WordZap Update

[kevin]

  WordZap Update V1.1

     WordZap is a crossword/word finder game, and is one the oldest 3rd party PlayBASIC games that i can think of.   Since it's a PB game it's been hosted on UW.com for number of years, although only recently did I notice the link was broken.. erm yeah...  Anyway,  while i could chase up the old download version,  a few years ago the author released the source  code, might as well build a local version.   I've been meaning to tweak it into shape for some time, and have had the odd session looking over it.   It'd probably be quicker to re-write it to be honest, but that's more time lost down the well.   So a could of tweak sessions will have to do. 

    The main changes today  have been the addition of the background music and  making the game more aware of it's local surroundings.  it seems that backgrond music was meant to be included, but just wasn't utilized.  So that's in and the other change refers to making sure the game is more aware of where the preferences are.  So if the local folder it's living in is writable, the pref's are stored locally,  if not, they're in the users my documents folder.  Which would hang on Vista/Win7 machines otherwise.. Thanks MS ..   
 
     Some older changes have been in improving the games loading performance.  For a small game, it was a bit slow getting started.  After a bit of a look see, it turned out the dictionary loader wasn't as optimizal as it could be,  so I rewrote that.   It's virtually instant now.   There's a few other tidbits that need tweaking, namely with system interruption protection  and few little effects. 


     

[kevin]

  WordZap Update V1.1 - Continues

    Still tinkering away with dressing up WordZap.  The the V1.1 update of the gameplay is identical to the original,  it's an interesting little game once you start to get how to play, which i must admit I never really was aware of previously.  But anyway, what i';ve been doing it trying to clean up the presentation of what's there and tweak the performance of the app.   

   Performance wise the new version is running about twice a fast as it was originally (3 millisecond refresh), with just a little tweaking of how and where it draws stuff.  I know this seems uneventful, but by improving the performance, it means it'll play better on even older hardware than before.  Which is important for a game that's not really about spec's.   Making a high spec game is easy, making a backward compatible game isn't.

   Visually all i've done  is clean up the opening and closing bookend effects, there wasn't really any before.  So this session i'm just looking at tweaking the menu and dialogs a bit.  It all a bit static, so figured an easy tweak would to be make them transparent.  This means will no doubt means lossing some of gained performance, but visually it'll be worth it. 

[kevin]

   WordZap Update V1.2

    In keeping with the previous update,  I'm really just focusing on the cleaning up the presentation of the program a bit, which is turning out to a bit harder than expected without diving in and rewriting slabs of the game.   Which as it turns out i'm slowly but surely doing, probably should have just written my own version of it from scratch, but where's the fun in that ?  - Plus I'm not entirely sure on all of the games rules..  :)

    Since last session i've been tweaking up layout of the game window.  There's a number of little effects added to brighten it up a little, but the main change is in reworking the screen size.   The new little effects all run fine, but the original game had a window size of 800*600,  which was too high for windowed app on NetBook.  So i'm just trying to trim and tweak the layout a bit to fit.  Still a ways to go, but mostly just tweaks.  Got a few ideas for making a better time bar, so see how we go with that in a minute .


 

       

[kevin]

WordZap Update V1.2b

   Still tinkering away with WordZap, while i'd like to get it knocked over today, i'm no real hurry.  Today's version is bit tighter than the yesterdays one, due mainly to tweaking the games layout, which was all originally hard coded together.  Now it's all a bit more dynamic.   The original game was fairly static really, so with each upgrade i'm adding a bit of movement here and there.   Its funny how the little things add that extra bit of something to the presentation.   Currently having a few drama with some colouring issues with one the overlays, which for some reason just doesn't shade correctly.   What fun..

     Anyway, here's today's pic..

[kevin]

  WordZap Update V1.3

    The update is complete, there's still a few bugs, most notably a strange one with the font loading, which for some reason isn't loading the correct font..  But with any luck that little tidbit will get worked out today, then whack it up on the site.    While it's simple looking game, it's a lot harder to play than expected.      


  WordZap  V1.3 Released
 
    The last few issues have been resolved and the new installer is now available on the site.

    WordZap V1.3 Released

[Jeku]

This makes me really happy that someone has taken the time to update my old game!  Thanks, Kevin!  The source was atrocious admittedly, as there was absolutely no refactoring done on my part.  It was a bit of extreme programming and I really enjoyed how it played originally.  I will download your update tonight and check it out :-)

[kevin]

 No probs.  It was a nice distraction from the day to day grind. 

[kevin]

  I think we'll rename this app. So the question is what could we call it ?

[kevin]

Any ideas on a new name ?

[Jeku]

I'm a fan of renaming it just enough to avoid trademark claims... i.e. WordTris -> WordTrix.  Maybe WordZap could become WordZapper?  WordBlast?

[BlinkOk]

alphabet soup

[kevin]

  Empty had a couple.. Only one I can remember now was Word Soup.

  Xword  (as in Cross word) is another obvious one. 

  Word Zone..   Word Jumble   ..   Word Perfect :)





   

[empty]

I think it was word salad

Word perfect :D
btw, does that thing still exist?


Hm I like Word Jumble

[OldNESJunkie]

I think Word Jumble sounds good myself.