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Name:	Ward De Langhe
Date Posted:	Nov 14, 2007
Rating:	Not Rated
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Blog post

Time to reveal the gameplay of my new game! I uploaded a little video to youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLIYaJHe2Rg
I call it "match-3 with a twist". The video shows a bit of everything: the menu's, the gameplay, the quest, highscore screen, etc
The game isn't 100% finished yet, but its very close now. Still didn't start the closed beta testing, should be able to do that soon.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	11/14/07 - game video 10/15/07 - Alchemist progress (TGB game) 07/06/07 - Time for another blog post... 04/22/07 - New game & some freebies 03/28/07 - TGB projects 10/22/06 - What i've been doing lately 09/14/06 - Magic Pearls 07/29/06 - Update

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Joshua Dallman (Nov 15, 2007 at 01:12 GMT)

NICE WORK WARD! This is a huge step up from Magic Pearls -- original gameplay, nice twist, great theme, and tons of polish and bling. Fantastic job, really shows off what you can do with TGB and a limited budget/resources. This should do well on the casual portals :)

Adam deGrandis (Nov 15, 2007 at 03:04 GMT)

Wow, super top notch! Very nice work, Ward.

Michael Bacon (Nov 15, 2007 at 04:50 GMT)

Beautiful! That game looks hard! I will be in line to play as soon as you tell us how!

Todd Pickens (Nov 15, 2007 at 07:09 GMT)

Very very nice. Great job!

Brian Wilson (Nov 15, 2007 at 10:09 GMT)

With another layer of graphic polish along with some dynamic gameplay components (like the popcap puzzlers), you've got a winner on your hands. Oh, and the sound will need to be top notch, the menu sounds from warcraft 3 come to mind...

Maxim Lyulyukin (Nov 15, 2007 at 11:10 GMT)

hello, very solid idea and nice art
i want to contribute to one idea, may be you like it maybe not...
main filed with rotating gears is looking good, but flat area in the center is not used and looks a bit boring
here is my idea:
main playfield is reaction pot, where you can add drops of chemical ingridients, pot will be in perspective and drops that closer to us will be a little bigger... and as result there is a bit less empty space, that makes visual part looks a bit more interesting

Edited on Nov 15, 2007 11:10 GMT

Clint Herron (Nov 15, 2007 at 15:36 GMT)

WOW.

Beautiful game -- I recently had my first foray into making a smooth UI in TGB, and you've done a spectacular job with this one -- I'm quite impressed. Well done!

Drew -Gaiiden- Sikora (Nov 15, 2007 at 17:03 GMT)

I like the UI too - are they all just scripted moveTo commands for the most part in regards to the button animations?

Ward De Langhe (Nov 15, 2007 at 17:44 GMT)

Thanks for the comments!!

Quote:
This should do well on the casual portals :)

I sure hope it will! Unfortunately there are still some issues on lower end PC's. This is typical for TGB. But to get on major portals this is something I will have to fix. If anyone did some speed/memory optimisations for TGB before... let me know

Quote:
With another layer of graphic polish along with some dynamic gameplay components

What exactly do you mean with "dynamic gameplay elements". Can you give me an example?

Quote:
main playfield is reaction pot, where you can add drops of chemical ingridients, pot will be in perspective and drops that closer to us will be a little bigger... and as result there is a bit less empty space, that makes visual part looks a bit more interesting

Actually, this was the idea from the start. Its just a bit hard to get this done right in 2D. I coded it so the outer sphere's are bigger then the inner ones... but maybe I should make that more obvious. Changing the graphics a lot is not really an option in this stage.

Quote:
are they all just scripted moveTo commands for the most part in regards to the button animations?

Yes they are. I made all GUI's as levels... but didn't mix the GUI elements with gameplay elements. I just put 2 scenes on top of eachother, then use one for the game and another for the GUI. Those buttons are all the same script class. I just need to create PNG with 2 states (idle and roll over), asssign this class and my button works. For the dialog screens I mount the buttons (and other elements) to the background panel, and then I only move that panel.
Edited on Nov 15, 2007 17:45 GMT

Jonathon Stevens (Nov 15, 2007 at 20:28 GMT)

this looks like a fantastic game! very impressive!

Brian Wilson (Nov 16, 2007 at 11:07 GMT)

Quote:
What exactly do you mean with "dynamic gameplay elements". Can you give me an example?

Specifically, something like:
- bonus pearls that change the dynamics of the scoring by being:
- - multipliers
- - wildcards
- - dead pearls that wont match and just fill the tray
- - dead pearls that won't match, but fall out of play once they reach the center of the wheel (basically to encourage the player to continue to go for the harder matches at the center of the playfield instead of the easy matchs along the outer edge

- possibly multipliers that give bonuses for consecutive matches without spinning the wheel

- events that affect the nature of the wheel, like special pearls, when matched, the wheel will only spin in one direction

- fast-match multipliers, the faster matches are made, the more points you score

- make bonus events graphically pleasing with large fly-by fonts

stuff like that ;p

But by all means.... get the game polished and working in it's simple state before considering the above features. Don't let features break the concept.

Ward De Langhe (Nov 16, 2007 at 11:58 GMT)

Ah, I see. There are some dynamic elements, altough not much. There are 2 types of speacial pearls:
-a "ring of fire"-pearl: When dropped, it sits there until you can create a full circle. Then all pearls in the circle react and create a ring of fire (really cool effect)
-a pearl that kills all pearls of the same color
There's also the possibility to create a super-charged pearl. You do this by combining 5 or 7 pearls of the same color. The middle one will not react, and will become supercharged. If you combine that pearl, it reacts with all the pearls around it.
Also, when you produced enoug gold, but still have time left you get bonus points (with animation).

Maybe I should add some more...

Brian Wilson (Nov 16, 2007 at 13:15 GMT)

Oh, and some other advice about complicating the gameplay dynamics.... introduce the variables slowly. Start with simple levels and introduce new game features as you complete levels and to keep the player from getting bored.

But, a caveat.. sometimes the simple games that progress on a steady difficulty curve can be fun too (think tetris).

Joshua Dallman (Nov 17, 2007 at 02:44 GMT)

Quote:
I sure hope it will! Unfortunately there are still some issues on lower end PC's. This is typical for TGB. But to get on major portals this is something I will have to fix. If anyone did some speed/memory optimisations for TGB before... let me know

there should be a forum thread from amanda who did grimm's hatchery (which was a blockbuster casual game on the portals, and made with TGB). seek it and ye shall find. --josh

Ward De Langhe (Nov 18, 2007 at 11:43 GMT)

Thanks.
I searched the forums, and found some things, but not everything I was hoping for. Doesn't look like she released any code. Anyway, I'll try to contact her.

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