Slick Forums

Hi all

Whilst on holiday recently I started playing around with my own little Sudoku game. Its got to the point where it is playable so I thought I would post it up for comment etc.

Its not finished and the music is just a holder, and can get REALLY annoying. The music can be muted when playing the game.

I am still playing with this as I think its worth finishing, so I want to add more when a game is complete etc and work on the button graphics, that kind of thing.

The best bit for me at the moment is the wobbly title on the start screen. I took the bouncing text code I did a while back and changed it so that it could do the same with an image, very 1980's demo scene

Post comments, bugs and suggestions and I hope you enjoy.

Sudoku Dreams

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

Bug:
I had a situation where I right clicked and then wanted to choose number 4 for that cell, but instead of inserting the 4, the program selected the cell underneath the 4 (the popup interface).
So instead of getting a 4 inserted, it exited the number selector thingie and selected another cell.

I could not proceed, other than to kill myself over the music.

Otherwise, I like it!
The design seems a bit tacky with that background image, at least in my book.

Thanks for the feedback tackle.

I've tried to re-create the bug you have spotted but I'm unable to get a mouse click within the number popup to register on the main grid behind. It always selects the number I am after. Did you notice this Behavior oh a specific square or location within the grid?

The music is a complete joke I know. I'm still looking for something ambient enough to be nice but no annoying. I've set the default so that the music is not playing when you start the game. You have to unmute it when playing. I didn't want any suicides because people were subjected to the music as soon as it started

I did have problems trying to come up with something I could use as the background. The rising sun is a little tacky and I'm open to suggestions of something which people think fits in with the game?

A lot of time was spent working on the algorithm to generate the Sudoku's in the first place, this is where I focused most of my time, hence the presentation could be improved.

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

Not sure what you could use for background.. I'm thinking you could maybe keep the one you have for the startup, but switch to something more discreet when in-game.

It's currently kind of tacky when you look at all the elements combined; the difficulty setters, Time-bar on bottom etc..
Not sure how to explain it other than "ugly"

But enough of ranting on your design... I don't have much constructive to say at the moment. Just go with something that matches the rest. Keyword simplicity.


About the bug, I feared I had encountered something hard to re-create, but now I've got it figured out.
It has to do with the first cell, and it has to be empty.

Example:
Cell x1.y1 is empty (as stated), and so is cell x2.y1.
You right click in cell x2.y1 and choose "4" (which incidentally hovers above cell x1.y1). Voila, the bug.

Same thing happens if the second cell is x1.y2 and you select "2", or x2.y2 and you select "1"; in both cases it hovers over cell x1.y1. Oh, and the in both those cases their respective cells has to be empty as well.

I think you made your point on the look and feel I'll work on some cleaner graphics etc

Thanks for the description of the bug. I was able to re-create it using your description and its now fixed. Let me know if you find anything else

I'll post again when I've given the gfx a refresh.

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

Cool game!

My thoughts as I play (I think you've got the UI comments already):

1. Should be possible to enter a number after clicking a square to enter it. Pressing right click and then clicking again is too much and I kept pressing the number I wanted after left clicking.
2. Not really sure I like the red highlights for the column/row. If you have found that other people like that then keep it, but in my opinion it doesn't help much. At the very least I would tone it down to fit in the color scheme.
3. I'm not sure how to clear a space if I made a mistake... I don't just want to change my answer, I want to clear it. Again, I want to press a key (backspace/delete) to do this.
4. It would be nice to be able to write guesses in the margins like in the Nintendo DS game Brain Age.
5. I hit esc at many times to exit the number entry menu only to exit the game!
6. I don't really like the timer nor see the point, but maybe that's supposed to add to the challenge?
7. You should add something to tell the user what the difference is between the difficulties. Maybe some hover text?
8. Not sure I like how it shows the wrong guesses in red, especially on the hard difficulty. It seems like that should be present in easy but off later on.


Well that's all I've got for now. I finally cleared a board! I think it's fun and with a few easy changes could be even better.

Thanks for the feedback manunderground. I knew the usability was a little lacking and wanted to see what people thought before I spent time sorting it out.

I'll work through your suggestions as I'm re-doing the GUI.

Putting notes in the margin is one I do want to work on. The red numbers showing up for incorrect numbers is something I will let the user switch on and off. The idea is going to be that if you get a number wrong then you incur a time penalty on the harder puzzles.

The timer was to make it more game like in that you could test yourself on how fast you could solve a puzzle. I may give the player the option for casual play, with no timer, and more pressured play with the timer. I want to get a high score type page going eventually which will record your puzzles time at different levels.

I'm glad you enjoyed the overall game and I'll post a new version when I've made changes.

EDIT: You can now just type in the numbers you would like in a cell and also use delete/backspace to remove a number from a cell. Escape now closes the number select popup and Q quits back to the menu. I'm going to add an "Are you sure?" as well.

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

I've done some more work on Sudoku Dreams. I've created some new graphics and changed the overall theme which I think works better, comments welcome

I still have things to do, such as improve the celebrations when the player solves a puzzle and also allowing a player to place notes into cells while working out the puzzle. I'm also still looking for some good background music and some general sound effects for when a user enters a correct number or a wrong one etc.

If anyone has comments or finds problems please let me know. The link in the first post will take you to the latest version.

