ColorDots Game Dev Blog - version 0.0.green

Having skipped Orange and Yellow for being ugly, ugly colors, I present you with ColorDots pre-alpha version 0.0.green.

The best part about having a game that you work on every week is that you can put a new post on your blog every week and not feel like you're neglecting your loyal readership, which for me is I think 1-3 people, but I digress. The second best part is that you can change the difficulty at a whim, which for me was everyone saying they couldn't beat level 22, 16, 15, 11, 7, and 4. That last person must have had pretty bad luck.

The problem with the previous game was that it was hard. Really really hard. Which, after the beginning being really easy, kind of snuck up on people. The good news is that in the initial trial period, we got a great idea of exactly what was too hard, and realized that maybe our linear difficulty mechanic was a bit too demanding of the player. Here, we made a graph.


So it was clear that something had to change, and the first part was that we'd have to make it a little harder to lose. The mechanic as it stands is that, packed ideally, there are a certain number of dots that fit in the center circle. So, if it fills up to 90% of the maximum, you lose. It's like 51 dots. However, it turns out that Joe's physics code is too good (!), so ideal packing occurs really fast even in normal circumstances, and even faster when there are external dots that also want to be in the center.

In short, as soon as 60 dots were on the screen, 51 dots were in the center circle. So unless you could make pairs in less than 2 seconds, you would lose. As it turns out, only 2 people were able to do this, and even they couldn't sustain it for longer than 45 seconds, which was less than half of the original duration.

So we made it so that once you hit 51 dots, a 5-second timer would start, and dropping below, I think, 48 dots again would cancel the timer. Woo!

This... is probably overkill... by itself. But then we added powerups, which to be fair, we had planned on doing from the beginning before this whole "the warning makes everything too easy" issue came up. So to... even things out? I guess? There's a cycle to powerup introduction, adding a powerup then a powerdown, then a powerup, then a powerdown, so the new difficulty graph has a nice sine wave in it before sort of leveling off.


Almost everyone can make matches during the 5 second timer, so surviving isn't exactly a challenge anymore, and then you've got powerups that you can use if you get into even a slight jam. And we intend to add more powerups later, so we can expect this line to dip even further before it grows at all. With luck, it will fall below the graph, and become some sort of antigame, which I can't even define properly at the moment.

We did some initial playtesting, and were rewarded with a new line for our graph, which, rest assured, we are going to keep in mind for future builds.


So the current build, 0.0.green, is for everyone out there who loves games but really isn't very good at them. For those people who have seen a mouse, but are hesitant to actually use it. For anyone out there who wants to play a game not to accomplish something, but to really spend some time doing something. Anything. Preferably something colorful.

Oh, and in case powerdowns are too hard, you can throw them out of the outer ring to destroy them. That'll come in handy in 0.0.blue, which will probably overcompensate the other way again, making a game that is so hard that you will cry giant blue tears of sadness, fondly remembering the idle bygone days of green.

-s

ColorDots Game Dev Blog - build 01

Hi. In the absence of a real name for the game I mentioned in the previous post, which would allow me to start a new blog with the same title, I'm going to just use this space to accomplish the same goal: blogging about the game progress.

The hope, at this time, is to release a new build weekly, probably Sunday evenings, since that's the best time for Joe and I to get together to work on it. So, if you're looking, that's the time to look for it.

The game as of today at build 01, is only about 20% done. There's no UI, there's no art, the mechanics are only about half implemented, there's no story. Lots of stuff still sucks, specifically the fact that the instant that you go over the loss threshold, you lose. That's probably the first thing we're going to fix, because it's freakin' annoying. (But much better than last week's loss condition, which would cause you to just randomly lose every once in awhile.)

Second is level balance, which includes powerups, powerdowns, new effects, dot-spawn speed, and half a dozen other things that are being thrown around. There are a lot of people who don't play FPS games religiously, and don't have the level of mouse-eye coordination that the current incarnation requires. This can't be a game that most casual players get 3 minutes of frustration out of.

Worse, I haven't seen anyone get past level 16, which is... troubling, since that's about 10 and a half minutes of gameplay and then hitting a wall that perhaps no one will ever cross. Getting crazier is ok, but we need it to happen more gradually, and we need to add powerups and other benefits at a rate that allows the player to properly combat the unrelenting tide of dots.

Third, art, sound, and story. A fun game mechanic was enough 20 years ago, but it really isn't anymore. I was going about this on the assumption that the ideal game mechanic could replicate Tetris-style success. However, a friend informed me that one of the most important parts of a casual game was that it gave the player all the flashy lights right away, instead of making the player invest a lot of time and effort to gain them. I figure a 5 minute investment isn't so bad, but it's true, relying solely on the game being fun to click isn't going to be enough. It has to look fun too. /sigh

What's the plan for doing all this? Well, I'm writing a story, which at some point will get fixed by some real writers who are friends of mine. I have an artist lined up, but music/sound might be a problem.

For level balance, I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I'll talk about more when they're actually implemented. We'll probably do all the implementation of new features first, and then tweak them to be fair and then to change over time. Then, we start picking and choosing which effects or abilities are added at which time, and base that on how useful they are under different circumstances.

That's basically what we did last weekend, when it was tough to get past level 5, so we just divided all the numbers by 3. Now level 15 is hard, so we'll probably need a more complex solution. We've just started, though, so I'm not terribly worried yet.

That, I think, is everything at this time. I'll be back with more next week.

