WIP - Easter Week Mini Game Challenge 2011

[balaporte]

I'm in and have two ideas, but need to take the first step today to rough out the concepts and see what's workable in (less than) seven days. Even if I don't come up with something that good, my goal is to get something playable submitted ON TIME. More later...

[balaporte]

Took some time yesterday to play around with three ideas, just to see what was viable and also whether the ideas are fun. I've settled on a simplified version of my original idea, which is an egg coloring puzzle game. Essentially, the player will dip eggs in to colors in order to match a displayed design. It will involve some planning and a little knowledge of color mixing (red + yellow = orange, for example). I'm drastically simplifying it in order to get something done, then will add features (maybe introduce drawing on eggs or using wax resists, or creating a mode where a player can make new design puzzles) if I have time. I've found that I tend to underestimate the time it takes for me to finish something.

I still don't know how I'll incorporate the golden egg, but I'm thinking using it as an award that a player can then use to skip a design he/she is struggling with, or using the eggs as a scoring/rating device (i.e. a better player collects more golden eggs).

I'm looking for something that is fairly simple to code in order to allow time for puzzle creation. I don't want a puzzle game with only three puzzles or something like that. The feel of the game in intended to be very casual and laid back, no timers or losing a level. The worst that will happen is that a player will mess up an egg and have to start over with a fresh one.

I have a bit of time today to work on this, so I'll be back tonight to post my progress.

[BlinkOk]

sound good dude. i really like the idea of colouring the eggs. pattern matching might be good too (seeing as easter eggs always have crazy patterns on them)

[balaporte]

Thanks for the support, BlinkOK. It is basically a pattern-matching game with a mechanic built around dyeing Easter eggs.

So far I've worked out a system for coloring the eggs and have started coding the mechanic. I've decided that it's pretty important to code the part where the player will be able to create and save eggs as puzzles early on, so that I can then use it to create puzzles for the game.

I've spent probably too much time on working out what colors will be available and how to represent the mixing of colors while teaching a bit about color theory. I want the player to be able to figure out how to make a certain color without too much thinking. The idea right now is that there are three colors available - red, yellow and blue - that will dye the egg when it is dipped into the color, which is pretty much how it works in real life. The player can dip the egg into red first, and then dip it in to yellow to make orange, for example. Too much dipping could cause the egg to turn a brown color, which, if you've ever colored Easter eggs, is also how it pretty much works in real life. I'm trying to find that special place between challenge and frustration that equals fun.

At this point, this probably doesn't make much sense without a screen shot or demo. I don't have either of those yet, but I do have the basic game mechanic working. I think I've also figured out how to incorporate the golden egg. I'll plan to post something more tangible in a day or so.

I just want to say that I'm using PB's sprite tinting ability to drastically reduce the art assets needed for the game, so thanks for that, Kevin.

[balaporte]

Okay, still no screenshot - I'm concentrating on getting the game coded first, and then will take the last couple of days to make it look as nice as possible, so it looks pretty bad right now. However, I have most of the game mechanics working, including the ability to save eggs decorated by the player (as filename.egg files, my wife thinks that's funny) so that they can be shared with others as puzzles for the game. I don't know if that will actually happen, but I like that it's possible. I'd love to do something like they did with Spore, where a small image file of the egg would actually hold the data to make the egg, but I really don't think I will even get near that in the remaining time. If the game turns out to be fun, then that's something I'll look in to later.

So far, the player can dip the egg in either red, yellow or blue dye to make different colors. Because of the way the eggs are dipped, stripes are really easy to make. Tonight I'm working on the last important (and most complicated) part of the play, which is allowing the player to put stickers and stamps (at least that's what I'm calling them right now) on the egg. To briefly explain, if the player puts a sticker on the egg BEFORE dipping the egg into the dye, the sticker will block the dye. So if you put a star-shaped sticker on a white egg, then dip the egg in red dye, what you will have when you pull the egg out of the dye is a red-colored egg with a white star on it. Stickers last for only one dip before they fall off the egg. A stamp can be dipped into the dye first, and then stamped on the egg to make a shape. So dipping a star-shaped stamp in the red dye, and then stamping it on a white egg will make a white egg with a red star on it. I wonder if this makes any sense to anyone else besides me...  ???

With stickers and stamps, players (and me, too) should be able to make some pretty interesting designs, which will translate into more challenging puzzles to figure out.

The golden eggs can be found as rewards. Basically, the player has the ability to work on any egg puzzle at any time. When a player finishes a puzzle, there is a chance that the puzzle actually contains a golden egg, which will then be revealed and given to the player. I'd love to let the player get extra items like new stickers based on how many golden eggs have been found, but I don't know if I'll have time for that, either.

Back to work...

[BlinkOk]

sounds great balaporte dude. i have defiantly seen a game like this made in flash but i cant find it at the moment. it was a very addictive game though and lots of fun so good luck with your version and i look forward to playing it

[balaporte]

Thanks for the encouragement...

I figured it must be out there somewhere (it's a pretty simple idea), but I couldn't find anything like it, either. As I'm coding it, I've been thinking it would probably even work better as a Flash game for sharing puzzles and such. No matter what at least I'm still learning something...

