We all have a pile of shame; this ever growing pile of games that we always wanted to play or games that we never got around finishing.
- Suikoden 2, 5 - Loved loved loved Suikoden 1! But only got about half way through Suikoden 2, shame on me…
- Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, 3 - Played a fair part of MGS 1, but never finished it.
- Devil May Cry 1, 3 - Played a bit of DMC 1, but got stuck on the fight against Nelo Angelo :’(
- Final Fantasy 5, 9, 12
- Silent Hill 1, 2, 3, 4
- Resident Evil 1, 3, 4
- Deus Ex
- Chrono Trigger
- Secret of Mana
- Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
So, what’s on your pile of shame?
It’s often the simplest gameplay mechanics that make the best game. A couple of days ago I bought Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved on Steam and I’m hooked. It’s not a complex game, it’s really simple, you stay alive by shooting things. Yet it’s really fun and I played it a lot!
Another simple game that I played a lot lately is Squircle. It’s was created by, I believe, a reader of this blog. Kudos to Nick for the nice little game.
Changes:
- Renamed Nameless-Tetris-Clone to TetriQuest.
- A working AI for TetriQuest. It can do on average 10000 lines per game. \o/ I think that’s a fairly impressive start.
Dev Notes:
Okay doing a working AI for Tetris was not as hard as I thought it would be. But doing one that is good involves sooo much more testing and debuging than I thought hehe.
You might be asking how I could create a fairly solid AI for Tetris. Surely I had to use some complexe neural network AI technique. Nope! I loop all possible moves (x position and rotation) and use this simple formula:
score for this move = (edge weigth * number of edge touching the map)
+ (cleared line weigth * number of cleared lines)
- (height weigth * positive delta of the height before and after the move)
- (shadowed holes weigth * number of shadowed holes)
The AI then use the move with the highest score.
Mojo:
You should have seen me the day I finally ironned out all the little bugs that was preventing my AI to play. I was throwing my arms in the air shouting “I did it!”, laughing and dancing, happy and proud. That feeling is well worth all those late debuging night ^_^
Challenge 200:
For this progress report : 13h
YTD : 80h00 / 200h
Todo:
- TetriQuest: Player vs Multiple AI.
- TetriQuest: Magics (i.e.: Tetrinet like special box).
- TetriQuest: AI react to magic attacks.
- J.I.M. : Do not allow an object to be push into another object.
- Fix gif transparency.
- Pixel perfect collision detection.
- Rework the split of a tileset image. I should copy the pixel of the big image in the tile, instead of each time copying the big image and cropping it.
