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AppGameKit Classic Chat / [WIP] Stack 'o Blocks

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Silvester
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Posted: 11th Sep 2011 20:24 Edited at: 14th Sep 2011 11:00
Stack 'o Blocks is a very simple physics based game, the basic idea of the game is that you're a storage worker in life, and have died concealing your secret banana crate stacks so nobody would ever find them! Ofcourse, this sort of behaviour does not go unpunished in the afterlife, so you've been doomed to spend eternity stacking boxes! On a rather unstable beam hanging above the fire.. Ouch!

Should your beam tilt over you yourself will burn in the fire below, will you be able to handle the stress?

Video of Early Release 4 Testing:
Please note, this was recorded before I tweaked the balls and added a game over screen!

Video of Release 3
Video of Release 2
Video of Release 1

Screenshots:


^Both taken by Conjured Entertainment^

As you can see, the graphics do not suit the game AT ALL, nor my idea of the direction I want to take it in. Do remember that this is all just placeholder material, be it made by me, edited by me or taken from Clker.com for prototyping purposes. I am willing to hire a 2D artist to make the final graphics for the game, the only problem right now is.. I don't quite have the funds for it right now! So if anyone would be willing to help out, by either donating a small amount on my Website(I would prefer not to do this, I dislike asking for cash), or simply help out by making a piece of artwork that can be used it would be much appreciated, and I will include you, or your website on the intro sequence should you so desire.

Future Ideas
Add an imp that'll fly over, and drop a so called 'void box', this box will consume the first five boxes it collides with, and then dissapear.
Add a random fire cloud flying across the screen, drop a box on it and your entire screen will be consumed by fire, resetting the game field at the cost of 10% of the score.
Add imps that sometimes drop random boxes as they walk across the beam your dropper hangs from.

Downloads
Release 4
Download

Current Known Issues:


Changelog:

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Rich Dersheimer
AGK Developer
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Posted: 11th Sep 2011 21:55
Oh, man, I'm laughing out loud! This is too cool!

If you have to get other music, fine, but this music really suits the steady, relentless dropping of the crates.

At first I thought they were dropping too slow, but then when I saw what happens as they hit, wow, this is fun. Tricky to keep the bar balanced and rack up a score.

Keep working on this one, it's got lots of potential!

Silvester
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Posted: 11th Sep 2011 22:12
Thanks for your feedback! If possible, could you tell me your current screen's resolution so I can test, and where possible adjust the speed scaling? It's a little silly as it is now.. And yes, the boxes do have a rather.. large impact! But given the rather small area to play around on, that is to be expected.

Quote: "If you have to get other music, fine, but this music really suits the steady, relentless dropping of the crates."

Would you mind going into the music folder, and telling me which one it was playing at the time? It's a random system.

Anyways, I've been fixing some stuff that has been bothering me. Such as the speed boxes dropped at when falling over, this didn't scale at all, and was horrendously slow regardless of what you did. Now, they fall over at much more aggressive speed, meaning less time to place blocks to save your behind!

Here's the current changelog for R2:


I'm currently having issues with getting sound files to work, is there a way to determine collision with ANYTHING, instead of a specified sprite? I just want it to make a noise when it hits anything, without looping through ~150^150 options every game loop.
Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 11th Sep 2011 23:31
main2 was the one I heard that really had me smiling. So relentless.

My scrren is 1680 x 1050.

I've been able to reach 1000 points before I lose control of the beam.

What I'm using for collision detection is



Silvester
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Posted: 11th Sep 2011 23:34 Edited at: 11th Sep 2011 23:37
That's interesting! Will look into all that in a moment.. Your resolution shouldn't cause that many abnormalities compared to mine. But first, here's some work I've done after my last post. ;]


Note: I'm planning to (perhaps) make the rail movable, if it won't cause too many control issues for the tablet version(s). Right now I have it working fairly well, it's a bit frustrating having to click an addition button to drop a box, but sadly there's no mouseclick feature on tablets. x[

I'll look into the sound now, and I agree with you on that music track! It's possibly the best one I have in the current selection.
Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 00:02
Oh noooooose! Only being able to drop the boxes from that height will make it much harder to cheat!

Looking good!

Silvester
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 00:06
Haha, I've managed to frustrate myself on several occasions so far tweaking the physics for that! I had it set to making the beam fly off the screen instantly one time.. Wasn't very pleasant!

