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Geek Culture / Zero. sidetracked.

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flashing snall
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Posted: 19th Jul 2011 05:16 Edited at: 19th Jul 2011 05:52
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So last night at 1:00AM, I had a thought to try and quickly program a little math puzzle game. The idea was simple enough.

You have a series of numbers in a set order, so for example...
5,2,8
you may control the operands between them, so...
5+2-8 = 1

the goal of the game is get the result to be equal to zero. No of course, if you just have 5, 2, and 8, you cannot get zero, so the puzzling part enters here. Each one of those three numbers is in existance in the same way the resulting '1' is from the last example.
so 5 is around because another set of numbers looks like
3+4-2 = 5
and 2 is around because
6-4 = 2
and so on and so forth. YOu get to change any of the operations.

Let me know what you think.



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crispex
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Posted: 19th Jul 2011 06:29
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Actually it's quite interesting...educational yet entertaining to watch.

Reminds me of that old math game, 24.

I just now realized I've had a typo in my signature for the past 3 years.
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Grog Grueslayer
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Posted: 19th Jul 2011 08:40
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Wow that's cool!

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Hodgey
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Posted: 19th Jul 2011 09:00
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Quote: "5+2-8 = 1"

Ahhhh -1?

I think it is a fantastic game! and it's educational.

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flashing snall
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Posted: 19th Jul 2011 16:41
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Thanks guys!
Ah Hodgey, yes, my math is quite dodgy, but I assure you Zero's math is quite solid


Now I just need to find a way to make each level possible...

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tha_rami
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Posted: 19th Jul 2011 17:22
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That's superinteresting. Loving the visual style, too. Bit too hard to see what influences what, at this point, though.

Business guy and developer at [url]www.vlambeer.com[/url] - bringing back arcade since 1956.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 19th Jul 2011 19:58
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rami?! Maybe youve always been here, but I havnt seen your screen name is a long time
I agree, I need to work out a way to make it more clear what influences what.

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tha_rami
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Posted: 21st Jul 2011 01:59
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I've been lurking. Way too busy with Vlambeer at this point to be active, but if I see some friendly names from the good old days I still check what you're all up to

Business guy and developer at [url]www.vlambeer.com[/url] - bringing back arcade since 1956.
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 21st Jul 2011 02:09
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That's a really cool idea. Definitely a great game for a mobile phone. Consider AppGameKit?

http://lossofanonymity.wordpress.com
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flashing snall
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2011 22:49
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I thought it would be good for mobile devices with touch screen, because of the way the controls work. But its currently super object oriented. Im not how I would port it to agk. Granted, I have not really been following agk.

I just coded an algorithim to generate an always possible level. Sometimes you get lucky, but usually the game is quite challenging.

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flashing snall
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Posted: 23rd Jul 2011 08:20
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Ive put in a nice menu system. The idea is similar to the game itself, each bubble is a topic, and each bubble has different options. So the main one is the title of the game, and coming out is Play, Quit, and Options. Ive only really shown the options in these shots, because its hard to capture the whole thing in just a few shots.



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Hodgey
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Posted: 24th Jul 2011 07:47
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Quote: "But its currently super object oriented. Im not how I would port it to agk."

AGK Tier 2 could be sufficient as you use AppGameKit with C++ and as far as I know, C++ is "super object oriented".

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flashing snall
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Posted: 25th Jul 2011 23:18 Edited at: 25th Jul 2011 23:18
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Hmm, AppGameKit looks pretty snaz-tastic.

Here is an ingame shot of part 1 of the game's tutorial. I think I might rearrange it to be a little more intuitive.



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flashing snall
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Posted: 27th Jul 2011 04:27
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Here is a video on how the game works. Its the game's tutorial levels.


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Qqite
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Posted: 27th Jul 2011 11:31
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Download?!

Ventures of the worlds around us are limited only by our imagination.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 27th Jul 2011 14:08
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no demo yet, sorry.
Hopefully in another couple of days the game will be done, and then I can send it to steam and see if I can become a steam works partner. At that point, I'll need to figure out a way to apply their C++ steamworks API into my C# game. The internet says people have made wrappers for the API, so Im hoping that once I become a partner, some one will lend me the wrapper, or its simple enough that I will be able to figure it out.

But anyway, after I send the thing off to steam, I think I will release a demo.

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crispex
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Posted: 27th Jul 2011 16:18
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I'm looking forward to it. Do you plan on making it free, or are you going to sell it?

I just now realized I've had a typo in my signature for the past 3 years.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 27th Jul 2011 16:34
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I'm hoping to sell on steam for around $4.99. Nothing big, but something.

Im trying to figure out a way to randomly generate levels of a specified difficulty. Currently, I can make random levels, but they may really easy or really hard. I figure the best way to determine the difficulty of a level is to compare how many possible combinations of operations there are versus how many of those solutions work.
So the difficulty of a level could be written as
difficulty rating = solutions equal to zero / possible solutions.

