[Original Game] Puzzletube

[Ziz]

Good morning folk,

after a little while I plan to release a new and finished version of puzzletube. I thought the competition would be a good incentive to finally finish some of my work (not to mention the attention I get in a competition in contrast to a "normal" release. Yes, I am an attention whore ). So maybe a second game of mine will be finished this way depending on my spare time, too.

Maybe you are a bit disappointed, that I don't bring you something new, but at the moment I have 5 parallel projects

• sparrow3D
• Snowman
• Puzzletube
• Schizophrenia
• Schwerkraft

and instead of beginning new fancy stuff with a good or maybe even great idea, which is even so never completed, I should finish at least 2 to start a new one.
So I do. As I said puzzletube is the first one to be finished. That means after that goal I am done with it. Everything is built in, what I want to have. Anything more would be fine - sure - but somewhere the line has to be drawn. Of course bugs still will be polished or if I have a fancy idea to improve the speed I will implemented it, especially if puzzletube profits from sparrow3d improvements. I don't say, that this project will never be touched again. Maybe there will be a puzzletube 2 someday. Maybe... But that will be a new project, IF it happens.

So, what are the great changes for you, which ED demands to admit already released software?

First of all, what I did new until now:

• starting of implementation of multi language support (nearly done). This feature was requested by some users, whose moms liked the game, but don't know the English language.
• Improved settings menu (with some preview instead of featureless words like "stone quality: flat | bordered | textured"
• Bug fixing
• Improving of the render quality AND speed
• Improved the font with a bit anti aliasing
• I don't know, whether I mentioned it sometime, but I changed the highscore system, too. It was to messy, now there are only 4 different kinds of games with two changeable game options: normal or hard and with or without special stones. Furthermore the highscore for each kind of game is trimmed to three entries
• I removed the old competition splashscreen

And what will I do the next 2 weeks?

• Finish the multi language support. That is a point, where YOU are able to help me. I know only two languages (German and English) and the last one not very well, so I would like you to have a look at the English translation and maybe even to add a complete new language I don't know. That can be any language from Russian over Spanish to Elvish or Klingon. When I release the public beta, I will explain, how the language files work. It is pretty easy.
• Improving the help. A Wall of Text is inacceptable.
• Custom Music option. Puzzletube will search for music in a well-defined folder and play it instead of the great music of Nick May
• High Score goals. At the moment you play for your fun and to challenge yourself, to get better and better. But the goal is, that you have highscore goals like in trackmania. That means, you get a bronze, silver or bold medal, if you reach a given goal. I am thinking about a green medal like in Trackmania, too. But that would mean, that I have to become better than gold first. XD (For people not knowing Trackmania: You get a green medal if you got better results than the game makers)
• Making new kind of advertisement for sparrow and this competition.

That's it. I think, I will post a video later today or tomorrow, depending how fast I progress.
greetings,

Ziz

Edit: Hm, at least a pictures of the new version I should post now.

 

[Farox]

I could translate in Italian...if you don't have another translator.

 

[Ziz]

At the moment I have only one translator: me.

So, thanks, I will revisit your offer, if my multilingual changes are done

 

[foxblock]

I can translate to English if you want me to

 

[ekianjo]

I can translate in french and Japanese, if you can display it

 

[Ziz]

Uh, sounds great.

My engine and my game are able to show japanese letters, BUT I think my font is not. :-\ So maybe I should review my chosen font. Another person mentioned the Russian language, where I would have the same problem... I will think about it and come back to you - at least for French.

I hope nobody of you writes texts about horse penises, except for English I had no real chance to prove that. XD

 

[Ziz]

As promised here is a video of the newest version. The game in the middle took longer than I thought, feel free to fast-forward. ^^

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5oOZeW1rz9c?feature=oembed
At the moment I am trying to choose a new font, but I can't decide, which looks best, especially on small screens (like any other device than the pandora):

Spoiler

 

[fusion_power]

I remember that game. I still have an old version on my Pandora, the one with the 3D tiles. Now they are 2D but still look 3D, well made and I guess a big performance boost.

