Category: Articles

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Setting the Bar

More Rank Generation

Spent time tonight playing through each level three or four times to get better values for the S ranks.  I want to ensure that the player can get S ranks in all three categories in one play of each stage.  For instance, I don’t want players to have to use a lot of pieces to get the S rank in time, then have to replay it again to get the S rank in pieces.  However, the player can get a better rank in any category by replaying the level, and specifically focusing on that specific category.  This means that each rank category of each stage is considered independent of the other rank categories as far as the records go.

When going for the best times, I found that the optimal strategy is having the most possible LEDs fill at the same time.  There should always be a piece filling, and the more pieces filling simultaneously the better (as long as it doesn’t impact the number of pieces used).  The LEDs that require the most distance should be completed first, filling in the shorter routes after.  It really is a bottle neck problem to solve to get the best time ranks.  Maybe its because I’ve played my own game so much, but getting the S ranks for pieces and luminosity is really simple, so the only challenge will be getting the S ranks for time.  On the other hand, if the player isn’t good at subtraction, then the luminosity scores will be difficult to obtain.

Platform Specific Exception

Noticed another difference between PC and XBox 360.  On the XBox 360, a runtime error will be generated if a try/catch statement isn’t placed around the game loading functionality to catch the System.InvalidOperationException exception.

More Level Design

Spent time creating ten more levels.  These use up to the 7 value battery.

 

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Rank Updates

Rank Modifications

Modified the way that ranks are calculated at the end of a level.  Before, I had S, A, and B values defined for each of the three categories (pieces, luminosity, time) for each level.  I’ve realized that I will not have enough time to come up with all of those values for even the 50 stages that I currently have.  Therefore, I’m just going to define values for the S ranks.  Then, I will derive the A, B, and C values for pieces by adding 1, 2, and 3 to the S rank.  The same goes for the luminosity value, but decreasing the value by 1, 2, and 3.  For time, I will set a base S rank time, and then calculate the A, B, C ranks by adding 2 seconds for each lower rank level.

Fixed an issue with records being wiped when New Game is selected after the game is executed again.  This is because the constructor of the PlayerRecords class was initializing all of the array values to -1.  Now the save data is loaded once when the game is started, after the rank arrays are initialized in the constructor.

The rank values now gradually appear on the game win screen.  Currently, the ding sound effect is played when each value appears.  The game is already heavy on the voice work, so I thought the letter voice work was excessive.  I may use Audacity later to modify the ding sound, so it is different for each rank or new best ranks.

Added boolean variables and methods to track if the new ranks obtained for the level are better than the previous ranks obtained for the level.  This wasn’t pretty, because the GameWinScreen doesn’t have references to the GameLevelScreen or PlayerRecords classes, so it has to keep local variables to track if each rank is the best.  The GameWinScreen then uses those boolean variables to display if the rank is a new best if appropriate.

Level Number Display

Created a static method in the Level Definition class, which takes an integer level number and converts that number into a string level name.  It divides the level number by 10 and adds 1 to get the first number, and then takes the modulo of the level number by 10 plus 1 to get the second number.  For instance, level 25 becomes “3 – 6”.  Level 10 becomes “2 – 1”.  This is the value that will be displayed to the player on the various game screens.

  

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Even Software Developers Need a Break Sometimes

Burnout

Took a coding break on Sunday, since I was starting to feel the burnout.  Participating in a programming competition on Saturday really pushed me to the limit as far as writing code goes.  I had done little game playing in April, so I’ve dropped a few places in the XBox gamerscore leaderboards on TrueAchievements.  Therefore, I picked up an easy game from Redbox and scored a quick 700 gamerscore for a quick rank boost.  I also played a few Indie and XBLA games to check out some of the currently independent developed games.

Level Design

I was able to do a little level design, but that was about it.  One thing I’ve got to watch out for is placing two LEDs next to each other, because the GameLight class is derived from the GamePiece class, which means an LED will automatically start filling other adjacent LEDs.  This prevents the player from using resistors to change the flow values for the adjacent LEDs.  This could lead to an automatic bust in some cases.  Noticed that I also need to display the level/stage number on the level complete screen, which would also help me with recording my scores for the rank information.  There are now 50 total levels to play in the game.

  

Did some more playtesting of the game through the XBox, and began recording my scores, which will be used for the ranks.  I want the S Rank to be difficult to obtain, but I’ve got to ensure that it is possible to get the values that I define for the S Ranks.

Level Select Screen Glitch

Noticed an issue on the Level Select screen where the cursor keeps going back to index 0  from index 1 when the down button is pressed.  Not sure what is causing this, but I will check to see if the pause value is getting set properly in the setActiveScreen method.  Pressing up seems to fix it so that down properly moves the cursor down the screen.  Looked at the code, and I realized that it happens when the user holds up and then presses the confirm button on the Level Select screen (to select a level) before releasing up.  The boolean that tracks if up is pressed was not getting set to false, because the Level Select screen never saw the up direction being released.  Setting that boolean to false in the setActiveScreen method of the Level Select screen fixed the problem.