However, the max possible solutions is equal to 4 ^ changeable bubbles, so looping through them all to see if they are zero would take awhile.

Hmm...

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flashing snall
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Posted: 30th Jul 2011 02:21 Edited at: 30th Jul 2011 02:22
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So I finally came up with a way to generate puzzles of a different skill level. Its not very elegant, but it seems to work just dandy.

It gets a possible puzzle, which I was already able to generate, and configures the operations on it 1500 times, each time remembering if the answer in the center circle was zero.
It then makes the ratio I was talking about, with correctAnswers / totalAnswers. If there are no correct answers, it runs the 1500 again.

3000 loops in a while loop is a lot faster than doing it recursivly like I was doing it before, and making sure to check EVERY solution.
So this ratio is not 100% accurate, but it gets it usually within 5%.

I changed the way the symbols act. Now they travel in a circle around the game space instead of falling to the left of it. I was finding that a lot of my play testers were having a hard time finding the symbol they wanted because it had not fallen into view yet. Now all the symbols are always in view, which makes it a lot easier.
The color of the plus sign got changed, because the green was soaking into the background too much.



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Teh Stone
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Posted: 30th Jul 2011 11:46
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A unique and almost fully working game in just 10 days, well done my friend.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 6th Aug 2011 08:17 Edited at: 6th Aug 2011 08:17
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The game is coming along very nicely. The website should be up soon. Then an internal demo. Then a public demo and applications to
Steam
D2D
Impulse
Desura



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tha_rami
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Posted: 7th Aug 2011 03:50
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Dude, get me a playable, will you?

Business guy and developer at [url]www.vlambeer.com[/url] - bringing back arcade since 1956.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 9th Aug 2011 22:59 Edited at: 10th Aug 2011 16:52
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Dun dun duh!
public demo time!

Here you go...

Edit fixed demo


Edit again. I have removed the demo link because it is now outdated.

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Plystire
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Posted: 9th Aug 2011 23:24 Edited at: 9th Aug 2011 23:27
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If you're stil having troubles with level generation, I have an idea.

Start with 0. Generate 1-5 numbers randomly, depending on difficulty of level. Apply random operators to these numbers. Figure out answer... add one more number to the equation, designed specifically to cancel out the result of what the other numbers equated to. This will guarantee that the center answer is 0.

For the branches, start with the number they were designated before. Generate, again 1-5 numbers randomly, depending on difficulty of level. Apply operators, find answer, make one more number to cancel out and bring answer to what it should be.

Do this until you've reached the number of sub-branches that you wanted. When done, all numbers should be in correct order and the solution is shown. All you need to do now is change the operators of everything randomly... Tada! Insta-level, with no recursion or guess-work in the system.


I love the idea! I'm a huge fan of puzzle games, so will be trying the demo in a few minutes.
EDIT: Blah, 15 minutes to finish download.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 9th Aug 2011 23:52
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Plystire, that is EXACTLY how the levels are generated

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Plystire
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 00:00 Edited at: 10th Aug 2011 00:11
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Oh, cool!


Just finished playing it. Didn't want to finish playing it, but it crashed on me.

I was doing the tutorial and was up to the part where it was teaching you about "ACE"ing levels. It said I had 4 moves to ACE it. I solved it in 2. But as soon as I dragged the new operator onto the second piece to solve it... the game crashed with the usual "This application has encountered a problem and needs to close".

I'll try again, but hope you can find out the cause behind that.

Oh... I was running the "Zero Private Demo v3" executable.

[EDIT]

Tried again. Now, I can't even start up the game. When I double-click the Zero.application, my screen will change resolution, background will turn white (but I can still see explorer window, and taskbar), music will kick in for 0.5 seconds and then cut off... and then it just sits there doing nothing with CPU spiked to around 39%. In order to close it I have to use task manager to end the process.

Tried running Zero from the other folder included, but it told me that it couldn't run from there because Zero was installed at a different location.

Shame, I was really hoping to get into the meat of this game.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 00:09
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oh eek
Did the main menu say "DEMO" or "PRIVATE DEMO" underneath the title?

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Plystire
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 00:11 Edited at: 10th Aug 2011 00:12
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I believe it said "PRIVATE DEMO" under the title.

I made a new profile and signed in as well.


I made an edit above, in case you haven't seen that yet.


EDIT:
Oh, if it helps, I'm running Vista 64-bit.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 00:18
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hmm, well I wasnt looking to give out a link to the private demo. That one has all of the game modes unlocked, which is something I did not want to do. So in a mean way, Im glad the demo goes kaboom. Its bad though, because I just sent that version off to shack news, I hope they dont even read it now :/

I know exactly why the game crashed however. Its because that was the last tutorial level, and it seems I didnt put in a check to not try and load the menu. I did that a long time, and I thought I didnt need to update it after I put in level stats, but I guess I did. Should be all fixed now and Ill try and upload a new demo that ISNT the private demo, very soon.