Anyways, I decided to look into the command you handed out.. And I couldn't get that to work as I wanted it to, so I decided to work with the following commands:



HOWEVER, according to the documentation, NewHit should equal the sprite we're colliding with.. Sadly, it always returns a 0 for some odd reason, meaning it doesn't work the way I want it to. I'm likely doing this awfully wrong, but I've never before bothered working with this many different physics objects that require a sound every time any of them move enough.
Bursar
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 00:07
Looks great! There was a game a little like this on the Wii, but you used the Wii-mote to balance the beam as various objects fell onto it.

Maybe to mix things up a bit you could have different shaped boxes, so it plays a bit like Tetris and you have to think about how to stack your boxes in addition to trying to balance the beam.
Silvester
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 00:12 Edited at: 12th Sep 2011 00:48
The original idea was to eventually have various sizes, but I suppose a different shape couldn't hurt either..

I was also perhaps thinking of a random item that would appear SOMEWHERE in the gamefield, and if you can hit it with a box it'll reset your gamefield, but only decreasing your points by 25%, meaning it can be quite a blessing after a while.. And some nasty bonusses which make it rain rocks or something. But right now, I'd rather get my sound to work first!

EDIT: just fixed the nasty tendancy of the beam to lean left straight after starting the game.. I don't know why this happened, as the bar was positioned dead center and it's identical, but what the hey. It's fixed now.

Anyways, I'm off for tonight.. So here's my current version for you guys to play with, any feedback would be appreciated! And I know, the graphics need work.. Badly.

Release 2
Download

Silvester
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 11:41 Edited at: 12th Sep 2011 11:42
I hate to double post, but sadly.. I'm doing it anyways!

Here's some more progress on what I have right now..


Apologies for the graphics in Release 2, they're quite a strain on the eyes. I was just testing something, and forgot to change them back! D'oh!

Anyways, without further ado, here is release 3.. Ready for testing. Any feedback on how I could improve the current mechanics is welcome!



Release 3
Download

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Cliff Mellangard 3DEGS
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 18:14
Looks very fun

Great idea and work so far!
Silvester
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 21:58
Thanks! And I'm here with some more news/changes.. and.. Two new box types.

A larger heavier one, and a bouncy ball.. Here's a video of three of my plays after balancing the ball somewhat.. I -think- it works nicely so far, aside from a small bug I hadn't fixed at the time, which means the balls don't despawn when they hit the bottom of the screen, meaning they at times bounce back up.. No worries! This has been addressed after uploading the video.



And the CURRENT changelog:
Impetus73
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 23:22
Look like great fun! The physics in AppGameKit are awesome. Maybe you could add some tetris style or bejewel or 4 in a row functionality, where boxes of simmilar colors pops away, to make room for more?

----------------
AGK user - novice
Did Amiga / AMOS programming in the 90's, just started programming again with AGK.
kaband
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Posted: 12th Sep 2011 23:37
This looks great. Nice job.
Conjured Entertainment
AGK Developer
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 03:28
This does look awesome.
I like the addition of the balls but they could roll more, which would affect the beam more, making it more challenging.
Sometimes the beam is getting offest but the ball just sits there when it seems like it should be rolling.
Anyway, this is a great idea and looks like a lot of fun!

Silvester
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 10:23 Edited at: 13th Sep 2011 15:44
Thanks all for your comments! I've just woke up and fiddled with the game's mechanics some more.. Messing it up making everything float instead of falling! I was trying to optimize my code, so instead of switching the physics on/off I'd turn them active/inactive.. But this resulted in a lot of outer space weirdness. It's been fixed! But I find it odd either way.

@Conjured,
I had that exact same feeling.. So I went fiddling about with their physics settings. I've got the friction to nearly zero and they still hardly roll! The beam doesn't tilt all that far before you hit a game over I'm afraid.. And the physics engine only really makes things roll and slide when it gets at the angle you're pretty much a goner I'm afraid. If there's a command I'm missing that doesn't manually set the torgue, but allows for more acceleration on it I'd be glad to hear it!

And now.. I should probably add a gameover screen.. The boring part of programming. Where I don't get to fiddle with new stuff.

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Conjured Entertainment
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 15:40 Edited at: 13th Sep 2011 15:46
Maybe you could apply a force to the ball to encourage it to roll.
If the force was coming from the center of the beam, then it should push the ball either way.
Maybe set the force a little higher thatn the beam though, to force the ball to roll.

