Introducing Picross Forever
Posted by Will | Filed under Adobe Flash, Flash Games
I’m been a little quiet lately on the blog front as I’ve been working on my latest game, Picross Forever. I’ve been working on this game intermitantly since finishing my previous game, Knight of the Dead.
I feel I’ve learnt a lot from developing Knight of the Dead and hopefully it will show when Picross Forever is released in the not-too-distant future.
When starting Picross Forever I had a very clear view in mind of how I wanted the game to be structured from a coding point of view. I really took my time putting pen to paper diagramming a framework which will be extensible with a view to possibly creating a sequel without too much extra work. I developed my own implementation of a Model-View-Controller design pattern and the results have really payed off. I was very meticulous with sticking to this pattern even when things could have been acheived faster in a less structured way. I will definately be employing an MVC pattern in my future projects.
Some facts about the game:
- 45+ Puzzles in 4 Categories.
- 5 Music tracks.
- Individual sound toggles for music and sound effects.
- Puzzles are ‘themed’ according to their catagory.
- Puzzles are automatically saved. This should encourage users to come back to complete more puzzles.
- Unique menu system, possibly a first for a Flash game?
I’ve recently put the game up on flashgamelicense.com to get some user feedback and see if there are any potential sponsors out there. In the meantime I hope you enjoy the following screenshots of the game.
Categories screen
Categories are dynamic and self contained with outputs informing the user how many puzzles in each have been completed.
Puzzle chooser screen
Each category has 3 tiers of sizes. 10×10, 15×15 and 20×20. Puzzles with question marks indicate unsolved puzzles. Once a puzzle is solved the resulting image appears replacing the question mark.
Game Screen
This example is a puzzle withing the Sport category. Blocks here are inline with this sport theme with an animated golf ball and cup. Puzzles have a 5 strike rule and no time limit.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Are you going to put your self-serve ads system in this game? Are you going to release the code of that soon - I’m very very interested to see how successful you’ve been with it.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Yes I am including my self-serve ad system in this game. I have re-written a lot of this code to enable the option to have both my own ad system as well as MochiAds in the game. Naturally one or the other will be shown and this can be toggled remotely.
I personally haven’t used MochiAds so I can’t comment on how well my system compares. I have had some success with selling my own ads in my last game and have sold the space from shortly after it’s release until early December. Again, I’m not sure if I could have made the same money or more by just using MochiAds.
Releasing the source for this is not high on my list of priorities at this stage. I *may* spend some time on this in the near future however I’m not promising anything.
October 31st, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I love Picross, especially the free kind! Please, whatever you do, have a hotkey to switch between x’ing out spaces and filling them in!
I can’t wait to play this.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
This new game is great. I am really bad at it, but the graphics and music are awesome. Except my song. Thanks for using it Groady!