Animatch For Gp2x Released

[ruckage]

Hi everyone, Animatch is finally ready.





Animatch is a tile matching game based on Zoo keeper for the DS (Zooo on GBA). The aim of the game is to create a row of 3 or more animals either horizontally or vertically by swapping tiles. Tiles can only be swapped if it results in a row of three or more of the same animal otherwise the tiles will swap back again. When a row of animals is made they dissapear from the board and the tiles above fall into their place.

Features:
Full joystick and touchscreen support.
3 game modes (Normal, Time attack and Score attack).
Hiscore tables.
Fantastic music by Pat Ferguson (thank you )
Special tiles which remove all matching tiles friom the board.
Hints that can be used if you're really struggling to find that next move.
The game checks to make sure you always have a move available and gives you a new board if you don't.

If you enjoy the game and would like to donate some money to either myself or Pat you can do so at our websites. Any ammount is greatly appreciated and will help with future projects.

Ruckage: www.muddymonkey.co.uk/ (taking an age to load at the moment for some reason, any problems PM me)
Pat Ferguson: www.obstacledelusions.com/music/


You can download the game from the archive: Download link

 

[Yod4z]

yah! thank you i love this game Tilematch on Gp2x are realy great but miss some funtions

 

[plopperz]

Been waiting for this for a while.
Guess it's time to dig up my F200.
Thanks Ruckage

 

[Kojote]

looking excellent ruckage, as all your games do.

 

[ruckage]

Thanks for the replies.
I've actually just noticed a small bug that I managed to overlook :angry:, the touchscreen control is about 5 pixels out on the Y axis. I've fixed it now and will upload a new version soon.

 

[slaanesh]

Awesome! Brilliant graphics too. And I bet my wife will love this one too. She's totally into tile and puzzle type games.

EDIT: Been playing. Great stuff. Great attention to detail. Superb quality.

 

[TrevorBradley]

Excellent work Ruckage! Touchscreen works great on my F200.

I'll be losing a few hours to this one over the next few days to be sure.

My 8 year old daughter loves the Paws function.

 

[Alex.]

Thanks for yet another great game Ruckage, commercial quality no less The music again lives up to the high standard Pat got us used to.

I love your attention to detail, everything flows together so incredibly well. I love the note that plays higher and higher as you get chained matches. I'll wait for the touchscreen fix and then I'll also give this a try on the Wiz

 

[gruso]

The long awaited Animatch! Can't wait to fire it up.

 

[JeanLouSchmidt]

Great game !
My girlfriend wont give me back my gp2x if she try that !

 

[mepuldera]

this is really cool game! graphics are nice, and music is fantastic
above all, touch screen support is absolutely cool!
(in fact,touch screen doesn't work properly with FW4.1.1 on my F200 but using "hack permanent installer" by EvilDragon makes it work)
anyway, really thanks for this great work. i've been waiting for this type of game

 

[Tag5]

I have downloaded it but won't be able to try it out fully until I come back from my weekend break. Many thanks again for creating such a addictive game.

 

[Yod4z]

suggestion: In highscore when you have to put your name maybe when you push the direction for like 2 or 3 sec the cursor move to the next selection is good for F100 user

 

[slaanesh]

My 8 year old daughter loves the Paws function.

Yeah, I played it some more last night. Showed my wife too. My daughter enjoyed it but she's only 14 months.

Actually, I thought the Paws mode was great too.

 

[timothee]

Thanks Ruckage! Great game as usual. Features are awesome (thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for the lifeline hints) and both music and graphics are great.

I'm a little bit disappointed by the gameplay though. I think the transition to make matched tiles disappear (rotation + funy faces + explosion + movement to bring in new tiles) takes too long. I often find myself waiting before I can do my next move because the next tile selection is disabled until the entire animation is complete. In comparison, I feel things are a faster in Tilematch and I have more frenetic games on it. An Animatch game is more relaxed. It's probably good for some, but personally, I prefer panic mode.

But anyway, thanks again for releasing this!

 

[senquack]

Just tried it out, it is extremely good. Thanks Ruckage.

Only things I'd suggest are

1.) Allow another button other than B be the main button also (Y or A) so I won't wear out my B button so quickly. Just about every game on the 2X uses B as an action button and mine on the F100 is getting softer and softer.

2.) Tweak the timing of tile selection a bit. I often will be moving my cursor to a specific tile, let go of the direction and hit B but there is a very tiny window there where you can't select a tile even though the cursor is over 99% of it. It happens often and is frustrating to have to hit B twice a lot.

 

[jbrodack]

though when you first announced this I wasn't excited about a new match 3 game coming out I do really like your presentation of this. the touchscreen works well and having the special blinking animal is cool. nothing innovative but a very good version of a classic games thats really addictive. I always love your graphics work

 

[fusion_power]

Very stylish and polished game. I love the face expressions of the Animals when they disappear.

