Animatch For Gp2x Released

[ruckage]

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.

Hi again, I wouldn't have thought that the colourd program would cause any problems, it's more likely due to my code but may only occur in very exact conditions that I haven't stumbled across while testing. If it happens again just try and remember exactly the conditions before the error and your actions as the error occurred and I'll see if I can replicate the error and then hopefully fix it . edit: 35000 points seems quite respectable.

@Senor Quack: I think I understand what you mean now about the delay, it's if you push the direction and then select in very quick succession. I'll see what I can do to improve it.

 

[ruckage]

Right, I think I've managed to replicate the bug you spoke about fusion_power, good find - I had to really abuse the game to reproduce it
It seems to be entirely related to the routine that gives a new board when you run out of moves and doesn't seem to occur at any other point. I think I've fixed it so I'll get some of the other request added and upload a new version later today.

Plans for version 1.02 are as follows:

Fix major bug - found by fusion_power
Fix minor tile swap error - found by me
Improve selection response - requested by senor quack
Add alternate control methods - requested by senor quack
Pause the game timer during score attack if you run out of moves - requested by fusion_power
Add a remember last name/default name option - requested by fusion_power
Move onto next letter on keyboard when direction held - requested byyod4z

edit 1:
Fade out completed animals - requested by Alex
Countdown for quota instead of countup - requested by Alex

edit 2:
Have a 'Normal' and 'Hard' mode for 'Time attack' and 'Score attack', Normal has the standard 7 animals and hard includes the pig as well. - requested by me

edit 3:
Tap selected tile to de-select - requested by senor quack

Also timothee mentioned the speed of the game compared to tilematch, while I'm not going to increase the speed of the game in general or remove any animations I may increase the speed at which the new tiles drop into place, I've tested it and the slight increase in speed seems to work well and matches the original zoo keeper a bit more. Whats everyones thoughts on this?

Any other suggestions let me know quick and if I think them appropriate I'll try and get them added to this next version.

 

[Alex.]

How about fading out the small animal icons whose quota you already met? Either that or have a countdown instead of a countup to get a quick idea of how you're standing.

Oh, and thanks for adding the hint before the game ends, I always found it frustrating not knowing the last move I blatantly overlooked

 

[ruckage]

How about fading out the small animal icons whose quota you already met? Either that or have a countdown instead of a countup to get a quick idea of how you're standing.

Oh, and thanks for adding the hint before the game ends, I always found it frustrating not knowing the last move I blatantly overlooked

Good suggestions , both added to the list. I'll have the animals countdown in normal mode and count up in the other modes as they don't have a quota.
Yeah, it's infuriating if you never know where the last move was so I had to have that feature .

 

[naples39]

Great work Ruckage. I loved Tilematch, but the graphics on this version are gorgeous, with outstanding attention to detail on gameplay features as well. Thanks!!

 

[quote]

Will you be releasing this game (and your others) on the Wiz, ruckage? Looks great.

Have you got a Wiz? 'Blingo' is meant to ship with it, I've just noticed.

 

[ruckage]

Will you be releasing this game (and your others) on the Wiz, ruckage? Looks great.

Have you got a Wiz? 'Blingo' is meant to ship with it, I've just noticed.

Yes, all my previous and future games will be available for the Wiz. I have a prototype of the Wiz and thanks to the efforts of Puck2099 porting Fenix to the new system all my games work flawlessly. They were going to include my new version of Blingo but unfortunately it is nowhere near finished yet - they might include the original version of Blingo though but i'm not Sure. Hopefully 'Animatch' will be built into the system as will 'Snake on Dope' and 'Space Varments.'

Also if Fenix is ported to the Pandora (and I'm sure it will be) then it will be easy for me to port my games to that as well, with maybe just some button changes needed - though ideally it would be better if I had system so I could optimise the games to make better use of the pandoras screen size etc.
But for now I'm quite happy focussing on the GP2X and Wiz as even the 2X has a lot of life left in it and the Wiz is a perfect gaming platform imo.

 

[quote]

You're right, the Wiz really is perfect (from what I've seen). You've just made me want it more )


..and I hope you focus on it, instead of bringing out games for the Pandora which the Wiz can't cope with. From what you've said, I doesn't look like this is going to happen .

 

[fusion_power]

Wow, you are very fast, ruckage.
I think I get the "bugfinder of the day" medal
Well I also had an Idea of the cause of the bug in my case. I usualy played the game without the pig animal in time attack. As the bug happend, the pig was enabled in this mode. (afaik this was not supposed to happen in the first release, right? ^_^ )

The game is so polished, it is hard to find things to improve. Maybe some more Music in the Future or changing random backgrounds here and there... but the appearence of Animatch is really close to Calibres like "Wind and Water" etc..
My fav. feature is the special block that eliminates all matching animals on screen by the way.

 

[senquack]

Yeah this game is a serious contender for "funnest GP2X game ever made" in my opinion.

I tried the game on my F200 last night and found it took the game to a whole new level for me, love it.

I found only one more thing I could suggest: When you accidentally tap on the wrong tile with the stylus, there's no way to de-select it like the F100. With the F100, you just hit B again when you make this mistake. Perhaps you can make it so if you tap a second time on a tile you can de-select it? Or you can maybe make the L and R triggers de-select buttons?

 

[ruckage]

Perhaps you can make it so if you tap a second time on a tile you can de-select it?

Good suggestion, added to list.

 

[timothee]

Thanks Ruckage for taking in the comments. I've been playing Animatch a lot more over the last 2 days (I don't know if I must thank you, or curse you ) .

I have started playing with the touchscreen and I agree with Senior Quack: the experience is very different. I still feel there could be some speedups but for some reason, it felt better with the touchscreen. Very nice implementation by the way: I started by tapping twice to move the tiles (same as I did with button B), and it took me a while to realize I could tap and slide, niiiiiiice .

One more request: can the highscore for normal mode show the level reached? When I play normal mode now, I barely care about the score any more, I just want to beat the levels. It took me ages to beat level 10 (damn pigs!). I haven't gone beyond 11 yet .

Btw, on Alex's comment for normal mode: I think it's ok to implement either: count down instead of up, OR grey out animals whose quota is reached. Personnaly, I like the idea of grey out more, and keeping the count going up anyway. I find it interesting to know by how much I overshot the quota for one particular animal (sometimes by as much as 3 or 4 times while waiting for the quota to even be reached on other animals). At the same time, without the grey out, its very hard to tell, at a glance, at the moment, which animal I need to focus on.

And one praise for Pat: this game is a showcase of how important a good music is to the game: I woke up this morning with the tune in my head and it was begging "how about a game of Animatch?". The music is great and a very powerful draw for this game. Really well done.

 

[ruckage]

Thanks Ruckage for taking in the comments. I've been playing Animatch a lot more over the last 2 days (I don't know if I must thank you, or curse you )............ trimmed

Thanks for the feedback Timothee,

The new version is actually finished now so I can't include any of these new changes but I'll keep them in mind for the next version. I particularly like the idea of adding the level reached on the highscore table but it will require quite a bit of adjustment to the highscore tables so will have to wait. I have the quota counting down now and greying out when you reach the quota but I can always add an option in the next version to have a choice for how quotas are displayed.

Pat has indeed done a great job with the music, and he's even made some more songs for the new version which are just as catchy.

 

[ruckage]

The new version is now available to download from the archive.