For the font, I prefer a font without serifs, these are somehow looking weird in games. Your option Nr. 3 looks nice, Nr. 2 would be also OK.

 

[Neelix]

Looks good!

Personally, I like the font in the 4th screenshot best.

- Neelix

 

[Ziz]

I liked to 4th most, too.

But I think, I take the 3rd nevertheless. It works best.

However, @Fusion_Power: The flat stones are not really faster than the 3D ones. I didn't test it, but a big performance boost should not occur. I just like them more.

 

[Ziz]

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YWWtnuV2Zk8?feature=oembed

I think I will win because of my intro. ^^ Microbes, pack up and go home!

No, just jocking. I just had no other idea to implement to competition logo.

However I did usefull stuff, too!

• The multi language support is done, if no new text is added tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, I will come back to the translation offers.
• A new help. It is still without images, what - I know - isn't perfect. I even tried to add images, it just looked wrong and didn't helped at all. But: It is no wall of text anymore. A wall of keywords...
• Custom music folder. That was a feature request, add your own music (linux users can use symlinks ) to the puzzletube/music folder and it will be player instead of the great music of Nick May ingame.

greetings, Ziz

 

[Farox]

I love this intro...and also the smooth movement of menu. Very well done B)

 

[pmprog]

Really like the logo flips at the start.

 

[Ziz]

So guys, Done!

That means: Done! Puzzletube is finished. Everything I wanted is implemented, now I only fix bugs and change little things especially about text positioning.

Apropos Text: I added every text I wanted, so the translation file is ready to get filled with new languages.

How can you do this? Take this file: https://raw.github.com/theZiz/puzzletube/master/translations/translations.txt It looks like this:

# filenames for the flags.
--:flag.png
en:./images/flag_en.png
de:./images/flag_de.png

# Start question
--:Choose your language!
en:Choose your language!
de:Wähle deine Sprache!
--:Language: English
en:Language: English
de:Sprache: Deutsch

# Menu
--lay
enlay
de:Spielen
--:How to Play
en:How to Play
de:TutorialAs you can see every "group" of meaning and translations starts with the meaning used ingame to reference the translation and then is followed be different translations starting with the two-character iso 639-1 code (http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp?order=639), a ":" and the translation. So e.g. if you want to add French, a group could look like this:

--:hello
en:hello
de:Hallo
fr:Allô

Do this for every group and your language is in! If you finished such a translation.txt file, please send it too me, I will merge it and name you ingame.
Apropos ingame: I will add a video of the finished game this weekend (I hope). Maybe a beta version for the pandora, too, I will see.

greetings, ziz

 

[Farox]

Here is the italian translated text...http://filesmelt.com/dl/translations.txt

 

[Ziz]

Wow, great, thank you! I added it to the repo, so if the next translator didn't download the translation.txt already, the three lingual translation file is default for them.

One (important) thing I forgot: The length of the string should be around the other translations length. Otherwise it may be, that the text is too long, leaves the screen or similar.

I tested your solution and it worked great. I will post a video with it tomorrow (I hope). The next translations maybe can be tested on your own. Then you can see, whether the size fits or not.

Thanks again!

Greetings, Ziz

 

[_wb_]

Here's a Dutch translation (nl). I also fixed one or two bugs in the English strings.

 

[Ziz]

Oh, thank you, too.

I added it, it worked fine, but the lines in the Tutorial part are sometimes a BIT too long (on 320x240, for the pandora it should be fine) as you can see here:



Nevertheless, thank you!

greetings,

Ziz

Edit: Unfortunately "Terug naar het menu" is too long, too. Maybe "Naar het menu" works, too?

 

[_wb_]

I made some modifications to make some strings a bit shorter. Hope it helps.

 

[Ziz]

Nearly perfect.



I think, I will release a Linux version this weekend, then you can improve it better.

Til now it is fine.

Oh and please use always the up2date version of the repository, makes easier for me to add your changes.