more on puzzle game

Hey! It's been a while since my last update, since I've been quite busy with some university assignments and work. Some news on the computer connectivity puzzle game!

I've completed the code for virus expansion through the network. When you click the '*' button, you are no longer allowed to rotate pieces, and the virus starts to creep through the cables. (as usual, graphics suck, but I'll take care of that in the future...)

Note how the connected PCs get infected, and how virus only reaches the sections of the network which are connected to the originally infected host.

I've also added score calculation based on the proportion of the network which ends infected and the amount of computers taken. And after you press the button and watch the virus take the network, a new level is loaded (I should probably add an intermediate screen showing score for that level and some extra info). I'm thinking of a possible game mechanic which is basically that the player must solve as many levels as possible in a fixed amount of time (say, 2 minutes). There will also be a "Relaxed Mode" where you can play without the time ticking behind, but I think it would be fun to have something like a global leader-board for the fastest solvers! :)

Oh! Another important development: I've decided the game will include music from DoKashiteru. They have generously released some great tunes under Creative Commons License, so go check them out and tell me if you like any in particular. Some of their best, which I'm planning to include in the game:

• 5
• one thousand six hundred tracks
• The Annual New England Xylophone Symposiym

and the real MASTERPIECE:

Yiourgh

Please let me know what you think!! Thanks for reading

New puzzle game

OK, some days ago I started a logic puzzle game, and today I decided to push it forward. It still doesn't have a name, so be welcome to recommend one. 

The (not-so-original) idea is to connect a set of computers in a network by rotating switches. The first thing I needed was a way of generating a random network of computers. I used something very like good old Kruskal for the connections, and got pretty nice results from the start :).

Adding computers to this useless network is a matter of just selecting some random nodes, and voilà:

Graphics are just for the prototype, I'll get proper ones before releasing the game, of course. The next and last step in generating the initial board is to randomly spin each tile so that the player has to figure out the original configuration by rearranging them. Here's the result: (I also increased board size in this one)

OK, so next was the tedious work of mapping the user's touch into a single tile, but after some hours of maths and testing I nailed it, alright. I also figured that no one would be able to select each individual tile with his huge finger (in relation to the tile's size, hehe), so I decided to increase the tiles and to test it on a real device. I also added a special computer, which I call "mother server", hehe. I think the idea of the game will be to rearrange connections so that the green virus infects all the computers of the network, or something like that... 

Anyway, that's all. I hope to finish this game before November, although I'm not very optimistic about it.  Oh, if you think of a name for this game, please tell me because I'm quite clueless on that...

Game idea: String Wars

Hey! This is my first entry in English, so please bear with me. It will start a (hopefully long) series about game design and programming. Thanks to some tough decisions and support from friends and family, I'll be dedicating some weekly hours to this activity from now on, and I want to share my experience.

Today, I was returning home (I've got quite a distance to travel), and I was thinking about how to put some newly acquired knowledge into a game. We learned the basics of the Finite Difference Method used, among other things, for estimating solutions to the partial differential equation of waves. Basically, estimating functions that satisfy the following:

This can be used to describe the movement of a guitar string over time, or the propagation of a sound wave in the air. I thought it would be interesting to make an iPhone app where you can disturb a string, initially at rest, and watch how it bounces back and forth, following the above equation. Touchscreen would enable interaction to be with the finger, which is nice. But I rejected the idea almost immediately: boring! Then I thought that could be just an element of the whole idea: a sort of bow shooting game where you actually tense the bow's string and the way you do it influences the shot. I liked that, as a start.

I then thought about how to make the bow shooting game more realistic in interface terms. I imagined it could be possible to determine the angle for the arrow using the accelerometer in some clever way...  I still need to make some experiments to see if it is feasible, but it would be fun to aim a shot with your real arm. 

One last concept I'd want to add to this game is the possibility to create a two player online game where you have to kill the other player firing virtual arrows at him. Using the iPhone's GPS, both players' coordinates could be obtained to create their virtual selves and allow the in-game positions to resemble the players' actual physical ones. I'll leave this for the last stages of development because I think it will be the most technically demanding.

I'll keep you updated on any development!
Thanks for reading

Manuel