Casually Hardcore devlog

Line World ideas…

I’m just expunging that last of the Line World game ideas as I restart another project of mine. Hopefully somebody implements one of these ideas:

Stuntman Lives

A stuntman is fired from a cannon into the air, but needs your help to reach the final safety net where a pot of money awaits.

Goals:
- Reach safety net at far end
- Get money from violent collisions

Mechanics:
- Draw physics objects like walls, trampolines, fiery rings, pyramid of boxes, etc.

Stuntman moon shot

Goals:
- Get the stuntman high into the air

Mechanics:
- Draw physics objects like trampolines and springs to bounce the stuntman up.
- Use predictive drawing to guess where the stuntman will be in the next second or two.

Squish all humans!

Squish those pesky humans that stand in your glorious way to supreme rulation of the the universe. MUWAHAHA,

Goals:
- Crush all ragdoll humans in a city with giant dung ball

Mechanics:
- Draw physics objects like lines and springs to navigate ball towards humans
- Hit buildings to tumble them into humans

The fantastic death of stickdude

Depressed man, stickdude, wants to go out with a bang and in public!

Goals:
- Create the most elaborate death that involves blowing up cars, destroying buildings, and finally killing stickdude

Mechanics:
- Draw physics objects in a city. Stickdude starts at the top of a building.

The incredible light bulb screwer

Screw in a light bulb by building a contraption that does it using the most objects possible, but does not damage the bulb.

Goals:
- Screw in light bulb.

Mechanics:
- Draw/drop objects like levers, pulleys, cogs, chairs, balls, anvils, wheels, etc. into the world
- A fixed number of objects per challenge. i.e 10 then 20 then 30, etc.

Ladder of stuff

Stack random objects as high as possible – chairs, tables, balls, humans, cars, etc.

Goals:
- None. The sky is the limit.

Mechanics:
- Stack objects on top of each other.
- Objects are randomly chosen.
- Fallen objects start fire, so keep the ladder of stuff from burning up.

The Traveling Gnome

Help the floating gnome get home through the use of air currents.

Goals:
- Get the gnome home in front of his favourite lawn.

Mechanics:
- Draw wind currents.
- Drop objects to trigger rube goldberg devices that remove barriers like trees + walls + buildings.
- Drop objects on birds that dare attack.

Sledding (ala Line Rider)

Goals:
- None, just create the longest track .

Mechanics:
- Draw lines
- Drop sledder

Wrecking Ball

Goals:
- Smash boxes into the void (create most damage)
- Do it before the timer finishes

Mechanics:
- Draw ground lines
- Drop wrecking ball

Add comment September 28th, 2007

Addictive vs. Fun – revisiting the box stacking gameplay mechanic

As I demonstrated to my students the Box2d editor and the sample box stacking game, a few of them got addicted to the physics gameplay which led to me to think about fun vs. addiction.

In psychology, addiction can be “triggered” by rewarding the player at infrequent intervals. We’ve all experienced addiction in games. Games we played, not for enjoyment, but to “finish it.” In fact, I can list many console and DS titles like that. Fun + addictive is rare.

Mr. BigPants referred me to a one-button Flash game called Tower Bloxx that uses a variation of stacking mechanic (swinging crane, 3 box limitless realistic physics – overall more hardcore). It’s pretty slick and has a full progression system (you build a city). It’s dark chocolate while Peggle is crack cocaine.

So we know the box stacking mechanic can be addictive but does that make it fun? I’m not sure about that. We’ll need to dress up the pig with more than lipstick…

What can make it fun is getting rid of the “stacking high to reach a goal” mechanic and replace it with something deeper and more fulfilling to the player. i.e turn it into a puzzle…

• Crayon Physics does this very well by letting you think up shapes to draw in order to reach the stars (goal objects).
• There was also a toy block game that required you to build a specific structure using a collection of wooden pieces.
• Puzzle Quest takes the match-3 mechanic and puts it into the context of a RPG. It’s pretty fun also.
• The fantastic Bridge Builder allows for multiple solutions – some just insane.

Bridge Builder proves you don’t need fancy graphics and sound to have a fun + addictive game. Tower Bloxx went the route of covering up a weak game mechanic with fancy graphics and sounds. For casual game / portal market this is necessary, so I don’t blame them.

Other physics-based games:

• Loco Roco(PSP)
• Toy Blocks (Freeware PC – tech demo)
• Chalk (Freeware PC – art demo)
• Kirby’s Canvas Curse (DS)
• Bridge Builder (Commercial PC)
• Toribash (Commercial PC)
• N (Flash) and N+ (XBLA)

Add comment September 28th, 2007

Box2d physics editor video

And another vid (with ragdolls!)

Missing:

Dominoes
Towers…

Add comment September 28th, 2007

Wrecking Ball – last of the Line World experiments for a while..

This mini-game spawned the Box2dEditor. A true game designer could “go to town” using the wrecking ball + physics game mechanic. The possibilities are endless. I just ran out of time + patience. It will be great learning material for students (hint, hint – mine) for sure.

Source available at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/musicala

Add comment September 28th, 2007