Quote: "

SetSpritePhysicsForce
Description
Applies a force to the sprite that will last for this frame only, to continue applying this force you must keep calling this function. The force consists of a point in world coordinates and a direction, if the point and direction are not in line with the sprite's offset point then it will result in a rotation of the sprite as it is moved by the force. The length of the force vector determines its strength. If the sprite is constrained by surrounding objects it may not move unless the force is large enough to move those objects as well.

Forces apply acceleration to an object relative to its mass, heavy objects will move less than light objects with the same force applied to them.

Definition
SetSpritePhysicsForce( iSpriteIndex, x, y, vx, vy )

void agk::SetSpritePhysicsForce( UINT iSpriteIndex, float x, float y, float vx, float vy )

Parameters
•iSpriteIndex - The ID of the sprite to modify.
•x - The X coordinate of the force position in world coordinates.
•y - The Y coordinate of the force position in world coordinates.
•vx - The X component of the force direction.
•vy - The Y component of the force direction.


"


Bursar
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 15:43
Quote: "If the force was coming from the center of the beam, then it should push the ball either way."


Until the ball reaches the edge of the beam, the beam tips the other way due to blocks being dropped on the opposite side, and the ball 'rolls up' the beam.
Silvester
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 15:45
Well, I've finished the game over screen.. As well as the resetting of the game afterwards.





Release 4
Download

-------
@Conjured,
I did consider such a thing.. BUT I figured that would cause too many issues. One of them being the one Bursar mentioned, besides I don't believe it's all that off in my latest demo above.
Conjured Entertainment
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 15:48 Edited at: 13th Sep 2011 15:54
Quote: "Until the ball reaches the edge of the beam, the beam tips the other way due to blocks being dropped on the opposite side, and the ball 'rolls up' the beam. "

Good point
You would need 2 other forces as well on each side of the beam to force the ball back to the center.
Then the X and Y coordinates of the ball would help determine which force to apply.

Quote: "@Conjured,
I did consider such a thing.. BUT I figured that would cause too many issues. One of them being the one Bursar mentioned, besides I don't believe it's all that off in my latest demo above."

Okay, cool
I was just throwing out a suggestion.


Silvester
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 15:58
I might end up doing such a thing, if people think it's still too far off in my current demo. But only in a future version, right now I'm making up ideas on how to reset the game screen DURING gameplay. Be it through a powerup, or a special box that you can drop that blows it all up.
Conjured Entertainment
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 16:07 Edited at: 13th Sep 2011 16:20
Yeah, the ball is fine like it is now. (it was the earlier videos where it looked off)
I just played your latest demo and thought it was fun.
Has anyone tried throwing as many boxes as fast as you can right in the center???
It got crazy.


Quote: "But only in a future version, right now I'm making up ideas on how to reset the game screen DURING gameplay. Be it through a powerup, or a special box that you can drop that blows it all up."

I was thinking that something could fly over and drop stuff (like a red baron in biplane or a bird or something).
That way it would force you out of your own strategy to counter act that action.

If the background image was like a high rise building construction site, then maybe a guy above your crane could be wheel barrowing something across a higher beam and drop stuff as he goes across.
Then it could be different workers dropping different things, like a guy carrying a bucket of rivets, or another one carrying a short beam or something.
Just a thought


Quote: "I've been able to reach 1000 points before I lose control of the beam."

lol
1700+

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Silvester
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 16:11 Edited at: 13th Sep 2011 16:17
Well, the background -should- be a bit like Hell, with random animated shades of people in fire hopping around and such should appear, and fire at the bottom below the bar.. So I had the idea of a random fire cloud flying across the screen, and if you'd hit it the fire at the bottom would rise and 'burn away' your current boxes, and reset the beam while everything is invisible.. Thus cleaning your game screen by the user's command.

For a more random one, I was planning a flying demon that'd pop up from the top of your screen above the box dropper, dropping a 'void box', which would consume up to five boxes it hits.

Sadly, I currently do not own the funds to pay a graphical artist however. So I'm going to have to do with this.. Or my own horrible drawings, which are even worse.

Quote: "Has anyone tried throwing as many boxes as fast as you can right in the center???
It got crazy."

Best fun I've had with it so far though!

And your 1700 points are AFTER I buffed the scores! And reduced the penalties.
Conjured Entertainment
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 16:20
Quote: "And your 1700 points are AFTER I buffed the scores! And reduced the penalties."

