SmallHexWorld

zelos 2017-05-01 21:44

I really like this. Reminds me a lot of how a board game would play out and I do enjoy those. The mechanics are really well thought out and it's fun to think of ways to make your hexes better. I feel like it should end once all the spaces are filled, but the way you implemented it works as well. Could use a bit of a better presentation regarding graphics and audio, but it works. Got up to 6531. There's obviously a 'best solution', but I feel like you can't really control that without knowing what the next tile will be. I think your 'next tile' slot should be renamed to 'current tile' and there should actually be a display for the one that comes after.

2017-05-02 10:24

This is awesome. The most tricky is finding the best way to place your tiles. I really enjoy finding better ways to chain farms / water.

Would be cool if there were more graphics but overall very enjoyable and personally challenging.

orcolom 2017-05-02 13:29

This is cool.

I did not get it the first run. I just started placing things. But my second did a lot better. It is confusing though that you can place any tile anywhere except the waste.

evogengames 2017-05-02 19:17

I like this sort of stuff! Good variation of tiles. Would love to see a 1v1 against an AI who get's the same blocks to work with :-)

kantieno 2017-05-03 00:08

This is a real neat game! Did several runs on both versions and think there is a lot of potential. Could work well as a simple puzzle game but could definitely see it being a pretty complex strategy game with all kinds of land and building types. Some of the RNG components are a little strange but also interesting such as getting farms before water so they just turn into wastelands.

Hope you work on this more, good luck!

martenscedric 2017-05-03 00:38

Nice I like hex games too! Pretty neat, I think you should add graphics and would make a nice android game!

stuntddude 2017-05-03 01:03

This is pretty cool. While it sometimes feels like too much of the outcome is based on luck, the ruleset makes the interaction between the different tiles really interesting. I kind of want to see if I can write a program to play this optimally.

Also, I beat your high score. Screen Shot 2017-05-02 at 8.00.31 PM.png

simonhutchinson 2017-05-03 02:53

Ugg. So much wasteland.

Screen Shot 2017-05-02 at 10.52.22 PM.png

Great game though, perfectly sized for a compo entry, and really fun!

eevee 2017-05-03 06:31

It's not obvious that you can replace any tile with a different one at any time, but I think that's a fundamental part of what makes this so interesting — I'm not shackled to the choices I made earlier. It really does feel like playing a two-player board game against myself, continually shifting the world towards something possibly more optimal.

Despite the small number of tiles, I found myself wishing the game would last longer so I could play around with my current configuration for a while. You found an _excellent_ set of interconnected rules here; well done :)

krunoslav 2017-05-03 23:18

I made 6.100, 6.200 and 7.000 points, I am getting better :) EDIT: I keep playing, I get 8.200!

I will keep playing, a re-playable game (**really!**), simple dynamics but very fun. I liked the concept. The graphics are not too nice but this game has not limits. I mean, you could keep adding more features and graphics. Congratulations!

I totally agree with @eevee: *You found an excellent set of interconnected rules here*

It is true, @evogengames, a 1v1 would be great!

stuntddude 2017-05-08 00:49

I whipped up a bot that plays greedily, making the move that will result in the highest score next turn, and it already does pretty well most of the time:

greedy bot.gif

That's a fairly typical game, but because the bot can't look ahead (and therefore can't strategize), it's very sensitive to luck, so the score varies wildly, from under 5,000 to over 10,000, depending on RNG. Next step is implementing minimax, and then optimizing to hopefully squeeze out an extra round or two of look-ahead.

japes 2017-05-08 05:35

@stuntdude that is amazing! I wish I could give more than one feedback heart. Did you whip that up using processing? What's the highest score you've seen? Current highest I've seen by a human is 9049. (unless you've beaten that)

I am stoked that the mechanic stands up to the simple greedy approach. The quest for the optimal strategy continues!

Please keep me updated with any progress you make!

Check out my post version, it has an online leader board. But no bots allowed there ;)

mathiouza 2017-05-08 16:09

5936, Is it a good score ? I do not think so x)

Great puzzle game ! :)

This entry is really different that I could see ! Great work :)

It lacks sounds and musics though.

Keep working on games :) Especially on this one, I think you can improve it ;)

kirenio 2017-05-10 00:00

So far the best I got is 5854, and while hex and turn based games are my weakness I was never good at planning ahead. Really entertaining mechanics that wakes the slumbering min-maxer in me!

Edit: Just did another try and scored 7827 by shamelessly copying stuntddude's layout, really shows how bad I am at planing compared to others! ^^

smiling-cat-entertainment 2017-05-10 00:18

Nice puzzle game. After a few tries, I managed a respectable 8107. The way the tiles interacted with each other was good. Managing the wasteland tiles was especially challenging. Great job!

lipsch 2017-05-10 20:29

Am I the only one who gets a really loud noise at the beginning of the Game? Really destroyed my ears o.O Apart from that, i liked it (: I didn't came that far, cause i didn't know how to handle the wasteland :D And I liked the sounds you added in the new Version (:

scriptorum 2017-05-10 20:51

Love this! I topped out around 7200 points. It would be helpful if hovering a piece over without dropping it gave you a peek at what the scores would be. Obviously the art could use some work, :smirk: but you've got some really solid game mechanics here. Reminds me of board games like Quadropolis and Suburbia.

japes 2017-05-10 22:06

Thanks for the comments everyone!

