> Now, I have changed it. The weapon will throw off any creature which
shares
> the same cube as you. This includes fruit. So, in effect, any creature
> about to hit you (if you're jumping onto its square, or its jumping on to
> yours, it is the same) will be tossed off by the weapon. This adds a lot
to
> gameplay, too... if you have an octopus rearranging the hell out of
> everything, you have to go chase it to get rid of it.
You are right, it adds a lot to the gameplay. I like this feature.
> To compensate for that, I've loosened the tolerance on the available
> time/screen. It is now a linear function of the level # (up to 31).
> Basically (31-level)/4 + 1--> timer. So, on level 1 your time is 9
units,
> on level 15 it is 5, and on level 31 it is 1. I have also adjusted the
> penalty/frame when your score is counting down from -3 to -1. Thus, it is
> 1/3 the speed, and you have a lot more time to do things. Hopefully this
> will reduce the cost in score while you scramble to complete.
I still can't get used to the score countdown. In a game that
constandly gets faster the player will always get to a point where
he can't keep up with the speed anymore. At that point in your game
the player can quickly loose all his points, if he doesn't give up
and kills all his remaining lives. I don't want to give up. I want
to be beaten by the game. If I play your game as long as I can, I
might end up with no points at all. That way the score degrades
to a weapon charge for me.
If you want to give the player some incentive to finish the levels
quickly, maybe you could use a bonus counter instead. Or remove
a fixed amount of points every time the pattern changes and
maybe twice the amount of points for every cube that gets move in
place after the first pattern change.
> I plan to adjust the fruit functionality. Currently, you just jump on
fruit
> (without missing one) and you get your extra life. I'm thinking of
> requiring you to get the fruit in the correct sequence, and generating
fruit
> randomly. That is, the sequence would be A,B,C,*D* (extra life).... but
the
> fruit might appear as D, C, C, A, B, D, A, A, B, A, D, C, A, A, D
> To get the extra life, you could jump on the first 4 (as you need an A to
> start), then the 5th, toss the 6-11th off the screen, as they break the
> sequence, and jump on the 12th (the C) and finally the 15th for the extra
> life.
This sounds like a good idea. Right now it's way too easy to get the
maximum number of lives. But since in higher levels the probability
for nasties increases and the available time gets shorter, it might
be impossible to get all fruits within one level, so you might want
to remember the achived sequence throughout the levels.
Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg
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