Particle Demo

Community Forums/Showcase/Particle Demo

TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#1]
Hi All,

After years of Blitzing doing tools and stuff, this is my first real attempt at a game.

Particle is a puzzle game which requires you to match up particles on a grid.



Download demo (1.7 Meg.)

Let me know how you get on.


semar(Posted 2005) [#2]
Nice.. but I don't understand how it works... and yes, I've red the readme file.. :-(

Anyway, if I CTRL+ALT+CANC I get a Memory Access Violation error box, and the game quits.

Congratulation for your first game.. IMO should be more intuitive. But perhaps right now I'm not in a 'game mode'..

;-)
Sergio.


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#3]
Nice.. but I don't understand how it works... and yes, I've red the readme file.. :-(


It can be a little boggling at first. You need to click the silver hexagons on the left grid. Anything that goes red when you hover over it will change down to the next particle state (as on the left).

Anyway, if I CTRL+ALT+CANC I get a Memory Access Violation error box, and the game quits.


Ctrl-Alt and what? I don't have a canc button on my keyboard.

Thanks for giving it a try. :)


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#4]
Anyone else had a try yet?


Mark Judd(Posted 2005) [#5]
Hi Terabit,

Sorry to say but after reading the readme file and five minutes of clicking i was no nearer understanding what i was actually doing.

Just wound up randomly clicking the grid to see if i could determine some sort of pattern, but never understood if the changes that were happening were 'correct' or not.

Cheers

Funky Frank


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#6]
The entire grid on the left starts off as red circles. The aim of the game is to make the patterns on the left grid match the ones on the right.

As you mouse over the hexagon grid on the left, you will notice that there are three colors the grid can be.

Green - Means that this symbol matches the one on the right hand grid and should be left as it is.

Silver - Means that this symbol is different to the counterpart on the right hand grid, and will need to be changed.

Red - Means that you are hovered over it and if you click the symbol will change down to the next form. (Circle -> Triangle -> Square -> Star -> Disappear).

To win a level you need to make the entire grid go green by changing the symbols on the left to match the pattern on the right.

Other than that I can't really think of a better way to explain it.


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#7]
Except Visually... :)

This is the grid when you start, notice that most of the grid is green. Only a single zig zag line is silver


Here you are hovering over one of the Silver ones. Notice how it (and its neighbour) is selected in Red.


The same with the other two near by when you hover over them.


Then When you click, Both Circles Change to the next form, Triangles. Since this matches the Ones on the right, they go green.


Which can be better seen when you move away from them so they are no longer selected.


To me it seems pretty clear, but I've been working on it for a few days, so I'm probably blind to the confusion it can cause. Maybe I should have stuck to Pong ;)


Mark Judd(Posted 2005) [#8]
Thanks for the extra info Lee,

OK - what was throwing me was the fact that sometimes you change two grid symbols, sometimes one.

Now i can get the left hand grid to look like the right hand one but i have 'empty' grid squares on the left that i cannot change - i guess this is because i took too long.

If i achieve the mirroring quickly, then i get a 'well done' message and move onto the next level.

But before i can evaluate the pattern on the right (on level two) to mirror it, i get more empty grid positions appearing on the left making the match up impossible.

Am i missing something (!) or is this how its meant to be ?

cheers

Funky Frank


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#9]
If the timer reaches zero or you click the reset button (top left) then the left grid symbols return to the starting state.

If you click a set of symbols that are stars they disappear. That is the fith state (GONE!). So to match empty ones on the right, simply click the the ones on the left until they disappear! Also if spaces appear lower in the grid, the symbols above it drop into their place.

(Circle -> Triangle -> Square -> Star -> Disappear).


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#10]
Anyone completed the demo yet?


Perturbatio(Posted 2005) [#11]
yes, I took about 2 minutes to complete it.
They don't appear to get any harder.




TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#12]
yes, I took about 2 minutes to complete it.


Good, it wasn't meant to be hard! Far from it. I'm going to make the levels progressively harder, but to be honest I've been having problems getting people to understand it in the first place! :)

I'll repost it when I've put in a few more sensible levels.


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#13]
Ok. I've redone some levels and added another. It should take a bit longer to complete now:

Download demo (1.7 Meg.)


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2005) [#14]
"Particle Demo" - sounds like a particle fx demo. "Hit the reset button" confused me kind of :) Unfortunately I am still using this old No3D Thinkpad for Web Access, so it failed to initialize Graphics3D. The concept sounds good and innovative. Maybe I'll play it later, when I setup a lan to my dev machine.


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#15]
Yeah, I quite like it, not to hard to figure out at all. Kinda like an IQ test. It seems original, is it? The music is good too, did you make it?


TeraBit(Posted 2005) [#16]
Yeah, I quite like it, not to hard to figure out at all. Kinda like an IQ test. It seems original, is it? The music is good too, did you make it?


I've not come across anything quite like it, but I think there are lots of variations in puzzle games. Even Tetris is a kind of pattern matching.

The Music was googled for free, royalty free music loops. (There are a million of them out there!) They're only a few seconds long, but loop really well.


Grey Alien(Posted 2005) [#17]
Thanks for the google music tip, as long as they are rolalty free for commercial projects too, that's cool.