Sadly I had some serious bugs. My System is GP2X F100 MK II Firmware 2.1.1, Gmenu2x.
I played normal mode, I was in good shape, Level 8 and suddenly I wasn't able to select Animals, B Button didn't work anymore! I was able to move the cursor and pause the game but I couldn't play anymore without working action buttons (Musik was still playing). So Time ran out and then the creatures start shaking...and keep shaking. Game was in a loop and I had to reset my GP2X.
Maybe this was because I underclocked over gmenu to 166MHz. But I also had a issue with standard clocking:
Time Attack: It lso started good but something around 16K points the screen refreshed (again) because of no matching animals on screen. But this time it looked like the new screen was filled only with one type of creature (pig maybe) and vanished instantly and I won the Match because it gave me thousands of points, I reached 24K but need only 20K in this mode. Then game again hangs in a loop.

I hope this can be fixed because in booth cases I was close to hit a good highscore.

Oh, Bug or feature?: When the playfield refrehes because there are no longer matching animal, the timer continues during the refresh screen. This costs valuable second. I suggst to stop the timer during this screen
And the last Name that was typed in for the Highscore could stay in the keyboard screen so we only have to press enter. (for lazy people like me )

 

[ruckage]

Thanks for the replies and suggestions everyone,

suggestion: In highscore when you have to put your name maybe when you push the direction for like 2 or 3 sec the cursor move to the next selection is good for F100 user


When I release an update then that can be added.

I'm a little bit disappointed by the gameplay though. I think the transition to make matched tiles disappear (rotation + funy faces + explosion + movement to bring in new tiles) takes too long. I often find myself waiting before I can do my next move because the next tile selection is disabled until the entire animation is complete. In comparison, I feel things are a faster in Tilematch and I have more frenetic games on it. An Animatch game is more relaxed. It's probably good for some, but personally, I prefer panic mode.

But anyway, thanks again for releasing this!

Well I based the game on Zoo Keeper (not tilematch) and I feel Ive matched the game fairly closely and personally I'm happy with the speed of the game. However I take your comment on board. I could increase the speed the animals fall down if it's a common consensus that they fall too slowly.

Just tried it out, it is extremely good. Thanks Ruckage.

Only things I'd suggest are

1.) Allow another button other than B be the main button also (Y or A) so I won't wear out my B button so quickly. Just about every game on the 2X uses B as an action button and mine on the F100 is getting softer and softer.

2.) Tweak the timing of tile selection a bit. I often will be moving my cursor to a specific tile, let go of the direction and hit B but there is a very tiny window there where you can't select a tile even though the cursor is over 99% of it. It happens often and is frustrating to have to hit B twice a lot.

1. I'll add it to the list for the next release.
2. I Hadn't noticed a problem but I'll have a look and see if I notice the delay. The cursor is actually never partially on a tile as it jumps an entire space at a time. The only time you can't select a tile is if the previous move hasn't finished and tiles are still falling.

Very stylish and polished game. I love the face expressions of the Animals when they disappear.

Sadly I had some serious bugs. My System is GP2X F100 MK II Firmware 2.1.1, Gmenu2x.
I played normal mode, I was in good shape, Level 8 and suddenly I wasn't able to select Animals, B Button didn't work anymore! I was able to move the cursor and pause the game but I couldn't play anymore without working action buttons (Musik was still playing). So Time ran out and then the creatures start shaking...and keep shaking. Game was in a loop and I had to reset my GP2X.
Maybe this was because I underclocked over gmenu to 166MHz. But I also had a issue with standard clocking:
Time Attack: It lso started good but something around 16K points the screen refreshed (again) because of no matching animals on screen. But this time it looked like the new screen was filled only with one type of creature (pig maybe) and vanished instantly and I won the Match because it gave me thousands of points, I reached 24K but need only 20K in this mode. Then game again hangs in a loop.

I hope this can be fixed because in booth cases I was close to hit a good highscore.

Oh, Bug or feature?: When the playfield refrehes because there are no longer matching animal, the timer continues during the refresh screen. This costs valuable second. I suggst to stop the timer during this screen
And the last Name that was typed in for the Highscore could stay in the keyboard screen so we only have to press enter. (for lazy people like me )

That's very odd, I've reached much higher scores and played extensively but had no bugs like that (I also use gmenu2x). If it happens to anyone else please let me know and give as much detail as possible about what happened so I can try and trace the error.
You're right, I think the timer should be stopped when you run out moves so I'll add that to my todo list. For the highscore entry I'll add an option to remember the last name entered or choose a default name.

 

[fusion_power]

Thanx. I always have the "talent" to find bugs without searching for it. I hope it doesn't has anything to do with my "colourd" program I'm using in the background for propper Colours on the F100 MK2 screen (Your Game also looks much better with this little tool on my GP2X)
I've reached around 35K points in normal mode, is this good? And do touchscreen Users have an advantage in the game? I could imagine they are much faster than we poor GP2X F100 Stick users. h34r:

P.S. I find the timing of the game is perfect. It "Feels" very good for me.