Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD58 → The Pink Operator
By geckoo1337
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 63 | 3.63 | 21 | |
| Fun | 55 | 3.57 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 154 | 2.94 | 21 | |
| Theme | 123 | 3.47 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 125 | 3.30 | 20 | |
| Audio | 139 | 2.82 | 19 | |
| Mood | 109 | 3.27 | 20 |
Right as it was getting good it ended, which is how I know when I've found a fun demo for a puzzle game! I hope you will continue to develop it, there's many places you could take it and I found that the speed with which I could play it was really comfortable (i.e. resetting was fast, punishment free, and the puzzles weren't very difficult but satisfying) Great work!
Was very fun. Good core loop and the puzzles were challenging without being too hard. Could see it being expanded in a few different ways. Enjoyed looking through the source. Seeing that the engine was inside a single header file and you use bytebeat music were both welcome surprises.
Solid puzzle expirience. Not really my genre, but I managed to get through 7 levels — and actually enjoyed it.
What a fun puzzle game! I escaped the system a bit too soon I think :sweat_smile: It was a bit simple after you get the hang of it. Fun nevertheless, I see potential in this one.
I poked a bit around in the code, I see some lore at the end of xxx.h. Any reason why you did not include that in the game? It looks fun and it would give some depth to the game
The \*thonk\* sound is very satisfying to me somehow. Another Geckoo-classic! Last time I saw this c++ template style game was a few games back. Somehow I thought 'tiny creatures' was made with the same template, but after checking it's not?
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I have to think about your question regarding generating levels. Right now I'm thinking into the Dijkstra/A* direction. But that is for finding the optimal path, and not "clear the whole path in one continuous fashion"
@wouter52 Hello my friend. Thank you for your review. I really appreciate it. When you have the "next level" info on the screen, you have the story above the screen. I guess that's what you talk about... and you are right - this is the same template (more or less) ++
@geckoo1337 ooooohhh Now I see! (just booted up the game again). I did not see the story lines at the top of the screen indeed. I just skipped that screen as soon as it appeared. Maybe having the pink text at the center instead of "next level" would be better
very good game, i like this level-design
Your game is easy to pick up! That makes me immerse into the joy of solving puzzles quickly. Also your art style is simple, which together form a perfect balance.
capture.png
Found some help with my friends :-) Crisp game except for that ^^
Fun puzzles. The game's easy to pick up and play. imo, level 8 was much more difficult than level 9, but all levels were fun to play.
I enjoyed reading the story progress. While the text was easy to read, I didn't notice it immediately (I see Wouter had that issue too)
Interesting to read that the music was procedurally generated. It turned out well.
Overall, a great entry.
Nice game! I completed all 9 levels. Usually I'm not into minimalistic games myself, but as a fellow C++ programmer I totally get the vibe of coding something simplistic without complex engines and such.
Great realization, I loved the fact that the executable and the archive were ~small~ tiny ( mine is also custom engine C++, but the archive is 3MB big ! but at least, I have GNU/Linux support :D). I also loved the minimalist graphics, in a retro/atari style.
> PS : There is a mathematical explanation according to levels. I have to find the key - which levels are solvable - which are not. If you have an idea, let me know. It could be a way to create many other levels. Thanks ++
I have a good news, and a bad news :-)
The good news is that solving a level corresponds to an (probably easier) special case a known mathematical problem, called "search for a hamiltonian path in a non-directed graph". In your case, your graph is planar, and there's at most 4 neighbors by node. This greatly restricts the search space.
The bad news is that this problem belongs to the "NP-complete" category, which basically means : solutions are easy to check in polynomial time, but there's no known algorithm to *find* them in polynomial time. Basically, searching for a solution implies to consider all the possible paths, which will get impossibly slow very quickly as the graph size size grows.
Please note that this is not equivalent to "levels are hard to generate", actually I see many ways you could generate them (for example, starting from a straight path of a given random length, and repeatedly "folding" it (e.g an "I shape" becomes a "U shape" ) in a random way).
This would always create solvable levels, but not necessarily interesting ones (especially considering that there would be no guarantee for a unique solution here). To rate the quality of a level, you would have to compute some formula based on the characteristics of the (hopefully unique!) solution : number of turns, locality, etc. As I said above, as your graph follows a grid, it might be possible to find the optimal solution for each level in a reasonable time.
BTW I don't know what linker you're using, but with most of them you can get rid of the console by specifying the "subsystem" , there would then be no need to: ``` ShowWindow(GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE); // hide console" ```
On mingw gcc, the option is called `-mwindows` (vs `-mconsole`).
@sevansevan Have you found a bug? In this cas, how can I reproduce it? Thanks ++
@geckoo1337 yes it's easy to reproduce, you have to press two keys at the same time (left + down for instance) and that dupplicates the player :-) (I guess this might be keyboard dependant since some do or don't register multiple simultaneous inputs)
Nice little game!
I think it played very well. I would really have liked bindings for WASD though as arrow keys aren't layout very comfortable on my keyboard.
I liked the story after each level was completed, but I totally missed it on the first couple of levels because the text was so small!
Playthrough with some more feedback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-2HnFAL9L0
@sevansevan fixed :cat: Thanks for your help ++
Finished it all in a row without being stuck! …And then, reading the comments, I understood I've totally missed the little story above each finished level, so I finished it a second time in order to get this. Nice little puzzle, friend, and it was good to play again with a game made with your home-brew engine! Well done!
That's a nice little gem. Loved the Atari vibe of the graphics. And kudos for going with your own engine :wink:
Nice short collector game! Though it does remind me to games I've played before. Nonetheless, I've completed this game.
Nice little puzzle mechanic, can ramp up pretty high as level 8 shows. Impressive for a custom-engine game. I also didn't notice the story at first :P
This is how far I made.
Very nice brain-teaser!
level8.png
The song **Smooth Operator** by Sade started playing in my head because of the name. :stuck_out_tongue: :musical_note:
@dis0rder a kiss for you :love_letter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TYv2PhG89A
Very cool minimalist game! Really hits those oldschool Atari vibes. Would have liked more stages, but I enjoyed the puzzles and the little story snippets with every stage. Where did it escape to though!?
The exe size is surprising too, that's way smaller than most textures and sound effects. Even an old prototype I made with SFML way back was bigger. Being able to fit a game inside a floppy disk and make it in just two days for a compo submission is always impressive.
55th for the fun category, that is pretty good! Congratz mate!