I broke 2000

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Silvester
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Posted: 13th Sep 2011 16:43 Edited at: 13th Sep 2011 17:14
Haha, nice going!

Anyways! I hate to moan, or beg.. But unfortunately I cannot afford to hire a graphical artist on my own at the moment. I can pitch in some of my own money, but I doubt I'll have enough to pay someone to make me something decent for another while due to a few health issues.

Therefor, as much as I am against this.. I've set up a donation button on this game's webpage. I in no way mean to obligate anyone to pay, the game is free and will always be(The PC version, anyways). I only use it to get some funds to be able to afford some decent graphics in the style I'd like.

Game Webpage

Also, I would love to see some creative screenshots with the boxes or some nice moments captured to use as a showcase on my website, and the topic!
Silvester
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Posted: 14th Sep 2011 11:03
I've made a new topic in the WIP boards, where this might catch some more attention.. I'm finaly at a point where I dare posting it there for some real thourough testing.

New Post
LeeBamber
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Posted: 26th Sep 2011 04:12
The game play is so cool I thought it was worth bumping It's exactly this kind of innovative thinking that will earn you lots of kudos and potential rewards when you publish your app. Simple to grasp and learn, time consuming to master, the hallmark of a great snackable game!

I drink tea, and in my spare time I write software.
ElijahNomad
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Posted: 26th Sep 2011 04:53
Nice stuff. This will give people using AppGameKit some inspiration for sure. I got some
Duke E
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Posted: 26th Sep 2011 12:36 Edited at: 26th Sep 2011 12:37
Looks fun!

I´d suggest making the red stationary "pivot" block more narrow with time to spice things up.

Probably have to use a premade set of progressingly thinner rigid bodys that are removed instead of replacing the block though - for the simulation to be stable.

Regards
Duke
Dybing
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Posted: 26th Sep 2011 15:02
I think this game got a winning formula. A simple concept done well. Checking off all the popular casual game tabs. Colourfull and cheerfull. Got physics for some hilarious action. Is good for a quick fix when a spare minute or ten opens up.

Kudos dude, looks great
kaband
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Posted: 26th Sep 2011 21:36 Edited at: 26th Sep 2011 21:41
Yah, I think it looks great. Fun to play. I think the game will do very well on Phone devices. Perfect size.
Silvester
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Posted: 1st Oct 2011 09:44
Interesting, people posted here. Anyhow, I'm glad to hear some more commentary. I've been a tad busy lately sorting out my health issues so I haven't had time to fix up a decent new stable release aside from the ones in my WIP board post.

I might have to work on that, however.

As for the graphics, those were supposed to be replaced by now. But unfortunately the health bills smashed my budget once more! So I'll stick with the colorful annoying stuff for the time being.

@Lee, I'll be sending you guys a mail in relation to publishing it once I'm finished with it. So you can be part of it too! <insert random evil laughter here>

@ElijahNomad, Funny thing is.. This all started as a random test to see what I could do with AppGameKit Physics!

@Duke, An interesting idea, but as my WIP topic states(the one in the WIP board, which is more recent than this one) I will be adding several other things to make it slightly harder as time progresses.

@Dybing, The graphics are not meant to be! They're just placeholders until I can finally afford to pay someone to do them for me.

@Kaband, Thanks! The original intention was to make it for phones and computers, in a manner that it'd scale according to resolution.. But my scaling math somehow got messed up, so I will likely need to come up with seperate versions, unless I can get the scaling to work properly in my rewrite.
Drillfoot
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Posted: 1st Oct 2011 20:36
I like it!! Very neat indeed! The physics and music I think fit this nicely. I honestly wish you could keep the graphics as is, I don't think they need much of a make over, as they fit fine for the systems they would be running on.

Some things for possible editions. Or suggestions. Maybe the heavier block can destroy the lighter blocks. Maybe 1 or two upon collision. So the block which looks like it has the heavy steel bar going across it would destroy 1 or two of the wooden blocks upon collision. Or like in Tetris, if your next box, or ball is at random, show what the user will have next, so they might be able to plan ahead?

Other than that good stuff so far!! This is looking good!

rem allow user create game with one click
rem create graphics, sound, scripts, models, with one click
rem slap user in face if game choice is mmo
LeeBamber
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Posted: 9th Oct 2011 04:11
@Silvester, I look forward to receiving a version to play, and helping you monetise is!

I drink tea, and in my spare time I write software.

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