WaHoo! 1.ALPHA released

[Rook Zimbabwe]

Just when you thought it couldn'tt get any worse...

WaHoo! is released in PB form!



and



Download a bugfree copy at:

http://www.bluemesapc.com/Downloads/wahooALPHA.zip

Music from the OGG file is created by ME and is not redistributable without permission!



HOW TO PLAY:

You have to place the piece to make 3 colored pieces in a row.
If you place them HORIZONTALLY you make a WaHoo! (big score)
If you place them VERTICALLY you make a YEAH! (lesser score)
If you don't make a chain of 3 you get a STRIKE (game quacks at you!) and you loose points!

Trial version limited to 3 rounds.

STRATEGY is to place the WaHoo! without the possibility of creating a YEAH! since the games checks for those FIRST and will clean the board after getting a score and NOT give you any other points!

Yep... t can be evil.

Anyway in those 3 rounds my top score is: 12800 points...

There are NO CHEAT CODES!!!

Enjoy!

[Rook Zimbabwe]

Amazing... 187 peeps visited this thread. ) as of this writing (

My site reports over 300+ downloads...

No one has any ideas/ comments / criticism?


Why do I bother... too many freeloaders!

[Thalius]

Darn Rook! let the Addiction settle itself - (or the weekend...)

[Demivec]

Amazing... 187 peeps visited this thread. ) as of this writing (

My site reports over 300+ downloads...

No one has any ideas/ comments / criticism?


Why do I bother... too many freeloaders!

You still have border troubles...Can't leave the play area from the right or bottom border. When near the top border the mouse pointer glides to the right by itself.

The sound works well in the game. The visual effects worked well also. The game play is simple and direct. You may want to tamper with it to provide some additional options in higher levels.

My high score: 18525.

I think you both because you have the hunger.

[Tipperton]

No one has any ideas/ comments / criticism?

I do.

It's a good start, some things I'd do to improve it are:

1. Provide something like a training level with hints and/or tips to help new players learn the rules of the game while playing it.
2. Make the screen more active by animating the playing pieces. For this you may want to make them less round so you can have them slowly spin or rotate.
3. When pieces disappear because you got three colors in a row, animate their disappearance and also animate how the new pieces replace them.
4. Since each level has a time limit have some kind of meter to show how much time is left, and as time run down, speed up the music to create a sense of "urgency".

The idea is you want to make the screen interesting just to look at which will draw the player into the game. As it is now, it's kind of boring because nothing other than the music playing is happening unless the player makes something happen.

Wahoo has some similarities to the Bejeweled games, you might want to look at them to see an example of my suggestions.

http://www.popcap.com/games/bejeweled2

You still have border troubles...Can't leave the play area from the right or bottom border. When near the top border the mouse pointer glides to the right by itself.

Hmm... I noticed the border problems too, but not the mouse pointer moving by itself.

You also need to explain what the radio active symbol does besides blow up and change pieces.

I'm not that good, best score so far is 87xx.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

Good suggestions all...

# When pieces disappear because you got three colors in a row, animate their disappearance and also animate how the new pieces replace them.

I would love to do this... haven't figured out how to do that AND keep the gameplay time amount to do it LOW!

have some kind of meter to show how much time is left

I was using a statusbar for that (above the clock!) I may have to change the colors of that. Since it is in a window, I can't do much in the way of animation. I tried drawing an image and drawing a line to indicate a clock countdown... problem was it was too slow on even my wifes P3 1GHz... It was fine on my Athlon 64

as time run down, speed up the music to create a sense of "urgency".

The music is in a loop... I wonder if I couldn't increase the frequency a bit towards the end... Hmmm... Great idea. I will attempt that.

There should also be mouse tails...

You still have border troubles...Can't leave the play area from the right or bottom border. When near the top border the mouse pointer glides to the right by itself.

All those are a part of the same attempt to fix the edge effect problem. I think I can end it, but I have to remove the change of the target background tile from blue to BLACK with a yellow Border. I have to completely drop that idea.

As far as additional options... I am stumped.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

You also need to explain what the radio active symbol does besides blow up and change pieces.

Actually, that is pretty much all it does. I used to have a bomb and firecracker... the bomb bblew up horizontal, and the firecracker blew up vertical... But that was too easy. This way you never know what it is going to do! : D

[Rook Zimbabwe]

Different playing boards... I need different playing boards...

[Demivec]

All those are a part of the same attempt to fix the edge effect problem. I think I can end it, but I have to remove the change of the target background tile from blue to BLACK with a yellow Border. I have to completely drop that idea.

I posted something in the other thread you started regarding this.

In that example I adjust the the border values for moving into the screen from the bottom or right so that the mouse pointer has to move one pixel farther into the screen before the screen pointer/effects become activated, while.

The method you seem to be using is to apply this same idea to the screen area when moving right or down into the window area. But when it does this the window checks place it right back in the screen. I'll leave off any further discussion of this for the other forum thread you are using.

[Tipperton]

# When pieces disappear because you got three colors in a row, animate their disappearance and also animate how the new pieces replace them.

I would love to do this... haven't figured out how to do that AND keep the gameplay time amount to do it LOW!

One possibility would be to have the pieces flip over to reveal their other side with a different color.

You could carry this further by having every pieces flip whenever its color changes for any reason. And to make it interesting, make the flip angle and direction random so one piece may flip along the x axis with the front edge going up while another piece flips along the y axis with the front edge going left.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

@Demivec, Jared... I will sned you the code to look at... I did try that.

I think it is because f HOW I handled the target square draw feature that this is chunking... I attempted to implement the changes you suggested but they didn't work.

Maybe I implemented them wrong (which we both know is entirely possible!)

Tipperton: Yes, flips are nice, but I think I will attempt to make them dissappear and fade in first!!! along with shooting bobs out of their locations.

If O don't use the target square animation the throwaway animations linke the mouse trails and the explosion effects work much smoother and better!



OK here I go to code!

[Tipperton]

Tipperton: Yes, flips are nice, but I think I will attempt to make them dissappear and fade in first!!! along with shooting bobs out of their locations.

Whatever you do, it needs to be long enough to be noticed, but because it is a timed game not so long as to eat up time from the user unless you stop the clock while playing the animation.

And if you can come up with a variety of ways (flips, explosions, etc.) mix them up to add variety.

OK here I go to code!

Have fun!