XENON 16square slider puzzle

[Shockman]

Slide _6
-------------------
When there is a window border
-Right click on title bar for standard Windows options. Left click on bar to drag the window and edges to size. (also Windows standard)
-Mouse wheel to change puzzles.
-Right click inside the window to turn the border off.

When there is no border
-Hold the left mouse button on the top left corner to move the window.
-Mouse wheel on bottom left corner to change puzzles.
-Mouse wheel to size the window. (this works also with the border on)
-Right click inside the window to turn the border on.

The game is automatically saved. The puzzle, the state of the puzzle, the window settings, size, and position.

- Left click on a tile next to an empty space to slide it.
- ESC to save and quit.
- F9 to shuffle puzzle.
- F12 to solve the puzzle.
- Press shift to cycle through the frame blending colors
- Cursor left and right to blend frame colors.
- Cursor up and down to change puzzles.

Note the changes to the controls above, left clicking on the top left corner to move a borderless window, mouse wheel at bottom left with a borderless window to change puzzles (anywhere else to size the window)

New,

- a difficultly setting. If the window is shown, so is the difficulty setting (to the right of the window caption). The number and letter tiles, and anything added along that line is EASY. The pictures are intermediate, and the new puzzles are hard. Not only hard because the patterns produce similar looking tiles, but you can not auto solve them, and they are shuffled every time they are selected, and you will probably have little idea of what pattern they will make until you match a couple. (you will never see them in the correct order unless you do put them in it).

-the frame can cycle through tones of more colors and no longer shift from one color to another but through the shades of a single color. Press SHIFT to cycle forward through one base color (red,blue,yellow,green,orange,and white,black,and others), then cursors left and right to adjust the tone. All colors reduce to a pewter color (silver, grey, whatever you want to call it) and max out to that color more solid color ( a bit of texture remains).

 

[bob]

Very nice Phil.

I couldn't find the way to randomly mix up the puzzle.

I have 1920x1080 monitor, so image was a little low res at full screen.

In real games like this, you can slide more than one square at a time as long as you are moving towards the open square. It would be nice to see this added.

Would be great to be able to add our own images. I think you could sell this with the offer to add customers own image, like grandchild playing with puppy or whatever image customer sent.

 

[Shockman]

I could easily add a function to mix it up. I'm not sure about a 16x but on a 9x it's possible to put them in an order that can not be solved, so it can't be simply random. It would be hard to do a visual scramble (though possible), and a random setup is slow as the last few tiles search and find tiles already sitting at the position that comes up and have to pick a new spot and check it. I am thinking about the best way. Real time is too slow, but I can try to mix up the order of the tiles then drop them in sequentially.

I don't follow about moving more than one square, when there is only one empty square. Do you mean if the empty square is on the upper left you can click any square on the left or top edge and move the row (from there to the empty square)? I could probably do that.

If I was to use high res images, then the smaller windows would loose too much as sizing is just scaling. I did not give a full screen option, but you can maximize the window with the icon, mouse wheel, or dragging the window past the top of the monitor, but yes, the larger, the more low res it appears.

I am working on a routine that will cut up any picture imported,

 

[bob]

Yes, if the top row was Blank, 1, 2, 3 then you should be able to slide the 1,2,3 all at the same time by clicking on the 3 or moving just the 1 and 2 by clicking on the 2.

I never thought about the random not being solvable.

This is another cool project. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Shockman]

Shuffle added to XENON slider.

I will work on doing that multi-slide next.

I actually did have a random scramble in this, and THEN checked to confirm, and found that the chances of having a solvable puzzle, given the number of random moves I used was very low, and that given the thoughtless manor I used, one move could have as well. Just transpose two adjacent tiles on a solved board and you render it unsolvable.

So, I went with the sliding shuffle and was very pleased with the results. And it is always solvable.

Updated download in the first post.

 

[bob]

Nice shuffle Phil.

I'm not a fan of the purple color, I thought about brown, but like the example below.

 

[Shockman]

I thought I was using Blues. I have a lot of stories about my colorblindness.
Here is the base image in the correct size. If you want to gussy it up I will use it.

Now everyone is going to know I was just faking the tongue and grooves on the tiles, and that they were not casting the shadows.

 

[bob]

Your image has a pink outside with a blue shadow trim and a purple inside.

I'm not saying my image is great, it has a reddish brown outside with the same color shadows and has a blueish inside squares. I did put just a little texture on the case.

 

[Shockman]

The frame is too thick. I could make it work, but it would be more than just scaling.

If I change the window size, or the tile size, then every number in every variable would have to be not only changed, but figured out again. You have no idea how many times a tile would not slide because I had a tile one pixel off. the function I use to see if a tile can slide if checking if there would be a collision if it moved there. I could just check for an empty area, but this way assures that the tiles stay lined up.

I like the frame a lot. Thanks.

If you want to work on it, though you don't have to, keep in mind that it is important that the complete tile set fits inside. Saying that the new frame must cover the old, but no more. There is a margin for error... even the pic posted does not make the game not work, because there is no collision with the frame, but there is a collision mask on another object that is invisible and sits over just the ring of the frame which is slightly bigger inside. the same image without the inside was used for this mask. It's just easier to ask one question (would the move make the tile hit anything than to ask if it is as far as it should go 4 times(once for each direction))

Thanks again Bob. It is a nice frame and I need help when it comes to color.

 

[bob]

Try this one, I'm not sure why the size was different, but this one should be a match.

 

[Shockman]

XENON slider puzzle with Bobs' graphics

It's a perfect fit, but the light source is wrong.

