YY Slider (simple, relaxing polarity puzzle game)

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rrTea
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YY Slider (simple, relaxing polarity puzzle game)

Post by rrTea »

So here's a new sketch by yours truly! It's a one-screen tile-based puzzle game where you have to go over all tiles but are not allowed to cross them more than a certain number of times. Nothing spectacular really but it can be fun. (I should also update that other old thread before making new threads I guess...)

Anyway here's a screenshot:
(attached below)

After extracting, keep both files together. Control the "Turtle" with d-pad and after completing the puzzle restart with Button 1 (keyboard also works: Cursors + "Z"). The current puzzle should be solvable within 17 moves (it's pretty easy).

There's only one test level for now but it should be easy to add more and expand it with additional elements you'd expect to see in a game of this kind (keys / doors, switches, that kind of stuff, nothing too complicated).

This time I'll try to put it all together using only ZGE inbuilt components and keep it within 64kb just for fun. The current build is mightily bloated because I just used my previous project that has tons of audio effects, a few fonts, meshes etc already in... I'll clean it up later.
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CoolSliderScrShot1a.jpg
CoolSliderScrShot1a.jpg (12.8 KiB) Viewed 24667 times
Last edited by rrTea on Sun Feb 08, 2015 4:30 am, edited 4 times in total.
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rrTea
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Post by rrTea »

(Edit: Removed outdated build.)

...and here's the new build! It includes the tutorial level and one empty room. It's still a bit rough but it should all work...
Last edited by rrTea on Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:45 am, edited 4 times in total.
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

I like it :). Good increase of difficulty and the tutorial text makes it easy to figure out what to do. Nice that the binary is so small too. Fun puzzle game.
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rrTea
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Post by rrTea »

(Edit: Removed outdated build.)

VilleK: thanks!! and...

Here's the new build! Numerous changes in both game mechanics and technical setup, resulting in smoother experience and easier to build and maintain levels. I can now finally edit levels in Pro Motion as opposed to editing them in a txt-editor - just compare the two screenshots! I even made "fancy" icons for the map.

Anyway, the exe is now only 46 kb (thanks to kkrunchy)! Levels are external and they do add a bit but it's all still within reason. There are 20 (I hope simple?) tutorial levels (first layout versions mostly, so expect some bumpyness in design!), and only the last one gives a hint of the things to come. The tutorial text and well, lots of other things are very, very far from finished but even at this early stage it should give an idea of the project. I'd be happy to hear any impressions!
Last edited by rrTea on Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:45 am, edited 2 times in total.
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

Nice level design. It requires some thinking to minimize moves :)

Cool that you managed to use Pro Motion for level editing.

I think a nice feature would be if you zoom in the camera on smaller levels and zoom out on larger levels because the smaller levels currently only use a very small portion of the screen.
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rrTea
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Post by rrTea »

I also thought about that, the camera should zoom in / out... there are other things I was planning to introduce in situations when the levels are small. Not sure I'll manage to implement all of them but I'll try!

In the next build I'll also include my pmp level layout files in case anybody wants to design a level or two.
Imerion
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Post by Imerion »

This was indeed very fun! Was just going to try it quickly, but still sat and played through a bunch of levels. :)
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rrTea
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Post by rrTea »

(Edit: Removed outdated build.)

Thanks for the nice words :) I managed to work on this a bit more.

It's still far from anything spectacular but I want to set it up first so it doesn't crash, loads and saves things properly, is fun to play etc, and then if the project is successful (is enjoyable and challenging to play etc) I'll eventually add things like nice menus, background images etc. Right now it really is rather basic and not very interesting (except hopefully as the prototype / design etc), if it were any simpler it wouldn't work...

1. First 30 rooms are set up, divided in 3 levels (out of 10 planed). First level is just a tutorial, second level introduces path overlapping, and the third introduces interactive walls. The balance and the design are all over the place right now but generally it should go from easy to hard.

2. The game now unlocks new levels whenever the last room in a level is solved. For this demo I just added my own save game so the first three (or four?) levels are alreayd unlocked.

3. Each room / level can be freely selected for replaying once it's unlocked, on the "Select" screen press up / down to select the room, left / right for level.