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

Added:

- Notes in cells
- Instructions page

ToDo:

- Better celebration when a puzzle is complete
- High Score table
- Time penalty for entering an incorrect number
- Sound effects and music

Sudoku Dreams

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

* Make esc the exit or q the exit key, I couldn't remember X... if esc is already doing something in the right click menu that just means you have to make it contextual!
* Would be nice if the options in the title screen lit up when hovered or were somehow more interesting. Could use SlickFX to make them really neat.
* Not sure how I feel about the current note system. Definitely a great first step, but I still think it's a little clunky. I don't really like having to hit the number a second time to remove it. Not sure what you could do, though, with strictly the keyboard... maybe notes should involve clicking?
* Would be awesome (and tons of work) if you created a tutorial puzzle which walked the user through the list of instructions since there are a lot of them. You could either save some state on the HD saying whether the user already played the tutorial or make it skippable so it wouldn't get old.
* Back to the menu, I want to click those links! Not press keys! Going to the ingame menu, it's *very* hard for me to tell which difficulty is selected. I'm a little color blind so perhaps that's it, but I think you should make it clearer by making the selected one even darker. I also really encourage you to make those buttons light up when hovered because they just feel too static and unresponsive as is. Also the timer looks like a button too... a little confusing.
* I think the new board is in the right direction, but could be further improved. I would try to make it look more like your sound button.
* No more comic sans! Seriously you have every font in the world to pick from and you settle on comic sans?? You're going for the brushed metal look so pick a font that fits that (open up an Apple I app and just use one of those fonts...)
* Going back to the title, if you're board and buttons are going to have this metallic finish then you probably want your game's logo to match that, so I guess it should change from comic sans/yellow to something harder and more industrial.
* One nice thing about all this is that it will help you make your background... you just need to make it look industrial/gritty to match your brushed metal board/buttons.
* I don't think it should be possible to select the board before hitting Go!
* I don't think you should have a blank board to start... I was confused. Either have a timer count down to start for a default board or have the Go! button softly flash red to draw attention.
* Definitely need to add sound effects for feedback. If I write a number in I should hear something confirming wrong it was write or wrong, or at least that I wrote something in.
* I really like the sound it makes when you select a square.
* There should be sounds for right clicking, entering notes, etc etc
* Maybe add a sound to the timer so that it plays when a minute has passed or some relevant interval. That way I can get a sense of where I am without having to stop playing and look.
* Still not really liking how it shows me whether it was correct, makes it vastly easier.

Alright, I think I just gave you a lot of work to do! Haha, the game is really looking cool and I'm excited for the next version!

Best Feedback Evar!

Kev

I'm with Kev, that was a HUGE amount of feedback. Given this has been just a play thing I've been impressed with the feedback I've got so far. I think it only right that given the amount of time you have put into the feedback I'll work on improving the game with your input Thanks

I've been meaning to change the font for a while. It was the first font I landed on in Hiero. I've been having some problems with Hiero of late in that it does not show up all the Apple fonts I have loaded. There are either errors in the console such as font too large, or could not be read or the fonts just don't even get read by the program. I've looked into this a couple of times but not got to the bottom of it. I'll work on getting a better font sorted out.

I like the idea of a tutorial puzzle as well. I've done some work on recording myself playing a game and then being able to play it back in things such as tutorials. I'd not considered using it for this, but I'll look into that.

Gfx always takes me SOOO long to do, hence I get so far and then just throw in what I have. I'll have to work harder at getting the board right.

I've been trying to create an input system that means people playing with the keyboard can do all the actions without needing the mouse (apart from moving cells). I couldn't think of another way of doing the notes apart from toggling them on and off. I'll see if I can come up with another way, but looking at other Sudoku games I've played, this does seem to be a common method.

I'm not finished yet with the timer/scoring of the game. The idea is that if you place an incorrect number into the puzzle you will get a penalty added to your time. This is to discourage people from just going from 1 to 9 in each cell. You could, but then you would end up with a HUGE time.

Given this was a few hour on holiday its turned into a fun little project, so I'll carry on making changes and post a new version soon.

Thanks again for the feedback. So much more fun that developing stuff in a vacuum.

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

Well if you're finding the GFX to be hard let me give you a little help. Here is a class for making cool buttons. (This is pretty much a straight copy/paste from the distributed example) It requires Slick and SlickFx be in you build path. I'll post an example usage below.

http://anotherearlymorning.com/source/forte_gui.zip

Second, check out http://brusheezy.com for tons of really excellent free Photoshop brushes (I'm assuming you're using Photoshop). For instance, I downloaded the "Abstract Technical" brush set for my backgrounds in Forte. Here's an example of what you can do:

http://anotherearlymorning.com/images/forte_title.png

If you're aren't sure how to make the brushed metal stuff I probably have a link somewhere though I'm sure Google will get it for you, too.

HTH

Here's the example usage of the button class. This governs the "Play Game" button you see in the above screenshot.



playUp and playDown are images I've loaded earlier. The listener is called when clicked (duh) and has the game enter the next state. Simple huh? And it all looks really nice!

Thanks

I've just made some really quick changes to the game. Changed the title to be a little more industrial, and also added some mouse overs to the buttons. Just trying stuff out, but interested if this is the direction you were thinking?

MikeD

_________________
Work In Progress:
Atic Atac Remake
MegaBlast (First Slick Game I started)

Yea it's heading in the right direction.

* Personally I don't see the title being in a wave like that in the end
* I think the Go! button should be lit up to start and animated so that it fades in and out until clicked.
* You nailed the other buttons
* Just noticed this, but what happens if I select a different difficulty after I hit Go!? It probably shouldn't be possible to do that...
* maybe Go! Should change to Stop! after it's been pressed? This would then lock/unlock the difficulty buttons
* Check out http://1001freefonts.com/ for some possible font choices. You could probably find a great font for you title... for instance pick a modern one then in photoshop apply various effects to make it really cool