[java] Energox (Java-based puzzle game)

Sorry, forgot to add one thing... comments towards the difficulty level are also important! In my opinion, the first two levels are extremely easy, but the game gets a lot tougher on the third. Any thoughts on this?

Pedro Amaro (http://pedroamaro.pt.vu)

[edited by - pamaro on October 27, 2002 2:39:20 PM]

Ok, just placed a new version on-line... this time, I implemented a feature requested by a friend, which enables the player to swap the order of the blocks on the device by pressing up or down.

I''ve also fooled around with the difficulty levels... it should be more appealing now... the number of levels was also boosted from 7 to 19.

The URL has also changed and now it''s http://student.dei.uc.pt/~pamaro/energox/index.html

Any comments, suggestions or bug reports are highly welcome!

Pedro Amaro (http://pedroamaro.pt.vu)

Any comments at all...?

Judging by the counter stats there are a few people playing it... even if you didn''t like the game, dropping a few lines explaining why you didn''t like it could help me improve it .

Pedro

Interesting game, not to bad actually. The first too levels are pretty easy but after that it seems like it get way to hard way too fast. The balance between the block types and the board space seems to be ok.
My initial suggestion would be to try a version with a smaller board space and a few less types of block. I am probably wrong but it looks like you are using somewhere around 16 different types of blocks, although this isn''t bad, it kind of hampers the game in that people in general can''t remember that much info all at once, so as you build your ''towers'' of blocks 90% of the time you wind up forgetting exactly which towers were the important ones.
Although I would guess that this really won''t be a problem for the hardcore puzzle gamers I think that if you were looking for a bit of mass appeal it might be worth looking into.

Another suggestion of mine would be to adjust the scoring a bit. After just playing it, I noticed that it is a fair amount easier to make diagonal connections than vertical or horizontal. So making diagonal worth more points doesn''t make much sense. But if you ''borrowed'' some scoring ideas from toki-meki fighter or tetris it might be worth while to do a combo score...
As you make a connection of four in a row the top blocks fall and re-settle they could possible with either luck or planning make another 4 length connection and the blocks would have to resettle again.. ad naseum... so make the subsequent connections that settle into place worth more and more...
Also if you do that you might want to havea visualization verify tyo the player that they completed some kinda of cool combo, either with text or something else.

I think I made about 2 combos on the first 2 boards but never noticed if they were really scored different or not.

All of the above are just comments and not to be taken as negative criticism. But being gamedev-ers we all really need as much feedback as we can get and sometimes that feedback seems to go in different directions than we intended our game to go in the first place. I think it is kick ass that you keep pumping out games, and they are fun too. This is what java needs is people to make the things that will waste our time ^_^

Good job and good luck pamaro

Thanks for the feedback .

I''ll try to ease up the difficulty level (in order to make it more progressive). I''m having some problems tuning this, so even after correcting it I''ll probably need more feedback on it .

Actually, I only have 12 different colours . I have to say that here I went in a different direction... my initial board was smaller, but it seemed to fill up pretty quickly (especially in tougher levels). With a larger board, the player will probably live longer (and has better chances of fixing up any mistakes he made). By the way, which board size did you had in mind? I already tried a 7*7, but it seemed too small...

Regarding the score, I have to say that my experience was completely the opposite... vertical rows seem to be the easiest (you just have to let''em pile up)... horizontal are also simple... but diagonal require a bit more of planning. Hmmm... anyway, since we have quite different opinions here... anyone else wants to talk about their view on this?
As for the combos, they''re a cool suggestion . I''ll see if I can implement them (I''ll probably need to do some massive adjustments to the current scoring algorithm).

Once again, thanks for the comments! I''ll try to release a new version this week covering some of the stuff you mentioned.

Any more comments out there?

Pedro Amaro (http://pedroamaro.pt.vu)

Ok, uploaded a new version with a slightly different difficulty increase. I think it''s better now (a lot more progressive). Also reduced the number of levels to 18. Any comments?

The URL''s still http://student.dei.uc.pt/~pamaro/energox

Pedro Amaro (http://pedroamaro.pt.vu)