4. During the game, press and keep pressed button 1 on the gamepad to restart (a counter should apper), button 2 works the same if you want to exit the current room and go abck to the splash screen. "Start" button toggles between two zoom levels. Esc to exit the game at any time.

4. Zoom in / out sadly doesn't follow the player yet.

5. If you have Pro Motion, you can load the levels and see the solutions :) The files are included in the "Rooms" directory.

One crucial thing that is still missing is that the number of steps doesn't get saved (the goal of the game is to solve each room with minimal number of steps). Right now you can just fumble around and after a while the room will be solved: I plan to leave this as a valid method of solving rooms, but only solving the room in a predesigned amount of steps will unlock a "star" rating, similar to how it's done in Polarium Advance (only there you can't solve harder levels by just randomly flipping tiles, because the levels are based on gravity unlike in this project).

This build uses "tiles" (via the new ZGE component) from an imported 256*256 bitmap (of which only one tile is used for now, it's barely implemented) - but the exe is still under 64 kb!

And again, thanks to Kjell for all the examples without which I wouldn't even be able to set up the opening screen...
Last edited by rrTea on Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

I tried it again now with the volume turned up and noticed that the sound effect and little tunes are really nice :).

It is fun and addictive.

I think it would benefit a lot with a little bit better graphics. Right now the graphics are maybe too abstract :).
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rrTea
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Post by rrTea »

Right, the graphics should absolutely be updated (still didn't manage to get to it for this build, hopefully soon...).

New in this build: levels 5 and 6 implemented + minor tweakings for older levels. Except in the newest levels (5 and 6), the game now actually shows the number of steps required to get a star rating (and keeps track of player's records)!

I'm afraid it's really hard to get a star rating on certain levels. Nobody playtested this game so far except yours truly, will probably be fixed one day...

Edit: removed obsolete build.
Last edited by rrTea on Tue Apr 21, 2015 3:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
Imerion
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Post by Imerion »

Nice update!

By the way, in the last version you had some sort of RenderBeams-effect on the title screen. How did you do that, it looked really cool. I tried to do something similar for a space-game I'm working on, but it didn't turn out very well. (The beams look distorted, probably because they try to render translucent beams on top of each other.)
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rrTea
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Post by rrTea »

Imerion: Sorry for the late reply, had to attend to some stuff this month... Anyway, is this the RenderBeam effect you were referring to (attached)?

As for the game... I managed to implement more levels and fix other bits here and there. I also went through some of the levels with a fresh outlook (coming back to it after a few weeks... I forgot the solutions etc) and ended up infuriated at how bad some of the levels are. What a frustrating game, who wrote this!? Haha... A few more updates and the game should reach v0.99... Hopefully next month I'll be less busy!
Attachments
RenderBeams.zgeproj
I'm using an animated Material (see in the OnUpdate) to make the beams "lively". The material also uses ZBuffer because I was after a special effect.
(5.65 KiB) Downloaded 673 times
Last edited by rrTea on Tue Apr 21, 2015 3:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Imerion
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Post by Imerion »

No problems, and thanks for sharing! That's the effect I was referring to!
Using an animated material was what I was missing. :) Now I should be able to do something similar.
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rrTea
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Post by rrTea »

(Edit: obsolete build removed)

The new build is still ugly but the puzzles are all finally implemented (first version) and some bugs finally fixed (thanks Rado1 for reporting them)! The first sketch of the logo is also added in - just to give you an idea of where it's supposed to be going here's also a comparison between "sketch" (where I'm currently) and "published" logo.

This build has all the levels unlocked: obviously the first time the game is started the later levels should be locked, but I left it open just so it's easier to see later levels. They are all marked with (-) in the beginning, if you solve a puzzle within a reasonable amount of steps it will be marked as (*). I really like the last 10 puzzles (level 10) and I hope they're fun to play too!
Last edited by rrTea on Fri May 15, 2015 3:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
Imerion
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Post by Imerion »

Played a few levels, and it's still fun! :) Really nice new logo!

Also, I really like that you have a countdown before restarting a level. Was about to accidentaly do that a few times, but that counter saved me. Also it feels professional when it appears. :)
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