I used your textured frame with that field. All highlights I made used the colors in there darkened or lightened so should work.

I do like this. If you think it needs adjusting let me know.

I also toned down the light reflection on the embossed edges of the tiles.

Thanks again Bob.

Updated download in first post.

 

[Shockman]

Slide updated with 4 puzzles

No longer XENON_Slide.

Thanks to Bob for the use of his Graphics, including Puzzle 2.

There is a read me in the zipped folder as well as info in the game by pressing F1.

Cursors up and down cycle through the puzzles.

 

[bob]

Really nice. Fun to play. 4 choices makes it 4 times better.

I remember the blank space always being at the bottom right in these puzzle sliders, I was wondering why you put it at the top left.

 

[Shockman]

I don't know why I did that. I might be dyslexic as well as colorblind. I was debating myself about fixing that, and now that it has progress more than I thought it would, I probably will. This was originally an exercise in GM Studio, then on the Windows functions.

Moving more than one piece at a time is going to be tough. I would have to check which sections are involved and move them all at once. There is no function to just push whatever is in the way.

I can create a smooth slide instead of a jump, but it would be hard to deal with the tongues.

I can do both those things, I just have to get in and do it. I can make an object move relative (same direction and speed) to another. I just have to poll each square and see which ones to do it to.

I'm afraid if I try to make it too real that it would break and I would loose a piece.

 

[Shockman]

Slide_3

The file is up now.

Added three more puzzles and the ability to change the color of the frame between red and blue.

 

[bob]

Thanks Phil. Great game.

I really like the numbers, I can whip right through it with the numbers, I was feeling stupid with the images. :D

Great game to have on the desktop, just load and play.

 

[bob]

3 possible variations and one not possible.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

nice work, shockman. are you still designing in gamemaker, or did you move on to whatever it was you said you were planning on moving on to?

and what's the next project?

 

[Shockman]

I got Construct and the free version of Construct 2. These are nice. I also got the free version of Gamemaker Studio. The 9square puzzle is made with that. This game started in the free version of GM Studio, but overran the resource limitations the free version has.

The CEO of GameMaker, formally Game Maker, said buy it once and update free forever. Now I can understand new projects along the same line, or even new projects that take over where where the old one ended, but as of 8.1 became expensive, and was reallly nothing more than a lot of bug fixes and features it should have had from the beginning. Then Game Maker Studio became real expensive. As of now Studio is about $500.00 with the export modules.

This was made in Game Maker 8.

I have did a bit more tinkering with it. I have it where the window size and position is remembered.

 

[Shockman]

3 possible variations and one not possible.

The first incarnation of the game in 18seventysomething or eightysomething, had the 14 and 15 transposed. The object was to sort the puzzle, including those two numbers, and have the empty space bottom right (as it started out). I read that trains failed to stop, planed passed airports, and all sorts of this kind of stuff because $1000 was promised by the creator to the first person to solve it. I think it's exaggerated (hyped) though. Back then that was like $94,000 depending on how it was spent. Land for example. That puzzle is unsolvable.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

$500?? wow, those clever bastards...


about 2.5 years ago i bought GM8 for $30 just so that i could tinker with the script of the greatest game in history, spelunky. after that i had dreams of making a sequel to fort apocalypse, a fantastic game in its own right that came out for 8-bit PC's in 1982. i hope i get some relief soon, because it would be real nice to start up that project and finish some old VP works.

the surprising thing to me about fort apocalypse is that a couple modern authors did some remakes, and they're absolute pants. they kept the exact same gameplay but updated the graphics with bullshit miss-matched graphics. what's the point? better to just play the original, like with paradroid and all those other mangled classics. the simpler graphic scheme works perfectly with the minimalism of the game design- a concept that so many modern authors seem unable to grasp.

today's kids......

 

[Shockman]

Gamemaker can handle long backdrops, like Fort Apocalypse, but not as long as, say, Spy Hunter. Of course a clever (laid down on the fly)tiling system would still work with those long backgrounds.

 

[Shockman]

I would be inclined to make Choplifter first, but Fort Apocalypse is better.

As far as what's next. I have many WIPs at various stages of development, But I want to do something 100% original. GameMaker Studio has Box2D physics built in and looks like it could do a nice bagatelle or even pachinko.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

i'm 99.9% sure spy hunter itself used tiling. even within the same region (normal, bridge, water etc), and even within the span of a single screen height. there would have been no reason for them not to, really. i take it that with your work on xevious, you were forced to use the long backdrop approach.


choplifter as a start makes perfect sense to me. or maybe that chopper commmand game activision made for the atari 2600. which was basically just their version of defender. so yea, actually... choplifter would probably be better because its much more unique.


i wonder if box2d physics could do a better flipper simulation than the other crappy but popular pinball emulators? wouldn't that be funny...

 

[Shockman]

I think most if not all of the games back then were tile based. Even those that were inside a single screen. C64 certainly with 40something cells each way.

Xevious uses 16 full height backgrounds that are tiled, in a sense. True tiling would make that game better, but I was lazy. My DigDug WIP is the only game I have worked on lately that has true tiling.

It's wide open as far as flipper settings in Box2D. Basic bouncing off the flipper ... anything else is programmed. Flippers are not the hardest part in a pinball simulation in my opinion, but the most important. Rolling along slopes and curves smoothly is the hard part. In my opinion programs like VP for example has poor flipper physics and way too many settings. Physics settings is an oxymoron. Physics are a law. Pick a flipper strength, and speed. That should be it. Then simulate real world physics, not unreal physics like scatter angle, oblique correction and that kind of stuff that is just an adventure in how unrealistic you can make your game.