I basically lost yesterday as a programming day, so now I'm trying to catch up today. I had to make a major change to the dyeing and sticker process, so now I'm rewriting that code. It's actually coming out better than it did the first time but it's taking up a lot of time. I may have to radically simplify the game in order to get it submitted on time. If it seems decent then I guess I can always add to it later.

Still no screenshot or anything. Now it's back to work once again...

[micky4fun]

looking forward to this game , sounds quite interesting like the sound of the eggs being dipped in dye and reading your description sounds like something thats new , like you i think the timespan over the easter weekend is tight and may i not get finished , but at least we are both tapping away at something , hope theres a dark horse or 2 to still come forward , but wont hold my breath anyway good luck to you to

mick ;D

[balaporte]

Well, I realized yesterday that after not coding on Thursday, there was no way I could get the egg dyeing game finished in time. So on Friday I started on a simplified version of another idea I had. Believe it or not, I'm almost finished with it! I still have to make a quick intro screen, and I'd love to get a few more backdrop images, but after that I'm putting it up for download. No sound effects, unfortunately - I'm just getting too tired.

The game is called "Egg Hunt". A backdrop is displayed, an egg image is selected from the backdrop, and a 30-second timer starts. The player moves an egg-shaped cursor to outline (and click on) the egg image before the timer runs out. The player tries to collect 12 eggs, and then the location of each egg is revealed, scores are shown, and the player is awarded either a golden, silver, or bronze egg depending on how well he/she did.

I think this game is actually more fun than the egg dyeing game, even though the feel of it is completely opposite - "Egg Hunt" is fast and high pressure. An entire game only lasts six minutes.

The game selects a random image file for each new game, so players can add their own images (800x600 PNG or JPEG files) for more play.

Okay, I'm off to finish up and upload before the deadline...

[balaporte]

Just finished, posted EGG HUNT in the competition thread, and then posted again (attached the wrong file the first time). It's not as smooth as I'd have liked, and I had planned to create some background images instead of using public domain photos, but it's done on time - I met my goal. I also learned a lot about planning ahead and not trying to be too ambitious.

At some point I may clean this game up a bit, but it's done for now. I still like the idea of the egg dyeing game (my first attempt), and I may explore that more as an abstract puzzler.

Good luck to all that submit a game...

[micky4fun]

hi all

I realized yesterday that after not coding on Thursday, there was no way I could get the egg dyeing game finished in time

now that is bad news as this game sounded very interesting but know how it is , time just goes with other things to do , i just hope you get time to finish this orignal game
would be great to see in action

mick :)

[stevmjon]

hey balaporte

your game requires concentration, but fun to play.  these are types of games my mum loves. she can play them for hours.

the game ran @16 frames per second on my system (quad core only 3 years old). i had a look at your code and noticed you are drawing sprites using AFX images to a video surface. video is very slow to blend anything to.
there is a few ways to correct this, so i chose the easiest way, and edited your code to suit. it now runs at the required 60 fps (providing your cpu and ram speed is quick enough).

hope this helps

  stevmjon

[micky4fun]

hi all

your game requires concentration, but fun to play.  these are types of games my mum loves. she can play them for hours.

the game ran @16 frames per second on my system (quad core only 3 years old). i had a look at your code and noticed you are drawing sprites using AFX images to a video surface. video is very slow to blend anything to.
there is a few ways to correct this, so i chose the easiest way, and edited your code to suit. it now runs at the required 60 fps

yep my girlfriend loves these game to , runs nice n smooth now on her pc to

i thought this game was quite a good idea  , especially at short notice , still love to see other game to

mick ;D 

[balaporte]

Thanks for the encouraging comments...I thought it came out all right for just under two days of coding, but it really needs more work. The game definitely requires concentration. After play-testing it for hours and hours, I started to get a headache.

I knew I was having some problem with drawing to the wrong surface. I kept getting these weird fps numbers, sometimes it would be 60 fps and then suddenly drop down to 20 or 14 when it seemed like just little changes were made. Since I was working on a newer system, the rate stayed near 60 for most of the game, and I just kept ignoring the problem until I ran out of time to fix it. I'm still pretty much a newbie at using the different image types. I really like those smooth AFX images, though.

Thanks a lot for uploading the fixed code. I will look it over and see what I can learn... :) I'm going to go ahead and keep working on this game to get it polished the way I want it.

Mick, I'm also going to keep working on the egg dyeing game. I was REALLY struggling with the image types on that one.

[balaporte]

stevmjon, I just quickly went through the code you posted and just have to say: Thanks for fixing my broken game! Now I'm hoping people will download your version instead of mine.  :-\ Too bad that people will be voting on the messed up version. Oh well, live and learn.

Also, thanks for commenting the code and explaining what you were doing. What's weird is that at some point, I thought I changed the "screen" image from video to an FX image and my fps actually decreased, down to 12 or something like that. Now I'm thinking I messed that up somehow - it was around 4:00 in the morning, so who knows what I was doing.

I looked at the code for my ASCIItude game, and I used an FX formatted image for the "screen" image there, so at some point I knew what I was doing. Now I'll know for next time...