Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Puzzle Game Competition / [LOCKED] Connect More

Author
Message
Richard Davey
Retired Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th Apr 2002
Location: On the Jupiter Probe
Posted: 23rd Jul 2005 06:56 Edited at: 29th Jul 2005 17:54
Link
By Walaber
Dark Game SDK



Various coloured balls drop from the pipes at the top of the screen, you can also shoot coloured balls into the mix and if you get four (or more) of the same colour touching they vanish, causing the rest to drop down. The lovely twist with this game is the use of physics for the balls and collision - you can literally blast the balls out of the screen (although sometimes they'll rebound back at you!), this adds a neat twist to the puzzle element.

Download: http://72.36.165.83/Connect-More.zip

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
French gui
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 11th May 2004
Location: France
Posted: 23rd Jul 2005 09:43
Link
Again an impressive work with physic Wally! And it's a really funny game.

Sorry for my English...
Back to top
Profile PM Website
Louiz ofRohr
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 11th Nov 2004
Location:
Posted: 23rd Jul 2005 12:35
Link
The best puzzle I ever playied..
Walaber, you deserve



The worst foe lies within the self...
Back to top
Profile PM
Cavex
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Feb 2003
Location:
Posted: 24th Jul 2005 04:18
Link
This game seem a bit on the easy side but part from that a good game.
Back to top
Profile PM
BatVink
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Apr 2003
Location: Gods own County, UK
Posted: 24th Jul 2005 07:21 Edited at: 24th Jul 2005 07:22
Link
Firstly, I'm sure you didn't submit it with Rich as the highest scorer

Very Nice game. For some reason it performed really badly when i played it, although I know it worked fine on another PC.

Pros
Original, but fast to pick up because the underlying puzzle is just Tetris.
Very "Organic" due to the Physics, removes the predictable element that some games have
Good music that fits the game

Cons
You can cheat to a certain extent, simply by blasting the balls out of the container
One game lasts a long time!

Overall, I like it!

BatVink
Back to top
Profile PM Email
spooky
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 30th Aug 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 25th Jul 2005 00:39
Link
For some reason game is really choppy on my pc and screen goes black after a few minutes of play. Not a bad idea but doesn't do it for me. I like puzzle games to tax my brain and this is bit too simple. I do think you will get lots of votes though as I'm sure this is a great game.


Back to top
Profile PM Website
walaber
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 25th Jul 2005 05:18 Edited at: 25th Jul 2005 05:20
Link
thanks for the comments everyone! Spooky- sorry it didn't run right, but you've mentioned crashing in a lot of posts on other games, so I'm blaming it on your computer

I agree I should have adjusted the difficulty a bit, as you can just blast balls at the bottom and survive for quite a while.

by the way, the source code is included in there for any DarkSDK users that are interested. it uses Newton directly, with no wrappers

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!

Athlon XP 2400+ || DDR-SDRAM 1GB || Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
fog
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Oct 2003
Location: Newcastle, England
Posted: 25th Jul 2005 05:40
Link
I've already replied in The Showcase but will do again.

Looks and sounds great with typically excellent Walaber presentation.

I love the idea of the gameplay but I get quite a bit of slowdown and it's too tempting to just shoot the balls out of the container when it gets tricky

Hopefully Walaber will find time to fix these few issues soon.

Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
walaber
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 25th Jul 2005 07:58
Link
just a note, the slowdown comes from deleting several objects after explosions (particle debris and smoke billboard particles). I probably should have implemented some kind of pool-system to re-use the objects, but... eh.

I don't think Newton is slowing down although it's possible I suppose...

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!

Athlon XP 2400+ || DDR-SDRAM 1GB || Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Keaz
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Sep 2003
Location: Somewhere in south Texas
Posted: 26th Jul 2005 03:12
Link
Excellent work and very addictive. I still play it in my spare time and I got it the day you released it. The high scores didn't work on my sys then. Did you fix that?
But that's only minor and doesn't affect gameplay so you still get my 1st place vote.

Breaking Stuff=Fun!,Bug Testing<>Fun!, Bug Testing=Breaking Stuff, so...
Bug Testing=Fun! Hmmmm....
DOES NOT COMPUTE! SYSTEM MALFUNTION!
Back to top
Profile PM Email
LeeBamber
TGC Lead Developer
24
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 21st Jan 2000
Location: England
Posted: 26th Jul 2005 06:20
Link
I often wonder what it would be like if we actually used our newly discovered third dimension to create a puzzle game you could not really have done in the olden 2D days. When you finally play one, you know what your brain was trying to tell you. Well done here!!

"Small, smart, and running around the legs of dinosaurs to find enough food to survive, bedroom programmers aren't extinct after all "
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
tiresius
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Nov 2002
Location: MA USA
Posted: 27th Jul 2005 13:07
Link
I thought this game was really good. The physics play an important part in the game, without them it wouldn't work. The special effects (smoke trail) and clinking sounds were good as well.

The gameplay is simple which is nice, but the game is too easy. There should be some ways to make it more difficult, such as increasing the color count, dropping balls that cannot be removed until they get to the very bottom (preventing combos), etc.

This is going in my voting pile.

I'm not a real programmer but I play one with DBPro!
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Avan Madisen
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 12th Sep 2002
Location: The Castle Anthrax
Posted: 6th Aug 2005 16:07
Link
I like the concept of this game and it's very well presented, but the gameplay suffers from some serious slow-down at times, Ithink this is because of the physics calcutating a sudden huge number of collisions, which kills the game for me. I really hate games that have sudden pauses for no obvious reason.