Of the game that you got to play, what did you think?

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flashing snall
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 00:20 Edited at: 10th Aug 2011 00:44
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OH so much yuck, the download link I gave had BOTH versions How on earth did I not see that?!

Okay. That was a nightmare. Thank you Pystire for finding that bug and letting me know. Please do not distribute the Private Demo.

The public demo is back up, and working.


http://privateinstall.smallgroupproductions.com/games/demos/Zero demo.rar

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Plystire
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 00:41
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From what I got to play I thought it was very well done. There are some things I think need some attention, though. The default setting for panning around the area is too low. Some levels, the panning was good, while others the panning was way too slow and I had to drag my mouse across the screen a few times just to look at what I was aiming to look at. In a couple of the tutorials, this was very apparent since some of the tutorial text was off screen and panning over to it took longer than it should have.

Aside from that, I'd say the different modes were pretty neat.

This portion is based on theory only, since I had not played into anything other than the tutorial:
Being that this game is intended for educational purposes, I hope there is a way to set exactly what features levels will include. Such as only allowing "+" and "-", or only "x", etc. so the player can match the game to their current math knowledge.


Since you didn't intend to upload both versions... I am going to see if I can uninstall the version I was playing and then install the one you had intended for us to play. Maybe then I will be able to play the game again.


~Plystire

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Plystire
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 01:13 Edited at: 10th Aug 2011 01:19
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Alright, that worked. Played the intended version up to level 13 and noticed something along the way.

When you Reset a level, it doesn't reset to exactly what you started at. This means getting an ACE can become impossible... and sometimes, the level itself becomes impossible.

Not sure how scoring is performed here. Getting an ACE doesn't seem to effect the score, and the score seems to just be how many seconds it took you to solve the problem. Lower score = better, I assume?


Also, the resolution the game is set at appears to be a widscreen setting. I am not using a widescreen monitor, so the game is squished for me.

[EDIT]
Just saw your edit. No worries. I already deleted the private demo since it wasn't working anyway.


~Plystire

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flashing snall
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 01:20
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Thanks for all your advice. The resolution is something I really need to figure out.

As far as level panning goes, the speed is dependant on the current zoom level. So if you are zoomed out all the way, you cant really pan around. If you zoom in a lot, you can pan around a lot. I guess I need to figure out a way to make that more apparent.

When you say, a way to set what levels will include, do you mean the user gets to set it, or I have a way to set it? Because every level I make, I have complete control over what operands are present, the game mode, and everything else.

The reseting bug... I thought I had noticed something fishy about it, but I think its a intermittent bug, because when I go back to check it, it works.

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Plystire
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 01:29
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What I mean about setting up the levels is, having a game mode that will stick to rules set up by the user. They can select if addition, subtraction, multiplication, and/or division will be present, how large the supplied numbers will be (dealing with large numbers in your head is hard for younger people, especially if they're new to math), how "big" the level will be (number of nodes), etc.

You might even consider placing in presets for the user to pick from, like "Small Addition", "Medium Subtraction", "Large Division", etc. (Maybe have "Size" and "Operator" as two different picks) and selecting an operator will enable all operators below that one (So, enabling multiplication will also enable addition and subtraction, but not division). And the size here would refer to how large the numbers in the level will be.


Just an idea.


Oh.. can you put in a way to skip the splash screen and/or the "Buy full version" screen? Perhaps when pressing Esc or Spacebar or mouseclick, it'll skip. Waiting through those is a pain. I understand if you don't want to skip the "Buy full version" screen, but at the least let us skip the splashscreen.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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flashing snall
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 01:36 Edited at: 10th Aug 2011 09:44
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I am a minacial advertiser, muwhahahahaha!
I really like your idea about a custom game mode. Im going away on vacation tomorrow, but I'll have my computer with me. So I think Ill work on that, and writing the rest of the levels. And fixing up some bugs.

Ill add a way to skip the start splash screen

Edit: Im not sure if the tutorial doesnt explain this well enough, but a low score is a good score. If you havnt noticed Acing helping your score, then Im wondering if youve ever beat a level without acing it.
The score formula is thus
score = ((moves - ace#)*120) + seconds

each move is worth two minutes, although your moves dont start to count against you until you pass the ace count. So if ace = 3, and you take 2 moves to solve, you get a very nice score, because none of your moves counted against you. If you took 5 moves, then you will be counted for 2 moves.

I just fixed the reset bug. It was really dumb

Edit2: I have the custom mode in now, and a more finalized demo.



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flashing snall
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Posted: 10th Aug 2011 22:26
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DEMO. with custom game mode.

http://privateinstall.smallgroupproductions.com/games/demos/ZeroDemo.rar

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