do the material system becomes the best friend of the AI and Game play.

Yet another one of those unnatural property (did I say property, I meant power) of the Newton Site.

[Dan]

Looks like fun

Different shaped vessels might be a cool concept. rectangular shaped like
you currently have allow more surface contact with surrounding balls. If the edege had a _/\_/\_/\_/\_/\_/\ shape then I believe the difficuly would increase.

like wise having <> <> obstacales within the container would also limit surface contact (As well as fill the container allowing less ball to fill.

[walaber]

interesting idea about the different shaped objects, I'll give it some thought. I will definately be including the following 2 specials:

(1) Wild ball - instantly destroys all balls of the same color of the first ball it touches.

(2) Bomb ball - destroys all balls within a small radius, and also applies an explosion force on all balls in the frame, hopefully juggling them around and causing some chain-reactions.

here are a few screenshots to show my progress. I have added a scoreboard, and the coolest addition so far is the smoke effect when you shoot a ball (see the video). for the "bomb" the smoke will be red

SCREENSHOTS
SHOT 03
SHOT 04

VIDEO CLIP
VIDEO CLIP (divx) approx 1.5MB

[cleathley]

thats got to be one of the more bizarest games i've seen for a long time. really looking forward to playing it..

well done..

[walaber]

well, why not

here's an early beta of the game. the basic functionality is there, and the game gets harder and harder as you play.

no big instructions, just point and click. there is a slight delay between clicking and shooting. when you click, the bottom-most ball is dropped into the tube, and then shot. it will be shot at the location of the mouse when you clicked, even if you move the mouse after clicking.

basically try to get 4 balls touching.

there are 2 special balls, the "wild" (gold color) and "bomb" (has explanation marks on it).


anyway, please let me know if you come across any problems, and I'd also really appreciate any input on the difficulty... too easy? too hard? etc.

DOWNLOAD LINK - .rar archive, approx 1.5MB

[cleathley]

came up with can't find d3dx9_25.dll. i have the full dx9c installed so maybe its a orge specific dll ?

[_Tux_]

i downloaded the dlls from here :: http://www.clootie.ru/delphi/download_dx92.html (Clootie_DX92_dlls.zip)

they worked but when it loads i get a play game screen but i cant get passed it

[tomek]

came up with can't find d3dx9_25.dll. i have the full dx9c installed so maybe its a orge specific dll ?

It's contained in DX9.0c April Release in one of directories. It's called so to not overwriter D3DX from older 9.0c releases

[cleathley]

seems like the mouse is way off. it seems to be loosing tracking hence problems picking the hot spots in the game (menu) and targeting (during the game)

[walaber]

ah, I should mention this was not written with Ogre, but with "Dark Game SDK", a C/C++ version of Dark Basic, what I used to program in. they're holding a puzzle-game competition, so I decided to enter a simple game made with Newton.

you're right about the mouse, that part was tacked on at the last minute. however in-game it should work fine if you look at the red cursor, not the windows mouse. I'll make it hide the mouse later, and of course also make sure the mouse doesn't get off-center.

sorry for releasing a hard-to-play demo! the next one will be improved

[walaber]

new demo - this beta should work much better. i also included the directX dll, so it should work even without the absolute latest DX version.

all mouse problems should be fixed...

DOWNLOAD LINK

[_Tux_]

that works much better!

1 thing i noticed is it seems the mouse isnt focused on the d3d window. because far into the game, the game lost focus and a firefox menu was clicked.

good job though

[cleathley]

seem to play a lot better.. cool game...

[walaber]

Beta release 3

this is the final beta before I consider the game "done". I have purposely kept the game very simple, I intended this project to stay a simple game

here are some screenshots from this beta:



DOWNLOAD LINK - .zip archive, approx 4MB

please inform me of any bugs/issues so I can finish this up