The physics, although at the core of the game, are the real problem in my opinion, the physics are trying to be too realistic when really you want simple physics that allow the balls to stack in the same way as puzzle-bobble. The balls in this don't stack that way very easily. Plus the 'cannon' doesn't always work, sometimes the ball bounces off the stack or pushes the other balls apart rather then pushing one out of the stack.

Although a great concept, well presented and plays reasonably well, I feel the problems of the physics can't be ignored. I'm putting this in my top 10 but my top 4 are elsewhere, no offense Walaber.

I don't suffer from insanity - I enjoy every minute of it!

Current Projects: Lemmings Remake & (undecided)
Back to top
Profile PM Email
lagmaster
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Playing:
Posted: 6th Aug 2005 17:12
Link
i give this game 1st place, keep up the good work walaber

lagmaster - irc.devhat.net <--
Wireplay TFC Stats
Back to top
Profile PM Email
The Darthster
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 25th Sep 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 7th Aug 2005 02:53
Link
This is a well presented game, nice graphics, great music, with an innovative concept, but for me it just doesn't quite work. More often than not the balls are just blasted out of the container rather than joining together in a combo, or the ball I fire just rebounds off the front. Towards the end there are so many bombs and gold balls that it becomes a clickfest which never seems to end, rather than a strategic puzzle game. This is bogged down by the way the game lags for up to a second per frame, and is alternately slideshow-esque and too fast to see what's going on in an erratic oscillation, even on my 3ghz laptop.

Sorry to be so negative, this is a really good concept, if only it worked properly.

Once I was but the learner, now, I am the Master.
See my site for amazing games and demos!
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
walaber
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 9th Aug 2005 05:07
Link
thanks again for the comments everyone. I agree that the game was an interesting idea, but certainly could use some tweaking to make it better.

to be honest I viewed this project as a coding excersize, and it was a very succesful one at that. I was able to use the Newton material system more extensively than I ever have before, and writing the code to detect when more than 3 balls are touching was a bit difficult, and an interesting problem to solve.

anyway, that's how I vew this project, and thus I'm very happy with it. also the source code is included, so I hope it might help some users who want to integrate Newton with DarkSDK

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!

Athlon XP 2400+ || DDR-SDRAM 1GB || Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Avan Madisen
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 12th Sep 2002
Location: The Castle Anthrax
Posted: 10th Aug 2005 01:23
Link
So you should be happy Walaber, it's a great attempt that deserves credit, and if you could remove, or at least reduce, those speed stability problems it'd be even better.

I don't suffer from insanity - I enjoy every minute of it!

Current Projects: Lemmings Remake & (undecided)
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Spambergo
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 10th Oct 2003
Location: CT, USA
Posted: 11th Aug 2005 17:45
Link
I loved the idea and design of this game... if it played just a little better, I would have definately voted for it. With a little more work, this could easily be the most addictive game on the board! Great work, keep it up!
Back to top
Profile PM
Jess T
Retired Moderator
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 20th Sep 2003
Location: Over There... Kablam!
Posted: 13th Aug 2005 09:53
Link
Pro's:
Great Graphics.
Unique game, and so much fun too!
Music Plays great with the mood, and is excelent for this game.
Sound effects are brilliant!
Control is nice and easy, and everything is set out so that it is infalable by the user

Con's:
The game seemed to slow down as the 'game speed' got faster. I have a fast computer and saw no reason for this.
Once the game reaches a certain speed, it simply becomes a click like crazy game, which is still fun in itself, but there is no long any element of strategie.
The puzzle element to this game is limited, but it is present, and is much like that of Tetris - Simple but effective!

Comment:
I love this game! It's great fun, and very well-rounded!
The only problem I have is that it slows down way, way too much.
( Oh, and I had a strange thing where extracting the game caused it to go all whacky, and not load any music/sound/models/anything but a blue screen and some white squares. But, running from the zip made it work perfectly... Strange )

Team EOD :: All-Round Nice Guy
Want Better dbHelp Files?
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
walaber
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 19th Aug 2005 06:10 Edited at: 19th Aug 2005 07:16
Link
so i played this game on my desktop for the first time (it was developed during a time when my desktop was being shipped in a boat to the US, I made the game on my *faster* laptop), and I was amazed at the slowdown!

I guess deleting objects is a hell of a lot slower than I thought (and my laptop is faster than I thought).

anyway I think I'll go back and implement an object-recycling system which should fix the problems when I get a chance.

[edit]
implemented a simple recycler, and the performane increase is huge!! it's currently only running on the particle effects in the game, but if I implement it for all dynamic objects (explosion particles and standard game balls), it should be even faster! hopefully in a few days I'll release a much optimized version of the game.

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!

Athlon XP 2400+ || DDR-SDRAM 1GB || Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
walaber
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 22nd Oct 2003
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posted: 19th Aug 2005 18:04
Link
okay, here you go, a new release of the game which should fix most slowdown issues people were experiencing.

those that had lots of slowdown, please let me know if this improves the problems!

http://walaber.com/connect_more/ConnectMore_v1_2.rar

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!

Athlon XP 2400+ || DDR-SDRAM 1GB || Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
TDP Enterprises
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 28th Mar 2005
Location: on or in front of my computer
Posted: 21st Aug 2005 19:39
Link
Great presentation and physics!

“A lot of people approach risk as if it’s the enemy when it’s really fortune’s accomplice” - Sting“
Back to top
Profile PM
Back to top

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2024-04-20 03:01:42
Your offset time is: 2024-04-20 03:01:42