Friday, March 7, 2008

ColorDots: Poker Chip Style

A commenter wrote...

This could be adapted to a poker chip thing. That would be cool for our website.


And here's the response...

This would totally be good for your website (or anyone's website!) And I do enjoy a good selling out. :)

Lessee, what's a good poker chip mechanic... Different point values for matching different chips? Collect all you can in a certain amount of time?

Probably want to change or remove almost all of the effects, un-sci-fi most of them. We'd probably take out the explodey mechanic completely, as that's more of a gamer mechanic. Anyway, effects would be secondary as keeping the board clear wouldn't be as important as just high-point-value combos.

Actually, that's not a bad idea - an older test version chained effects and instead of filling to overflow, maintained a constant supply of dots. That would probably do better for a time-bounded points-based game.

More colors would be good, because it would mean that finding matches at all is more important than being able to find matches quickly. It should also almost eliminate the accidental matches.

Powerdowns don't really make sense in a game like that (at least the ones we already have), so just powerups like 3 match or full-size chained effects. (Chained effects were smaller than normal ones, aside from just being bigger).

Chains... can't always propagate, so maybe higher point chip effects can propogate only to lower point chips, so protecting high-ticket chips would be a priority as their effect would make the whole screen explode. Also, we can add the chain multiplier back in, which is something I really miss from the old design :)

Effects... we should keep everything that doesn't move dots, so really only green and blue are out. The old yellow "disintegration circle" mechanic would be good to put on something, and it would still be fine to have black and white without effects. Maybe just white, as the lowest-denominator chip, and black would be out for some other color with a new effect of some sort.

Anyway, it would definitely work, maybe even being more mainstream than the current game, it would take very very little time to build because really we'd just be reverting code to the older version, and it wouldn't require too much art.

4 comments:

silver said...

Oh and also, I don't want to re-edit the post, but the chip colors would have their spawn rates partially controlled by their value (so the high ones would be relatively rare, sort of like powerups are now).

wisestofthemall said...

i think the chip direction is a good one for the following reasons:

1.online poker is big right now and only getting bigger

2.few things distingiuish online poker sites from eachother- low product differentiation

3.this is an html game online, perfect for an online business

a few suggestions from snowy ohio where the king of COD4 resides...

1. it seems like the size of the dots could be enlarged

2.some of the explosion dynamics seem random

3. better instructions i guess, or description of why im playing how to win, strategy for the game maybe that prompt when u start a new game

4.comparable games have differences between the levels, maybe something as samll as certain chip colors on later levels. like after level 5 or something you get the black chips which are worth more

5. going back to the size issue, maybe have chips of different sizes, that could be dealt with when stratifying the level differences

6. i like when the connect and then get large, transparent, then dissapear. different sytles of this explosion for different size or value chips would be interesting

i would like a happy meal with no pickles, god help you if i find pickles- always reminds me of steve

take care buddy

wisestofthemall said...

one more thing, i think a few game breaks would spice things up and give them something to play for. all i mean i like when you beat solitare how the cards fly everywehere 3d for a second. after level 10 or something have alittle 3 second visual, thesew little trinkets make these games fun, and you feel like you were rewarded somehow, or that you got somewhere. i know this is game is meant to be a time consumer and not a winning game, but that element would add flavor i believe. think packman where they run accross the screen after level 3. i dont think you should take our all of the explosion dynamics if u do the pocker chip thing, maybe add a crumble effect, or it turns into money or something, theres a lot of directions you can go.

one more thing. maybe have like bumbers around the circle, 2-4 of them, maybe not till a later level, that makes it slightly harder to get to the middle from on angle, like bumber pool. now that would be cool i think, and stratify the levels, which i think is your biggest obsticle here. level one and level 10 look the same, but one is a little faster then the other.

wisestofthemall said...

final idea, how about a tally of the points you have! that would be so easy, assign each color a point value and then have a tally keep track of it in real time underneath the circles. then if u do chips u can make the tally cash earned, which would be cool