@kantieno thanks for the feedback, I've fixed the annoying case of getting a farm before any waters in the post version.

@Scriptorum thanks! I plan to add some more visual feedback to the post version so that things feel a bit more intuitive. I'm just not sure if showing all the potential scores would take some of the fun out of it? Will try it out and see.

david-cookie 2017-05-10 22:28

It's a really cool entry, and reminds me mine a lot aha (that's why I was intrigued). The mechanics of your game are clearer though and it's really easy to get into it! I've managed to score 6001 pts on my 1st run by making simple strategies, but there's really more to it. I couldn't beat that score though but I've been unlucky with red tiles :/ Could be cool to at least see the next tile that's coming!

Really great puzzle game anyway, and with more polish, sounds & music, it could really be a thing! Well done :D

flaterectomy 2017-05-13 16:15

This is a pretty clever concept. I am not sure whether it was a bug or an intended mechanic that I didn't understand, but a few times it would drop a different tile than what I had selected. I think a city became wasteland after I dropped it. I scored 6877 on my third run.

The graphics are a bare minimum, as are the sound effects. I understand this, the compo is short, but there's a lot of room (and potential) to expand there.

Nice work!

skosnowich 2017-05-14 11:36

Cool puzzly game. The graphics are simple but clean and work for the game. Solid entry, good job!

headmade 2017-05-14 13:18

Such a clever game, I love this! The graphics ain't much to look at but the well designed mechanics make up for it. One of the best games I played this LD.

I got 7481 points. screen.png Not as good as the bot of @stuntddude but it's something.

btwj 2017-05-14 13:33

Great puzzle game! I think a more visual explanation of the rules may make it more intuitive for new players (for example giving visual feedback on the impact each tile has on the neighbouring ones), if you're planning on further developing this. Good job! :)

japes 2017-05-14 17:22

@david-cookie I think seeing the next tile could be cool too. Will experiment :)

@flaterectomy thanks - that is an intended mechanic. Cities can attack each other under certain conditions, turning them into wastelands, and if farms are too far from water they also turn into wasteland. It isn't clear if you don't read the text carefully; an animation showing what was going on would be much clearer. This is one of the things I'd like to do in the post version.

@headmade thanks! check out the post version with online leaderboard!

cliffracerx 2017-05-15 07:21

Made it to 5819 points before running out of turns. Oh my, the strategy is real.

Took a bit for me to figure out how the basic tile mechanics worked, but once I figured it out, I had a blast trying to figure out the most optimal positions for everything.

I feel like a real-world board-game version of this could be fun, especially if it had a 2-player competitive mode with special tiles or something.

phaze0 2017-05-16 00:34

You can really get hurt early if you are given wastelands or farms (with no water before) at the start. Still, it's an interesting game, I can see lots of potential to expand upon it.

hackingroelz 2017-05-18 17:59

Really impressive! One of the most fun games I've played so far this Ludum Dare. It looks very simple, but the mechanics are actually quite deep. Being able to replace old tiles really makes for some interesting strategies. Awesome work!

stuntddude 2017-05-19 23:50

@japes Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. I would have left another comment sooner, but to be honest, it hasn't gone so well. I implemented minimax and expectimax, but got discouraged when neither of them were able to do much better than the greedy approach. I don't know if that's because they can't look far enough ahead, or because they're just not the right strategies, or because I coded something wrong. I don't really know what I'm doing here, as it turns out. Still, [I put the code up on GitHub if you're interested](https://github.com/Stuntddude/HexBot), but fair warning, it's a bit of an undocumented mess.

It's written in C++ using SFML for graphics. I saw some absurdly high scores when it was picking each next piece at random, but since implementing your tile bag algorithm for fairly picking pieces, the highest scores I've seen are in the 9000s range. And the highest score I've gotten as a human is still only 8948.

I do want to finish the bot, but I'm struggling with some hard-to-diagnose bugs in it right now, and haven't done much with it in the past few days.

japes 2017-05-21 11:02

@stuntdude That is awesome man, no worries! I'm just stoked someone is taking an interest in my game :)

Will definitely take a look at your code when I'm able to get back to this. I am planning on working on this more and releasing it on the google play store, RL will just be in the way for the next few weeks.

Current highest by a human is 9266 by me :). I got this on the post version, but the rules are the same. It just disallows farms before at least 1 water has been provided. So maybe something in the 9000s is close to the theoretical best.

2017-06-05 15:15

Nice little game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ9fOEQeXAs