-s

Newest Game: ColorDots

A friend and I have been working on this on and off for awhile now, and I think the mechanics are starting to come together. At least enough that it is playable, and sort of fun.

I should warn you that it's extraordinarily pre-alpha right now, but feel free to give it a play and send any comments my way. I haven't seen anyone get past level 16, so good luck!

Click Here for The Game

Okay, the fun part is done, time to get to the grunt work. :)

-s

Quotable Quote

A while back I was doing some coding at work, and found out that the solution for a particular problem was really stupid. Like deleting all the files and copying them back into the project kind of stupid. It fixed the problem, but only after I'd tried everything else, wasting about a day and a half of work by trying to fix something retarded with elegant code. The good news is that it helped me come up with this axiom of programming:

If a problem is exceedingly clever, then an equally clever solution is often required. But when the problem is dumb, then the solution must be equally dumb.

I call it the Dumb Rule of Programming.

-s

Woo, Ads.

I just added ads to the site. I don't know why, though. No one reads this.

-s

Superfriends, sans Super Powers

The header of this blog used to say "philosophy, humor, and game design". Now it says "largely unedited" which is more accurate, but less ambitious. For months, all I had was a decent tongue-twister, which is more of a hard truth than a great truth. Time to step it up a bit.

-----

There's no use for anything but perfect friends on the internet. It's big enough that just happening upon another person means you share an interest, but it's hard to stay with anyone because there's no reason to put up with differences. Travel is cheap on the web, so the only people we have to tolerate are ourselves.

People are ending their searches, however, at social networking sites. Why? Because the result of social sites and networks then, whether they've intended it or not, is to consume all of your friends and spit out giant aggregate superfriends. Some facet of these things is always ready to support anything you say, agree that anyone on the planet is a jerk, and tell you you're the greatest/smartest/most attractive person in history. And they'll do it at any hour of the day.

It's all a pile of crap, though, because that kind of approval is useless, even detrimental. You stagnate, weighed down by all the appreciation. Appreciation of people who, when you're the discordant one, don't have to listen to you either. How do you learn when your mistakes are reinforced by a dozen voices and ignored by the rest? How do you debate with people who are only there to develop their own superfriends?

I don't know.

Probably by video-blogging. Comments on youtube are vicious.

-----

I should have just named this "I don't like social networking sites". Maybe I was subconsciously hoping for mis-clicks on google.

Followup Post: Game Designs

Ok, time to put some meat on this blog - can't in good conscience just post youtube videos and say they're neat. Let's make games out of these.

First off: VR Window

The guy asked for them, so here's the game designs.

#1) 3D Pong
I think we've all played 3D Pong, and can agree that it is way too dang hard. I'm going to say that's because of a strange disassociation between the cursor and your face, and if the camera were moving along with how you faced the hither plane, it'd be a lot easier to play. Maybe even more fun.

Basically make this exact same game except for two changes. One, use the VR camera so that lining up the shot is essentially just standing in a position that makes the ball look like it's coming straight at you. Two, you've got both hands free, so manage the curving of the ball not by how fast your face is moving, but by how you're orienting a second controller in your hands. Bonus changes 3 and 4: it's 3D now, not flash, so throw in some particles to make it prettier, and make it multiplayer. Seriously.

Aaaandd everyone in this world is a clone. Just to spice things up a bit. Make it a bit less formulaic. A bit more... unreal.

#2) Ikaruga Clone (snicker)
I'm laughing because Ikaruga is a clone of R-Type maybe, which is a clone of 1942 I guess, which is a clone of something else which itself was based on centipede, probably. They're all the same game just with different color palettes and sprites. Anyway, with this head-tracking thing, I can't think of a good reason not to make it 3-D and have them coming down a big rectangular tube at you. Maybe because it's just too weird, and would probably give you vertigo. (But if we're worried about vertigo, we're probably not going to let you stare into a bottomless TV screen that follows you around.)

You can only shoot forwards, and you move on the x,y plane by moving your face around in a manner that is probably bad for your meninges. Different powerups change your attacks, making theme wider, conical, laser/long-range, explosive, slightly seeking, whatever. There. Easiest game design ever.

Also, you play a fighter-pilot who happens to be a racoon. Wait, no, that's been done, make him a skunk. A skunk who's really a good guy, but fell in with the wrong crowd.

#3) Operation
Can I get sued for this? I want to put the operation guy in the tv, put the TV on the ground, and play operation with little virtual tweezers that are controlled by... my face? No. Too vaguely cannibalistic. Maybe by a second wiimote that I point at the screen. Sure, why not. The face thing is

Just though of a way to make it more copyrightably-correct. Make it a rubber-looking doll with big black eyes and call it Alien Autopsy. Hmm, that's taken? Damn. I guess we'll have to go with Trying to Fix the Family Dog and call it a day. Too scary? Hey, it's not my fault all the wholesome ideas are copyrighted.

#4) Yoga Game
This one's a little off-topic, but you basically put flashlights on your head and hands, and you have to move the two that are turned on into the right place, 3-dimensionally speaking. The trick is that your eyes are closed, and you have to navigate by ear.

So the Wii lights up two of the lights, and then plays two discordant chords, based on how far away from the ideal positions you are. You figure out which lights are lit and then move the lights into the right spots until the chords are right, and then hold it as long as you can.

Awesome, right? Well the music builds as you get into position, and then holding it causes it to build even more, so even as you're getting completely tired and want to die, the sound is more beautiful and complex, to take your mind off of it.
Two weeks later, you have mastered yoga.

Next up: dolphin bubble games.